PROFIT-DRIVEN Care UK, owned by London-based private equity firm Bridgepoint Capital, undercut the National Health Service when it took over a contract it had with Doncaster Council to provide support for people with learning difficulties.

The council had to put the contract out to tender under Tory competition rules, which are resulting in the enforced privatisation of an increasing number of NHS services.

In effect, taxpayers’ cash is being diverted from the NHS to private healthcare contractors whose motive is profit.

Coincidentally many of the private healthcare firms receiving multi-million-pound NHS contracts involve individuals who have donated cash to the Conservative Party.

Care UK has contracts worth £102.6 million. Its chairman John Nash was made a peer after donating £247,250 to the Conservative Party.

The NHS had held the Doncaster contract for more than 60 years and 150 NHS employees provided help and support to enable 130 people with learning difficulties to maintain their independence.

The NHS bid is understood to have been £7m and the Care UK bid £6.9m.

The 150 NHS jobs were transferred to Essex-based Care UK in September last year and, within three months of taking over the contract, the firm began slashing wages and attacking working conditions, including reducing holiday entitlement and weekend and bank holiday pay rates.

The former NHS staff, members of public-service union Unison, voted overwhelmingly for industrial action. They are currently staging a three-week strike.

The Morning Star posed a series of questions to Care UK through the firm’s media office.

Did Care UK submit its bid in the knowledge that it would have to reduce wages and worsen working conditions? Care UK’s bid was very close to the NHS, but sufficiently beneath it to win the contract. Did Care UK know what the NHS bid was?

Are low-paid, less qualified and inexperienced staff now being employed to replace former NHS workers who have left? How many former NHS staff have left since Care UK took over? What are the potential profit figures for Care UK from the Doncaster contract?

We assume Care UK must have worked out a financial plan, including profits, before it submitted its bid. How much in total, on an annual basis, has been cut from the wage bill? What was the average cut imposed on an individual’s wages?

In response Care UK learning disability services director Chris Hindle said: “From the outset, Doncaster Council made it very clear that whichever provider was chosen to deliver this service would have to reduce spending as well as improve the support it offers to service users.

“The previous NHS provider also made clear that changes to terms and conditions were inevitable. The procurement process was based on quality as well as cost and Care UK had no knowledge of any component of any other bid.

 “Our solution was to maintain the basic pay of all the employees who transferred in, to continue to give them access to the generous public- sector pension scheme and to avoid making anyone redundant. The suggestion that anyone has seen a 50 per cent reduction in their salary is wholly inaccurate and a gross exaggeration.

“We have made transitional payments equivalent to 14 months difference in earnings to those affected. The basic pay that colleagues have maintained is up to 50 per cent higher than comparable roles elsewhere in the sector.

“The numbers of colleagues leaving following the change of provider is around 15 per cent — around the normal rate in the care sector. We continue to recruit experienced new colleagues at competitive rates of pay, ensuring Doncaster Council is able to maintain this essential service, and have improved the relevance of training to the needs of those people it is there to support.

 “Our service has continued to provide an improving quality of support throughout the industrial action taken by a minority of Unison’s members. Furthermore, Doncaster Council has given our local team very positive feedback about the more flexible, person-centred approach which it has started to put in place.”

The Morning Star repeated its request for answers to the questions: how much has been cut from the wage bill, what is the average reduction in salary, and how much profit does Care UK expect to make from running the service?

That was over a week ago. There has so far been no response from Care UK.

This paper has spoken also to Care UK workers who are taking strike action, including Roger Hutt and David Honeybone. Both are senior support workers worked for the NHS on the Doncaster contract for more than 20 years, until their jobs were transferred to Care UK against their will.

Before Care UK took over their jobs their basic monthly take home pay was £1,800. After the pay cuts were imposed they’re taking home £1,300, a cut of £500 a month. That is a reduction in their basic pay of 27.7 per cent.

The figure does not take into account reductions in overtime payments for working at weekends and during bank holidays.

Nor does it include the value of lost holidays.

Hutt, Unison shop steward at Care UK, estimates that his overall income loss is between 35 and 45 per cent, equivalent to his monthly mortgage payment. Honeybone’s marriage has broken up during the strike action.

John Cafferty, Unison regional secretary, said that Care UK took the contract in the full knowledge that the contract price would not meet wages, terms and conditions of the NHS staff being transferred to the firm.

“They have deliberately tried to dumb down the care of the most vulnerable members of society in the Doncaster area,” he stresses.

“If any evidence was needed that Care UK is profiting on the back of non-payment of decent wages to their workers, it is the fact that they have refused to disclose the profits they expect to make over the life of the contract.”