HEALTH Secretary Wes Streeting has been urged to honour the New Deal for Working People after failing to back a Unison NHS strike over a £100 million-plus privatisation plan.

More than 350 facilities workers are on a three-week walkout over East Suffolk and North Essex Foundation Trust (ESNEFT’s) plans to outsource their jobs.

Large NHS contracts such as this need Cabinet Office approval but Mr Streeting has said he will not intervene in the trust’s outsourcing bid despite Labour’s promise for the biggest wave of insourcing in a generation, a union source said.

His stance has attracted criticism from Labour MPs, Unison and NHS campaigners, with ESNEFT’s board of directors expected to rubber-stamp the outsourcing of their soft facilities management contract tomorrow.

Eastern Unison head of health Caroline Hennessy said: “Moving these essential teams out of the NHS is a false economy and goes against government pledges on insourcing. 

“The trust has spent months trying to justify its ill-thought-out plans to privatise the jobs of these key staff and has failed to win any of the arguments.”

Cleaners, porters, housekeepers and other facilities staff employed at Colchester Hospital, Aldeburgh Hospital and several other ESNEFT community sites began a three-week strike on November 25, after voting 99 per cent in favour.

Staff fear the sell-off will threaten their pay and conditions and pose a serious risk to patient safety, and had already walked out over the dispute for more than 20 days.

The facilities contract for Ipswich Hospital, also within the trust and currently provided by private contractor OCS, ends next April and Unison is urging the trust to bring all these services back in-house.

But in May, ESNEFT chief executive Nick Hulme was filmed telling workers at a board meeting to lobby executives that the decision to outsource had already been made, the union said.

NHS campaigner and academic John Lister said: “The trust has shown no respect for proper procedure, and even less respect for the staff who stand to lose their status as NHS employees if the contract goes to a private company.”

He branded the plan’s Outline Business Case — which recommended full outsourcing — “hopelessly biased and littered with flaws,” adding: “ESNEFT is also out of step with NHS England guidance, and with the major trusts that have been bringing services back in house in the last few years.”

“Since the July election it seems the trust is also happy to stick up two fingers to the Labour government, whose policy opposing outsourcing and the two-tier workforce is clearly expressed in Next Steps — Making Work Pay and in the Employment Rights Bill,” he added.

“If Wes Streeting does not take the opportunity to confront this outrageous behaviour, he will fatally undermine any confidence that the government intends to tackle bad management and work with staff to rescue the NHS.”

Keep Our NHS Public co-chairman Dr John Puntis said there is little indication that Labour is doing anything to prevent the outsourcing of facilities staff in the ESNEFT “by putting pressure on a secretive management that has failed to engage with its workforce.”

“NHS England has also recently doubled the threshold for reporting commercial contracts to its Spend Controls Team,” he added.

“It seems the mistaken view that the private sector is there to ‘help’ the NHS rather than profit from it is still prevalent in Whitehall."

Socialist MP Richard Burgon, currently suspended from Labour, said: “For far too long, private companies have been raking in profits off NHS contracts by running down the quality of service, cutting corners and driving down staff pay and conditions. 

“I was delighted with the promise that a Labour government would oversee the biggest wave of insourcing for a generation.

“That needs to shape what happens in this case and these plans need to be ditched.

“NHS services should be run in the interest of patients and the wider public, not private profit.”

A Labour MP, speaking to the Star anonymously, added: “It is concerning that public bodies are continuing with the short-termist and costly approach of outsourcing jobs when our government has made clear that it will oversee the largest programme of insourcing in history.

“The government should block further outsourcing outright or alternatively set stricter parameters on any interim outsourcing that should be time-limited whilst it sets out its plans and provide clear guidance to public bodies to deliver a new wave of insourcing.

“Those plans must set out the benefits that can be realised – both in terms of employer costs and employee benefits – by putting an end to outsourcing and retaining jobs in-house.”

ESNEFT declined to comment before announcing its decision next Monday.

NHS England and the Department for Health and Social Care were approached for comment. 

The Cabinet Office referred queries to NHS England.