In the last four years I have spent much of my time in Parliament fighting against the coalition government’s damaging marketisation of our NHS.

The arguments about the fragmentation and privatisation of NHS services are well rehearsed.

The public knows the reorganisation wasted £3 billion and vital resources which should have been spent on front-line services and patients, but what has often gone unnoticed is the democratic deficit and the erosion of our rights to question those who run public services and spend our money.

Freedom of information was one of the previous Labour government’s greatest achievements, ensuring transparency and accountability in modern government.

However, currently it is not possible to make private providers comply with freedom of information requests, which is why this week I retabled my private member’s Bill “to amend the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to apply to private healthcare companies and all other bodies seeking health service contracts.”

Owing to the government’s policy of opening up public services to the private and voluntary sectors, billions of pounds of NHS contracts are now being made available to the private sector.

Since the implementation of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, 70 percent of NHS contracts have been awarded to private healthcare companies, many with pasts checkered with fraud, failure and criminality.

Unfortunately, while more and more taxpayer money is being handed to the private sector, the public have their hands tied when trying to obtain information about how our NHS is being run.

My Bill would extend the provisions of the 2000 Act to all bodies, whether public, private or voluntary, bidding for NHS contracts and ensure that freedom of information legislation is applied equally in the implementation of any public contract.

It would stop private healthcare companies operating behind a cloak of commercial confidentiality and prevent billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money being awarded to private-sector companies under barely transparent contracts.

Despite the massive investments made by the public in the NHS, more and more NHS service providers are now free from financial scrutiny by the very people who made the investments — the British taxpayer.

It is common sense that FOI responsibilities should follow the public pound and when the Prime Minister was in opposition he agreed, promising to increase the range of publicly funded bodies subject to scrutiny.

Now, unfortunately, it would appear that nothing is being done to address the democratic deficit caused by the outsourcing of public services.

In fact, yesterday the government excluded Network Rail, another public body, from FOI requests, something I have already written to the Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin about asking him to reverse his decision.

As the NHS contract says, the NHS belongs to the people. It is time for political leaders to deliver on their promises.

If we are to safeguard the public’s right to know what is happening in their name and how their money is being spent, we must extend freedom of information legislation to all providers of public services no matter if they are in the voluntary, public or private sector.

Grahame Morris is Labour MP for Easington.