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Reform UK’s leader Nigel Farage says he is “open to anything” when it comes to replacing Britain’s NHS with “an insurance-based model”.
The Clacton MP told LBC on Sunday the French healthcare system could be a model for Britain’s NHS, appearing to back a move “where you pay in to effectively an insurance scheme.”
It is the latest in a series of comments on the health service which put him at odds with the British public, despite Reform UK’s recent climb in the polls.
Reform UK’s 2024 manifesto – or “contract” – called for tax relief of 20% on all private healthcare and insurance, effectively a state handout to those with the broadest shoulders. It pledged to use more independent (i.e. private) healthcare capacity, paid for by the NHS.
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In May last year, Farage also became “Co-founder and Chairman” of a company called ‘Action on World Health LLP’, which wants to “reform or replace the World Health Organization” – the international body which helped coordinate responses to the Covid pandemic. One of its directors is also a director of a consultancy which advises, among other sectors, health care firms – “particularly mental and behavioral health”.
Labour now looks set to make Reform UK’s stance on the NHS a key attack line.
Responding to Farage’s LBC comments, Health Secretary Wes Streeting MP said: “We have it straight from the horse’s mouth: Nigel Farage says he is “open to anything” when it comes to replacing Britain’s NHS with an insurance-based model.
“With Reform, our NHS would be reduced to a poor service for poor people, with working people forced to pay to go private. Labour will rebuild our NHS so that it is there for everyone who needs it and, whenever you’re ill, you never have to worry about the bill.
“Farage has been pushing healthcare charges to his supporters in private for over a decade saying, “I think we are going to have to move to an insurance-based system of healthcare”. Now he’s going public, proposing that “if you can afford it, you pay”.
He added: “Every single voter considering Reform needs to ask themselves if they could afford to pay for health insurance like patients have to elsewhere?
“There are elections in just three months’ time. Voters deserve straight talking from Reform about their plans to move to health insurance.”
The health secretary has reiterated his support for using private healthcare providers to reduce NHS waiting lists, while emphasizing they must contribute meaningfully without depleting NHS resources.
Wes Streeting himself has come under fire from NHS campaigners recently after the Government announced plans this month for private hospitals to deliver up to one million additional appointments, scans and operations annually for NHS patients in England. It is part of a plan to reduce backlogs in the health service.
Streeting has described his approach as “entirely pragmatic” and claimed practical solutions should take precedence over “ideology”.
He had previously claimed some critics of his plans were “middle-class lefties” prioritising ideological purity over patient care.
Co-Chair of Keep Our NHS Public and retired Consultant Paediatrician, Dr John Puntis told Byline Times: “Mr Farage would do well to read Lord Darzi’s recent report stating clearly that: ‘Nothing that I have found draws into question the principles of a health service that is taxpayer funded, free at the point of use, and based on need, not ability to pay…other health system models—those where user charges, social or private insurance play a bigger role—are more expensive’”.
He called for Reform MPs to explain to voters “why they want us to pay more for healthcare and what benefits this would deliver.”
But Dr Puntis also criticised Labour’s approach to the NHS, saying: “The recent Elective Care Recovery Plan fails to acknowledge that, rather than being partners, private healthcare providers are locked in ruthless competition with the NHS in their battle to generate profit.
In 2015 when he was the leader of the UK Independence Party, Farage said: “People who can afford private health care should pay for it.”
Read Nigel Farage’s comments in full below.
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Quotes on the NHS from Nigel Farage, LBC from 10:15am, 26 January
Lewis Goodall, LBC: You are not committed to the [NHS] model as it currently exists and would be open therefore to an insurance-based model in future?
Nigel Farage MP: Open to anything.
LG: Open to anything, fine. So, would you be open still, I mean something that you’ve talked about in the past, would you be open still to moving to say a French style insurance model for the NHS?
NF: Well, there are, there are… I mean the French have a mutual system where you pay in to effectively an insurance scheme.
LG: And the rich pay and the poor don’t?
NF: Yeah, and that’s the mutuality. Now you know, I’m not saying we should absolutely mimic the French system, but let’s have a much deeper, broader thing.
LG: So it’s possible you could go into that election and that election manifesto saying let’s look at a French-style insurance model or an insurance model for the NHS?
NF: By the time we get to the next election, we will have made our decision as to the right route. What I’m absolutely certain of, is the way we’re doing it at the moment isn’t working and we’re getting terrible value for money.
LG: Well, the French model is not completely free at the point of use.
NF: I know that, I know that, I’m fully, fully, fully aware of that. I just said they deal with their money the way they do. Let’s have a think about how we do things.
The NHS was set up for one reason and one reason only to give health care free at the point of delivery. If we work back from that, let’s be open-minded about any way we can fund it.