Ex-minister seeks to protect NHS against foreign ownership
A former minister has called on the government to intervene in foreign takeovers of critical NHS infrastructure such as doctors' surgeries and hospitals.
Baroness Altmann, the former pensions minister, raised concerns about overseas private equity firms owning NHS buildings and warned of 'wreckage' such as happened in the care home sector with the collapse of Southern Cross in 2011 and Four Seasons Healthcare in 2019.
Writing in The Times, she says: 'Private equity firms stripped equity value from care providers, loaded them with unsustainable debt, and pursued aggressive cost-cutting driven by short-term profit maximisation not patient welfare.'
Her comments come as KKR and Stonepeak Partners, the US private equity funds, find themselves in a bidding war for Assura, which owns hundreds of doctors' surgeries around the country. As it stands, the board of Assura is recommending a £1.7 billion deal to merge with its rival, Primary Health Properties, instead.
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