The government has awarded an NHS contract to a private firm linked to scandal-hit MP Malcolm Rifkind. But the winning bid will actually cost the NHS more than a bid from local NHS services!

This is the new bizarro world of NHS privatisation where money-grabbing corporations with links to top Tories win -- every single time.

But we could stop this corrupt back scratching with one simple rule change that’s hard to argue against. Right now, much of the bidding for NHS contracts happens in secret. If NHS England made bidding processes fully transparent, we could stop the government using NHS contracts as prizes for their corporate backers.

We’re watching the NHS be systematically dismantled and run in the interests of well connected private health firms. This is not what the NHS was set up to do, and we can save it.

Tell NHS England to make sure all bidders for taxpayer funded NHS contracts should publish the full details of their bids and stop ripping off the Great British taxpayer.

Only this week, Malcolm Rifkind has been caught selling his contacts book to whoever has the cash to pay him. The company he works for, Alliance Medical, won an £80 million contract to run diagnostic clinics in Staffordshire, but that winning bid was actually over £7 million more than a bid from the local NHS. The government happily announced that this contract was going to a private company -- but hid the fact that Alliance was underbid by the local NHS!

This is yet another attempt to steal our NHS and hand it off piece by piece to private corporations that will charge us more and serve us less.

SumOfUs was created to put an end to the corporate capture of our public services, and to challenge the corporate corruption at the heart of our democracy. We’ve already been knocking up campaign wins in protecting our NHS -- from halting the sale of our medical data, to forcing Lockheed Martin to withdraw from an NHS contract bidding process. By taking action now, we’ve got an opportunity to help stop more damaging privatisations of our public services.

Can you tell NHS England to stop secretly privatising the NHS?

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More information:

NHS Contract Awarded To Private Firm Despite Rival Bid Being “£7 Million Cheaper" Buzzfeed, 27 January 2015

'Selling off NHS for profit': Full list of MPs with links to private healthcare firms, The Mirror, 27 November 2014