Renationalise the NHS, scrap integrated care systems, and end PFI contracts
This petition gathered 137,708 signatures between 14 October 2021 and 14 April 2022, according to the Parliament petitions site. The Government responded on 23 December 2021. MPs debated it in Westminster Hall on 31 January 2022.
The petition
The petition's creator is not named in the Petitions site's published record. Quoted in full from the UK Parliament petitions site.
Renationalise the NHS, scrap integrated care systems, and end PFI contracts
We demand the Government restore England’s publicly funded, publicly provided NHS by reversing all privatising legislation, ending ongoing PFI contracts, and scrapping plans for Integrated Care Systems and for-profit US-style ‘managed care’.
The Government has no democratic mandate to privatise the NHS, yet vast amounts of public money are being squandered on the internal market, business managers, private providers, PFI debts, multinational accounting firms and corporate consultants. We believe the Health and Care Bill could undermine access to care and universal standards by locking in privatisation and dividing the English NHS into Integrated Care Systems. The Government should renationalise the NHS, and reverse all of the above reforms.
The Government's response
The Government published its response on 23 December 2021; the petitions site lists the Department of Health and Social Care as responsible. Its summary:
The government has been steadfast in its commitment to the guiding principles of the NHS which mean the NHS is not and never will be for sale to the private sector.
The opening 346 words of the 659-word response:
This government has no intention of privatising the NHS.
We firmly refute the claim that the Health and Care Bill undermines access to care or universal standards. It is not a privatising Bill. It delivers on the NHS’s own proposals for reform in its 2019 Long Term Plan and makes permanent some of the innovations we have seen in the system due to Covid. It captures learning from the response to the pandemic and the vaccine rollout. And it goes even further, improving access and standards with a range of measures to level-up health outcomes across the country, enabling people to live longer and healthier lives.
The Bill establishes Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) to take on the commissioning functions of existing CCGs and some of NHS England’s commissioning functions. They will be directly accountable for NHS spend and performance, and will be NHS bodies. They will bring in representatives from a range of other NHS bodies including NHS commissioners and NHS providers. The work of ICBs will be driven by health outcomes, with no space for profit, competition, or private interests.
The new commissioning bodies being set up are all public bodies and will not, indeed cannot, be controlled by private providers. Independent providers, as corporate entities, will not be able to sit on Integrated Care Boards, nor will any individual appointed there be a representative of such an interest in any capacity.
The Bill includes ample safeguards to ensure that the interests of the public and the NHS are always put first. The ICB chair has the power to veto members of the board if they are unsuitable, and NHS England has the power to issue guidance to ICBs in relation to appointments as part of its general guidance-making power. That sits alongside the robust requirements on ICBs to manage conflicts of interests, including publishing and maintaining a register of Members’ interests, and NHSE’s wider duty to issue guidance to ICBs.
At Report Stage the Government further clarified, by amendment, existing provisions that ensured private sector organisations would not be able to sit on ICBs.
Read the full response on the petitions site.
Where the signatures came from
Signatures came from 650 constituencies on the boundaries used until the 2024 general election. The largest number, 674, came from Brighton, Pavilion.
136,302 of the signatures were from the UK and 1,406 from elsewhere, by the location signers gave.
| Constituency | Signatures |
|---|---|
| Brighton, Pavilion | 674 |
| Bristol West | 653 |
| Hove | 519 |
| Hornsey and Wood Green | 517 |
| Liverpool, Riverside | 462 |
| Holborn and St Pancras | 448 |
| Hastings and Rye | 447 |
| Exeter | 439 |
| Sheffield Central | 429 |
| Cambridge | 427 |
| Region | Signatures |
|---|---|
| South East | 20,140 |
| North West | 17,838 |
| London | 16,273 |
| South West | 15,980 |
| East of England | 13,020 |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | 11,075 |
| West Midlands | 9,609 |
| East Midlands | 8,810 |
| Scotland | 7,246 |
| Wales | 6,702 |
| North East | 5,597 |
| Northern Ireland | 1,367 |
Debate in Parliament
MPs debated the petition in Westminster Hall on 31 January 2022. Read the debate in Hansard. House of Commons Library debate pack.
Source and receipt
- https://petition.parliament.uk/archived/petitions/598732.jsonUK Parliament Petitions API · read 2026-10-15 · SHA-256
0328135100417092… - The petition on petition.parliament.uk
The petition's words are its creator's and the response is the Government's; this site quotes both and gives no view on either. Signature counts can still change while a petition is open. To report an error, send a correction request.