Calls for inquiry into patient transport payments '˜scandal'

Jonathan Ashworth, Labour's Shadow Health Secretary speaking about the failed Coperforma contract in the House of Commons (photo from Parliament.tv).

A Parliamentary inquiry into payments to a failed private patient transport service provider in Sussex should be held, according to MPs and trade union officials.

Coperforma was awarded the contract by the county’s clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) in April 2016, but it never recovered from a disastrous start and after seven months later a ‘friendly divorce’ was announced.

South Central Ambulance Service stepped in to take over the service providing transport for non-emergency patients and has run it ever since.

But in Parliament on Wednesday (January 10), Hove’s MP Peter Kyle said it now transpires Coperforma was given more money from the NHS than it would received if it had performed properly for an entire year.

He asked: “Is that not indicative of the way in which the NHS is being run?”

In response Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s shadow health secretary, joined calls for a full inquiry into how what he described an ‘absolute scandal’ had happened.

He added: “The privatisation of patient transport services to Coperforma in his area of Sussex was an absolute disaster for patients and for the ambulance drivers.”

The GMB union, which represents health and care workers, were the first to call for an inquiry.