- NHS contracts worth a stunning £4.5 billion put out to market in last year

- Jeremy Hunt’s first year saw highest amount for any single year

- 40,000 protesters gather outside Tory conference today

Labour publishes new figures on NHS contracts put out to competitive tender as ‘Save Our NHS’ campaigners gather outside the Conservative Party conference today.

Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham will join the march in Manchester and address the rally alongside TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady.

During Jeremy Hunt’s first year as Health Secretary, 81 NHS contracts with a total value of almost £4.5 billion have been put out to the market. The single biggest year for NHS privatisation included:

– £800 million contract for elderly care services in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough;

- £770 million for pathology services in the Midlands;

- £500 million for community health services in Gloucestershire;

- £240 million for care homes in the North West;

- £210 million for adult mental health services in Bristol.

The George Eliot hospital in Nuneaton may follow Hinchingbrooke into private hands following Treasury go-ahead earlier this month, with an estimated contract value of £630 million.

Other NHS contracts put out to tender in recent months include patient transport services – non-emergency ambulances – in Hampshire, Oxfordshire and Sheffield. Last year, Arriva bus company took the contract for the same service in Greater Manchester. Further contracts include urgent care services in Hillingdon, Bracknell and Bath.

This increased pace of privatisation reflects the Government’s Health and Social Care Act, which forces commissioners to put services out to tender and which has been widely condemned for fragmenting services. This week it was revealed that even NHS England Chief Executive Sir David Nicholson has warned that David Cameron’s NHS marketisation is harming patient care.

Andy Burnham MP, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, speaking ahead of the march and rally, said:

“David Cameron needs to be forcefully reminded that he has never been given the public’s permission to put the NHS up for sale. Thousands of people will today travel to Manchester to do just that.

"These figures reveal the frightening scale and pace of NHS privatisation since Cameron’s Health Act came in. It has mandated market testing on the NHS and placed it on a fast-track to fragmentation and privatisation.

"If we carry on down this path, market forces will eventually devour everything precious about the NHS. That is why Labour will repeal the Health & Social Care Act in the first Queen’s Speech of the next Labour Government.”