The usual deranged loony left line on the Tories’ supposed ‘privatisation’ of the NHS didn’t land well for Nadia Whittome on Politics Live this morning. Asked to explain her tweet that the government’s “pushing through a Bill that would further privatise [the NHS]” with the new health and social care reforms, Whittome claimed it was the result of allowing private bodies to sit on new integrated care boards. Unfortunately that claim was quickly debunked by Dave West, the Health Service Journal’s Deputy Editor, who actually knew what he was talking about:

“This Bill, if anything, as some other Labour MPs who have been following this closely and know a lot about the health service have made the point, this Bill if anything brings an end to contestability and the internal market in the NHS… under the existing law brought in by the coalition government in 2012, there [sic] are quite substantial – the most requirements there’s ever been on the NHS to tender services out to potential bidders in the private sector. This will bring an end to that.”

Every single claim Whittome made about the Bill was shot down, as if she was at an under-prepared university interview. Whittome eventually insisted that she didn’t “want to get bogged down in a discussion about privatisation”…

Danny Finkelstein pointed out the absurdity that she was the one ‘bogging down’ the debate in the first place…