Strike threat over £1.6bn NHS contract

The German-owned company DHL is expected to face a series of strikes as it takes over a £1.6bn contract to oversee supplies to the National Health Service.

Union leaders predicted more than 1,000 staff at NHS Logistics would deliver an overwhelming vote in favour of industrial action against the Government's decision to award a 10-year contract to the private-sector haulage company.

It is understood that the public service union Unison will call a 24-hour strike initially, followed by regional industrial action - the biggest outbreak of industrial action in the NHS over privatisation. The first stoppage could be staged in the week before the Labour Party conference which begins in Manchester on 24 September.

DHL is scheduled to take over the management of around £22bn worth of NHS spending in October.

Dave Prentis, the general secretary of the public service union Unison, said he was supporting the call for industrial action to demonstrate to the Government that the union was united in its opposition to the "sale" of NHS Logistics. "We want to keep this vital service where it belongs - within the NHS," he said.

Karen Jennings, Unison's head of health, said that despite repeated requests she had not seen a business case for the decision because of "so-called commercial confidentiality".

She said: "The Government is running a huge risk by forging ahead with this contract given the under-performance of the private sector in the NHS. We have no confidence in the Government's ability to negotiate such a huge contract given their recent track record in the NHS. Look at the overspend on computer systems, which is running into billions, or the guaranteed funding to private sector treatment centres for operations they haven't even carried out.

"DHL will be a monopoly supplier and already we have a lack of openness in this contract. The private-sector ethos is surrounded in commercial confidentiality which goes against the open-book policy of the public sector."

Sharon Holder, the national officer for GMB members in the NHS, and Mick Rix, the union's officer for DHL workers, said the announcement betrayed the Government's intention to dismantle the NHS bit by bit. "It is part of the creeping, ill thought-out privatisation of health services," they said.

Ministers said the move would save £1bn and create up to 1,000 jobs, with a new depot planned for the Midlands within two years and another over the course of the contract.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "Although NHS Logistics has been a successful organisation in many ways, it provides less than one third of the NHS spend on such products and the outsourcing is necessary to deliver greater value for money for the NHS.

"This is a good deal for staff, patients and the taxpayer ... [The deal] gives the unions everything they have asked for in terms of staff protection.

"The arrangement means substantial scope for bringing down the prices of the goods that NHS trusts buy."