Member

It is interesting to note, in the context of our whole private healthcare sector, that the majority of the private hospital sector’s profits comes from NHS patients. There was £2.34 billion spent on mental health in 2023, compared to £3.5 billion on in-house NHS beds. That is very costly, and there are quality problems and a huge stability issue. In the middle of last year, a leading provider of private mental health services narrowly avoided liquidation. This is an issue that we have also seen in our care home sector on multiple occasions. We are seeing ownership with private equity, which is based on a model of heavy loads of debt. Quite unsurprisingly, we are seeing significant rises in interest rates after a period of long-term low interest rates recently, and that has created instability in the sector.