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London: A London hospital is set to become the first in Britain to hand over control of all surgical procedures to a private company.
Kingston Hospital is in discussions with an undisclosed outside firm over a 10-year contract to manage its operating theatres in a move to cut costs.
Staff have been informed their "working practices" may change but have been assured there will be no redundancies.
Midwife and Unison branch secretary Nora Pearce said: "We have been told our terms and conditions will be the same and the facilities will be the same, so how are they going to make money? These companies aren't there to be altruistic."
Staff at Kingston have been told the hospital is only capable of surviving if a private-sector company with "significant experience in marketing" can attract patients from further afield.
Intervention
Pressure group London Health Emergency has urged the government to intervene over the "unprecedented experiment" which it says amounts to stealth privatisation of the National Health Service (NHS).
Geoff Martin, head of campaigns at London Health Emergency, called for the intervention of Health Secretary Alan Johnson. "The plans by Kingston Hospital to become a commercial, profit-driven company are unprecedented and would give that company enormous leverage to launch a takeover bid to run the whole hospital," he said.
"This is NHS privatisation on a scale we have never seen before. It will be a huge embarrassment for the Government at a time when it is signalling that private companies' involvement in the NHS is being pulled back."
Shadow health secretary Andrew Langsley has accused Johnson of engaging in a "spin operation" to deny greater NHS privatisation while green-lighting the Kingston scheme.
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