Election 2015: Leaked documents reveal Tory benefit cut options – as it happened

Miliband confirms the profits cap:

And, for the first time, we will cap the profits that private health companies can make from our National Health Service.

The standard rule will be a five per cent cap.

Because the money we pay for our health care should be invested for patient care not for excess profits for private firms.

Miliband says Labour would stop creeping privatisation within the NHS.

Privatisation of the NHS is no longer simply out of step with our principles, it is out of step with the needs of the time.

If the task of health care in the future is integrating services, bringing them together, the last thing we need is to fragment and privatise.

Because it sets hospital against hospital, service against service.

Privatisation cannot meet the needs of 21^st century healthcare.

We’re going to restore the right principles to our National Health Service.

With the next Labour government:

We’ll scrap David Cameron’s market framework for the NHS and stop the tide of privatisation.

The NHS will be the preferred provider.

No company working with the NHS will be able to profit by cherry picking: rejecting patients with the more complex and expensive needs for their own advantage.

Miliband turns to the new health proposals unveiled today.

He says they amount to a “double lock” to protect the NHS.

View image in fullscreen

With a Labour government there will be a new double-lock to protect our National Health Service.

Guaranteeing proper funding.

And stopping its privatisation.

Miliband is now summarising Labour’s election pledges.

View image in fullscreen

View image in fullscreen

Miliband says Labour are the optimists in this campaign. And his opponents are pessimists.

And he turns to last night’s TV encounter.

We saw a rattled prime minister, running from his record.

And we heard a prime minister living in a different world.

Asked about the soaring use of food banks?

He says it’s not because of the bedroom tax or falling living standards or payday lenders.

It’s because of more effective advertising by the government.

Asked about the explosion of zero hours contracts?

He says it’s not because of the growth of low-paid insecure work on his watch.

It’s really because people want zero hours contracts.

But then he says, oh no, he couldn’t live on a zero hours contract.

I say, if it’s not good enough for you, prime minister, it’s not good enough for the people of Britain.

Ed Miliband is just starting his speech now. He was introduced by Harriet Harman and a nurse called Agnes (I did not catch her surname).

He says he is at the site of the Olympics, an event that showed Britain at its best.

And what was at the heart of those games?

A spirit of optimism.

A belief that Britain can do better.

And that same spirit is at the heart of our election campaign.

It is that spirit that is going to drive us on in the next few weeks.

Because we know Britain can do better than this.

Labour has sent out a briefing note with details of its policy announcement. The key elements are already in Patrick Wintour’s story. (See 11.16am.)

This is what Labour is claiming about the threat posed to the NHS about privatisation under the Tories.

David Cameron’s Health & Social Care Act imposes a market framework on the NHS, forcing services to be put out to tender even if doctors do not think they should be. As a result, more and more private sector contracts are being awarded:

· Private providers have secured a third of contracts for NHS clinical services since the Health & Social Care Act came into force (BMJ, December 2014)

· The amount of the NHS budget spent on non-NHS providers increased by 60% between 2009/10 and 2013/14 (House of Commons Hansard, 16 December 2014)

· The BMA has said: “The Government flatly denied the Act would lead to more privatisation, but it has done exactly that.” (December 2014)

This increases the risk of excessive profit-taking. At a time when the NHS is under huge financial pressure, resources should go into patient care, rather than being diverted into excessive profits, and private companies should not be able to make profits by only treating patients with simpler needs – so-called ‘cherry picking’.

On Twitter I’ve been asked if GPs, dentists and pharmacists count as “private firms” for the purposes of Labour’s proposed profits cap. The answer is no.

John Plunkett tells me that around 300 people have now complained to Channel 4 about alleged bias in the questioning of David Cameron and Ed Miliband by Jeremy Paxman and Kay Burley last night. That is on top of the 110 complaints to Ofcom (see 10.58am), taking the total number of complaints to more than 400. We are still waiting to hear about complaints to Sky.

A profits cap would be imposed on private health companies by an incoming Labour government, Ed Miliband will say today when he launches the party’s election campaign at the Orbit Tower at the Olympic Park in East London.

He will say all outsourced NHS contracts over a value of £500,000 will be required to include a profit cap with the default level which will be set at 5 %. NHS commissioners would have the power to lower or raise this profit level to take account of particular issues relating to the contract .

Any company that made more than the 5% threshold from the contract would have to reimburse the NHS for any returns above the level of the cap.

Miliband is also expected to announce that a Labour government will try to stop cherry picking of profitable contracts by:

developing a more cost reflective tariff system to ensure that the prices paid better reflect patient complexity”.

The aim will be to stop providers getting over reimbursed if they only treat simple cases and ensure that NHS hospitals who have to treat all cases are not short changed.

Commissioners will have powers to terminate contracts if they judge the private sector provider is not providing high quality care.

Labour claims concern has been expressed both by the health select committee and the National Audit Office over excessive profiteering.

Miliband will say the new profits cap alongside the commitment to extra funding for the NHS already announced represents a double lock to save the NHS. The proposals will cause anger with the independent providers as well as some concern amongst those Blaiirites in the party that believe there is a legitimate role for the private sector in providing additional services or driving up standards through competition.

Miliband will claim another five years of Tory control would see the full marketisation of the NHS including forced tendering even when clinicians are opposed to the move.

Miliband is expected to reaffirmhe would repeal the Health and Social Care Act and ensure the NHS is the preferred provider when bids are made.

In a policy note Labour said:

There is a limited role for independent sector providers in providing services but that must be to support the NHS not to break it up.”

Private health companies are pocketing a record £18m each day from the NHS budget as more and more health contracts are passed over to the private sector.

New figures from the Department of Health show that last year £6.6bn was taken from the NHS coffers to pay private health providers - a 50% rise from before the coalition took power.

Critics of the coalition government’s health reforms say this trend of allowing private companies to cream off NHS cash is set to increase.

Ed Miliband has been tweeting from the Labour campaign launch, which is at the Olympics site in East London.