Unearthed video Tories don’t want you to see shows PM defending NHS privatisation

The video has re-emerged as the Tories desperately seek to convince people that the NHS is not for sale, despite documents held by Labour which show the health service is “on the table” in trade talks with the United States.

In a 2002 speech Boris Johnson says the government should look into “the experience of other countries that have a far better record of health care provision […] because they do not rely exclusively on a top-down monopolistic service of the kind we have in this country.”

Labour’s claim about the NHS has been repeatedly denied by Boris Johnson during the election campaign, who insists “our NHS will never be for sale”.

But the video, found by The Red Roar blog, shows Johnson critical of Labour’s decision to remove tax breaks for private healthcare.

“People are being driven to use private medicine in despair at the NHS. There should be no shame in pointing that out,” the prime minister said. “I don’t think it should be sacreligious to point out that the NHS is failing”.

He continued: “I think it is all very well to treat the NHS as a religion, but it is legitimate for some of us to point out that insofar as it is a religion it is letting down its adherents very, very badly.”

The unearthed video follows the re-emergence of a book written by Dominic with Kwasi Kwarteng, Chris Skidmore, Priti Patel and Liz Truss, in which he calls for private operators to be allowed into the NHS.

READ MORE: ‘Ludicrous’ Dominic Raab denies Tories wish to sell NHS, despite calling for privatisation in 2011 bookThe Red Roar followed the clip with a thread of ten more times that the prime minister backed privatisation of the NHs on the record.

Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s sShadow health secretary, said of the clip: “This proves once and for all that you can’t trust Boris Johnson with our NHS. He wants to break it up and sell it off to the highest bidder.

“The stakes couldn’t be higher – this election will decide whether our NHS is saved for future generations or cut up and auctioned-off. Our NHS is not for sale.”