A report by the think tank The Centre for Health and the Public Interest (CHPI) has found that in 2025-26 the NHS in England will overspend by £164m on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) services, with an increasing amount going to unregulated private assessments. Data shows the amount spent on private ADHD has more than tripled over three years because of increasing reliance on outsourcing.

Spending went from £16.3m in 2022-23 to £58m last year, an increase of 255%. This has raised concerns that companies are making millions from an under-regulated market, and cuts could be made in other services to offset the overspend.

The chair of the all-party parliamentary group on ADHD said the findings show that services were at breaking point and the NHS costs had soared while private providers profit from poorly regulated systems, leaving many patients in limbo without proper oversight.

The research by the CHPI found one company recently bought by a private equity firm had reported profit margins of 33% over the past two years mainly from providing NHS services. Because of the market based “Right to Choose” framework which underpin this provision, expenditure on private companies has been unplanned by the NHS and is significantly impacting the finances of the NHS at local level. The CHPI notes that “this unplanned expenditure means that scarce health care resources are potentially being moved away from being used to treat patients who are most in need to provide income for private companies.”

The NHS principle of treating patients was never meant to be a source of easy profit for private equity companies or venture capitalists. While this report is about services in England, we know from experience that large private companies do not confine themselves to one geographical area. It is important that we stop thinking that throwing enormous amounts of money at the private sector is the answer. It is not, it only increases their profits, and does not solve the crisis within our health and social care systems.

In our 2025 response to the consultation document, “Hospitals -Creating A Network for Better Outcomes”, we noted that another document, “The Health and Social Care NI - Three Year Plan” emphasises the use of the Third Sector and huge efficiency savings totalling £400 million, with anticipated savings coming through charging for prescription and home care services. We noted, that the Three Year Plan expects what it terms “independent sector in-sourcing”, i.e., outsourcing, to relieve pressure on breast cancer services, while more generally, the independent sector is described as being one of the “key partners” in the planning and delivery of social care and mental health services.

In October 2025 we reported on an excellent article on the NHS for Sale website, which found that the private sector supplies over 30% of NHS mental health hospital capacity, including over half the NHS inpatient beds for children and teenagers with mental health problems, and almost all of the secure beds for adults. NHS for Sale note that “despite underfunding being rampant in the NHS, the whole sector is underpinned by guaranteed public funding. Private equity sees the potential to make a lot of money out of NHS healthcare.”

The Workers Party is calling on those responsible for running our services to learn the lessons from these reports, where experts have warned that assessments provided by private providers can be unreliable, pointing to cases in which patients have been harmed by poor continuity of care after private diagnoses. The CHPI reports finds further evidence of the intrusion of private equity into our NHS.