A pressure group has claimed that of the 400 clinical contracts made available for bidding, around 70 per cent have gone to the private sector.

Since competition rulings came into force in April 2013, the NHS Support Federation has claimed that based on the tenders advertised on the official Journal of the EU and on the NHS website Supply2Health, the private sector took the vast majority of contracts available, worth around £5 billion collectively.

A Department of Health spokesman said the report only focused on a tiny sample: "These figures are highly selective and misleading. The percentage is based on a tiny sample of contracts. The reality is that private sector providers carry out around 6 per cent of NHS work.”

The Support Federation said: “the evidence in this report already points to a significant transfer of care out of the hands of the NHS towards a range of commercially driven providers. It also shows how commercial influence is also spreading to the management of NHS facilities and to the decisions around how the NHS budget is spent.”

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