By Mark Kleinman, City Editor
Ministers have begun exploring a sale of the main supplier of temporary staff to the NHS in a move likely to revive political accusations about its creeping privatisation.
Sky News has learnt that the Department of Health (DoH) has appointed Deloitte, the accountancy firm, to review options for NHS Professionals, the state-owned staffing agency.
A formal decision to sell NHS Professionals, which has roughly 40,000 nurses, doctors, midwives and other healthcare workers on its books, has not yet been taken.
However, sources said on Monday that an outright sale of the now-profitable agency was "a very real possibility", with analysts estimating that it could raise between £50m and £100m.
News of the prospective sale process comes amid an increasingly heated political debate about NHS funding less than seven months before the General Election.
The Conservatives and Labour both made bold commitments about the NHS at their autumn conferences, underlining the importance of health policy during the looming election campaign.
NHS Professionals is a limited company wholly owned by the DoH and run by Stephen Dangerfield, its chief executive.
According to its 2013 annual report, it moved from a £6.7m loss in 2009-10 into the black the following year, since when it has made an aggregated profit of £10.8m.
The agency managed 2.9 million shift requests last year, filling 21.5 million hours of staffing requirements, including 350,000 same-day requests for shift work.
NHS Professionals counts 60 NHS Trusts as its clients and said this year that in "the forseeable future, growth in our revenue and profit will come from extending our business in our core markets".
The new process is not the first time that ministers have examined a sale of the agency.
In 2010, a consultation over its future was launched, with ministers anticipating bids from private equity firms and outsourcing groups.
For undisclosed reasons that sale process was delayed.
If the Deloitte review does result in a decision to press ahead with a sale, it would be the latest in a string of controversial privatisations initiated by the coalition Government.
A row erupted 12 months ago about the sale of Royal Mail, while last week, George Osborne, the Chancellor, confirmed plans to sell taxpayers' 40% stake in Eurostar.
A source at the DoH confirmed that Deloitte had been engaged to examine "all options" for the NHS Professionals agency, although the Department had not provided a formal response more than three hours after Sky News' initial enquiry.
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