Letter to Weston Mercury on Cabinet Members' interests in health industry

I have sent this letter to the Weston Mercury:

Dear Editor

Readers may remember that the Weston Patients Before Profits Campaign asked John Penrose MP to look into the number of Cabinet Ministers who have financial interests in private health corporations. Our MP took the view that this was not something he should be expected to do. The Weston Patients Before Profits campaign has therefore done the research, and we have found that five Cabinet Ministers, and also five senior MPs who have access to the Cabinet, have private financial interests in the health care industry. Some of these are directly involved in Circle and Care UK who are interested in taking on the franchise of our Weston hospital. In addition to this, the Conservative party was given in excess of £95,000 by health and pharmaceutical industries in 2011.

It would be naive to suppose that these financial interests do not influence the decisions of Government regarding whether Weston General Hospital should be taken over by an NHS group or by a private corporation. The only way that these vested interests can be overcome is by a significant community protest.

Sincerely

Dr Richard Lawson
Walnut House
Dolberrow 
BS25 5NT
01934853606

"I have seen the future and it pays"

George Osborne's links with Health Companies

Part 2 of our series on cabinet members' financial links with the Health Care Industry: George Osborne the Chancellor.

Osborne invited Lord Nash, chairman of Care UK and founder of Sovereign Capital, which runs a string of private Health Care firms, to join his HM Treasury Independent Challenge Group, whose remit is to “question the unquestionable” in the Treasury's austerity drive.
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Cabinet Ministers' connections with Private Healthcare (Part 4)

The saga continues, listing Cabinet Ministers' sticky pie-covered fingers.

Philip Hammond, Defence Secretary was chairman of Castlemead Ltd for 2 years in the 90s. Castlemead has interests in design and procurement in the NHS. He still has a financial interest in Castlemead's perormance.


Maria Miller (Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport) is a former director of Grey's Advertising Ltd, who work extensively with clients in the healthcare sector.
Former director of the Rowland Group, which became Publicis Consultants, who are also a marketing company working extensively with private healthcare.

Andrew Lansley, the architect of the controversial Health and Social Care Bill that lies at the root of the current issue for WGH, was replaced as Secretary of State for Health by Jeremy Hunt after his bill was forced through Parliament.

Lansley received £21,000 for his personal office from John Nash, former chair of Care UK, one of the corporations who are interested in Weston Hospital.

One of his aides, Christina Lineen, went to work for Circle, again a corporation interested in Weston General.

Lansley was director of Profero, a marketing agency that acted for Diageo, an alcohol company that was accused in 2008 of flouting voluntary agreements, but whom Lansley nevertheless later allowed to "educate" midwives in alcohol advice.

Francis Maude has access to Cabinet. He was a director of Huntsworth until 2005, which has health and pharmaceutical interests. He is also non executive director of two other companies with interests in health care and software supplies to the NHS.

Oliver Letwin: has access to the Cabinet. He was a non-executive director of N.M. Rothschild Corporate Finance Ltd until 2009. Rothschild Group are one of the world's largest investment companies and invest heavily in healthcare.

David Willetts has access to the Cabinet. He had financial support paid to his research account by HgCapital private equity manager, Ian Armitage in 2008. HgCapital funds healthcare companies.

Dominic Grieve has access to the Cabinet. Has shares in Reckitt Benckiser, GlaxoSmithKline, Diageo , Astrazeneca, Standard Chartered (Health insurance).

Source for this data here.

William Hague's link with health companies

Part 3 of our series setting out the links of Cabinet Ministers with private health companies.

William Hague, Foreign Secretary, was in 2008 a director of AMT Sybex, a supplier of IT (computer technology) to the NHS.

George Osborne's links with Health Care companies

Part 2 of our series on cabinet members' financial links with the Health Care Industry:
George Osborne the Chancellor.

Osborne invited Lord Nash, chairman of Care UK (interested in WGH) and founder of Sovereign Capital, which runs a string of private Health Care firms, to join his HM Treasury Independent Challenge Group, whose remit is to “question the unquestionable” in the Treasury's austerity drive.

Osborne is a friend of Geoff Bridges, who lobbies for Quiller which lobbies for Capita (interested in  WGH). Quiller is owned by Huntsworth, a healthcare communications group.

Osborne received help in develping policy from Boston Consulting Group who work extensively in healthcare. Three other firms with healthcare connections have advised Osborne with policy development.

Sources and links for this information can be found on the excellent Social Investigatons blog.

David Cameron's financial engagements with health companies

We asked John Penrose MP to find out how many Cabinet members had financial interests with companies who stood to benefit from the increasing privatisation and franchising of NHS services.
He declined, and tossed the question back to us.

Although we feel that it is properly the job of an MP to investigate potential conflicts of interests in the Government which could distort decisions that bear on his constituents' interests, we have started the process here, not least because a Conservative researcher might be inclined to find out the whole truth.

We will post on the ministers one at a time. There is a lot to get through. "Over 200 parliamentarians have recent past or present financial links to companies involved in healthcare and all were allowed to vote on the Health and Social Care bill, turning it into an Act."


Our source is the excellent Social Investigations blog. though the Search the Money website is useful also.

We start at the top, with David Cameron.

Cameron (DC) has received £22,000 from Huntsworth, which has health interests. £10,000 went to his leadership campaign.

DC received £25,000 shortly after the health reforms were started from Lord Popat's TLC Group, which funds private nursing homes. Popat was made a Lord shortly after Cameron got into No 10.

DC has an adviser called Mark Britnell. He is/was head of KPMGs Global Health group. KPMG is heavily involved with the NHS dismantling reforms and CCGs. Britnell said the NHS should be shown no mercy.

In 2005 Cameron received £1,500 from care home property company Chiltern Care Holdings according to the electoral commission.