Health v Wealth

The privatisation of the NHS is not something to be feared in the future. It is already happening.

Margaret Thatcher denationalised many industries, but the popularity of the NHS meant that the privateers would need to move more stealthily. But move they would.

In 1986 hospital cleaning services were privatised followed soon after by new-builds, catering and diagnostics. Two years later Tory MPs Oliver Letwin and John Redwood published “Ideas for Radical Reform of the NHS” which advocated encouraging further joint ventures with the private sector and the introduction of fees.

Tony Blair’s 1997 National Health Service Act adopted Letwin/Redwood’s ideas, by turning NHS hospitals into trusts, and encouraging them to operate as commercial businesses.

One GP described these changes as “how to get turkeys not only voting for Christmas, but also plucking, basting and putting themselves into the oven.”

Private companies have been increasingly encouraged to franchise for NHS services, with the UK divided into 44 ‘footprint’ areas encouraged to amalgamate hospitals and shrink specialist units. 

This country’s bed-to-patient ratio is today one of the lowest in any developed country. A&E units have been cut from 144 (five years ago) to about 50 today. At least 1000 GP practices have closed in the last five years and patients are encouraged to use privately owned app consultancies. The result is that GPs are merging their practices into competitive organisations, open to takeover by private companies such as Virgin Healthcare.

The deliberate blurring of the distinction between public and private healthcare, the rationing of non-urgent operations as well as increased waiting times, encourages a move to private treatment. And how many of you knew that The Practice Group, the UK’s largest GP network, is owned by US company Centene.

A health service with primary loyalty to shareholders makes them more costly than state-funded services. John Furse, writing in The London Review of Books, estimates that private involvement in healthcare adds at least £9 billion a year to the NHS budget with the result that today the independent sector accounts for £13.7 billion of NHS spend.

We are running out of time to save the NHS and without a Corbyn-led Labour government we can kiss goodbye to Aneurin Bevan’s principle of “healthcare free at the point of delivery based on need, not wealth.”

 

This article can be read alongside my earlier pieces on NHS privateers here and here

 

www.davidwilson.org.uk  

 

Our 'Free Press'

Here is some information on the four leading UK newspapers. Without social media I would be in despair.

 

THE SUN: owner Rupert Murdock, with estimated wealth of £19 billion.

A Sun headline on Jeremy Corbyn: “Is this the Most Dangerous Chicken in Britain”

The Sun has a daily readership of 2.8 million and online readers are an estimated 6.2 million.

The Sun was founded in 1964 as a successor to the Left-leaning Daily Herald, and became a tabloid in 1969 after it was purchased by its current owner, Rupert Murdock (who also owns The Times, The Sunday Times, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and on and on ….)

Since The Sun on Sunday was launched in 2012, the paper has been a seven-day operation. The Sun had the largest circulation of any daily newspaper in the United Kingdom, but was overtaken by rival Metro in 2018.

The Sun is nothing short of insulting to anyone perceived as ‘left-wing’. Michael Foot was called an ‘old fool’, Tony Benn, ‘insane’ and miners’ leader at the time of the 1984 strike, Arthur Scargill "Mine Führer". In 1987, gay men were offered free one-way airline tickets to Norway with "Fly Away Gays – And We Will Pay" 

After the Hillsborough football stadium disaster in Sheffield in April 1989, when 96 people died, The Sun blamed the crushed and maimed for their own deaths. More than 25 years later it remains unavailable in many parts of Liverpool with Liverpudlians referring to the newspaper as "The Scum".

 

THE DAILY AND SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: owners Sir David Barclay And Sir Frederick Barclay with estimated joint wealth of £2.25 billion.

A Daily Telegraph headline on Jeremy Corbyn: “Corbyn will Drag us Back to the 70s”

The Daily Telegraph has a readership of 260,000 and The Sunday Telegraph a readership of 280,000. Online readers are an estimated 500,000.

The Daily Telegraph was founded by Colonel Arthur Sleigh in 1855 to air a personal grievance against the commander-in-chief of the British Army, The Duke of Cambridge.

It has been owned by the Barclays since 2004. As well as The Daily

Telegraph and The Spectator they own retail, property and hotel businesses, including The Ritz hotels.

Sir Frederick says they reside in Monaco and Sark and Brecqhou for ‘health reasons’. The Panama Papers produced evidence that they pay no corporation tax on their business profits.

Former columnist Graham Norton called it "toxic" and "a mouthpiece for Boris Johnson" published with "no fact-checking at all".

It has been reported that the Barclays are trying to sell the Telegraph titles.

 

THE DAILY MAIL: owner Jonathan Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere, with an estimated wealth of £1 billion.

A Daily Mail headline on Jeremy Corbyn: “Marxist Manifesto. A radical deluge of New Taxes”

The Daily Mail has a readership of 1.34 million and the Mail on Sunday a readership of 2.61 million. Online readers are an estimated 4.2 million.

First published in 1896 it quickly became a cheerleader for Empire. Harmsworth is the great-grandson of one of the original owners.

In 1924, the Daily Mail published the forged Zinoviev letter, which claimed falsely that British Communists were planning violent revolution. This was thought to be a significant factor in the defeat of the Labour Party in that year’s general election.

Lord Rothermere was a friend of Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, and Rothermere's 1933 leader "Youth Triumphant" praised the new Nazi regime's accomplishments. Rothermere predicted that "The minor misdeeds of individual Nazis would be submerged by the immense benefits the new regime is already bestowing upon Germany". The Daily Mail was sympathetic to Oswald Mosley and an article titled "Hurrah for the Blackshirts", praised Mosley for his "sound commonsense” and encouraged "Young men” to join the British Union of Fascists.

 

THE DAILY EXPRESS: owner Reach plc, formerly Trinity Mirror,  and bought in 2018 from Richard Desmond, who has an estimated wealth of £2.3 billion.

A Daily Express headline on Jeremy Corbyn “Burn Your Hard-Earned Pension Funds”

The Daily Express has a readership of 315,000 and the Sunday Express a readership of 605,000. Online readers are an estimated 95, 000 worldwide.

The Daily Express was first published in 1900 by Sir Arthur Pearson. Its sister paper, the Sunday Express, was launched in 1918.

During the late 1930s, and under the ownership of Lord Beaverbrook, the paper advocated the Chamberlain government. appeasement policies towards Adolf Hitler.

In 2000, Express Newspapers was bought by Richard Desmond, publisher of celebrity magazine OK! and numerous porn publications. Peter Hitchins moved to The Mail on Sunday, saying working for the new owner was a ‘moral conflict of interest’. Frying pan and fires comes to mind here!

Reach plc are also owners of the Labour-supporting Daily and Sunday Mirror . Good business covers all eventualities!

 

NOTE: a billion pounds is a thousand million pounds. That is 1,000,000,000

Meeting Ken

Last night I was invited to join Ken Livingstone for dinner at an Afghan restaurant in Kilburn. I had met him last some years ago in a supermarket queue.

During the course of our meal, I wanted to use the opportunity to express my solidarity with him about the shocking way he had been treated. I said I felt we had a lot in common, in my case because I was thrown out of the charity I helped to found because I had been a whistleblower about corruption. In late middle age I was left without a job and little money. One day I had been a charity director running a music centre and the next unemployed and unemployable. I was dazed at how quickly fate can change our lives.

Ken’s fate has been much worse. As Mayor of London, he has been responsible for much that remains positive about London life. Standing out in my memory was his anti-racism and the promotion of good community relations.

It was heartwarming to see a waitress come to our table to shake Ken’s hand and thank him for all he did for the city. And he left the job eleven years ago.

Today he remains ‘outed’ from the Labour Party because he stands falsely accused of anti-semitism. In a recent interview in The Guardian he said, “In more than 50 years in the party, I never saw or heard anything anti semitic … If you’re antisemitic, you’re not going to join the Labour party, are you? … the most prominent Jewish MPs are Labour MPs.”

I returned home on the London Overground. Oh yes, that was modernised and revamped under Ken’s leadership. How I wish there was someone with his vision and humanity in power now.

Interview with Ken Livingstone here

 

Health rats

I was shocked to find out from my GP office that very few patients take the trouble to praise the services offered there. It is vital that we all support the NHS whenever we need the health system – and even when we don’t. In recent years I have had two major operations, (brain and heart surgery), after-stroke treatment, three ‘minor’ procedures, numerous ambulance trips and an eight-week ‘on-drip’ drugs hospital stay. And of course GP visits. In the USA that amounts to a total cost of $250,000 at the lowest estimate. And that is without pharmaceutical costs which in my case are ongoing. Boris Johnson is already talking with US pharmaceuticals to move the UK to a private health system and much of the NHS is already under the greedy grips of the privateers. There have been six formal discussions between UK and US trade officials, Channel 4 Dispatches informed us, and representatives form American drug companies have been given direct access to British officials in five meetings. No prizes for guessing how I am voting in the upcoming election. It will be for the only party totally committed to a publicly-funded health service. JC4PM. And you?

No more Tweedles

“Austerity is the idea that the worldwide financial crash of 2008 was caused by Wolverhampton having too many public libraries.” Alexei Sayle

Whatever the result of the 12 December election we finally have the chance to promote and fight for radical change. I speak as someone who has never been a member of any political party, never taken any interest in Tweedle Dum / Tweedle Dee politics and only ever had the chance to vote for the lesser of two evils.

“Ambulances can’t offload because A&E is full. A&E can’t clear spaces because there are no acute beds to move patients to, there are no acute beds because medically fit, but vulnerable elderly, can’t be discharged because social care has been decimated. I work in A&E." Dr Georgina Porter

Now in my 7th decade, I have joined the Labour party whose leader Jeremy Corbyn has promised, “ the most radical plan for real change ever put before the British electorate … a once in a generation chance to transform our country”. He has called it an opportunity “to take on the vested interests that are holding people back.” 

"I’m a paramedic. Today I’m on a 12- hour shift and well into my ninth hour of helping others and as of yet have not been granted my unpaid half hour break. This is the result of an underfunded NHS Ambulance Service. We are on our knees.” Suze Bella

The question in this election is whose side are you on? … Are you on the side of the tax dodgers who are taking us all for a ride? … landlords like the Duke of Westminster and the big polluters like Jim Radcliffe. Or are you on the side of the children with special educational needs who aren’t getting the support they need because of Tory and Lib Dem cuts?

The party manifesto is likely to include plans for a four-day working week, a £10 minimum wage for all workers over the age of 18, a zero hour contracts ban, rented accommodation to be fit for human habitation, the creation of a National Education Service, the end of the public sctor pay freeze, the scrapping of tuition fees, free school meals, reversal of NHS privatisation and restoration of NHS bursaries, renationalisation of Royal Mail, rail and water companies, an end to rough sleeping, the setting up of a national investment bank, the ending of private education, the end of sweetheart tax deals between HMRC and massive corporations, defence of free movement for migrants, a ban on companies using tax havens bidding for government contracts and a target of zero carbon emissions by 2030. Oh and a foreign policy of peace not war.

More people were receiving emergency food aid in North Yorkshire last year than were inmates in the county’s workhouses 130 years ago. A report by North Yorkshire’s director of public health Dr Lincoln Sargeant, draws parallels between the extreme poverty of the 19th century - which drove people to workhouses - with present day poverty. It is estimated around 6,450 people in North Yorkshire received emergency food aid in 2018/19.

Corbyn has said the election is “our last chance to tackle the climate emergency … We have to radically change course now to avoid living on a hostile and dying planet,” adding that a green industrial revolution is “absolutely at the centre and the heart of Labour’s plan to transform Britain, creating new green jobs where they’re most desperately needed.”

"Rising homelessness is a crisis of the Tories’ own making as we’ve seen investment in the number of low-cost homes to buy and rent tumble. Add to that cuts in housing benefit, reduced funding for homelessness services and a private rental sector lacking any real protections and we know why so many are being let down.” Alex Cunningham, Shadow Housing Minister

On Brexit there would be a referendum within six months of the election “on whether to leave on a sensible deal or remain in the European Union.

It won’t have escaped your notice that I mention Brexit at the end of this piece. Deliberately so. With Michael Rosen “I have a dream that I and others will walk hand in hand to the polling station and be able to vote in an election that is about the NHS, education, benefits, climate change ...”

That dream is now going to be a reality. It is up to all of us to make sure that after we have walked to the polling station we don't return home to find that the dream has become a nightmare.

 

 

Brexit Jokers

“The Tories in England had long imagined that they were enthusiastic about monarchy, the church, and the beauties of the old Englsh constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about ground rent.”Karl Marx

The Brexit ‘debate’ is supposedly about the UK taking back control of its ‘destiny’ from the European Union. Brexit bores its way on while its advocates get on with the business of making as much money as they can without having to take notice of nation-state or borders. And Brexit itself can be a cash-cow. 

Former Chancellor Philip Hammond has claimed that “Johnson is backed by speculators who have bet billions on a hard Brexit – and there is only one option that works for them: a crash-out no-deal that sends the currency tumbling and inflation soaring,”

 

Of course the EU can still have its uses. 

 

Boris Johnson’s Brexit “Enforcer”, Dominic Cummings, talks about getting rid of ‘absurd subsidies’ paid out by the EU. He is co-owner of a farm which has received £235,000 in EU farming subsides

 

Conservative MP Richard Drax, descendant of a 19th century slave-owner owns a farm that has received an EU grant of £411,000.

Lord Gardiner of Kimble, in charge of steering Brexit legislation through the House of Lords is a partner in a family farm, which in 2017 received £49,000 in EU agricultural subsidies.

Lord Taylor of Holbeach, Tory Chief Whip in the House of Lords has a shareholding in a farm which received an EU subsidy of £159,000 in 2017.

Mark Spencer, Conservative MP and government Whip is a partner in a Nottinghamshire farm which received an EU subsidy of £14,000 in 2017.

And what about the loyalties of leading Brexiteer, Jacob Rees-Mogg, who famously said that “We are removing an imperial yoke”. He is co-founder of Somerset Capital, a £6.5 billion company based in London and Singapore. He stepped-down from the company on his appointment as Leader of the House of Commons, but he was then compensated with £1million from the company’s 2018 profits. If you search the company’s website you will be no wiser as to how they bring in the moola. Their mission satement has the clarity of mud, “Assessing governance risk and interacting with management teams to protect the value of our investment has been a cornerstone of our investment process since the firm was founded.” Let us take a guess that little of that £6.5 billion came from investments or activities within the United Kingdom.

And others? Lord George Magan is a former Conservative party chairman who has donated around £1.5m to the Tories. He is connected to the offshore law firm, Appleby.

 

Philip May, husband of former PM Theresa May, is a banker and pension fund expert. He is a senior executive at Capital Group, a US investment company that controls $1.4 trillion in assets. Linked to the Paradise Papers scandal Private Eye claimed the company use Appleby, to arrange investments in tax havens.

It would seem that loyalty to country does not weigh heavily on the Brexiteer mind.

I am not concerned about the ‘nationality’ of the capitalists who control our economy. Indeed capital has one progressive virtue. It is internationalist, but since our politicians claim they are putting Britain first, let us take a closer look at how they do that.

Of our energy companies EDF, a subsidiary of the French Government-owned energy company Électricité de France owns what were once London Electricity, SWEB, Seeboard and British Energy. E.ON is a German-owned group which bought UK energy company Powergen. NPOWER is a subsidiary of German energy company RWE Group which took over National Power, Calortex, Independent Energy and Midlands. SCOTTISH POWER is a subsidiary of Spanish company Iberdrola, formerly the South of Scotland Electricity Board. It later bought Manweb, the energy company supplying Merseyside and North Wales.

With transport, of twenty eight private rail and bus companies, 70% of them, are now partially or wholly owned by foreign states or their railways. German state railways, Deutsche Bahn, own Chiltern, Cross Country, London Overground, Tyne & Wear Metro, Borders and Northern. Dutch state railway Abello own Greater Anglia and French state railways own Keolis, running Transport for Wales and South Eastern.

With the escalating privatisation of NHS services, the Deparment of Health and Social Care awarded contracts worth £9.2bn last year to private providers, many of them non-UK based. NHS digital GP service providers Livi, is Swedish-owned. HCA International, running six UK hospitals and bone and cancer treatment centres, is a US company. Babylon Health, set up by ex-Goldmann Sachs banker Ali Parsa and providing digital diagnosis and GP services, is registered in Jersey and since they pay no UK tax cannot be considered a UK-based company. AB Kinnervik is a Swedish/ Egyptian company. Virgin Care, registered in the British Virgin Isles, is in the same categoty as Babylon Health.

The solution? Certainly not Brexit, but neither would be a return to the consensus politics that have brought us to this situation. We have had years of austerity overseen by these ‘turn the telly off’ politicians. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimate that over 14 million people are living in households with an income below the poverty line, with those numbers increasing daily. The number of people using food banks since 2010 has gone from the tens of thousands to the millions. The Office for National Statistics show that people born in the most deprived areas of England can expect to have over 18 fewer years of life than those born in the least deprived areas.

But don’t despair. As of July 2019, the Labour Party had nearly half a million members, making it the largest membership party in Europe. Today their policies include a four-day week, (with no loss of pay), £10 an hour minimum wage, reversal of anti-union legislation, reversal of NHS privatisation, the renationalisation of transport and energy companies, the scrapping of tuition fees, worker ownership funds, the abolition of in-work poverty, a National Care Service, a Green New Deal (with a 2030 net-zero carbon target), the protection of free movement, the closure of all immigration detention centres and a Brexit referendum which will not disrespect how people vote or voted in the past.

Can any of you think of a reason not to vote for Jeremy Corbyn?

Who will fight for the NHS?

A few years ago I received by post a ‘poo kit’ as part of the NHS bowel cancer screening programme. The instructions asked me to take two samples on three separate occasions and send off in the enclosed sealed envelope. I noticed that the address of the test laboratory on the label was in Texas. My faeces was off to the USA!

Private companies have a growing presence in the NHS. This was initially through providing support services such as IT, catering, portering, laundry and cleaning. Today it has expanded to cover GP services, urgent care, diagnostic services and non-emergency surgery, maternity care, community nursing, physiotherapy, CT scanners, radiotherapy machines, and ambulance services. Private companies are now involved in running entire hospitals, including A&E departments, not to mention hospital construction under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) scheme.

The Health and Social Care Act 2012 (HSCA) enshrined privatisation as official government policy, but it must not be forgotten that both Blair and Brown’s ‘New Labour’ governments encouraged private providers’ involvement in the health service.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) disclosed that its total spending on all non-NHS bodies has risen from £10.32 billion in 2014 - 15 to £13.75 billion last year, an increase of £3.43 billion or 33% over four years.

This means you may now find that your GP works for a company like Care UK. Tests your GP orders on your behalf like blood tests or scans may be carried out by companies such as In-health. If your GP refers you to hospital for surgery, this might be to a privately-run centre, or to an NHS hospital run by a company like Circle. On leaving hospital, after care may be provided by Virgin Care.

Privatisation is at its most extreme in the mental health and childcare provision sphere. Dr John Lister, secretary of Keep Our NHS Public has said, “Last year (2018), roughly 30% of all mental health spending was in the private sector and 44% of spending on child and adolescent mental health goes to private providers.”

Fifteen of these private companies have links to twenty-four Tory politicians. They include David Cameron, Andrew Landsley, Jo Johnson, William Hague, Nadhim Zahawi, Nick Herbert, Chris Skidmore, Mark Simmonds, Nicholas Soames, Kwasi Kwarteng and Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Let us look at a couple of these MPs.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, Leader of the House of Commons, who famously said that the growth in food banks is “rather uplifting”, is the co-founder of Somerset Capital, a £6.5 billion company based in London, the Cayman Islands and Singapore. He stepped down from the company on his appointment as Leader of the House of Commons, but was then compensated with £1 million from the company’s 2018 profits. If you search the company’s website, you will be no wiser as to how they bring in the moola. Their mission statement has the clarity of mud: “Assessing governance risk and interacting with management teams to protect the value of our investment has been a cornerstone of our investment process since the firm was founded.”

But I have discovered that Somerset Capital has received at least £4 million from one of their clients, Redwood Emerging Markets, who are involved in health technologies and digital support projects. If you want to know how difficult a task it is to get hold on this information, check out this talk by Dominic Johnson of Somerset Capital about Redwood Emerging Markets. Just as with their mission statement above, what is he on about?

Never mind the obfuscations. Channel 4 Dispatches has assured their viewers that there is little obfuscation in Rees-Mogg’s personal finances. He has received over £7 million from Somerset Capital in the last five years.

Nadhim Zahawi, Tory MP and Construction Minister in the Johnson government, whose duties include “better regulation and regulatory reform” is non-executive director of Sthree which won a £2.6 million contract from the NHS. He is paid £2,917 a month by the company for seven hours work. He may have on his busy desk company reports on their work replacing NHS primary care trusts with the company’s clinical commissioning group.

As the second highest earning UK MP, Zahawi acts as Chief Strategy officer for Gulf Keystone Petroleum. With all this work, he still finds time to go riding, although he had to apologise to the Sunday Mirror after they they published a report that he had claimed £5,822 on his parliamentary costs for his stable’s electricity.

During debate on the 2012 HSCA bill, Zahawi called it a “brilliant piece of legislation”. Of course he did.

You might think, So what? So long as treatment remains free when I go to my GP or when I am admitted to hospital, I need not worry. But with growing waiting lists for consultations and surgeries, NHS inadequacies open the door to privatised solutions. And they are already in place or scratching at the door to get in. And not just UK companies.

USA Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) has a lobbying group that supports the role of private company participation in the NHS. The US hospital operator, Tenet Healthcare, acquired Aspen Healthcare in 2015, an operator of private hospitals and clinics in the UK. Tenet said that it hoped that owning Aspen would provide “increasing opportunities to work with and support the National Health Service”. They went on to note that “privatisation of UK marketplace, given market inefficiencies and pressures on the National Health Service, should create organic and de novo opportunities” for their company.

What to expect from all this? Just two examples of what awaits us. The cancer / HIV drug Daraprim presently costs £2.30 per pill in the UK. In the USA the price is £619 per pill. Cataract surgery costs £800 in this country. In the USA that price is £5,780.

And why are so many of the UK companies involved with the health service registered abroad? Surely not to evade the taxes which fund their profits

We have a struggle on our hands to save the NHS. With the Tories actively voting for more and more privatisation and with the Lib Dems abstaining, no prizes for who will do the fighting.

A personal note. As someone whose life has been saved three times by the NHS in the last four years, I will be campaigning for a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government.

 

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