Campaign group EveryDoctor has uncovered more damning details about the shady financial links between politicians and the private healthcare sector. At this point, it almost goes without saying that it means millions more in corporate donations to the people calling the shots at Westminster on the future of the NHS.
EveryDoctor exposes donations from vested private healthcare interests
Anti-privatisation of the NHS campaign group EveryDoctor has long been exposing the cronyism at the heart of UK politics in relation to the private healthcare sector.
The group has put out multiple pieces of vital research pulling back the curtain on privatisation. In 2023, EveryDoctor previously put the links between politicians and the private healthcare sector on the map.
Reporting on this, the Canary’s Maryam Jameela honed in on a handful of then Tory government and Labour shadow cabinet ministers who’d accepted donations from vested interests. Of course, among the many MPs taking sizeable donations was to-be-health secretary Wes Streeting:
Wes Streeting, meanwhile, has benefited from a donation that came from Peter Hearn. As the Morning Star reported, Hearn is the third biggest donor to MPs since the last election, giving money to Dan Jarvis and Yvette Cooper also. Hearn is a director for OPD group, which as EveryDoctor note, is heavily involved in the private sector
Obviously, the Labour health secretary and other ministers’ proximity to the private sector has only continued to grow. In October 2024, the Good Law Project highlighted how Streeting had pocketed more than 60% of donations from people and companies linked to private health.
Now, EveryDoctor has gone and done it again. It has put politicians private healthcare donations under the magnifying glass once more.
£2.7m in cronyist donations
Notably, EveryDoctor has found that MPs bagged more than £2.7m in donations from individuals and companies directly or indirectly linked to the private healthcare sector. This was all just between 2023 and 2025 alone.
It revealed this to its supporters, and wrote that its other headline findings were that:
- More than half (£1.4m) of the donations came from companies with investments in the private healthcare sector such as asset management firms.
- A tenth of the donation (£312,204) came from companies that already provide services to the NHS.
- More than £230,000 was donated to MPs from directors of companies that have investments in the private healthcare sector.
- Lobbyists with private healthcare clients donated more than £110,000 to MPs.
However, this is just a small teaser of more to come. The campaign group plans to put all these connections on a new map. It will also put out a report to delve into the detail and show just how private healthcare interests have hijacked the politicians the public elected to represent them.
In her email to supporters, EveryDoctor founder Dr Julia Grace Patterson noted on these disgraceful findings that:
it’s appalling to see these sums, and particularly awful to see that lobbyists with private healthcare clients are donating to our representatives in Parliament!
Picking up the NHS privatisation baton
Its previous research has shown where this has all invariably led too: predictably, more privatisation.
For one, EveryDoctor published a separate map in 2024 uncovering the enormous scale of NHS services outsourced and privatised across the UK. In another investigation, it dug up the eye-watering sums of public money NHS England had been throwing at the private sector for beds in mental health facilities.
In this corporate-captured context, it’s little wonder that the Labour Party government has picked up the privatisation baton of the Tories.
Soon, EveryDoctor’s research will lay bare the extent of the new crop of MPs cosying up to the private healthcare sector. Given what it has revealed already, it’s sure to paint another alarming picture of politicians in the pockets of the private profiteers wrecking the NHS. Needless to say, there’ll undoubtedly be plenty more cronyist privatisation of the service on its way.
Featured image via the Canary
