Health secretary Wes Streeting accepted over £50,000 from a company with links to private healthcare recruitment on 3 February. Not long after on 18 February, Streeting announced he was abolishing NHS England and cutting 9,000 public jobs. This raises the question of whether the private sector would replace the public sector job cuts, with the Labour Party already increasing private provision of NHS services under Keir Starmer.
Wes Streeting: damning donations
Lobbyists and firms with private healthcare connections have brought in over half a million pounds to Labour’s cabinet since 2023. And that’s on top of a £4m donation to the party from Quadrature Capital, which has investments in private healthcare. More broadly, MPs have accepted £2.7m in donations from private healthcare linked companies or individuals since 2023.
The £53,000 February donation to Wes Streeting comes from the OPD Group, which is controlled by millionaire recruitment mogul Peter Hearn. Hearn is a recruitment executive that, as well as working on senior NHS recruitment, also works on private healthcare provider recruitment.
This is an interesting position, given the NHS and private providers are competing over staff. The very existence of the private healthcare sector takes expertise and resources away from the NHS and charges everybody more for the favour through profit.
Streeting also accepted around £47,000 in donations from another company Hearn controls during 2023. And the Financial Times reports that, through seemingly shell companies, Hearn previously donated over £1m to Labour and prominent individual MPs like Streeting from 2014-2023.
In total, since Starmer became leader in 2020, Labour has accepted 11 donations of one million pounds or more from an individual or corporation. In turn, those 11 donations total a whopping £23.6m from just a handful of people.
Shocking revolving door
It’s worth considering whether Wes Streeting will follow former Labour health secretary Alan Milburn and former Tory health secretary Andrew Lansley in the ‘revolving door’ between government and the private healthcare sector, once he is no longer in the cabinet. Both these health secretaries (one of the Blair government and the other the Tory/ Lib Dem coalition) took on lucrative roles in companies benefiting from an increase in private healthcare, after delivering such an increase in government.
In the 2024 general election, independent activist Leanne Mohamad came within around just 500 votes of unseating Streeting in Ilford North. She stands against NHS privatisation. Meanwhile, Transparency International recommends capping donations from individuals and corporations at £10,000 per year.
Featured image via the Canary
