Labour’s cabinet has taken over half a million in donations from private healthcare lobbyists

Lobbyists, hedge funds, and private equity firms connected to the private healthcare sector have funnelled more than half a million pounds to the new Labour Party cabinet since 2023. In a damning new exposé, Canary columnist Dr Julia Grace Patterson’s advocacy group EveryDoctor has revealed the staggering scale of donations from those with vested interests in NHS privatisation.

Labour donations: NHS privatisation profiteers

EveryDoctor pored through Starmer’s cabinet ministers’ declarations on the ‘Register of Members’ Financial Interests’. It explored this for the period between 2023 and 28 May 2024.

What the group found was a sprawling network of corporate capitalist donations from across private healthcare. Crucially, EveryDoctor uncovered that collectively, cabinet ministers had taken more than £500,000 in donations from firms with links to the sector.

Notably, these didn’t all simply come as direct monetary donations or freebies. Some of Starmer’s new cabinet had seconded free staff direct from lobbying firms or think tanks.

And one notorious think tank made up around 60% of the total donations. Labour Together ploughed donations-in-kind of staff or research services equating to approximately £300,000.

EveryDoctor identified hedge fund boss Martin Taylor among Labour Together’s biggest donors. It noted that Taylor’s firm Crake Asset Management holds £30m in shares in US private healthcare giant United Health. On top of this, it holds a further £5.4m in shares in Elevance Health, another of the biggest US-based private health corporations.

Additionally, Taylor had also made personal donations to lord chancellor and secretary of state for justice Shabana Mahmood of £20,000.

Of course, this is the same think tank that ousted shadow cabinet minister Jonathan Ashworth now heads up, since his poetic election defeat to independent Shockat Adam in July.

Lobbying and PR consultants: Serco again

Primarily, a sizeable pool of donations came from large lobbying firms, and PR consultants.

EveryDoctor reviewed the register of the Official Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists and the Public Affairs and Lobbying Register. These provide a list of clients for different periods.

Doing so, it uncovered a mass of firms representing private healthcare giants, big pharma, health insurance companies, and temp agencies.

This who’s who of corporate privatisation opportunists included lobbying firm Weber Shandwick. The company has shilled for multinational pharmaceutical corporations like Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, and Roche. As EveryDoctor pointed out:

The latter, which is the fifth biggest drug company in the world, previously refused to offer drugs for the treatment of terminal cancer and neuromuscular conditions at prices set by the NHS drug watchdog NICE. The Swiss multinational declared operating profits of $4.1 billion (£3.1 billion) in 2023.

Moreover, wherever private outsourcing treads, infamous firm Serco is never far behind. Unsurprisingly, Weber Shandwick has also had the firm among its clients. The former Conservative government repeatedly awarded the company millions in Test and Trace programme contracts. MPs later stated it had having “failed on [its] main objectives”.

In fact, it was then shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth who had lambasted the scheme as “broken” and not “fit for purpose” in 2020. In 2021, Starmer also criticised Serco for reintroducing dividends off the back of its soaring profits from covid testing contracts. Notably, it was doing so in spite of the fact that, as the Canary highlighted:

According to figures from October 2020, Serco and other organisations Test and Trace was outsourced to were only reaching around 64% of contacts. This was much lower than the 97% local public health teams reached.

Now, EveryDoctor has dug up that minister of state for development Anneliese Dodds took on a Weber Shandwock staff member between September 2022 and March 2023. The donation-in-kind amounted to £55,800.

Reeves and Streeting: private companies parasitising the NHS

Other notable lobbying and PR firms with fingers in private healthcare and big pharma pies included:

• FGS Global (United Health subsidiary Optum Health Solutions, Accord Healthcare).
• Sovereign Strategy (Novartis).
• Portland Communications (Vertex Pharmaceuticals).

Between February and June 2024, FGS Global provided chancellor Rachel Reeves the services of a campaign adviser worth £10,000.

Meanwhile, Sovereign Strategy had given deputy prime minister Angela Rayner a £5,000 donation in March for “campaigning activities”.

In Portland Communications case, the firm’s founder Tim Allen – a former advisor to Tony Blair – shovelled £15,000 to Reeves and cabinet minister Pat McFadden.

Naturally, Labour bedding down with companies exploiting the NHS didn’t end there either. Crucially, EveryDoctor also pointed out that:

In one of her first acts as chancellor, Reeves wrote to ministers instructing them to cut spending on consultants. Streeting had, similarly, called the NHS’s dependence on temp staff “infuriating” and pledged to tackle the problem prior to the election. Yet despite their tough talk, both have taken donations from lobbyists representing consultancy firms and temp agencies.

Lobbying and PR firm PLMR was a glaring case and point of the two cabinet heavyweight’s cosy relationship with these profiteering agencies. Specifically, EveryDoctor identified that PLMR founder Kevin Craig had donated £39,000 towards Streeting’s staffing costs. He’d also stumped up £1,934 for a website domain for Reeves. But, as the advocacy group noted:

PLMR’s clients include recruitment agency Adecco which is one of a number of companies that provides temporary staff to the NHS. Earlier this year, the Guardian reported that hospitals and GP surgeries across the UK are paying a record £4.6bn for agency personnel and another £5.8bn for doctors and nurses on staff to do extra shifts.

Labour’s lobby links ‘a liability in power’

Overall, these were all just the tip of the iceberg. EveryDoctor discovered many more connections with these industries exploiting the NHS. Given this, it concluded that:

Labour’s record haul of donations over the past year and a half has no doubt helped it secure victory, but as our research shows it could prove to be a liability in power.

Of course, the new Labour cabinet’s extensive financial ties prove one thing conclusively. That is, the NHS is no safer in red Tory hands than its blue predecessors.

Feature image via the Canary