New report: How the BBC betrayed the NHS

‘The BBC has failed in its responsibilities to inform the British public about one of the most important pieces of legislation of the 21st century.’

This statement comes from a new report written and researched by OurKingdom, a democracy news website project of Open Democracy. The 8,000-word document, highlights a catalogue of failings by the corporation in its coverage of the Health and Social Care Act that include:

• Never questioned or explored the lack of democratic mandate for the changes to the NHS

• Consistently presented the bill using the government’s own highly contested description

• Financial links between healthcare firms, the Conservatives and the House of Lords were never reported

• Significant role of the private sector in Lansley’s new health market was never explored

• Censored key stories, particularly as the bill reached its final stages. On 19 March 2012 when the bill was finally passed in the Lords, BBC Online published not a single article of news or analysis on the bill

Amongst the failings listed is researchconducted by this blog, Social Investigations, which revealed the institutional corruption and corporate takeover of our parliamentary system by private healthcare. 140 Lords and 65 MPs had financial links to companies involved in private healthcare, a damning statement on our political system. The report rightly points out the BBC’s failure to report this, although they were certainly not alone in neglecting this story.

A further search of the BBC website revealed that throughout the passage of the Healthcare Act, the BBC failedto challenge Andrew Lansley on private healthcare donations his office received when he was shadow health secretary. These connections were well known and published in most other newspaper media. The BBC acknowledged this with a somewhat pitiful response:

‘Factors such as how much national interest there is in the subject matter will all play a part in deciding the level of coverage and where it falls within a bulletin.’

The OurKingdom report offers further condemnation of the BBC’s coverage under the title: ‘The unexplored role of the private healthcare industry’ the report states; ‘One of the most glaring absences of BBC reporting concerns the role of private health and consultancy firms.’

Monitor, the new ‘independent’ regulator, which is to be tasked with promoting competition, or as the marketing apparatchiks would have us believe, ‘promote patient choice’, is heavily linked to consultancy giants, McKinsey & Co. ‘Of the five members of the board, two, including the Chair, David Bennett, are ex-McKinsey staff’. Mckinsey were the company that recommended the £20 billion of savings the NHS must make over the next 5 years and were charged with writing large parts of the Health and Social Care bill.

The report reminds us of comments made by Mark Britnell, a senior adviser to David Cameron and KPMG’s Global Head of Health, when he spoke in a conference in New York: ‘the NHS would be turned into a “state insurance provider”, a “big opportunity” for the private sector; the NHS would be shown “no mercy”.’ Worth mentioning you might think, but ‘despite the story breaking on 14 May, the report tell us the ‘BBC did not mention the comments until 4 days later when they were mentioned in brief to explain a comment by Nick Clegg. It was not deemed a story in its own right, and it was never mentioned again.’

The BBC did however find time to quote the private healthcare lobby group, NHS Partners Network. The report tells us how the BBC ‘frequently cited’ the network but failed each time to mention the rather significant fact that they are loadedwith vested interests. Their current members list contains 7 companies with financialconnections to MPs, Lords or former MPs. They met with Andrew Lansley in 2007 and held a 'meeting with Lansley on the Conservative party's draft bill.' They were in fact involvedin a lot more than that.

Not in the report, but worth mentioning is the case of Oliver Letwin. In Nicholas Timmins book, ‘Never Again?’, we learn how a deal was struck between Oliver Letwin and Danny Alexander as part of the coalition negotiations. The deal regarding the NHS was arrogantly - Give us the NHS and we will give you Lords reform.

In January 1988, the Centre for Policy Studies published a document written by a key member of Margaret Thatcher’ Policy Unit.  The publication was titled ‘Britain’s Biggest Enterprise, ideas for radical reform of the NHS’. The author was Oliver Letwin. The publication focused on two options for change in the NHS, both under the ‘principle of charging’, health credits or a national ‘health insurance scheme’. In June 2004, it was reported in the Independent that Mr Letwin had told a private meeting of construction industry representatives in his constituency in Dorset, that the “NHS will not exist” within five-years of a Conservative government. Take a look on the BBC website and there is no mention of any of these stories.
 

There are some important questions the BBC needs to answer. It is understood that the BBC is going through a nervy time. Like all public funded institutions it is being forced to make cuts to its service and with a government in place, which was so desperately trying to give more power to Murdoch.

There is no doubt that under a Conservative government and even one tempered by a largely submissive coalition partner, the BBC feels under pressure. Prior to getting into power David Cameron had called for the licence fee to be frozen for a year, by the time they got into power, this had becomesix years. Further support for this action came from Jeremy Hunt the then Culture secretary who said: "The BBC has to live on the same planet as everyone else." The same planet presumably that watched the unfolding hacking scandal with Mr Hunt waving the flag for Murdoch’s BSKYB bid.

Reducing the licence fee will naturally affect quality, there are to be fewer new factual programmes, which have already declined over the last few years. A total of 140 jobs are gone from the news division, which will hinder the BBC’s ability to produce the investigative journalism that it can do so well.

Attacking the BBC has multiple advantages to the Conservatives. It will weaken the service and help push the agenda of ending the licence. A tactic that is repeated across all privatisations; run it down, make the service so poor that people will cry less when it is finally dismantled. Indeed, the commercial arm of the BBC Worldwide service is certainlyin their aims.

The BBC is to be defended or else the likes of Murdoch become the more powerful force and nobody wants Fox news in the UK. Faith however needs to be restored, and not challenging Lansley on his healthcare donations and so many of the other failures of their Health bill coverage as highlighted in this report is simply sloppy journalism.

In addition it doesn’t help our confidence, when we learn via the Telegraph, (no angelsthemselves), that the BBC spent £2.2 million of public money on private healthcare for hundreds of senior BBC staff between 2008-2010. Neither does it help having Lord Patten of Barnesas Chairman of the Trust. The Trust is responsible for ensuring standards such as impartiality and fairness be maintained in the public interest. The Conservative Peer is a member of the European Advisory Board for a private equity investment company called Bridgepoint. The private equity firm which has been involved in 17 healthcare deals over recent years Eight of these companies remain as their current investments, which include four in the UK at a combined investment worth over £1.1 billion. One company acquired by Bridgepoint was residential care company Care UK, whose chairman was the person who donated to Lansley.

The report concludes with some recommendations to put the issues raised to rest.

-       release full data on the complaints it has received over its NHS coverage, if it has not done so already

-       formally address the concerns listed above

-       make available to the public, journalists and academics a full account of their coverage across all mediums so that it can be properly analysed.

The BBC is an important part of our society, and the NHS even more so. Are they intentionally not covering these important issues or is it simply poor journalism? If it is the former, then why and who is informing where they should be researching? If it is the latter, then what is the recruitment process for BBC journalists, because quite frankly, they are not doing their job?

Across its services, the BBC reaches a staggering 90% of people in every week. If the BBC doesn’t cover it, then a lot of the public will not know about it. There is so much more in the report by Open democracy and it is a vital and important read. Not least of all is the fact that blogs written by concerned members of the public, played a vital role in getting information out that the BBC and the media as a whole did not.

As Indymedia, the global volunteer activist media organisation have been saying for years:

You are the Media!

Reform: A Charity or a conduit for privatisation?

Conference season is upon us, and this year as with every other, the three main parties of the UK political system will each be taking to the stage in an attempt to define their centrist differences. ‘Tis the season to be lobbying, and one organisation in particular will be on the fringes, acting as the go between for their corporate partners and the MPs they hope to persuade; their name is Reform.

Reform is a free market think tank, whose mission according to their website, is to ‘set out a better way to deliver public services and economic prosperity.’ They are also an official charity, although not in the traditional sense that you and I might think, i.e. ‘an organisation set up to provide help and raise money for those in need’ (OED). The charitable aims, in fact, appear to be more like an attempt to leverage public resources into the hands of the corporations who donate money to their cause.

Reform’s corporate partnersrepresent some of the most powerful companies in the country, including the likes of Citigroup, KPMG, GlaxoSmithKline and Serco. Partners are asked to donate £7,500 (or more if they choose), annually to the charitable Reform Research Trust and currently 31 companies across all the key sectors are only too willing to part with this amount. Such sums of money are of little consequence to these global companies, and in return their agenda of further outsourcing makes its way to government ears through newspapers, research reports and key events.

Reform claim that the need for corporate inclusion in their charitable work is to give these organisations a voice, as explained on their webpage‘corporates’:

‘We are keen to involve corporate organisations in our research because their expertise is often left out of the Whitehall policy discussion.’

Is this true, are the multi-national companies really being left out of government discussions?

Take the global accounting giant, KPMG. Since the middle of 2010, they have participated in 33 government meetings, given written evidence multiple times and provided oral evidence on at least 4 occasions. KPMG guide policy, they are commissioned by various departments to produce reports and are currently one of the approved providers developing the Clinical Commissioning Groups, who are set to replace the Primary Care Trusts in 2013. This is not a voiceless outsider.

Not only are they already included in government policy-making, but they employtwo members of the House of Lords. Lord Harris of Haringey is a Senior Adviser and Lord Hastings is the Global Head of Citizenship and Diversity for Global Tax.

In fact 9 of the companies who are listed as corporate partners of Reform employ members of the House of Lords on their payroll. G4S, who are at the heart of government consideration for contracts on security and policing, have former Labour Secretary of State for Defence, Lord Reid, as a director. Since 2010, G4S have had 17 government meetings and 5 oral presentations. Serco, the public services giant, has billions of pounds worth of government contracts, and also has Lord Filkin as an advisor on public affairs. They have met the government on at least 36 occasions since 2010. The list goes on.

However, an annual donation is not the only way corporations can give money to Reform. One key element of their work is to set up meetings and events to bring together MPs and representatives from the various corporations willing to pay them money. In 2011, 68 different companies supported Reform, either via donation or sponsorship, totalling a weighty sum of £770,000. However, according to the Charity Commission website, their total income is over £1.25 Million.

This process is taking place over the course of the conference season. In order to participate in some of the key fringe events, which take place away form the main hall, corporations are paying money in the form of sponsorship in order to participate in events involving MPs.

Reform has produced a conference calendar of these eventsthat they will be attending alongside their corporate partners. On Monday 24th September, the new health minister, Norman Lamb, will be head of the table at a policy dinner sponsored by the UK’s biggest private hospital company, BMI Healthcare. General Healthcare Group, who own BMI Healthcare, gave Reform £24,500 in 2011 and are presumably covering the costs this time around.

In addition to this event, BMI are also included in invitation only events with Labour’s Shadow Minister for Care and Older People, Liz Kendall, and Conservative Health Select Committee Member, Chris Skidmore, on the shared topic of ‘Reforming health and care’.

BMI Healthcare came to the public’s attention recently when the Independentrevealed how the executive director of the private BMI Meriden Hospital, Bernie Creaven, sent a letter instructing doctors to ‘artificially delay operations on non-paying patients to encourage them to pay fees.’

Reform is at the forefront of promoting the policy of outsourcing hospitals. In February this year, Circle became the first company to start running an NHS hospital after being given a 10-year contract to run Hitchingbrooke hospital in Cambridge. Just 6 months into its tenure, Circle produced a press release telling us how they have cut waiting times, improved care and delivered savings. This announcement was enough for the media, and the Telegraph in particular, to move into action; they hailed the hospital a success despite only 5% of the tenure being complete.

What followed was a sequence of articleswritten by Reform for the Telegraph that promoted the benefits of hospital outsourcing; a policy that will benefit both Circle Health, who were the former employers of Reform’s deputy director, Nick Seddon, and of course the UK’s largest hospital group, BMI Healthcare.

Healthcare companies are prominent at Reform’s fringe events, which is not surprising given the recent passing of the Health and Social Care Act, and the fact that 12 out of 31 of Reform’s corporate partners are from the health sector. However, they are by no means the only sector making use of Reform’s sponsorship programme.

Indeed, Reform’s corporate partners include, ABI, Aviva, Balfour Beatty, Benenden Healthcare Society, Bevan Brittan, BG Group, BVCA, Cable & Wireless, Capita, CH2M Hill, Clifford Chance, Citigroup, The City of London, Ernst & Young, GlaxoSmithKline, G4S, GE, General Healthcare Group, HP, ICAEW, KPMG, Maximus, McKesson, MSD, Optical Confederation, PA Consulting Group, Serco, Sodexo and Telereal Trillium - hardly a roll call of the downtrodden.

Reform claim to be a charity and the Charity Commission, for now at least, have accepted this. But the definition of charity in most people’s mind does not stretch to promoting the transfer of public resources into the hands of global corporations. Such a definition led the public services union GMB at the TUC congress to call Reform a ‘fake charity’. It’s not hard to see why, and it’s an issue that goes far beyond Reform. There is a clear need for the Charity Commission, the government and civil society to take a fresh look at exactly what “charity” is and decide which public goods are worthy of tax exemptions. Corporate lobbying is not charitable, it is profit seeking - and the taxpayer is subsidising it.

I wrote this article for Our Kingdom (Open Democracy) here.

Choice and Competition Chair briefed by Lansley and SPAD before appearance on Health and Social Care Bill Committee

Just when you though the so-called ‘listening exercise could not be more of a sham, a new quotefrom Sir Stephen Bubb has come to light that reveals he was briefed by Lansley and his Special Advisor, Bill Morgan, before an appearance before the Public Bill Committee meeting on the Health and Social care bill.


We already know that the recommendations of the Choice and Competition working group were agreed and included in Cameron’s speech before their report had been given to No10. Here.

We know too that the Lansley, his special advisor and the NHS Partners Network met to comfort the lobby group that competition would remain in the bill before parliament had even had a chance to debate it. Here.

We know Bubb held secret meetings with the director of a private health care lobby group, the NHS Partners Network. A document revealed he had two lengthy meetings with David Worskett and other members of the lobby group. Here.

We also know that many of the members of the lobby group are the employers of our Lords and MPs. Here.

Now we learn that Bubb was having talks and walks along Whitehall in which he said:

‘Well that was spooky! Walking along Whitehall talking to Andrew Lansley's Special Advisor on aspects of the Health Bill I bump into... Andrew Lansley. So some useful lobbying. I'm speaking to the Committee stage of the Health Bill at the Commons on Thursday so I'm getting briefed on key points we want to raise. We strongly support the "any willing provider" concept, just as we opposed the misjudged "preferred provider" policy of Burnham.'

True to his word or at least the words of Lansley and his advisor, Bubb spoke at the committee on behalf of the third sector stating: ‘we are strongly behind the concept of “any willing provider”...The any willing provider approach actually allows us to get stuck in a way that has not been possible before.’

The so-called ‘listening exercise’ was nothing of the sort when it came to Choice and Competition, and the reward for Sir Stephen Bubb is according to Charity Times to become a Peer for the Liberal Democrats and will be ennobled as Lord Bubb of Charlbury.

Reform – who do they represent? BMI healthcare

As part of an ongoing analysis of Reform as a ‘charity’, this time the focus is on BMI healthcare.

Articles in relation to Reform already exist here on the meetings with senior officials using Chatham House rules which are an affront to transparency. Another article looked at their role in supporting the aims of Aviva, one of their corporate partners. This time the focus is turned to BMI Healthcare.

Reform are according to their website 'keen to involve corporate organisations in our research because their expertise is often left out of the Whitehall policy discussion.’ – Reform website – corporate partners page


Reform are a charity - Dictionary definition of a charity: ‘An organisation set up to provide help and raise money for those in need’.

Background – BMI Healthcare are not a small company
BMI Healthcare is the UK’s largest hospital group. BMI, according to the not-for-profit research organisation Corporate Watch, has a network of ‘over 70 hospitals and clinics, which treat NHS patients through the Choose and Book system, and is looking to sign more contracts with NHS trusts in a range of areas in the near future.’ Adrian Fawcett, who was their CEO until May 2011, according to the book ‘The Plot Against the NHS’, by Colin Leys and Stewart Player that he wants “co-paying seen as standard, so patients pay on top of their NHS care, for medicines or for their own room with extra facilities.”

BMI are owned by the General Healthcare Group who in turn are owned by a ‘consortium of companies including private equity firms Apax Partners, London & Regional and Brockton, and Netcare, South Africa's leading hospital group, which holds a controlling, 50.1% share. They bought GHG for £2.2bn in 2006, from BC Partners, its previous private equity owners. – corporatewatch

BMI Healthcare came under the spotlight recently following a letter written by BMI Meriden Hospital’s chief executive Bernie Creaven. The letter instructedtheir doctors to delay operations intentionally so that they would be encouraged to go private.

Do they need a voice?
If Reform are concerned that BMI Healthcare are not getting their voice heard, then they can breathe a sigh of relief. A selection of evidence is represented below across the decade revealing BMI Health and General Healthcare Group have had plenty of opportunities to get their message across to parliament.

In 1999, the General Healthcare Group provided a memorandum to the Select Committee on Health. The topic was ‘The Regulation of Private and other Independent Healthcare’.

Back in September 2001, GHG gave evidenceto the Select Committee on Health, on the topic of Public Private Partnerships in the NHS. The solution they believed was that the ‘future healthcare needs could be met more effectively by further developing a regulated, mixed economy in NHS provision.’

In April 2006, BMI produced writtenevidence for the select committee on health on their clinical outcomes. In 2008, BMI Healthcare were asked to give evidenceon patient safety, and in 2012 as partof Independent Healthcare Advisory Services.

In 2009, a £250 per ticket breakfast event hostedby Reform, which included Andrew Lansley, the then shadow health secretary and other high powered health figures, also had GHG. The event titled the ‘Future of Health’, saw Fawcett sharing the stage, providing him and GHG with a perfect opportunity to lobby.  Powerbase, a fantastic resource and project of Spinwatch, the transparency campaigners, revealed that in a speech at the ReformHealth Conference in July 2010, former General Healthcare Group CEO, Adrian Fawcett, called for ‘"greater self-responsibility in healthcare", saying "it is important that those that can afford to pay for themselves should be encouraged to if that makes financial sense to the Exchequer."’

Not only this, BMI healthcare sponsored a fringe event at the Liberal Democrat conference in 2011, where Norman Lamb was heading an event titled: 'Healthy choices: Reforming the NHS.' They are there again this year, sponsoring an invitation only event with minister of state for Care services Paul Burstow and Norman Lamb: 'Reforming Health and Care'.

As a top up for their already ample ability to access power, BMI Healthcare have received the help of Reform in promoting the idea of privatising hospitals. In a sustained campaign, both Reform and the Telegraph co-operated to act as PR for the private hospital firms. This followed a press release from Circle Health who were boasting of their success 5% of the way into their 10-year tenure. The details of the story are here.

General Healthcare Group and BMI hospitals expertise is not left out of ‘Whitehall policy discussion’, as Reform's reasoning would suggest. Like Aviva, their input is requested often. Reform does however ensure the message of hospital privatisation is repeated often and loudly, the beneficiary of which are companies like BMI Healthcare and their owners the General Healthcare Group. Corporate Watch exposed GHG as owning 37 hospitals owned by 37 separate British companies currently registered for tax purposes here, but each of those British firms are in turn owned by firms in the British Virgin Islands, which would mean there could be no stamp duty to be paid by a future buyer of the land and property.

Charity indeed!

Download the BMI Healthcare PDF here.