Wes Streeting brings in Blairite turned health lobbyist to 'fix' NHS

Right, so despite Wes Streeting, our new Health Secretary having previously said the NHS would be privatised over his dead body, frankly few who have ever paid attention to him in recent times believe a word of that, especially when he has also talked endlessly about harnessing the power of the private sector to boost our NHS, ignoring the fact the resources and capacity are not there and indeed nor are the staff, many of the health workers in private health already also work part of their time in the NHS as it is. But nailing on the fact that Streeting is absolutely headed down the road of NHS privatisation and that Keir Starmer is recruiting a number of former Tony Blair figures into numerous parts of his government, there’s a few more videos to come covering that I daresay, Streeting has brought on board Tony Blair’s former Secretary of State for Health Alan Milburn, a man regarded as Mr privatisation or perish, he was Mr Private Finance Initiative, PFI, that placed such a huge burden of debt on the NHS when Labour were in power before. Is Starmer simply going to rerun what we know already failed?
Right, so NHS privatisation, we knew it was on the cards if Starmer were elected, if Wes Streeting held onto his seat and despite Streeting’s majority being now virtually non existent, he’s pressing ahead anyway and in what should be a frankly nailed on warning to the British public that NHS reform under Starmer’s Labour will pretty much be carrying on with outsourcing and privatisation, the spectre of Private Finance Initiatives at their height is being brought back to health in some capacity, though it hasn’t been made clear what that precise role actually will be, other than he won’t be a minister, or chair NHS England Tony Blair’s Health Secretary from 1999-2003 Alan Milburn.
Where the Tories outright just hacked the NHS up and put the pieces up for tender to outsourcing companies, creaming cash off of the NHS budget, meaning for as much as the budget itself was increased, more cash simply went to shareholders and the service continued to suffer, as every privatised service has suffered, we know none of it works now, Labour under Blairism were a bit sneakier with it. While it was the Tories under John Major that introduced Private Finance Initiatives, it was under Blair and with Milburn driving this as well, to effectively allow private sector interests, to put their cash into the NHS and take a return directly out of it, effectively piling debt onto the NHS books and off the government books. Labour looked great at eliminating government debt, but just piled onto services we all rely on. Much of the Labour manifesto, much of what Rachel Reeves and Starmer have said about growth being generated despite them putting no money in, very much implies that the PFI’s which burdened the NHS with so much debt are likely to be seen in other sectors too and we need to look out for it, because you start burdening essential services with debt, it makes it harder for them to deliver on the services we all rely on and it should be opposed, it is privatisation by stealth, just a slightly different way of doing so than the Tories did, allowing Labour to essentially court private health, whist saying they are different from the Tories. For example for as much as Milburn was behind much of the PFI introduced to the NHS back in the late 90’s and early noughties, he was asked by incoming Tory health secretary back in 2010 Andrew Lansley, who’s reforms started much of the most recent rot, built on later by Jeremy Hunt, to help them, help the Tories with their vision for the NHS and Milburn refused, saying he was anti-privatisation, because Labour functionally see bringing the private sector into the NHS as different from just Tory style outsourcing and overt privatisation. But it is still private health coming in and shareholders in exchange for that, will still demand a return. The difference at the end of the day between what Labour are going to do again here by the look of things and what the Tories have been doing for 14 years ultimately are no different. I think Labour will struggle to sell it as I said though, because the NHS has been decimated, the staff and expertise that were there when they left office are largely gone and returning to the PFI era as if that is the solution isn’t going to wash. It is still about monetising the health service we all need, for the benefit of the rich. Tories by another name, Tory policy in another disguise.
Now you might be thinking Milburn has been out of health for some time, perhaps he’s had a change of heart, perhaps he acknowledges the mistake of PFI, perhaps he would point out to Streeting where the pitfalls are and I daresay he could well do that, but the rich making money off of healthcare isn’t going to be one of them.
Since leaving frontline politics, Milburn has been very busy with his portfolio of consultancies and these very much include private health. An article in the Morning Star from October of 2022, where he and his family made some £2.1m from consultancies, not all health related, but a significant chunk of that portfolio is to do with private heath. Here’s an excerpt telling you all about it:
‘He has had a lucrative post-politics career with corporate consultancies, including for firms profiting from his health “reforms.” Milburn channels some — probably all — of this income through his firm AM Strategies.
The latest AM Strategies accounts show the bumper £2.141m payout to shareholders. There are four shareholders, Milburn, his wife and their two grown-up children. Assuming the dividend was paid in proportion, Milburn got about £1.5m, his wife about £329k and his children each got £107k.
Milburn is also chancellor of Lancaster University, which describes his business interests.
It says: “His advisory business has corporate and government clients across the world. Among others, he advises Mars Incorporated and the Centene Corporation. He is chair of the advisory board at Bridgepoint Capital the leading mid-market private equity group and serves on a number of its portfolio company boards.
“He is a board director at Ribera Salud one of Europe’s most integrated healthcare systems and is board chair of Huma, the digital health business. He is senior advisor to PricewaterhouseCooper’s (PwC) government and health industries practice.”
So it looks like this advisory business is behind Milburn’s handsome payout. Milburn has been working for Bridgepoint Capital since 2004. This private equity firm in turn does well from NHS outsourcing by buying and selling private health firms that were NHS suppliers.
US health giant the Centene Corporation has been trying to break into outsourced NHS services for some years.
Management consultants PwC profited from NHS PFI schemes and advising other clients looking to profit from NHS privatisation.
The Mars Corporation is, I assume, interested in advice from a former health minister so the manufacturer of Bounty, Snickers and Mars bars can deal best with health and anti-obesity regulation.
As well as privately advising these firms, Milburn also publicly promotes NHS outsourcing — though not without controversy.
Last year the BBC issued a rare apology for failing to tell viewers that its Newsnight pundit pushing NHS privatisation, Milburn, was not just a “former health secretary” but also has much more current and very lucrative interests in health privatisation.
Milburn appeared on Newsnight last November on a segment on the NHS, where he pushed his familiar call for more “partnerships with the private sector.”
Newsnight identified Milburn as the “former New Labour health secretary,” even though that was 18 years ago. It failed to identify his more current potential interests in health outsourcing due to his roles with Bridgepoint, Centene or PwC.’
I think it would be a safe assumption to say Milburn hasn’t changed his tune on the value of NHS privatisation, the value to him personally seems a high one and with Starmer bringing him in, Streeting bringing him in, but to what extent, to do what exactly, he’s not an impartial player and if he promotes the likes of Centene, or Mars, or Bridgepoint or any other health clients he might have by this point, he would be helping to some sort of a degree, there are rumours he could become a new NHS chairman, to shape Labour NHS policy in a manner that may personally benefit him at that. He’s effectively become a lobbyist for private health interests since leaving politics, so do you honestly believe he won’t be lobbying from within?
Keir Starmer in his borefest of an election campaign, insisted he was not a Blair copycat, but here he is bringing an NHS privatisation former Blair health minister into the fold and he is not the only relic from the Blair era being resurrected. We know what happened before, we need to watch for it happening again. With the majority Starmer has got thanks to the scale of Tory losses, Labour vote share barely having moved in fact from 2019, there’s little to stop him, but that doesn’t mean we can’t call him out for it and with social media, we all have a voice we can use to do that, that we didn’t have under Blair. We don’t have to take it and grumble.
Amongst those people most in need of a fully functioning NHS of course are those long term sick and disabled amongst us, some of whom can get back to work if NHS waiting lists come down, but the private sector is not how this will be achieved. Not helping matters further on that score is the appointment of Liz Kendall in charge of the DWP. While the NHS looks set to be PFI’d once more, Tory demonisation of those at the mercy of the benefits system looks set to continue as well. Check out this video recommendation to familiarise with the new welfare boss and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.