Jump to content
  • Sign up for free and receive a month's subscription

    You are viewing this page as a guest. That means you are either a member who has not logged in, or you have not yet registered with us. Signing up for an account only takes a minute and it means you will no longer see this annoying box! It will also allow you to get involved with our friendly(ish!) community and take part in the discussions on our forums. And because we're feeling generous, if you sign up for a free account we will give you a month's free trial access to our subscriber only content with no obligation to commit. Register an account and then send a private message to @dave u and he'll hook you up with a subscription.

Cameron: "Cuts will change our way of life"


Section_31
 Share

Recommended Posts

Sorry, can't see this on here.

To us, it's an obscure shift of tax law. To the City, it's the heist of the century | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian

'I would love to see tax reductions," David Cameron told the Sunday Telegraph at the weekend, "but when you're borrowing 11% of your GDP, it's not possible to make significant net tax cuts. It just isn't." Oh no? Then how come he's planning the biggest and crudest corporate tax cut in living memory?

 

If you've heard nothing of it, you're in good company. The obscure adjustments the government is planning to the tax acts of 1988 and 2009 have been missed by almost everyone – and are, anyway, almost impossible to understand without expert help. But as soon as you grasp the implications, you realise that a kind of corporate coup d'etat is taking place.

 

Like the dismantling of the NHS and the sale of public forests, no one voted for this measure, as it wasn't in the manifestos. While Cameron insists that he occupies the centre ground of British politics, that he shares our burdens and feels our pain, he has quietly been plotting with banks and businesses to engineer the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle to the ultra-rich that this country has seen in a century. The latest heist has been explained to me by the former tax inspector, now a Private Eye journalist, Richard Brooks and current senior tax staff who can't be named. Here's how it works.

 

At the moment tax law ensures that companies based here, with branches in other countries, don't get taxed twice on the same money. They have to pay only the difference between our rate and that of the other country. If, for example, Dirty Oil plc pays 10% corporation tax on its profits in Oblivia, then shifts the money over here, it should pay a further 18% in the UK, to match our rate of 28%. But under the new proposals, companies will pay nothing at all in this country on money made by their foreign branches.

 

Foreign means anywhere. If these proposals go ahead, the UK will be only the second country in the world to allow money that has passed through tax havens to remain untaxed when it gets here. The other is Switzerland. The exemption applies solely to "large and medium companies": it is not available for smaller firms. The government says it expects "large financial services companies to make the greatest use of the exemption regime". The main beneficiaries, in other words, will be the banks.

 

But that's not the end of it. While big business will be exempt from tax on its foreign branch earnings, it will, amazingly, still be able to claim the expense of funding its foreign branches against tax it pays in the UK. No other country does this. The new measures will, as we already know, accompany a rapid reduction in the official rate of corporation tax: from 28% to 24% by 2014. This, a Treasury minister has boasted, will be the lowest rate "of any major western economy". By the time this government is done, we'll be lucky if the banks and corporations pay anything at all. In the Sunday Telegraph, David Cameron said: "What I want is tax revenue from the banks into the exchequer, so we can help rebuild this economy." He's doing just the opposite.

 

These measures will drain not only wealth but also jobs from the UK. The new legislation will create a powerful incentive to shift business out of this country and into nations with lower corporate tax rates. Any UK business that doesn't outsource its staff or funnel its earnings through a tax haven will find itself with an extra competitive disadvantage. The new rules also threaten to degrade the tax base everywhere, as companies with headquarters in other countries will demand similar measures from their own governments.

 

So how did this happen? You don't have to look far to find out. Almost all the members of the seven committees the government set up "to provide strategic oversight of the development of corporate tax policy" are corporate executives. Among them are representatives of Vodafone, Tesco, BP, British American Tobacco and several of the major banks: HSBC, Santander, Standard Chartered, Citigroup, Schroders, RBS and Barclays.

 

I used to think of such processes as regulatory capture: government agencies being taken over by the companies they were supposed to restrain. But I've just read Nicholas Shaxson's Treasure Islands – perhaps the most important book published in the UK so far this year – and now I'm not so sure. Shaxson shows how the world's tax havens have not, as the OECD claims, been eliminated, but legitimised; how the City of London is itself a giant tax haven, which passes much of its business through its subsidiary havens in British dependencies, overseas territories and former colonies; how its operations mesh with and are often indistinguishable from the laundering of the proceeds of crime; and how the Corporation of the City of London in effect dictates to the government, while remaining exempt from democratic control. If Hosni Mubarak has passed his alleged $70bn through British banks, the Egyptians won't see a piastre of it.

 

Reading Treasure Islands, I have realised that injustice of the kind described in this column is no perversion of the system; it is the system. Tony Blair came to power after assuring the City of his benign intentions. He then deregulated it and cut its taxes. Cameron didn't have to assure it of anything: his party exists to turn its demands into public policy. Our ministers are not public servants. They work for the people who fund their parties, run the banks and own the newspapers, shielding them from their obligations to society, insulating them from democratic challenge.

 

Our political system protects and enriches a fantastically wealthy elite, much of whose money is, as a result of their interesting tax and transfer arrangements, in effect stolen from poorer countries, and poorer citizens of their own countries. Ours is a semi-criminal money-laundering economy, legitimised by the pomp of the lord mayor's show and multiple layers of defence in government. Politically irrelevant, economically invisible, the rest of us inhabit the margins of the system. Governments ensure that we are thrown enough scraps to keep us quiet, while the ultra-rich get on with the serious business of looting the global economy and crushing attempts to hold them to account.

 

And this government? It has learned the lesson that Thatcher never grasped. If you want to turn this country into another Mexico, where the ruling elite wallows in unimaginable, state-facilitated wealth while the rest can go to hell, you don't declare war on society, you don't lambast single mothers or refuse to apologise for Bloody Sunday. You assuage, reassure, conciliate, emote. Then you shaft us.

 

Good post and thanks for explaining it to those of us without anything other than a couple of CSE's and half a lifetime as an adult.

 

I find nothing in it that i find unbelievable based on how the tories and big business works.

I'm not in a position to benefit from the tories so i expect to be shafted by them when they're in power a lot more than even a centrist or right wing labour government.

 

There is always a massive shift towards helping private companies when the tories are in power as their heads are the tories puppet masters,what they want they inevitably get.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think your shallow criticism is obtuse and oversimplified because this 'one-sided piece' of 'reporting' is just an opinion piece. He doesn't need to be balanced, like he would if he was reporting a factual analysis of the situation.

 

 

 

I don't think I'm entitled to anything. I think leveling the 'Daily Mail' accusation without any build up is quite ironic. You're doing exactly what the Daily Mail do, unlike Monbiot in the article.

 

OK. OK. I'm sorry I didn't structure my post to your requirements. I'll try harder next time. In addition to my opinion, I'll provide a "build-up". Do you want an executive summary too? Appendices? Bibliography? APA or MLA?

 

BTW The offer stands if you want to talk about the article rather than picking bones out of shit; just ask. It works everywhere else, I'm sure we can make it work here too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok. Ok.

 

Monibot has said that the tories have tried to sneak this in under the radar and hadn't included it in their manifesto. Contrary to what he reported, it was included in the manifesto, it was included in the budget and draft legislation has been published. That kind of misrepresentation is what I would expect from a tabloid not a broadsheet.

 

His interpretation of the legislation is similarly flawed, funnily enough the tories are not trying to erode their tax base by encouraging companies to go offshore. They are trying to encourage companies without strong ties to a location to remain in the UK by making it easy for them to open companies abroad which can then suck money out of local economies and then funnel it back to us to invest in our economy.

 

This is a big deal for companies whose business model is based on leveraging for example intellectual property something which you would imagine would be a significant part of our economy over the next 20 years.

 

Good? Bad? Indifferent? I don't know, but please, spare me the trite robbing the poor to pay Dirty Oil inc narrative.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok. Ok.

 

Monibot has said that the tories have tried to sneak this in under the radar and hadn't included it in their manifesto. Contrary to what he reported, it was included in the manifesto, it was included in the budget and draft legislation has been published. That kind of misrepresentation is what I would expect from a tabloid not a broadsheet.

 

His interpretation of the legislation is similarly flawed, funnily enough the tories are not trying to erode their tax base by encouraging companies to go offshore. They are trying to encourage companies without strong ties to a location to remain in the UK by making it easy for them to open companies abroad which can then suck money out of local economies and then funnel it back to us to invest in our economy.

 

This is a big deal for companies whose business model is based on leveraging for example intellectual property something which you would imagine would be a significant part of our economy over the next 20 years.

 

Good? Bad? Indifferent? I don't know, but please, spare me the trite robbing the poor to pay Dirty Oil inc narrative.

 

What an idiot!

 

Here boy, have a sugar coated candy cone.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What an idiot!

 

Here boy, have a sugar coated candy cone.

 

That's kind of the point isn't it Dennis. It's sugar coated candy cones all round. X says Dirty Oil inc. Y says John Galt inc. Both are selling you a line of shit. In fact both are selling you the exact same piece of shit just with different colored packaging. And the real turds in the piece are those going out of their way to make you think there's anything other than a rhetorical gap among all this humbuggery.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's kind of the point isn't it Dennis. It's sugar coated candy cones all round. X says Dirty Oil inc. Y says John Galt inc. Both are selling you a line of shit. In fact both are selling you the exact same piece of shit just with different colored packaging. And the real turds in the piece are those going out of their way to make you think there's anything other than a rhetorical gap among all this humbuggery.

 

eh!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's kind of the point isn't it Dennis. It's sugar coated candy cones all round. X says Dirty Oil inc. Y says John Galt inc. Both are selling you a line of shit. In fact both are selling you the exact same piece of shit just with different colored packaging. And the real turds in the piece are those going out of their way to make you think there's anything other than a rhetorical gap among all this humbuggery.

 

I have not a clue what you are talking about. Monbiot is correct your just saying some things. I have no need to stand in your way though so I'll let you pass through carrying a candy cone and carry on the interesting liccle debate with NNmeister. Sooner or later there bigger things happening whether you clap your hands or not, handwringing won't help though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Numero Veinticinco
A silly question I know but quite simple. Could somebody define what 'The Big Society' means? To me it's just another meaningless Tory catchphrase like 'Back to Basics'.

 

They're trying to sell it as a devolution of power back to 'the people'. Taking power out of the hands of central government and putting it into the hands of the local people.

 

Whether it works out like that or not is a different matter. A cynic might claim that it's the Conservative way of sacking a load of staff and then getting them to do stuff for free. Wikipedia, in its infinite wisdom, lists some of the positive and negative responses.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A silly question I know but quite simple. Could somebody define what 'The Big Society' means? To me it's just another meaningless Tory catchphrase like 'Back to Basics'.

 

The big society is not the big society at all, as the Monbiot article articulates, 'reassure' the public in times where "The capitalism of today is a capitalism that no longer produces but just consumes.". What they are actually referring to it 'the small government', that is the jist of it but they can't say all that so dress it up a bit and wala-the big society!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have not a clue what you are talking about. Monbiot is correct your just saying some things. I have no need to stand in your way though so I'll let you pass through carrying a candy cone and carry on the interesting liccle debate with NNmeister. Sooner or later there bigger things happening whether you clap your hands or not, handwringing won't help though.

 

Oh celebration time! It's coming, we're going to replace Thatcher in a well fitting suit with Thatcher in an ill-fitting suit. Celebration time. Candy Cones all round.

 

And someone throw Dennis a candy cane he appears to have become trapped in someone else's system of thought. Shame that. Redeem thyself Dennis. The path of Quantum-Fuzzy-Perspectivism is always open to you. Turn towards the light; and away from it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh celebration time! It's coming, we're going to replace Thatcher in a well fitting suit with Thatcher in an ill-fitting suit. Celebration time. Candy Cones all round.

 

And someone throw Dennis a candy cane he appears to have become trapped in someone else's system of thought. Shame that. Redeem thyself Dennis. The path of Quantum-Fuzzy-Perspectivism is always open to you. Turn towards the light; and away from it.

 

I thought it was Trident they were replacing? Is that shell casing going to fit her? WE SHALL SEE.

 

Whose system of thought am I trapped in? I'm not in a box, in fact, there are no boxes but THE box. Anyway, Monbiot is just a lens we view occasionally, there are many eyes amongst us and not being mouths they are never nourished enough!

Perhaps you may offer another way, another father figure to replace God and my represented father on earth who often become confused with in my mind's eye, a bigger force of what I know not, which is only that which I've forgotten more than I can ever know.

Perhaps you will loan me that monocle so I may find my contact lens or is it just another peice of onion or a wayward testicle to stick in my eye? Until I stick it in I doubt DON'T know, till then I don't crow, I try to see but can only catch the fuzzy shadows right now? You are merely a new and proccesable concept with no future except revision from above.

 

I must admit though, I think you've been having Charlie Sheen ponzi scheme cream dreams while taking one for the team, caught in my beam trying to get yourself clean.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Looks like someone in the coalition has principles . . .

 

Lord Oakeshott quits over George Osborne's banking deal | Politics | The Guardian

 

Lord Oakeshott quits over George Osborne's banking deal

Lib Dem peer leaves frontbench, saying of Project Merlin 'if this is robust action on bonuses, my name's Bob Diamond'

 

George Osborne's efforts to end the war on bankers were crumbling as Vince Cable, the business secretary, said he was still determined to end "unjustified and outrageous" salaries in the sector and his Liberal Democrat ally Lord Oakeshott left his party's frontbench after damning the government's attempts to curb bonuses.

 

Oakeshott, who was not in the government but spoke for the junior coalition partner on Treasury matters in the Lords, stood down shortly after he criticised officials working on the government's deal with the bankers and said: "If this is robust action on bank bonuses, my name's Bob Diamond."

 

Danny Alexander, the Lib Dem chief secretary to the Treasury, said Oakeshott had stood down by mutual consent.

 

Osborne hailed his deal as the moment to move beyond retribution to economic recovery.

 

Cable backed the deal – hammered out under the codename Project Merlin to cover issues such as lending, bonuses and pay disclosure – but then said the underlying cause of excessive bonuses would not be tackled until the report by the government commission into the future of banking, chaired by Sir John Vickers.

 

He described the bonuses announced on Wednesdayfor Stephen Hester, the chief executive of RBS, and Eric Daniels, the outgoing chief executive of Lloyds, as "extraordinarily wrong". Daniels is to be paid a bonus on top of his salary of £1.45m and Hester £2.04m.

 

Cable said: "We have a fundamental problem of excessive profits in the banking system which has got be dealt with through structural reforms. We cannot continue to have a situation where banks continue to be underpinned by the taxpayer. That will deal with the problems of very large bonuses that are unacceptable".

 

Cable also stressed that the deal was for one year and said if the banks failed to meet their commitments the government reserved their right to reopen the agreement.

 

He had fought hard to prevent the banks trying to make the deal neuter the Vickers banking commission, he said.

 

Although the deal makes progress on lending to small businesses, it also clears the way for bank bosses to collect their bonuses for the first time since the banking crisis began in 2007.

 

Barclays boss, Bob Diamond, can now expect to collect a bonus of at least £8m and Stuart Gulliver of HSBC at least £9bn. Oakeshott, a former City financier and a close ally of Cable's, had been scathing. Speaking while still a Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, he laid into the Treasury's negotiators saying: "They've got an awful combination of arrogance and incompetence, most of them couldn't negotiate themselves out of a paper bag."

 

Those remarks in particular are thought to have incensed ministerial colleagues.

 

Oakeshott told the Guardian: "I'm afraid the banks have taken the Treasury for a ride and I've decided I'm more comfortable saying that from the backbenches."

 

Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, said: "It is a sad commentary on this Tory-led government that Lord Oakeshott has been forced to pay the price for daring to tell the truth."

 

In a Commons statement Osborne highlighted a new gross lending target signed by the four major banks and Santander to lend £76bn this year – a £10bn, or 15%, increase in commitments to lend to small and medium sized business. The absence of a net lending agreement was highlighted as a big omission by Labour, but Treasury officials said the lending deal showed Osborne had played hard ball, adding that "the £10bn figure was way above expectations".

 

Overall gross new lending to business, large and small, will increase from £179bn to £190bn. The four major banks have also committed an extra £1bn to the Business Growth Fund, and an additional £200m to capitalise the Big Society Bank, the government lending vehicle to support voluntary initiatives.

 

The chancellor announced that directors' pay would be linked to lending targets, and insisted that no more than £2,000 could be paid in cash bonuses at the bailed-out banks.

 

The bosses of the bailed-out banks will have their bonuses paid in shares and deferred until 2013 while the bonus pool for RBS's investment banking arm – known as RBS Global Banking and Markets – will be £950m in 2010, down on the £1.3bn in 2009. Banks will voluntarily publish the pay of the five highest paid executives outside the boardroom.

 

In reality this means that the highest paid bankers – the star traders and deal makers – will still not need to be covered by the new regime. The banker leading the Merlin talks, John Varley, told the Guardian: "They could be different. It is possible that the five highest paid senior executives don't coincide with the five highest paid people in the bank."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I thought it was Trident they were replacing? Is that shell casing going to fit her? WE SHALL SEE.

 

Whose system of thought am I trapped in? I'm not in a box, in fact, there are no boxes but THE box. Anyway, Monbiot is just a lens we view occasionally, there are many eyes amongst us and not being mouths they are never nourished enough!

Perhaps you may offer another way, another father figure to replace God and my represented father on earth who often become confused with in my mind's eye, a bigger force of what I know not, which is only that which I've forgotten more than I can ever know.

Perhaps you will loan me that monocle so I may find my contact lens or is it just another peice of onion or a wayward testicle to stick in my eye? Until I stick it in I doubt DON'T know, till then I don't crow, I try to see but can only catch the fuzzy shadows right now? You are merely a new and proccesable concept with no future except revision from above.

 

I must admit though, I think you've been having Charlie Sheen ponzi scheme cream dreams while taking one for the team, caught in my beam trying to get yourself clean.

 

I offer only entrance to the Magic Theater (Entrance Not For Everybody). The usual price is your sanity, a mere trifle in your case, alas given the current difficult economic circumstances the price has been raised to your Belief-Preservation Fetish.

 

Tonight we have quite a show:

 

1. The Divine Super-Position

2. Lofti Aspirations

3. Clash of the Blenders in a multi-dimensional space

 

Enjoy.

 

BTW On that nourishment issue, I can prescribe a remedy most efficacious

and safe.

 

Take

 

2 parts Will To Power

1 part Death of the Author

2 parts Of Grammatology

1 part The Order of Things

A dash of Frogs to Princes

[NSF llego]

Some random Chomsky

[/NSF llego]

 

And glory be, all can be taken ocularly; no more excuses for being seen around town with that withered distorting eye Dennis.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Looks like someone in the coalition has principles . . .

 

Lord Oakeshott quits over George Osborne's banking deal | Politics | The Guardian

 

Lord Oakeshott quits over George Osborne's banking deal

Lib Dem peer leaves frontbench, saying of Project Merlin 'if this is robust action on bonuses, my name's Bob Diamond'

 

Barclays boss, Bob Diamond, can now expect to collect a bonus of at least £8m and Stuart Gulliver of HSBC at least £9bn. Oakeshott, a former City financier and a close ally of Cable's, had been scathing. Speaking while still a Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, he laid into the Treasury's negotiators saying: "They've got an awful combination of arrogance and incompetence, most of them couldn't negotiate themselves out of a paper bag."

 

Nice. That's a lot of hookers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A little more on the NHS cuts.

 

The British Medical Association has weighed in on the new Prime Minister David Cameron's health care proposals.

 

The Allergists voted to scratch it, but the Dermatologists advised not to make any rash moves.

 

The Gastroenterologists had a sort of a gut feeling about it, but the neurologists thought the Administration had a lot of nerve.

 

The Obstetricians felt they were all labouring under a misconception.

 

Ophthalmologists considered the idea short-sighted.

 

Pathologists yelled, "Over my dead body!" while the Paediatricians said, "Oh, Grow up!"

 

The Psychiatrists thought the whole idea was madness, while the Radiologists could see right through it.

 

The Surgeons were fed up with the cuts and decided to wash their hands of the whole thing.

 

The ENT specialists didn't swallow it, and just wouldn’t hear of it.

 

The Pharmacologists thought it was a bitter pill to swallow, and the Plastic Surgeons said, "This puts a whole new face on the matter...."

 

The Podiatrists thought it was a step forward, but the Urologists were pissed off at the whole idea.

 

The Anaesthetists thought the whole idea was a gas, but the Cardiologists didn't have the heart to say no.

 

In the end, the Proctologists won out, leaving the entire decision up to the arseholes in London ..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The suggestion that the public sector parasites off the private sector is so hilariously arse over tit that it actually makes my head hurt. I must have it wrong because I thought that it was the public sector that kept the staff of the people who work for Barclays alive, fit and ready for work? I thought it was the public sector that educated them and gave them the skills to be worthwhile employees, and not dribbling cretins? I thought that it was the public sector that kept criminals away from their buildings, put fires out if they struck and built the infrastructure on which the deem to do their business? More importantly now, it is the public sector that pays the wages some of its key personnel: MPs.

 

The private sector will be doing a lot of that though, to be fair, in the future. Well, it'll be doing it for some, for others...less so.

 

I see that a shitload of Lib Dems have kicked off today about the cuts...but Clegg thinks it's unhelpful. I thought that all the talk of dissention in the ranks was bollocks? Obviously not.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The suggestion that the public sector parasites off the private sector is so hilariously arse over tit that it actually makes my head hurt. I must have it wrong because I thought that it was the public sector that kept the staff of the people who work for Barclays alive, fit and ready for work? I thought it was the public sector that educated them and gave them the skills to be worthwhile employees, and not dribbling cretins? I thought that it was the public sector that kept criminals away from their buildings, put fires out if they struck and built the infrastructure on which the deem to do their business? More importantly now, it is the public sector that pays the wages some of its key personnel: MPs.

 

The private sector will be doing a lot of that though, to be fair, in the future. Well, it'll be doing it for some, for others...less so.

 

I see that a shitload of Lib Dems have kicked off today about the cuts...but Clegg thinks it's unhelpful. I thought that all the talk of dissention in the ranks was bollocks? Obviously not.

 

Yep, SD enthusiasticly wrong again.

 

 

Yep. ALL MONEY IS PUBLIC MONEY. In any country.

 

Theres no such thing as wealth creation, only offset another currency but all currencies are fucked anyway.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The government's Health and Social Care Bill passed its second reading in the House of Commons on 31st January by 321 votes to 235. One Liberal Democrat mustered the courage to abstain. None voted against it. The bill, however, has been heavily criticised by healthcare workers, unions and campaign groups, which argue it will lead to an increasingly unequal system as public healthcare is allowed to deteriorate and private providers come forward to take over the parts they can profit from (see, for example, Keep Our NHS Public's '10 Reasons to Kill the Bill').

 

The government's mantra has been that the healthcare 'reforms' are not privatisation and people who are calling it that need to “grow up” (see here). On the morning of the debate, David Cameron promised the BBC, “there is no privatisation taking place,” sounding suspiciously like the former New Labour health secretary Alan Milburn, who famously prefixed his healthcare reforms by saying "this is not privatisation in any way, shape or form,” before introducing plans that have led to far more private involvement in the NHS.

 

Indeed, Milburn was a popular figure throughout the debate as the coalition name-checked him and other New Labour reformers to deflect criticism by saying they were just continuing the reforms the previous government had started. Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, for example, avoided a question regarding the accountability of private companies hired by GPs to help them commission services, by repeating Milburn's dictum that, “If I can get a private-sector hospital to treat an NHS patient, then for me the person remains an NHS patient.” He went on to say his bill was following the “brainchild of Alan Milburn and Tony Blair,” while his junior minister Simon Burns concluded the debate, quoting some classic management speak from Gordon Brown in 2008: “the test at the end of the day is not private versus public, it is value for money, and it is not dogmatic to support one against the other.”

 

Given both parties have benefited from the largesse of the private healthcare industry over the last ten years, it should come as no surprise that they are reading from the same script (see Spinwatch's video tour of the private healthcare industry's lobbying). Indeed, Conservative ministers have followed Milburn's lead in more than just policy terms. After leaving office, Milburn secured jobs with American healthcare giant Covidien, Lloyds Pharmacy and Bridgepoint Capital, a venture capital firm heavily involved in financing private healthcare firms moving into the NHS. Andrew Lansley, as revealed by the Telegraph, has 21,000 reasons to be friends with the private sector, given that's exactly the amount of pounds the wife of John Nash, former chairman of private healthcare provider Care UK, gave his personal office in November 2009, on top of the £200,000 Nash and his wife had previously given the Conservative party. The Daily Mirror reported that, in total, the Conservative party has received over £750,000 in donations from private healthcare companies.

 

If it's not privatisation, then there are going to be some very unhappy companies knocking on Lansley's door. Luckily for them, though, Cameron and Lansley, like Blair and Milburn before them, may nothave been telling the whole truth. Even before the bill was passed, Care UK had won a £53 million prison hospital contract, being chosen ahead of the current NHS providers (see here).

 

Other beneficiaries of the health reforms so far have been management consultants with years of experience advising the previous government to sign bloated, inefficient private finance initiative (PFI) contracts. Private Eye reported that Mckinsey has been paid £6.5 million and KPMG £1.2 million by the Department of Health for advice on the commissioning to be done by the GP consortia at the centre of the reforms. Since giving its advice, KPMG has won a contract with NHS London to help develop GP commissioning consortia pathfinders in the city ( see here).

 

The Health and Social Care Bill bill now enters the Committee stage, which will stop receiving evidence on 31st March, after which there will be a third and final reading in the House of Commons. More public services are expected to follow the same route.

 

---------

 

Corporate Watch is starting a new project that will look at the increased private involvement in public services and provide anti-privatisation campaigns with a 'toolkit' for fighting against these 'reforms'. If you are a public sector worker willing to be interviewed for the project, or if you are a campaigner or researcher who has relevant information or wishes to contribute material, please contact us at contact[at-]corporatewatch.org, tel: 02074260005.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share


×
×
  • Create New...