A shocking expose in the Daily Mail shows why this Coalition can’t be trusted with the NHS.
No turning back
The firm that hijacked the NHS: The Mail on Sunday investigation reveals extraordinary extent of international management consultant’s role in Lansley’s health reforms.
The Daily Mail claims that many of the Health and Social Care Bill proposals were drawn up by McKinsey & Co, the company and that the international management consultant’s involvement in the NHS reforms is so great it sometimes even hosts meetings of the ‘Extraordinary NHS Management Board’ convened to implement the proposals.
Last June, David Bennett, the head of NHS regulator Monitor, flew business class to New York, where he stayed at a five-star hotel and attended a lavish banquet, all paid for by McKinsey and Company, the international management consultants.
Mr Bennett may not have broken the law. But as a former McKinsey executive, he should have known he was displaying questionable judgment – because Monitor’s future role, which is being massively expanded by Health Secretary Andrew Lansley’s controversial Health and Social Care Bill, includes regulating health service contracts potentially worth many billions with McKinsey and its clients.
McKinsey also worked closely with previous government and on disastrous Railtrack privatisation under John Major.
Meanwhile table-thumping Cameron lashes out at Cabinet back-stabbers and vows there won’t be a U-turn, while “Half of Cabinet in despair over health reforms.
Labour’s Andy Burnham, shadow Health Secretary, said he would be demanding an urgent review of McKinsey’s role in light of the Mail on Sunday’s disclosures.
He said “The Government needs to tell us how much McKinsey has earned in total from this re-organisation, whether Ministers have followed proper processes in awarding contracts and whether any inside knowledge of policy has been used for commercial gain.”
Meanwhile Cameron and Clegg have agreed to push ahead with the changes.
Footnote: Cabinet member William Hague has worked for McKinsey & Co where fellow Tory Archie Norman was said to be his mentor.
