Lords with interests in private health companies are members of the NHS Sustainability Committee

Three of the 14 members of the Committee, which has recently produced its report on NHS Sustainability, have past or present corporate health interests.

Lord Warner (Non-affiliated member.)

Following his 2007 departure from the post of New Labour Health Minister where he had responsibility for the botched £12 billion NHS Programme for IT (NHSPfIT) – which current NHS England head honchos Simon Stevens and Matthew Swindells were also involved in – Warner hastened to sell his services to a range of companies with a direct interest in getting contracts with the fast- privatising NHS that resulted from the 2000 New Labour Concordat with private health care companies.

He is a former adviser to Apax Partners – one of the leading private equity investors in healthcare, Their UK investments include General Healthcare Group which claims to be the largest private hospitals operator in the UK, with a 33% ish share in the BMI hospitals chain.

From 2007 until the company dissolved in March 2017, he was Director and Company Secretary of management consultancy Sage Advice Ltd . He also worked as an adviser to Xansa, a technology firm, and Byotrol, an antimicrobial company, which both sell services or products to the NHS, according to website Social Investigations.

He was also paid by DLA Piper, which advised ministers on contract issues for the botched £12 billion IT programme for the NHS that he was responsible for when he was a government minister.

Warner’s DLA appointment was approved by the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments subject to

“12 months after leaving office, he should not become personally involved in lobbying the Government on behalf of his new employer or its clients.”

That’s all right then.

The Chairman of the Public Administration Select Committee seemed not to think so. He told Warner that

“…DLA Piper for whom you work tells us that your job involves “deepening client relationships” and “introducing new contacts”. The contacts that are useful to them are entirely those that you have gleaned through your work inside government.”

His appointment as adviser to Strategic Consultancy Group Deloitte & Touche LLP in December 2007 was also Approved by the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments subject to the same condition.

When he stopped being a Labour government minister, he also became an adviser to Perot Systems Europe Ltd  – a technology provider company.  Now part of IT giant Dell, it was reported in February 2010 that:

“Dell Perot is facing up to the task of expanding its market share in British healthcare.”

He used to be an advisor to PA Consulting in 2009 – in 2010 Lord Warner declared his role was for “strategic advice relating to Middle East activities only”.

PA Consulting have worked with  Clinical Commissioning Groups, including Calderdale and Greater Huddersfield Clinical Commissioning Groups.  They appointed PA Consulting“to provide support to the Strategic Review and ensure smooth handover of the programme office function to the West, South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Commissioning Support Unit (WSYB CSU) later in 2013/14.”

The Strategic Review came up with the Right Care Right Time Right Place proposal for hospital cuts and so-called “Care Closer to Home”.

So we have PA Consulting to thank for the mess our local NHS and social care system is now in.

Lord McColl of Dulwich (Conservative).

In 2009 it emerged that Lord McColl – at the time David Cameron’s shadow health minister – had been a paid a fee as a consultant to a new private healthcare company that provided a fee-paying rival to the National Health Service’s family doctor service. Endeavour Health Ltd, set up by hedge fund advisers Yadin Shemmer and Jonathan Weiss, claimed to be Britain’s first comprehensive GP network, offering access to the best doctors and the opportunity to beat NHS queues and have appointments at any time they wanted. Endeavour Health was founded in 2008 and was dissolved in 2012.

Lord Ribeiro

Chair of the Independent Reconconfiguration Review Panel, in 2012 when the Health and Social Care Act was going through Parliament Lord Ribeiro was  PricewaterhouseCooper advisor on hospital reorganisation.

PwC is one of a number of management consultancy and accountancy companies with clients which have direct interests in NHS privatisation. PwC claim to be

“at the heart of shaping healthcare reforms.”

In 2016 a PricewaterhouseCooper steering group produced a report tacitly endorsing the current top – down NHS redisorganisation known as Sustainability and Transformation Plans; the report proposes changes to NHS England, NHS Improvement and the Department of Health in order to devolve the NHS to “local areas”.

This PricewaterhouseCooper report was supported by Jim Mackey, Head of NHS Improvement, where he is seconded from Northumbria NHS Trust – the first Trust to morph into an Accountable Care Organisation – although that now seems to have come unstuck after operating in shadow form, because Northumberland Clinical Commissioning Group – the primary commissioner for the Northumbria accountable care organisation- is broke.

NHS Improvement support for the PwC report is not surprising: the NHS Improvement Board Chair, Ed Smith,  was formerly Global Assurance Chief Operating Officer and Strategy Chairman of PricewaterhouseCooper, where he worked for 30 years.

PricewaterhouseCooper is also the internal auditor of the Care Quality Commission, where part of its role is to manage potential conflicts of interest.

In December 2015,  the Care Quality Commission (CQC) appointed a new chair, Peter Wyman, who was accused by some MPs on the House of Commons Select Committee of having a conflict of interest because of his 40 year employment at PricewaterhouseCooper (PwC) until 2011.