HEREFORD & South Herefordshire MP Jesse Norman is named among 70 coalition MPs with links to private health companies.

The list, compiled after an investigation by  the trade union Unite, refers to Mr Norman’s constituency as receiving £5,000 in June 2009 from a healthcare company investor, while the MP himself received payment for speaking at an event hosted by the lobbyist for an outsourcing firm looking to run NHS Direct.

Mr Norman has been active in campaigning for change to the way Hereford County Hospital – and Wye Valley NHS Trust as a whole works - particularly in relation to the PFI contract that got the hospital built.

The Hereford Times is awaiting Mr Norman’s response to the Unite findings.

In full, the findings with reference to Mr Norman outline the MP as received payment for speaking at a Quiller Consultancy event.

The Unite report says Quiller lobbyist George Bridges is a “friend” to George Osborne and David Cameron’s former election campaign manager, as well as Theresa May’s ex-chief of staff, and an ex-strategist for the Chief Medical Officer.

Quiller is said to lobby for Capita, the outsourcing firm interested in NHS Direct, and a private equity firm heavily invested in health.

According to the Electoral Commission, the report says, Mr Norman received £5,000 on June 30 2009 from Circle healthcare investor and hedge fund boss Crispin Odey to his constituency.

Circle is named as a beneficiary of the 2012 Health and Social Care Act that cleared the way for the most extensive reorganisation of the NHS to date.

The Act  abolished NHS primary care trusts (PCTs) and Strategic Health Authorities (SHAs) and transferred between £60 billion and £80 billion of "commissioning", or health care funds, from the abolished PCTs to several hundred clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) partly run by the GPs.

 CCGs have been criticised as a point of access to the NHS for private service providers.
Unite says its research reveals the coalition MPs and peers linked to firms which stand to benefit from any NHS “sell off” and voted for the Health and Social Care act in 2012.

Circle, for instance, is  cited as running the first fully privatised NHS hospital in Hitchingbrooke Cambridgeshire, and for its recent awarded of a £120 million contract in Bedfordshire for musculoskeletal services.

An earlier investigation by Unite found that since 2012 £1.5 billion has left the NHS and gone to 15 private companies, with 70 per cent of tendered contracts being awarded to the private sector.

Releasing the report, Len McCluskey, Unite general secretary said:

"The Government had no mandate to sell-off our NHS, no one voted for it, yet they are doing just that. 

“From lobbying links to investments, and in some cases direct donations, it is clear that many MPs who supported the NHS sell-off are linked to the very private healthcare companies which stood to profit.”