Wes Streeting NHS scandal blown wide open on LIVE TV!

Right, so if you want to see Wes Streeting utterly eviscerated for wrongdoing he’s already been up to, just 2 months into the job as Health Secretary, then for once an interviewer has actually done this live on national TV. The gut-wrenching and deeply unfortunate part of this story, is that I’m forced to give props to GBeebies for being the ones who did it, though having said that the interviewer has been a mainstream, albeit right wing newspaper scribbler for many years, so it does go to show that mainstream media folk are actually capable of journalism and holding power to account when they want to, so isn’t a crying shame they tend to be so selective about that and now Labour are in government, I expect we’ll probably see more of this as they seek to rehabilitate the Tories, or even worse big up Reform UK Ltd, as if they need any more attention. Motivations aside though, power should be held to account and a Minister, in this case Wes Streeting, sharing official government documents with someone that is completely unelected and unappointed because they’re a mate, because they’re an adviser. How many times have we heard this one before and Streeting fell back on his customary unapologetic arrogance as a defence. In any other government, this would be career ending stuff. This won’t be though.
Right, so that was a clip of Wes Streeting our weasel of a health secretary defending the bringing on board in an indeterminate and unelected capacity, the former Labour Health Secretary Alan Milburn, into the health department. Being completely unelected, he is completely unaccountable to us the British public and all Streeting could sneer, was that he makes no apologies for doing so, that Milburn has been advising him in opposition and continues to in government, that Streeting has invited him to certain meetings, was that where confidential information was discussed? Streeting wouldn’t deny any of this, in fact he openly admitted to doing so and declared that as Health Secretary he can do what he likes. He’d love to get Milburn on in an official capacity, the man behind so many of Labour’s PFI schemes in the NHS under Tony Blair, but couldn’t even reveal whether he had an official pass, I’d be amazed given how Streeting eulogised him, if he didn’t.
Now you might be thinking Damo, you’ve gone to the dark side, you’re using a clip of GB News, you’ve talked about how ridiculous this outfit is and my views haven’t changed, they are, their bias is inherently towards the right wing, indeed the presenter there, Camilla Tominey, is a longtime writer for the Torygraph, her bias is as nailed on as the station she’s working for there and it is a fact she would never hold a Tory in Streeting’s position to that same level of scrutiny, bringing up Suella Braverman’s case is easy now that is history, but the fact remains more mainstream media outlets should be holding Streeting to that level of scrutiny and any other government minister as well, but they don’t. What we should all be mindful of is the selective scrutiny and the bias shown by any station we watch. It is more obvious with an organisation like GB News I would argue, When Labour are very much right wing these days as well, how far to the right GBeebies are now is a talking point too.
Nevertheless, it is impossible to argue that Streeting wasn’t held to account for a really important point here. Tominey raised the case of Braverman discussing matters relating to refugees with a backbench Tory MP with huge influence, leader of the so-called anti-woke Common Sense group of Tory MPs on the right of even their own party, as far to the right as they had already lurched at the time of this mess back in 2022. Braverman got a telling off by parliamentary standards and that was of course as Tominey said, a discussion with matters of government with another elected MP. Alan Milburn is not elected at all, has no official role whatsoever, is simply a former health secretary himself.
Another example I’m minded to recall is the scandal involving then Defence Secretary Liam Fox and him bringing a chap called Adam Werrity along to meetings. Werrity was simply Fox’s mate, a former flatmate who enjoyed foreign trips with Fox, again like Milburn had no security clearance, no official role, was not even employed in any way by the MoD. He was just a spare part, along at Fox’s pleasure and it saw Fox resign in disgrace. This business with Milburn is even worse than that, because not only does he not have any of the clearances to be involved in Streeting’s team in pretty much exactly the same way Adam Werrity didn’t, Milburn does have a vested interest in privatised health, which we know Streeting champions and you are left wondering if that is because he has had Milburn as a flea in his ear for so long.
While it was the Tories under John Major that introduced Private Finance Initiatives, it was under Blair and with Alan Milburn as his Health Secretary who drove 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.
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.
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, he’s not an impartial player and GBeebies did as much as it grates to admit it, a good job in raising this. If Milburn promotes the likes of Centene, or any other health clients he might have by this point, he would be helping to some sort of a degree, shape Labour NHS policy in a manner that may personally benefit him and Streeting defends 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 with Streeting having opened the doors wide for him? Labour corruption is already blatant, so sure of themselves, so safe do they feel behind that big majority, but they really shouldn’t feel so comfortable and Streeting over this, compared to Braverman, compared to Fox, ought to be in a lot of trouble, given this to my mind, is blatantly worse.
Coming back to defence though, since I brought it up earlier, another massive scandal that is going very unreported, comes back to the matter of Trident, our nuclear arms deterrent, or is it ours anymore? We don’t actually have a say in it anymore, because Keir Starmer just gave that away. Get the details of that story in this video recommendation here and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.