CAMPAIGNERS criticised the head of NHS England today after she backed the return of discredited private finance initiative contracts.
NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard floated the controversial idea as part of what she called a “radical” rethink in how Britain funds its infrastructure.
Recent data shows that the cost to repair Britain’s crumbling NHS buildings has spiralled to £13.8 billion, the highest on record.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday, Ms Pritchard said: “We need to think much more radically, particularly about capital.
“So I think we now must consider private capital investment in the NHS because if we don’t fix our buildings, if we don’t fix our technology, we’re not going to get to a place where we can really drive that long-term improvement.”
The suggestion was slammed by anti-privatisation group We Own It.
Research by the group found that the current maintenance backlog bill is dwarfed by a £44bn debt that 80 trusts still owe to private firms for historic PFI contracts signed off by Tony Blair’s government.
I’m writing about someone without naming him or her. It might be worth using these metrics with anyone, see if they’re capable and adjusted?
She is easily manipulated because: She is not able to appreciate anyone else’s perspective and is therefore incapable of empathy. She can’t distinguish her own interests from the interests and responsibilities of her office or position.
The second issue may derive from the first: if you haven’t progressed from – or regressed to – infantile self-interest then there are no responsibilities and interests other than your own. Rich people are taught to only be concerned for themselves.
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12 Feb 2025
Since writing this yesterday I’ve realised that this might also apply to myself [edit: i.e. “… can’t distinguish her own interests from the interests and responsibilities of her office or position.”] I was appointed to a position without my knowledge or consent in the early 90s. Some would say that I wasn’t appointed and that it was instead a recognition. Soon later I went off grid and disappeared. My attitude is that since I didn’t have an option in it, FU you’re stuck with me and I’ll do as I like which in practice means I had chosen my path and I continue. Seniority appears to apply to this position and to me. I’m surprised that some people respect this position while many others seem to rebel against it and me, use their positions to try to entrap and persecute me. [14/2/25 Not so much now, used to happen so much when Bliar was PM and into late 00s.] Life is interesting and strange and then you die.
Keir Starmer confirms that he’s proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.
WES STREETING appointed Baroness Camilla Cavendish, who previously led David Cameron’s Number 10 Policy Unit, onto the board of the Department for Health this month, saying he wanted to have “cross-party” figures of “different political persuasions” to guide the NHS.
He wants to build a “cross-party consensus” to “reform the NHS.” But what is this consensus? In 2007, when Labour’s Gordon Brown was prime minister Cavendish wrote that “the hungry maw of the NHS is swallowing more and more resources, at the expense of virtually everything else.”
Cavendish denounced the NHS as “Britain’s last big state monopoly,” complaining that “its powerful unions view any slowdown in spending growth as a ‘cut.’ And cut is a deadly word in political terms.”
Cavendish said the NHS badly needs more “innovation,” which is only possible “by introducing competition.” Cavendish said New Labour had not gone far enough down this road. She welcomed Tony Blair’s attempts to “introduce competition” by letting private providers carry out some operations, and the introduction of foundation trusts, but claimed: “Ministers are too easily persuaded that the battle is between public and private provision. They are ashamed to endorse the private.”
She was worried Brown did not believe enough in “market-based reform” of the NHS. She said the health service was “a bloated state” and argued “the writing is on the wall: a tax-funded free healthcare system is looking ever less sustainable.”
The NHS was certainly in better state in 2007 than now. However, while the idea it was bloated, overfunded and needed more privatisation might appeal to Streeting, it doesn’t appeal to Labour voters. Cavendish went on to join Cameron’s No 10 operation in 2015, when the Tory PM did indeed stick with more NHS privatisation and less NHS money.
Cavendish is expected by Streeting to sit with former Labour health minister Alan Milburn on the Department of Health board and build up a consensus for NHS reform. Both seem drawn to Cameron’s approach — accepting and accelerating New Labour’s NHS privatisation, while adding Tory spending reductions.
Peter Mandelson told the FT ‘I regret ever meeting him’. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA
Peter Mandelson told a reporter to “fuck off” when asked about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
He was questioned about his links with the billionaire paedophile in an interview with the Financial Times as he prepares to become Britain’s ambassador to Washington. However, he told the reporter in no uncertain terms that he did not want to discuss it.
Lord Mandelson said: “I regret ever meeting him or being introduced to him by his partner Ghislaine Maxwell.
“I regret even more the hurt he caused to many young women.
“I’m not going to go into this. It’s an FT obsession and frankly you can all fuck off. OK?”
The pair’s connections have raised questions since a 2019 internal report on Epstein by JP Morgan bank was filed to a New York court.
It found Ubercnut Epstein appeared to “maintain a particularly close relationship with Prince Andrew, the Duke of York and Ubercnut Peter Mandelson, a senior member of British government”.
Labour’s new ambassador to the U.S. founded Global Counsel, a firm with major fossil fuel clients.
Labour’s top diplomat to Donald Trump’s United States leads a public affairs firm that has attempted to influence the new UK government on behalf of the oil and gas giant Shell, and the coal mining company Anglo American.
Peter Mandelson – who was a Cabinet minister under former Labour prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – has been accepted as the UK’s ambassador to the U.S. by Trump’s new administration.
In addition to his new diplomatic role, which he will formally begin in February, Mandelson is president and chair of Global Counsel, a London-based political consultancy and lobbying organisation. He will retain shares in the company even after taking up his new position in Washington DC, the Financial Times has reported.
According to official records, after July’s general election Global Counsel lobbied the new Labour government on behalf of Shell, one of the world’s most polluting companies.
Shell is still committed to exploring for new sources of oil and gas and does not have any plans to reduce the overall amount it produces by 2030, in contravention of climate science. In 2021, the District Court of the Hague found that the total CO2 emissions of the Shell group exceeded the emissions of many states, including the Netherlands.
Lobbyists must declare if they have attempted to arrange meetings or influence ministers or senior civil servants on behalf of their clients. However, the contents of these discussions are not publicly available.
Global Counsel seemingly has close ties to the Labour Party. Prior to the 4 July election, the company supplied a staff member to Tulip Siddiq, who served as financial secretary to the Treasury until 14 January, a donation in kind worth £35,835, according to the register of MPs’ financial interests.
Global Counsel is one of seven consultancies with a history of donating to Labour that have lobbied on behalf of fossil fuel clients since July’s election.
The client list at Mandelson’s lobbying firm also includes Anglo American, a British mining multinational which is a major producer of coal, and U.S. multinational bank JP Morgan, which has financed $430 billion in fossil fuel projects since the 2015 Paris Agreement, including $40 billion in 2023, according to the NGO Banktrack.
Another client, UK bank Standard Chartered, has financed $71 billion in fossil fuel projects in the same period, including $7 billion in 2023.
Other Global Counsel clients include food and beverage giant Nestle, which has emissions three times the size of its home country Switzerland, and the controversial tech firm Palantir, founded by Trump ally Peter Thiel.
Mandelson, who called Trump “reckless and dangerous to the world” in 2019, this week told Fox News his previous remarks were “ill-judged and wrong”, and that he has a “fresh respect” for the new U.S. president.
Global Counsel, and the Cabinet Office were approached for comment.
Transatlantic Ties
Mandelson’s appointment comes at a crucial time for climate policy, with a transatlantic network of political actors working increasingly closely to derail global action to achieve net zero emissions.
Since his inauguration last week, President Trump has removed the U.S. from the flagship 2015 Paris climate accord, banned offshore wind farms, and declared a “national energy emergency” in order to open new oil and gas projects.
His plans could add an extra four billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent to U.S. emissions by 2030, according to the climate publication Carbon Brief.
Trump received more than $32 million from the oil and gas sector for his 2024 campaign. The fossil fuel industry spent $445 million on political donations, lobbying and advertising between January 2023 and November 2024 to influence Trump and Congress, according to the green advocacy group Climate Power.
As DeSmog revealed last month, Mandelson’s counterpart, Trump’s ambassador to the UK Warren Stephens, runs a firm with investments in several oil and gas companies, including one wholly owned by his family business.
The UK government is committed to removing fossil fuels from the UK’s power system by 2030, but this week approved a third runway at Heathrow Airport – the second most polluting airport in the world, according to a 2021 study – and pledged to remove environmental regulations on new building projects.
According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s foremost climate science body, the next few years are crucial if we want to limit the worst effects of global warming, including drought, flooding, and heat waves.
To keep within the 1.5C warming limit set by the Paris Agreement, the IPCC says that emissions need to be reduced by at least 43 percent by 2030 compared to 2019 levels, and at least 60 percent by 2035.