Health Secretary Wes Streeting speaking to the media during a visit to the specialist surgical unit at Trafford General Hospital in Manchester, February 12, 2026
CAMPAIGNERS have written to Wes Streeting requesting the release of his messages with five private healthcare-linked donors, following the Health Secretary’s publication of WhatsApp chats with disgraced former peer Peter Mandelson.
The letter, signed by leaders of eight organisations campaigning against NHS privatisation — including We Own It, the Socialist Health Association and Doctors Association UK — said the public has a right to know how health policy is decided.
They said: “Releasing to the public your messages with these donors (relating to health policy, DHSC [Department of Health and Social Care] announcements and NHS contracts) would help assure the public that your policy of increasing the use of the private sector for the provision of NHS services, is not driven by a quid pro quo relationship.”
Research by the Good Law Project in April 2025 showed 60 per cent of donations received by Mr Streeting since 2015 have come from private healthcare companies or those with financial interests in the sector.
Mr Mandelson, whose lobbying firm Global Counsel, represents data surveillance firm Palantir, has previously helped to facilitate a meeting between the firm and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.
CAMPAIGNERS called for an end to water privatisation as Thames Water was today fined a record £122.7 million for breaking rules over sewage treatment and paying out dividends.
An investigation into Britain’s biggest water supplier revealed “a series of failures by the company to build, maintain and operate adequate infrastructure,” said water regulator Ofwat.
Nearly £170m of dividend payments by Thames in October 2023 and March 2024 were not justified in “a clear-cut case where Thames Water has let down its customers and failed to protect the environment,” said Ofwat chief executive David Black.
We Own It founder and director Cat Hobbs said: “None of this changes the underlying problem — as long as water is privatised, we will continue to be ripped off, and rivers will continue to be polluted for profit.”
River Action chief James Wallace added that “nothing will change unless the privatisation of Thames Water stops.” He urged Environment Secretary Steve Reed to “put this failing company into special administration and restructure its ownership and governance so it can be owned by and operated for public benefit.”
U.S. President Donald Trump next to the Thames Water and KKR logos. DeSmog collage. Credit: Gage Skidmore / Thames Water / KKR
The U.S. private equity firm KKR, which has been selected as the ‘preferred bidder’ for the takeover of Thames Water, gave a seven-figure sum to Donald Trump’s inauguration committee, DeSmog can report.
Official records show that Kohlberg Kravis Roberts Co LP (KKR) donated $1 million to the Trump Vance Inaugural Committee on 7 January. The committee is appointed by the president-elect to arrange the inauguration ceremony, when a U.S. president is formally sworn into office.
The embattled London-based utilities provider Thames Water, in debt to the tune of £20 billion, is attempting to secure new investment to save it from nationalisation. In March, KKR was granted preferred bidder status, giving it a 10-week period to raise the equity to buy the water company.
KKR is reported to have lodged an initial £4 billion bid in exchange for a majority stake in Thames Water, which serves 16 million customers.
However, campaigners have raised concerns about KKR’s suitability to own Thames Water, given its financial ties to Trump.
“KKR recently donated $1 million to the inauguration fund of President Trump, a man who has repeatedly called the climate crisis a hoax,” said Matthew Topham, lead campaigner at the pro-nationalisation campaign group We Own It. “Let’s not kid ourselves that this company will swoop in and clean up our rivers and lakes.
“The government has ducked the issue for too long – special administration to slash the rotten debt, then full public ownership, is the only way to reverse this catastrophe.”
The new Trump administration has initiated a bonfire of clean air and water regulations – rules that were set to save the lives of 200,000 people according to The Guardian. Gina McCarthy, chair of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under former U.S. President Barack Obama, said the announcement of the mass rollbacks was the “most disastrous day in EPA history”. During his first term, from 2017 to 2021, Trump repealed more than 100 environmental regulations.
Since being inaugurated for a second time, Trump has pledged to once again withdraw the U.S. from the flagship 2015 Paris Agreement, which set an international target for limiting global warming, and has declared a “national energy emergency” to allow the U.S. to “drill, baby, drill” for new fossil fuels.
KKR’s prospective ownership of a vital public utility has also been questioned on the basis of the U.S. firm’s business model. Private equity firms – which buy and restructure companies – are known to cut costs, and increase prices for consumers, in order to maximise their profits.
KKR was infamously dubbed the “Barbarians at the Gate” in the late 1980s for its takeover of U.S. conglomerate RJR Nabisco.
“It beggars belief that anyone could seriously think this is a business model and owner who will truly fix the crisis at Thames Water,” said Mathew Lawrence, director of the think tank Common Wealth. “It is exactly the behaviour of loading Thames Water up with debt, extracting money, and underinvesting that has led us to this point. What is needed is long-term stewardship, patient investment, and putting the public and our water system first for once – not the interests of elite financial firms.”
These sentiments were reflected in Parliament this week, through a House of Lords address by Labour peer Prem Sikka. “Thames Water was put on the road to ruin by private equity,” he said. “Now its shareholders have designated KKR, another private equity group, as their preferred bidder. KKR’s business model is profiteering, high leverage, low investment, asset stripping and high cash extraction. That will inevitably multiply Thames’s problems.”
KKR and Thames Water were approached for comment.
Debt and Donations
Thames Water’s debt ballooned under the ownership of Australian private equity firm Macquarie, increasing from £3.4 billion in 2006 to £10.8 billion when the firm sold its stake in 2017.
During Macquarie’s ownership of Thames Water, the private equity firm extracted roughly £2.7 billion in dividends and a further £2.2 billion in loans. Despite this, Macquarie has recently said that it is “very proud” of its ownership record.
KKR’s preliminary bid proposed a mechanism that would allow the holders of Thames Water debt – including the U.S. hedge fund Elliott Management – to become Thames Water shareholders.
Elliott Management is an activist hedge fund that recently built up a large stake in BP and has urged the British fossil fuel major to ditch a number of its green commitments. BP’s profits recently dropped by 48 percent amid this pivot back to oil and gas. The hedge fund is run by Paul Singer, who also donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration committee.
Turning around the performance of Thames Water will take considerable investment and business acumen. Thames Water reported a 40 percent increase in pollution incidents in the first half of 2024, while the firm has been allowed to raise customer bills by 35 percent on average over the upcoming years. Senior KKR Europe executive Johannes Huth said last year that water bills must rise to boost investment in ageing infrastructure.
KKR also has a 25 percent stake in Northumbrian Water, which it acquired in 2022.
KKR’s Connections
In addition to its donation to Trump’s inauguration fund, KKR has other ties to fossil fuels and those who oppose climate action.
Analysis by the investigative group Private Equity Climate Risks published in April 2024 reported that KKR has a large fossil fuel portfolio, with 188 assets in 21 countries.
KKR has also created a $50 billion fund with Energy Capital Partners to invest in artificial intelligence (AI) data centre energy infrastructure. Data centres are heavily energy intensive, and DeSmog recently revealed that AI executives have told major polluters that the nascent industry can keep fossil fuels alive.
KKR is also the co-owner of Marshall Wace, a hedge fund co-founded by UK media baron Paul Marshall, holding a 39.9 percent stake as of June 2023. The same month, Marshall Wace reported investments of at least £1.8 billion in fossil fuels companies, including in the oil and gas giants Shell, Chevron, and Equinor.
Marshall is the co-owner of GB News, a broadcaster that has frequently given a platform to climate falsehoods, and is an opponent of policies to reach net zero emissions.
Speaking at a conference in February hosted by the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), a group funded by Marshall, he said that the UK’s net zero plans are “leading the way in wrecking our industrial base”, “impoverishing people”, “sacrificing our energy security”, and “sacrificing our ancient rural landscape.”
The UK’s net zero sector is growing at three times the rate of the rest of the economy, according to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI).
DeSmog also revealed that Warren Stephens, Trump’s ambassador to the UK, donated $4 million to the president’s inauguration fund on the day that he was nominated for the diplomatic position.
The inauguration committee raised a record $239 million, including from fossil fuel giants Chevron ($2 million), ExxonMobil ($1 million), the U.S. branches of BP and Shell ($500,000 each), and Valero ($250,000).
NHS trusts have been asked to make drastic cuts as the service faces a predicted shortfall of nearly £7 billion, health leaders warned today.
In a survey for NHS Providers, 47 per cent of trust leaders warned they are rolling back services to balance the books, while another 43 per cent are considering doing so.
Rehabilitation centres, talking therapies and diabetes services for young people are among services at risk.Eighty-six per cent of respondents said their organisation is having to cut jobs in non-clinical teams, while 37 per cent plan to cut clinical posts. A number of trusts are aiming to cut 500 jobs or more, with one planning as many as 1,000.NHS union Unison’s head of health Helga Pile said: “Ministers shouldn’t be insisting trusts balance their books while ignoring the damaging consequences for patient care and a demoralised workforce. “The NHS needs more staff — not fewer workers — if delays and waits for patients are to end.”It comes as NHS chief executive Sir Jim Mackey told a Medical Journalists Association event in London the service had “maxed out on what is affordable.” He said that the NHS was likely to have a £6.6bn deficit this year, despite a budget of around £200bn.
Though he has demanded unprecedented savings, he slammed the “normalisation” of poor care, saying that, 10 years ago, “we would have never accepted old ladies being on corridors next to an [A&E] department for hours on end.”We Own It founder and director Cat Hobbs said: “Back in 2012, the NHS was rated as the best healthcare service in the world. “That was before the legislation that deliberately opened up our whole NHS to profiteering. “Sir Jim Mackey is absolutely right to say that patients being treated in corridors and car parks is unacceptable. If he wants to stop this scandal while saving money, he must end privatisation as quickly as possible.
George Osborne and NHS nurses. This image is not one of mine, I need to search again for the source. later: I searched for the author and found it attributed to one person. Unless it’s done deliberately to look amateur (which it could be), I doubt that it’s him & not signed it anyway so probably doesn’t want attribution.
A general view of British Steel in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, April 12, 2025
LABOUR has been urged to catch up with public support for nationalising services “just as strategically important” as British Steel.
Campaigners and unions have continued to call for the full nationalisation of the company after the government passed an emergency law on Saturday to seize control of its Scunthorpe plant.
The legislation was passed in a single day, empowering ministers to save the last plant making “virgin steel” direct from raw materials from imminent closure, as well as thousands of jobs.
But Labour’s action was likened to an expensive public bailout today amid growing calls for the government to stop the private sector from running other services into the ground.
We Own It founder and director Cat Hobbs said: “The government has sprung into action to protect British Steel as a strategically important industry, with nationalisation on the table.
“In 2020, Keir Starmer promised public ownership of rail, mail, energy and water — as well as ending outsourcing in our NHS and local government.
“These public services are just as strategically important as steel, as drivers of economic and social development.
“Since Thatcher’s sell off, many of our key public services have been handed over to foreign states, offshore funds and billionaires.
“If Starmer is looking to take back control of our economy, this would be a good place to start.
“The UK public overwhelmingly supports public ownership and it’s high time our government caught up.”
Health Secretary Wes Streeting speaking to the media during a visit to the specialist surgical unit at Trafford General Hospital in Manchester, February 12, 2026
