Sajid Javid: smug Sajid has been challenged to explain what guarantees he has secured to ensure that the new appointees will not use their positions to put private profit over public health.

Look out – the Tories are handing public health jobs to cronies with links to private health investment in their latest lurch towards NHS privatisation.

In March, Oluwole Kolade, a managing partner of Livingbridge, a private equity firm with extensive investments in private healthcare, was made a non-executive director and deputy chair of NHS England for three years.

And Simon Blagden, a chairman of Fujitsu UK, which sued the NHS over a failed IT project, was made a member of the UK Health Security Agency advisory board in April.

How can these be appropriate appointments? They will not support public health because their financial interests lie in the exploitation of health care as a market for making a grubby profit.

Here are some more details:

In just over a decade, Kolade has donated £859,342 to Conservative party headquarters; the party’s London mayoral candidate in 2021, Shaun Bailey; and the party’s branch in Hitchin and Harpenden. About a third of the donations – £300,000 – have been made since Boris Johnson became prime minister.

Kolade is a managing partner of Livingbridge, a private equity firm with extensive investments in private healthcare. Livingbridge’s portfolio includes multiple NHS suppliers, and private dental companies, care providers and fertility firms.

Since 2005, Blagden and companies he is associated with have donated £376,000 to the Conservatives. These include Pietas Ltd, a firm he was director of from 2000 to 2020, and Avre Partnership Limited, which he has been director of since 2014.

He was also a chairman of Fujitsu UK, which sued the NHS over a failed IT project. A parliamentary committee’s inquiry into the debacle in 2013 cited reports that a sum of £700m was sought from the Department of Health.

The government says political activity is not a bar to holding a public appointment and any such activity, including donations, is declared when such an appointment is made.

That’s all very well, but it seems to This Writer that shareholding in private health companies – or in companies that have tried to get contracts in the public health system – indicate a conflict of interest that should indeed bar the candidate (or should I say condidate) from the role.

Source: Two donors who gave Tories £1m between them handed public health jobs

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