NHS (theft) privatisation: Who benefits and has vested interests?

[Magda Hassan]

NHS privatisation: Compilation of financial and vested interests.

This list represents the dire state of our democracy. The financial and vested interests of our MPs and Lords in private healthcare. Why are these people allowed to be in charge of our NHS, to vote on a bill that they clearly have something to gain from. Who cares that they have put it in the register of interests. This doesn't excuse their interests, it merely highlights clearly why they should have no part in voting for the privatisation of the NHS. It is privatisation, despite the media's continued use of the word reforms'. The question must be asked. Are they public servants or corporate servants?


The list is long, and could surely be longer, I make no apology for that, tragically that is the reality of our politics today; and although the majority of vested interest lies with the Conservatives, as you might expect, it is however a cross party issue. It is compiled from accessible and trusted sources throughout the Internet. If one of these listed is your MP, then contact them and let them know you will not be voting for them again if this bill goes through. If the Lord is under your area, email them and let them know what you think. If there are others to be added, then please let me know with link to source - as this is by no means a complete list. Equally if you think someone should not be on here, then please say with reason and then they may come off if justified as the list should be as strong as possible.


In short - they won't be stopped unless they are stopped.


I start with the Lords predominantly taken from the Daily Mirror research: These are also available in register of interests.

Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone: Conservative - The former Conservative Health Secretary Virginia Bottomley is a Director of BUPA, the health insurance, private hospital and care group.
Lord Naseby: Conservative - Chairman of and a share-holder in Invesco Perpetual Recovery Trust. One fifth of their investments are in pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.
Lord Wakeham: Conservative - Advisor to L.E.K. Consulting, which specialises in helping private healthcare companies identify "growth and new business development" and "opportunities with the government".
Lord Hunt of Wirral: Conservative - Partner in Beachcroft, a law firm that offers incisive analysis on the full range of government, parliamentary and regulatory matters in the health sector.
Lord Lang of Monckton: Conservative - Director of Marsh & McLennan Companies that "help hospitals, insurers, pharmaceutical companies and industry associations understand the implications of changing policy environments".
Lord Darzi: Labour - Former surgeon drafted into government as a health minister by Gordon Brown when he was PM. Now an adviser to medical technology firm GE Healthcare.
Baroness Cumberlege of Newick: Conservative - Former Tory health minister, runs Cumberlege Connections, a political networking firm that works "extensively" with the pharmaceutical industry.
Baron Higgins of Worthing: Conservative - Holds in excess of £50,000 of shares in Lansdowne UK Equity Fund, backers of private hospital group Circle Holdings.
Baron Newton of Braintree: Conservative - Advisor to Oasis Healthcare on dentistry and general healthcare matters.
Baroness Hogg of Kettlethorpe: Crossbench - Chair of Frontier Economics, a consultancy that advises private sector clients on the impact of healthcare reforms and how "to shape regulatory environments".
Lord Freeman: Conservative - The ex-health minister is chairman of the Advisory Board of *PricewaterhouseCoopers, which claims to have "been at the heart of shaping *[healthcare] reforms and working with clients to respond to the opportunities they present".
Lord Ribeiro: Conservative - Adviser on hospital reorganisation to PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Lord Blackwell: Conservatives - Chairman of Interserve, consultancy to NHS and private healthcare firms.
Lord Blyth of Rowington: Conservative - Senior adviser to *investment bankers Greenhill. Boots Chemists deputy chairman.
Tory Donor. Stands to gain from the break up and privatisation of the NHS wants and would surely like to buy the Walk in Centres at an agreed cut-price with Cameron.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: Conservative - Senior adviser to *Evercore, bank involved in huge healthcare deals.
Lord Garel-Jones: Conservative - MD of UBS bank, whose healthcare division earned the firm over $1billion since 2005.
Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach: Conservative - Director of Goldman Sachs bank, provider of services to healthcare firms.
Lord Howard of Lympne: Conservative - Senior adviser to *Hawkpoint Partners, a corporate finance firm.
Lord Tugendhat: Conservative - Adviser to Trilantic Capital Partners, a private equity firm "active" in healthcare.
Lord Coe: Conservative - Director of AMT-Sybex Group, IT supplier to the NHS.
Lord Magan of Castletown: Conservative - Director of the SISK Group of healthcare companies.
Lord Ballyedmond: Conservative - Chairman of pharmaceutical company Norbrook Laboratories.
Lord Chadlington: Conservative - Chief executive of Huntsworth communications group with several lobbying firms.
Lord Bell: Conservative - Chairman of Chime Communications group, whose lobbying clients include Southern Cross, BT Health and AstraZeneca. Tim Bell has a conviction for wilfuly, openly and obscenely' exposing himself with intent to insult a female' under Section 4 of the 1824 Vagrancy Act. For more on this delightful personality, which bears little relevance to the NHS but says so much about the character click here.
Baroness Hooper: Conservative - Until July 11, chairman of Advisory Committee of Barclays Infrastructure Funds, one of the most experienced investors in hospital PFI deals.
Lord Ashcroft: Conservative benches and funder - Until 2010, held investments in two private healthcare groups.
Lord Leitch: - Labour Bupa chairman.
Lord Filkin: Labour - Adviser to outsourcing giant Serco, heavily involved in NHS services.
Lord Harris of Haringey: Labour - Senior adviser to business services giant KPMG.
Lord Hutton of Furness: Ex-health minister is an adviser to law firm Eversheds. Clients include care homes and private hospitals.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: Labour - Self-employed "consultant on NHS and wider health issues".
Lord Puttnam: Labour - Director of Huntsworth communications group. global public relations and integrated healthcare communications group. Did not stand for the board this year (2012).
Lord Warner: Labour - Former adviser to Apax Partners, one of the leading global investors in the healthcare sector. Current director of Sage Advice Ltd. Works as an adviser to Xansa, a technology firm, and Byotrol, an antimicrobial company, which both sell services or products to the NHS" and was "paid by DLA Piper, which advised ministers on the £12 billion IT project for the NHS" projects that he was responsible for when he was a government minister.
Lord Evans of Watford: Labour - Director of *healthcare property firm Care Capital.
Baroness Morgan of Huyton: Labour - Ex-director of failed care home firm Southern Cross.
Lord Clement-Jones: Liberal Democrats - Partner in DLA Piper, a global law firm providing lobbying services to "clients in the health and social care sectors".
Lord Taverne: Liberal Democrats - Chairman of private health insurer Axa Sun Life's monitoring board.
Lord Patten of Barnes: Conservative - Adviser to private equity firm Bridgepoint.
Lord Currie of Marylebone: Crossbench - Chairman of Semperian, an investment vehicle, which owns a portfolio of mature Public Private Partnership investments, including hospitals.
Lord Hameed: Crossbench - Chair of private secure mental health hospital group Alpha Hospitals, which is investing in a new acute private hospital in central London.



Lord Carter - Labour - the head of the increasingly influential Competition and Cooperation Panel, is an adviser to Warburg Pincus International Ltd, a private equity firm with significant investments in the healthcare industry. Chairman Patrick Carter, or Lord Carter of Coles to give him his full title, was the founder of Westminster Health Care, a leading private nursing home company. He is also the Chair of McKesson Information Solutions Ltd, which delivers IT to "virtually every NHS organisation", the chair of Primary Group Ltd, a Bermudan based private equity company, and a substantial shareholder in, among other companies, B-Plan Information Systems Ltd, which has also benefited from the increased need for large scale IT systems that the introduction of an internal market to the NHS has brought with it (see the interview with Frank Wood, of King's foundation trust, where B-Plan has worked, in the last news update). Carter's register of interests in the House of Lords also lists him as an adviser to Warburg Pincus International Ltd, a private equity firm, which has significant investments in the healthcare industry. It even rescued United Healthcare from financial ruin in 1987 and helped it to become one of the largest healthcare companies in the world. He can now help it to become one of the biggest beneficiaries of the government's reforms. -http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=3934



Lord McColl - Conservative - is a paid consultant to a new private healthcare company that provides a fee-paying rival to the National Health Service's family doctor service.

Endeavour Health, which was set up by two hedge fund advisers, claims to be Britain's first comprehensive GP network, offering access to the best doctors and the opportunity to beat NHS queues and have appointments at any time they want. Endeavour Health was founded last year by two financial advisers, Briton Yadin Shemmer and American Jonathan Weiss, to compete with the NHS. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/po...801270.ece


MPs

David Cameron - Nursing and care home tycoon Dolar Popat has given the Conservatives £209,000. The Ugandan-born dad-of-three has amassed an estimated £42million fortune as founder and chief of TLC Group, which provides services for the elderly. Mr Cameron made the businessman a peer shortly after entering No10 last May, and Lord Popat's donations include a £25,000 gift registered a week after the Tories' health reforms were unveiled last July.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/2011/01/19/nhs-reform-leaves-tory-backers-with-links-to-private-healthcare-firms-set-for-bonanza-115875-22859373/

Andrew Lansley - Conservative - John Nash, the chairman of Care UK, gave £21,000 to fund Andrew Lansley's personal office in November 2009. In a recent interview, a senior director of the firm said that 96 per cent of Care UK's business, which amounted to more than £400 million last year, came from the NHS. - Hedge fund boss John Nash is one of the major Conservative donors with close ties to the healthcare industry.


He and wife Caroline gave £203,500 to the party over the past five years.
The "hedgie" is also a founder of City firm Sovereign Capital, which runs a string of private healthcare firms. Fellow founder Ryan Robson is another major Tory donor who has given the party £252,429.45.
His donations included £50,000 to be a member of the party's "Leader's Group", a secretive cash-for-access club. The would-be MP, who tried but failed to get selected as the election candidate in Bracknell, is managing partner at Sovereign Capital.http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/2011/01/19/nhs-reform-leaves-tory-backers-with-links-to-private-healthcare-firms-set-for-bonanza-115875-22859373/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/6989408/Andrew-Lansley-bankrolled-by-private-healthcare-provider.html


Andrew Lansley's wife, Sally Low, is founder and managing director of Low Associates ("We make the link between the public and private sectors"). A Daily Telegraph report in February records that the Low Associates website lists pharmaceuticals companies SmithKline Beecham, Unilever and P&G among its clients. It also records Ms Low's assertion that the company "does not work with any client who has interests in the health sector". The website currently contains no reference to the drug firms listed above. http://www.channel4.com/news/andrew-lansleys-nhs-plans-still-in-good-health


Circle the ambitious private healthcare firm run and owned by clinicians, has recruited a former aide to health secretary Andrew Lansley as head of communications. Christina Lineen spent two years working for Lansley, who became health secretary after the general election. The company's income is derived from private patients, either on insurance schemes or paying for themselves, but it also treats NHS patients. - http://www.publicaffairsnews.com/no_cach...?tx_ttnews

Nick de Bois, Conservative MP for Enfield North - De Bois is the majority shareholder in Rapier Design Group, an events management company heavily involved with the private medical and pharmaceutical industries, and whose clients include leading names such as AstraZeneca. The company was established by the Tory MP in 1998. Last year it had a turnover of £13m. Last April, Rapier Design purchased Hampton Medical Conferences to "strengthen the company's position in the medical sector". It is involved in running conferences and other events for private-sector clients, and for NHS hospitals.


A number of the company's clients are "partners" of the National Association of Primary Care (NAPC), a lobby group supporting the health secretary's plans. Rapier Design Group's biggest clients stand to profit when the NHS is opened up to wider private-sector involvement. The GP commissioning consortium for south-west Kent, covering 49 GP practices and known as Salveo, has already signed a contract with the pharmaceuticals giant AstraZeneca aimed at improving diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.[/url]http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/...lobby-firm

George Freeman - His own business: http://www.4d-biomedical.com/ which is a specialist adviser on Healthcare markets, Technology development, Business strategy & Venture financing, working with NHS trusts. Speaking in Parliament on 11 November 2010 during the Policy For Growth debate he said, "The third is the national health service. I know from my own experience that we are sitting on billions of pounds-worth of patient data. Let us think about how we can unlock the value of those data around the world." See Hansard athttp://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa...1-0003.htm

Chris Skidmore, Conservative MP for Kingswood who sits on the Health Select Committee received a payment of £3,500 for 4 hours work - giving speeches to STAC Consultancy http://www.stac-consultancy.com/ which specialises in the launch of pharmaceutical products, strategic branding and medical education.




Chris Skidmore's family also owns a company called Skidmore Medical [url=http://www.skidmoremedical.com/]http://www.skidmoremedical.com/, which appears to be solely selling a physiologic Vascular testing equipment. The company made a donation to him of £7,500 in June 2010 which also appears onregister of members interests.

Michael Fallon Conservative MP for Sevenoaks Director of Attendo AB since 2008 a Swedish private health company offering care and social care. The register of interests show, he receives an annual fee of £13,954.88 net, for approximately 20hrs work. Bridgepoint the private equity firm which acquired Care UK, whose chairman John Nash bankrolled Andrew Lansley's office just prior to the takeover, has also invested in Attendo AB. Will they get contracts in the UK if the bill? Judging by this list of scandals, lets hope not.

Patricia Hewitt, left commons - is a former director of Andersen Consulting (now Accenture - which has gained from PFI contracts - Former Labour Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt has been an advisor to Cinven; http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=2382 - took a consultancy with Alliance Boots seven months after standing down and a £55,000 role with Cinven, which bought 25 private hospitals from Bupa - http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/...ate-sector

Alan Milburn, left commons - then Health Secretary for the Labour party, was a consultant for Alliance Medical's parent company. Alliance Medical runs diagnostic services for the NHS, including in Birmingham[15] and Falkirk.[16] UNISON reported that services were giving patients sub-optimal care, losing the NHS money because of below-capacity uptake, and pressurising hospitals into using private sector treatments - http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=2382

David Heathcoat-Amory - Former Conservative MP for Wells and a former Treasury minister, registered a payment of "£1,671.08 and health benefit to the value of £86.17" in July from Western Provident Association, which provides private medical insurance policies. The MP defended his work as a non-executive director for the firm, which pays him around £20,000 a year, saying: "The insight I receive from that helps me during health-related debates in Parliament and being part of the world of work and commerce helps me in scrutinising other parliamentary bills." - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6143256/Tory-MP-David-Heathcoat-Amorys-private-health-link-revealed.html

Rob Wilson - Conservative - MP for Reading East, registered shares in Vital Imaging, a private screening company.http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/20...-22859373/

Frank Field Labour Birkenhead MP is a non-executive director of Medicash Health Benefits Ltd a private health insurance company he was appointed Chairman of the board on 20[SUP]th[/SUP] of June 2011. Frank Field has worked with Medicash for 8 years having first been appointed as a non-executive director in 2003. The register of interests says his role is to attend meetings offer advice.' For this work he receives a monthly payment of £1,030, which according to the Medicash website will be given directly to local charities. What's the problem with this? Less so than some others, but private health companies are set to profit massively if the bill goes through.

Stephen O'Brien Eddisbury MP - Conservative - Stephen O'Brien's office received three payments totalling £40,000 from Julian Schild. Mr Schild's family made £184million in 2006 by selling hospital bed-makers Huntleigh Technology. Mr O'Brien was moved to International Development after the election.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/20...-22859373/

Mark Simmonds, Conservative as a shadow health minister, accepted a trip to the United States to look at hospitals there from Bupa UK. Mr Simmonds missed out on a ministerial job in the government. Mark Simmonds, who was a minister when the controversial reforms were drawn up, is paid £50,000 a year to work just 10 hours a month as "strategic adviser" to Circle Health, the first firm to win control of an NHS hospital: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/20...z1dJFD7uKw - Mark Simmonds accepted a US trip to Boston worth £4,982 from private health provider BUPA.

Mark Lloyd Davies - Conservative failed candidate a French pharmaceutical company gave a job to this prospective Bristol South Tory http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/notw/new...sters.html - According to the Conservative website: "Mark is the UK head of the pharmaceutical government affairs and communications team in the world's largest healthcare company [Sanofi-Aventis], so he's already familiar with the workings of Westminster."

Simon Burns Conservative - Chelmsford MP - attended an oncology conference paid for by Aventis Pharma - a five-day trip to the US funded by a leading drug firm.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/20...-22880670/

Jonathan Djanogly Conservative MP - His office received payment of £1,900 on 01/11/2001 and declared it on 30/01/2002 from Huntleigh Healthcare Ltd, 310-312 Dallow Road, Luton. The company manufactures medical, orthopaedic equipment and instruments for measuring and is part of Huntleigh International Holdings Limited of the same address. They are a member of the Getinge Group, a Swedish based group of companies who are split between Healthcare and Life sciences. The acquisition of Huntleigh by Getinge took place in 2007.

Helen Whately 
- 
Former Conservative parliamentary candidate.
 Has shrugged off any suggestion of a conflict of interest, after it emerged she works for the same consultants helping draw up plans which could see the A+E or maternity unit at Kingston Hospital removed.

 Her website states she works as a management consultant specialising in healthcare, mainly in the NHS but does not mention her employer McKinsey.

Liam Fox Former Conservative MP became shadow health secretary in 1999 employs Adam Werrity as a paid intern in 2004 by this time Adam Werrity becomes a director of health consultancy firm UK Health Ltd' (now dissolved), while Liam Fox was shadow health secretary of which he and Liam Fox were shareholders. Werrity owned 11.5% of UK Health Group and Fox owned 2.3%. In 2005 a researcher based in Mr Fox's office worked exclusively' for the now closed Atlantic Bridge charity', which Liam Fox was the founding member; Mr Werrity became director, and which had links to radical right-wing neocons in the U.S. The researcher received funding from Pfizer Inc. He claimed she has no function in any health role.' The researcher was Gabby Bertin, who is now David Cameron's press secretary.

Liberal Democrats - Alpha Healthcare, a residential homes firm which gave the Liberal Democrats party £125,000 last year, is ultimately run by Harberry Investments in the British Virgin Islands. Alpha Healthcare, based in Redditch, Worcestershire, runs ten care homes across Britain and had a turnover in 2006 of £14.5 million. Alpha Healthcare's ultimate parent company is Harberry Investments, which is based in Tropic Isle Building on the island of Tortola. Harberry's turnover and tax payments remain hidden because the company is based in an offshore haven where businesses do not have to declare their accounts publicly - http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/bu...492984.ece
Summary table Alpha Healthcare Ltd payments to the Liberal Democrats

Summary table type

[TABLE="class: MsoNormalTable, width: 0"]
[TR]
[TD="width: 100%"][/TD]
[TD]select[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]



[TABLE="class: MsoNormalTable, width: 0"]
[TR]
[TD]

Description

[/TD]
[TD]

No.

[/TD]
[TD]

Total value

[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]
[/TD]
[TD]Sum : 6[/TD]
[TD]£440,000.00[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Q2 2010[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[TD]£95,000.00[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Q3 2008[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[TD]£50,000.00[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Q2 2007[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[TD]£125,000.00[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Q4 2005[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[TD]£60,000.00[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Q2 2005[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[TD]£100,000.00[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Q1 2004[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[TD]£10,000.00[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]



Sum : 6 £440,000.00


The Lib Des have received a total of £440,000 from a private care home provider called Alpha Health care Ltd. The company is run by Harberry Investments in the British Virgin Islands a tax haven island and has been giving the Liberal Democrats yearly payments since 2004 with the exception of 2009. In addition to this sum, Bhanu Choudhrie who is listed as a shareholdera in Harberry and also director in Alpha Healthcare, according to Companies House and he gave two donations of £10,000 in 2004, and £20,000 in 2008 to the party. However Bhanu's Father Sudhir Choudrie who has been accused in several cases filed by the CBI alleging manipulation and bribery in defence purchases has also given 3 individual sums totaling £95,000 in 2006.
http://socialinvestigations.blogspot.com...on-of.html

[Magda Hassan]

NHS patient data to be made available for sale to drug and insurance firms

Privacy experts warn there will be no way for public to work out who has their medical records or how they are using it

• Randeep Ramesh, social affairs editor
  
  
• The Guardian, Monday 20 January 2014 08.34 AEST
  
• Jump to comments (823)
  

If an application is approved then firms will have to pay to extract NHS patient information, which will be scrubbed of some personal identifiers Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Drug and insurance companies will from later this year be able to buy information on patients including mental health conditions and diseases such as cancer, as well as smoking and drinking habits once a single English database of medical data has been created.
Harvested from GP and hospital records, medical data covering the entire population will be uploaded to the repository controlled by a new arms-length NHS information centre, starting in March. Never before has the entire medical history of the nation been digitised and stored in one place.
Advocates say that sharing data will make medical advances easier and ultimately save lives because it will allow researchers to investigate drug side effects or the performance of hospital surgical units by tracking the impact on patients.
But privacy experts warn there will be no way for the public to work out who has their medical records or to what use their data will be put. The extracted information will contain NHS numbers, date of birth, postcode, ethnicity and gender.
Once live, organisations such as university research departments but also insurers and drug companies will be able apply to the new Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) to gain access to the database, called care.data.
If an application is approved then firms will have to pay to extract this information, which will be scrubbed of some personal identifiers but not enough to make the information completely anonymous a process known as "pseudonymisation".
However, Mark Davies, the centre's public assurance director, told the Guardian there was a "small risk" certain patients could be "re-identified" because insurers, pharmaceutical groups and other health sector companies had their own medical data that could be matched against the "pseudonymised" records. "You may be able to identify people if you had a lot of data. It depends on how people will use the data once they have it. But I think it is a small, theoretical risk," he said.
Once the scheme is formally approved by the HSCIC and patient data can be downloaded from this summer, Davies said that in the eyes of the law one could not distinguish between "a government department, university researcher, pharmaceutical company or insurance company" in a request to access the database.
In an attempt to ease public concern, this month NHS England is sending a leaflet entitled Better Information Means Better Care to 26m households, to say parts of the care.data database will be shared with "researchers and organisations outside the NHS" unless people choose to opt out via their family doctor.
However, a leading academic and government adviser on health privacy said pursuing a policy that opened up data to charities and companies without clearly spelling out privacy safeguards left serious unanswered questions about patient confidentiality.
Julia Hippisley-Cox, a professor of general practice at Nottingham University who sits on the NHS's confidentiality advisory group the high-level body that advises the health secretary on accessing confidential patient data without consent said that while there may be "benefits" from the scheme "if extraction [sale] of identifiable data is to go ahead, then patients must be able find out who has their identifiable data and for what purpose".
Hippisley-Cox added that "there should be a clear audit trail which the patient can access and there needs to be a simple method for recording data sharing preferences and for these to be respected".
Davies, who is a GP, defended the database, saying there was "an absolute commitment to transparency" and rejecting calls for an "independent review and scrutiny of requests for access to data". "I am tempted to say that we will have 50 million auditors [referring to England's population] looking over our shoulder."
He said it was necessary to open up medical data to commercial companies especially as private firms take over NHS services to "improve patient care". Davies said: "We have private hospitals and companies like Virgin who are purchasing NHS patient care now. This is a trend that will continue. As long as they can show patient care is benefiting then they can apply."
But Davies accepted there was now a "need to open a debate on this".
He pointed out that a number of private companies such as Bupa already had access to some sensitive hospital data, although none had been able to link to GP records until now. He added: "I am not sure how helpful in the NHS the distinction between public and private is these days. Look at Dr Foster [which] is a private company that used data to show significantly how things can be improved in the NHS and revealed what was going wrong at Mid Staffs. The key test is whether the data will be used to improve patient care."
Campaigners warned many members of the public would be uneasy about private companies benefiting from their health data especially when the spread of data will not be routinely audited. Phil Booth, co-ordinator at patient pressure group medConfidential, said: "One of people's commonest concerns about their medical records is that they'll be used for commercial purposes, or mean they are discriminated against by insurers or in the workplace.
"Rather than prevent this, the care.data scheme is deliberately designed so that 'pseudonymised' data information that can be re-identified by anyone who already holds information about you can be passed on to 'customers' of the information centre, with no independent scrutiny and without even notifying patients. It's a disaster just waiting to happen."
Booth said the five listed reasons data can be released for are exceptionally broad: health intelligence, health improvement, audit, health service research and service planning. He said: "Officials would have you believe they're doing this all for research or improving care but the number of non-medical, non-research uses is ballooning before even the first upload has taken place. And though you won't read it in their junk mail leaflet, the people in charge now admit the range of potential customers for this giant centralised database of all our medical records is effectively limitless."
NHS England said it would publish its own assessment of privacy risks this week and pointed out that one of the key aims of care.data was to "drive economic growth by making England the default location for world-class health services research".
A spokesperson said: "A phased rollout of care.data is being readied over a three month period with first extractions from March allowing time for the HSCIC to assess the quality of the data and the linkage before making the data available. We think it would be wrong to exclude private companies simply on ideological grounds; instead, the test should be how the company wants to use the data to improve NHS care."

[David Guyatt]

It's a truly ugly state of affairs isn't it...

::vomit::