The Socialist 8 October 2014

Striking to end low pay

We need ideas to change the world

NHS - The black hole

UK - A tax haven for the super-rich

Them & Us

South Africa: "A workers' party must emerge"

Middle East: Repel IS and Western imperialism

Coordinated attacks on Hong Kong movement

Ebola crisis: Consequence of profit before health

Stop corporate plunder of Bangladesh energy

We can beat the pay freeze!

Public sector: why we have to strike

RMT tube workers join October action

Teachers: Pay rise? What pay rise?

Support Care UK day of action

Sheffield: Green workers red with anger

M25 maintenance workers protest

Training tomorrow's trade union militants

Finance to fight for the future

School students organise disabled rights meeting

Ice cream, you scream, we all scream for £10 now!

Exhaustion from buzzer to buzzer

Bedroom Tax: Still making tenants' lives hell

Scotland: Workers need a new mass party

Correction: Labour's private health links are worse!

Thatcher's enemies within

Andrew Price: Fighter, teacher, party campaigner

PO Box 1398, Enfield EN1 9GT

020 8988 8777

[email protected]

Link to this page: https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/828/19458

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Correction: Labour's private health links are even worse!

Following our article on 'Labour: no real alternative' in last week's issue of the Socialist we received an email from the corporate communications manager of private health company Bupa.

She was anxious to point out an inaccuracy in one sentence of the article that said: "Labour heath minister, Patricia Hewitt, farmed out NHS work to Bupa and other companies on the grounds that it would reduce waiting times. She later became a director of the private equity company that owned Bupa!"

In fact Bupa itself was not and isn't now owned by a private equity company. It sold its UK hospitals to Cinven, one of the world's biggest private equity firms in 2007 for £1.4 billion.

Patricia Hewitt became the "special advisor" to that company in 2008. At the same time she became a "special consultant" to Boots, one of the biggest pharmaceutical chains in the world.

The email from Bupa also very kindly points out that between July 2013 and May 2014 she was a board member of... Bupa.

This only emphasises our point: the tangled web between Labour ministers like Hewitt and the private companies that benefit from the privatisation that they carry out while in government.

Big business

This is not confined just to Labour of course, but does show that they are in reality no different to other big business parties. These positions are all well paid of course, and we invite our readers to draw their own conclusions on this practice!

We are grateful to Bupa for its correction, since it clarifies these links. And we are pleased to know that the pages of our paper and website are so avidly read! However it will not stop us campaigning for the nationalisation of Bupa and all other privatised parts of the health service, so we can have a fully funded, publicly owned and democratically controlled NHS.

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