I’m a Private Eye reader. I don’t know how far its reputation extends beyond Britain, so I shall briefly explain it. Set up 50 years ago, the magazine is a combination of satire and investigative journalism, exposing much corruption in the UK which is missed by other media outlets. Due to its willingness to print stories which it knows to be true but breaches libel laws, it spends over one-third of its revenue on libel payouts. I have found that people can be split into two camps based on their reaction to the publication: there are those who despise the cynical outlook of the publication and believe it to print any old rubbish, and then there are those who value its no-nonsense reporting of corruption. Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP who chairs the Public Accounts Committee has often acted on allegations made in the Eye about businesses, officials and ministers who have failed to meet their responsibilities.
One of a few issues which Private Eye returns to frequently is the now widespread practice of NHS hospitals writing “gagging clauses” into the employment contracts of senior executives. These are agreements that the executives will never disclose to others their accounts of any potentially controversial aspect of their work, even after their employment at the hospital has ceased. Needless to say, this blatant covering up of failures in one of our most important public services has made holding people to account impossible.
That is why I welcome an act by Jeremy Hunt (no- don’t laugh: this is probably the only time I will) to ban the contracts with immediate effect. At least when we have more failures in a semi-privatised National Health Service, we’ll know about them a couple of years sooner. It is vital that none of the organisations or individuals who work in the name of the NHS continue to think that they can buy their way out of any problems that they might create.
In some of our public services, there has been a serious problem with mentality and sense of purpose. Sometimes, often at management level, many think that the people who ultimately fund them are not entitled to clear oversight of those services. That is how some in the NHS see fit to spend our money to stop people telling us about flaws in the delivery of healthcare we fund.
But with the introduction of consortia, widespread outsourcing and several year contracts, we’ve a whole new layer of corruption ready to unfold. I’d ask if Jeremy Hunt is taking action to avoid conflicts of interest in the commissioning of health services. Tackling one pocket of secrecy and poor performance is not enough.