Labour's private hospital stitch-up: Shocking evidence of how the Left sabotaged NHS success story by Guy Adams & Sophie Borland, Daily Mail Story.

Shocking evidence of how Labour and union figures had the first privately run NHS hospital declared a failure has been uncovered by the Daily Mail.

There are growing calls for an inquiry into how Hinchingbrooke in Cambridgeshire was rated ‘inadequate’ by the Care Quality Commission watchdog – only months after winning an award for patient care.

But the Mail has learned that:

·         Individuals who helped draw up the CQC’s damning report have close ties to the Labour Party and unions which oppose NHS privatisation.

·         The local NHS body, which suddenly slashed the hospital’s funding and imposed arbitrary fines, is heavily influenced by Labour activists.

·         The watchdog’s lead inspector, Dr Jonathan Fielden, was previously a senior member of the doctors’ trade union, the British Medical Association, and has warned of the dangers of privatisation.

·         A second inspector, Dr Nigel Sturrock, has been associated with the Keep Our NHS Public group.

·         And a doctor employed by the hospital who is suspected of briefing the CQC about its supposed failings happens to be the Labour candidate to be the area’s MP. Dr Nik Johnson is believed to have influenced the report’s severe criticism of children’s services in the A&E unit.

The inspection report by the CQC last week led to Circle, the firm running Hinchingbrooke, withdrawing its contract. The hospital has now been placed in special measures and could be closed down.

MPs whose constituents include hospital staff and patients are urging the Health Secretary to begin an inquiry into the inspection. They say the report’s findings are entirely at odds with an award last May naming it as the best performing NHS trust in the country.

David Campbell Bannerman, Tory MEP for the Eastern Region, said: ‘This is a Labour stitch-up. I wonder how many of the CQC’s other inspectors are quietly sympathetic to keeping the NHS public

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Brian Wilson: SNP’s NHS scaremongering won’t work. The Scotsman

SOMETHING OF a pattern is emerging, is it not? The Nationalists’ claims have now become so cynically outrageous that non-politicians, who probably did not want to be drawn into the debate, are feeling obliged to rebut them in the plainest possible terms.

Last week, it was the Bank of England that issued a magisterial put-down when an SNP press release in John Swinney’s name claimed that “technical discussions” were taking place about currency union. It was untrue, and Swinney now says that he did not mean to give that impression. Doubtless he will be dealing internally with whoever took his name and reputation in vain.

Then Sir Ian Wood had a good shot at being even more magisterial with his remarkable interview in which he hazarded that Alex Salmond’s fabrication workshop had overestimated future North Sea resources by around 60 per cent and short-term revenues by 40 per cent. Chunky numbers, indeed, when translated into schools and hospitals.

Salmond’s audacity had provoked Sir Ian Wood into going far more public than he might otherwise have done, with his conclusion that, in economic terms, “the case is heavily weighted towards Scotland remaining in the UK and getting the best of both worlds. I want the best for future generations of Scots”. You don’t get much more unambiguous than that.

While currency and oil might be regarded in some quarters as fair game for misrepresentation, it is the Nationalists’ appalling behaviour over the National Health Service that merits the greatest contempt. In this case, the woman who headed the Scottish Government’s own cancer reduction strategy has felt moved to hit back at the pernicious nonsense they are promoting. By her own account, she would not have intervened if the claims had not been so outrageous.

Dr Anna Gregor said: “The thing that made me decide to talk about this subject is that both the politicians and, to my chagrin, some of the clinicians are now scaremongering and telling the voters and patients that the only way to protect our NHS is to vote Yes. That is a complete and utter lie.”

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