Question Time Platforms Extreme Right-Wing Anti-NHS Group without Telling Viewers about Them

A day or so ago I put up a piece discussing how the right-wing Lotus Eaters on YouTube have decided that healthcare isn’t a right, thus showing their opposition to the basic principle underlying the NHS. But they’re not the only right-wingers, who despise the NHS in the name of absolute free trade and private enterprise. Another of these is the Institute of Economic Affairs, which has been promoting these policies since the 1970s. Northern Irish YouTuber Maximilien Robespierre posted this little video on his channel exposing how Emily Carver, a representative of the IEA, was a guest on Question Time. However, the Beeb did not deign to tell its viewers who the IEA was or what they stood for. And in fact, as the video shows, the IEA are very secretive about both their members and the organisation itself. They’re on a list of political organisations and think tanks ranked according to their transparency. And the IEA are in the red marked ‘highly opaque’.

Carver and her organisation’s secrecy was called out by the panellist representing the SNP. He pointed out that he and the other politicians on the show, from the Lib Dems and Labour, had no need to explain what their parties represented as everyone knew already. But Carver and the IEA were just introduced as ‘a think tank’. Carver blustered some rubbish in her defence about being willing to reveal their members’ identities if necessary, but were really just taking care to protect them. Robespierre also goes on to reveal just what the IEA stands for by showing their entry on Wikipedia. He also shows Carver’s own extreme private enterprise stance with a couple of articles she authored, including one asking if people were finally waking up to how dreadful the NHS was.

In fact the Beeb has form when it comes to platforming right-wing organisations on their news programmes without telling people about their connections. A few years ago a friend of mine pointed out how the right-wing Taxpayers Alliance were frequently invited onto the news to give their opinions on government spending and presented as an independent organisation. This is technically true, but the leadership were all members of the Conservative party, making them effectively a Tory front organisation.

Jacky Davis and Raymond Tallis have an entire chapter in their book, NHS SOS discussing the way the Beeb’s coverage of the health service is biased and supportive of its privatisation. Academics from Glasgow and Edinburgh universities showed a few years ago that the BBC was biased towards the political right, though the Tories and their supporters continue to brand it as left-wing and liberal. The inclusion of the IEA without informing the public of what they stand for is just more proof of the Beeb’s right-wing bias and the supporting someone in the Corporation is giving to the NHS’ privatisation.

Lies and Secrecy in the Tory Privatisation of the NHS

Yesterday I put up an extract from Robin Cook’s Fabian Society pamphlet, Life Begins at 40: In Defence of the NHS, refuting health insurance as an acceptable source of funding for the NHS. Cook had been prompted to write the pamphlet in response to a review of the NHS by Maggie Thatcher. He was concerned at the way the review seemed less interested in improving the performance of the NHS as a state institution, than in opening it up to the market. Cook’s fears have been born out in the decades since. The Tories introduced the internal market under John Major. The role of the private sector in the NHS was then taken up and expanded further by Tony Blair. Now, nearly three decades after Cook wrote his pamphlet, the Tories are once again privatising the NHS.

This is being done piecemeal, and is shrouded in secrecy and denials. There are 92 Tory and Lib Dem MPs who stand to gain financially and commercially through their business contacts with private healthcare firms. Andrew Lansley himself has advocated the dismantlement of the NHS and its replacement with a private, insurance based healthcare system. So has Nick Clegg in the Lib Dems. Yet when one Tory official candidly stated that ‘in five years the NHS as we know it will not exist’, Tory Central Office immediately started issuing denials and spurious clarifications. The original statement made it clear that they expected the NHS to be sold off, and what remained of its bureaucracy would merely be concerned with processing the private insurance claims.

Not so, according to the ‘clarification’ issued by the Tory apparatchiks. What he meant, they claimed, was that the Tories would cut simply cut bureaucracy and improve efficiency. He never said anything about privatisation. ‘Onest, Guv.

It’s a lie. And the Tories have a long record on lying. To go back to the beginning of Cameron’s government, the plastic-faced android Toff promised that NHS spending would be ring-fenced and protected from cuts. This has most definitely not been carried out, and indeed the Tories have tried to purge the records of that promise ever having been made from their own internet site.

This is just part of the Tories’ long term strategy of secrecy and denial when it came to NHS privatisation. Thatcher also claimed that she would not privatise the NHS. Even so, documents released a year or so ago under the 30 year rule show that the review she commissioned argued for its privatisation. One of the authors of the report was Wassermann, who is now one of Cameron’s assistants on health policy.

Cook in his pamphlet also remarks on the secrecy surrounding the compilation of the review, and the way Labour researchers were denied information on it. Cook wrote:

This is not Review by independent inquiry but Review by Cabinet sub-committee. Entertainingly in the first week after the Review was appointed the Table Office of the House of Commons declined to accept parliamentary questions about it, as internal Government committees officially do not exist.

Not that we have learnt much more since questions have been accepted. Ministers have refused to publish any of the evidence submitted to the Review as some of it may have been confidential. They have refused to name the organisations who submitted evidence on the imaginative grounds that “it would be impracticable to try to distinguish between those communications which see themselves as specifically ‘submitting evidence’ and those which do not, but which may, nevertheless, be relevant to the continuing review process”.

Even our attempts to obtain the official remit of the Review have been baffled by the formula that the Review is “wide-ranging and fundamental”.

Tory policy on the privatisation of the NHS has not changed in the decades since then. It is still one of secret privatisation masked by public denial.

Tory Secrecy and Lies about Workfare

The privatisation of the NHS is not the only area of Tory policy, about which the government remains secret in order to prevent any criticism. Johnny Void has repeatedly blogged about how the identity of the firms involved in the Tories’ workfare scheme have also not been released. In this case the Tories have admitted that they are afraid that the scheme is unpopular, and fear that if the names of the participating companies were made known, they would be placed under massive pressure to withdraw. As a result, the scheme would be unworkable.

Lies and Secrecy about Sanctions Deaths

And Mike over at Vox Political and other bloggers about disabled issues have also met with refusals for their inquiries into the numbers, who have died after being assessed as fit and well under the Work Capability Assessment. Mike has estimated the number to be about 55,000 a year. Yet we cannot know the real figures, because the government says they are collating them for release later as part of government policy. They’ve been doing this for two or three years now. And if you try to ask for this information, you will see your request turned down as ‘frivolous’.

Secrecy about Honours Candidates

And yesterday it was reported that the Tories weren’t going to announce their honours list until after the election, because there were fears that too many of the MPs named would have been caught up in corruption scandals, like Jack Straw and Malcolm Rifkind.

So much for Cameron’s vow that this would be the most open and transparent government.

The Tories are privatising the NHS, and literally killing people with the sanctions system. This is being covered-up through lies and denials. Just as the party has always lied and covered up the truth.

Benefit Sanctions at Record Levels

The website Benefits and Work, which also gives a fortnightly news bulletin to subscribers about ESA, PIP and DLA, has reported that the number of people claiming ESA, who have been sanctioned has reached an all-time high. The article begins

Sanctions against employment and support allowance (ESA) claimants in the work-related activity group have hit a new record high, according to DWP figures released today.

In September 2014, the most recent month for which statistics are available, 3,828 ESA claimants were hit with a sanction. The total for the preceding month was 3,096.

It’s a very short piece that also gives the reasons why nearly 4,000 claimants have been sanctioned. It reports, however, that the DWP has so far not given a reason for the massive rise in sanctions since 2012.

The page also links to a fuller set of statistics.

I’m not remotely surprised that the government hasn’t given out these statistics. They have refused to release the figures for the number of people dying after having been assessed as ‘fit for work’ by Atos to Mike and other left-wing bloggers, after all. And as Johnny Void has repeatedly pointed out, they also won’t give details of the firms signed up for the Work Programme. Their reason? There would be too much of a public backlash against this firms, and this would cause it to fail.

The government is keenly aware how unpopular workfare, Atos and the whole fraudulent sanctions system is. They don’t want the embarrassment of having this revealed to the world at large, and so be unable to supply effective serf labour to their business friends.