The former Tory minister who chaired NHS England helped arrange a meeting for an American private health firm that paid millions of pounds to the investment bank that employed him.
David Prior emailed Matthew Gould, a senior NHS executive, in February 2021 asking him to “have a conversation” with Jason Gorevic, chief executive of Teladoc, a multibillion-pound virtual medicine firm.
In the exchange, Lord Prior described Teladoc as “the biggest US medicine and remote monitoring provider” and told Gould: “They have a footprint in the UK which they are keen to expand. Could you have a conversation?” Gould was the head of NHSX, which developed best practice for data and digital in the health service at the time.
Alongside his role as chair of NHS England, Prior was paid by the investment firm Lazard to provide strategic financial advice to clients in the healthcare sector. One of Lazard’s clients was Teladoc.
The emails, obtained in an investigation by the Observer and OpenDemocracy, raise questions about potential conflicts of interest and transparency. Details of Prior’s contact with Teladoc were initially kept secret by NHS England, which redacted his name in emails.
The month before Prior’s intervention, Teladoc, the largest virtual care company in the United States, bought the UK company Consultant Connect, which offers remote health services in the NHS, including an initiative that provides GPs with access to advice from specialist hospital teams.
The firm’s executives were keen to expand their UK operations and promote the potential of virtual triage. The acquisition gave the US multinational a valuable foothold in the NHS.
The Observer has established that following Prior’s top-level introduction, less senior Teladoc representatives met NHSX officials to share data from their operations and its impact on patient care. The Teladoc subsidiary says it covers 38 million patients in more than 120 hospitals across the country.
There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by Teladoc or Consultant Connect, which said they derived no financial benefit from Prior’s intervention, and no suggestion that Prior had any involvement in arranging contracts. But the revelations have led to questions for Prior about his second job and how the potential conflicts were declared.
A press release about Prior’s role at Lazard in 2018 said his job was to advise clients, “particularly in the healthcare sector”, using his “experience and connectivity” to help them “navigate fundamental changes” in global healthcare delivery.
Teladoc was one of Lazard’s biggest health clients, with records showing it advised on at least three major business deals between 2018 and 2020.
In August 2020, Lazard earned $31.5m advising Teladoc over its $38bn merger with the US company Livongo Health, described as the “largest digital health deal in history”. It went on to buy companies working in the NHS including, in January 2021, Consultant Connect, which claims to help hospitals reduce admissions. Transparency records show Prior disclosed that he was a senior adviser at Lazard in NHS England’s register of interests. But he did not declare that the role was focused on advising Lazard’s healthcare clients or mention that Teladoc was a client of the firm. Entries to the House of Lords register of interests also do not refer to the health focus of the role.
The life peer, who was recently appointed a director of Lazard’s UK company, denied any wrongdoing and said he had no direct involvement with Teladoc at Lazard while NHS chair. He told the Observer he “talked to different companies all the time” but said he was “no more involved in introducing Teladoc to the NHS than I was in introducing anyone else to the NHS” and was “not involved at all” in the Livongo transaction. When asked why he did not disclose that his role at Lazard had a global health focus, or that Teladoc was a Lazard client, he said: “I didn’t have any particular relationship with Teladoc, no more so than I had with many many other companies at that time.”
Prior is understood to have had contact with Teladoc on several other occasions while at the NHS, including appearing on a panel in April 2021 on “the future of healthcare” with its president of international operations, Carlos Nueno, and hosting a “digital therapeutics” summit in July 2021 in which Teladoc and other companies were involved.
In September 2021, he was pictured meeting the founder of another health firm, Proximie, the day after it announced a “partnership” with Teladoc.
NHS England initially redacted his name from the Teladoc emails, which were disclosed under Freedom of Information laws. Sources with knowledge of the exchange confirmed Prior made the introduction. He said he could not recall it.
Further messages about the NHS “digital therapeutics” summit also had Prior’s name redacted, but metadata in the email files show he hosted the event.
The Liberal Democrat health spokesperson, Daisy Cooper, said the revelations raised questions about a “potential conflict of interest at the heart of the health service”, adding: “The relevant authorities must get to the bottom of these worrying allegations.”
Rose Whiffen, research officer at Transparency International UK, said NHS board members should disclose “any connection”with companies operating in the health sector. “Even the appearance of impropriety can prove hugely damaging for public trust,” she said.
Prior, 68, “trained in finance” at Lazard and Lehman Brothers in New York before being elected an MP in 1997. He went on to be chief executive and deputy chair of the Conservative party and later served as a minister of business and health. He was appointed to the Lords in 2015. In 2018, he resigned the Conservative party whip to become NHS chair.
After leaving government, Prior received approval from Acoba, the advisory committee on business appointments, to return to work for Lazard as an adviser. In his letter to the committee he said he would advise on “general strategy” but did not mention the focus on healthcare clients. He also disclosed that Archie Norman, then chair of Lazard, was a “close personal friend” and that he had attended “personal dinners” at Lazard the year before.
Prior has previously faced questions after arranging for collapsed finance firm Greensill Capital to lobby NHS leaders. He was also linked to allegations about a Covid “VIP lane” after introducing a testing company to the Department of Health which later won Covid contracts.
NHS England said it had “strict protocols for registering conflicts of interest” and Prior had no role in awarding contracts while at NHS England. A source suggested the email introducing Teladoc to NHSX had been sent by a junior staff member.
Teladoc said it had not asked for the introduction or “gained any financial advantage from it”. It said it had a “couple” of conversations with Prior in which he “advocated for “increased use of digital technology” in the NHS. It said it had “no current relationship” with Lazard and had not dealt with Prior when working with the firm.
Consultant Connect said its relationship with NHSX predated Prior’s intervention. “We had already worked with NHSX, and the introduction from Lord Prior resulted in a meeting with the same team to share our data and discuss the impact of specialist advice on patient care,” it said.
Lazard said it was “not actively working” with Teladoc and had “no formal role with the firm”. It said Prior’s appointment as senior adviser in April 2018 was “fully disclosed at the time” and that he had “no involvement in any transactions where Lazard advised Teladoc”. “Lazard maintains strict procedures in relation to conflicts of interest,” a spokesperson said.
