LABOUR have made no secret of their intention to have private financial institutions help pay for infrastructure spending.
In her Mais lecture in March this year, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said: “Public investment is one important lever available to governments … but it is only one lever, and it must be used judiciously.”
She has launched a £7.3 billion national wealth fund as part of a drive to attract billions of private sector cash – aiming for roughly £3 of private funds for every £1 of taxpayer cash.
With the recently announced £20bn blackhole in the country’s finances, Labour may argue it’s the only option to rebuild Britain.
But the potential move towards PFIs – private finance initiatives, through which previous governments have ended up paying extortionate amounts to private contractors that built, financed or operated public services including hospitals and prisons – has also coincided with another phenomenon.
Large financial backers are flocking to the party, many of whom could potentially benefit from a Labour government embracing PFIs and privatising the NHS – which Health Secretary Wes Streeting has not dismissed to “get waiting lists down”.
Billionaire hedge fund manager Martin Taylor is the largest donor to Labour as well as the influential and secretive party-linked think tank Labour Together – giving almost £2.5 million combined in 2024 alone.
Taylor was the founder and CIO of Nevsky Capital, a hedge fund that held a significant stake in private health giant UnitedHealth – which recently purchased EMIS, which supplies data management systems to the NHS, including the electronic patient record system used by most NHS GPs in the UK, for £1.2 billion.
Martin Taylor’s current investments include setting up a new hedge fund, Crake Asset Management, which owns shares in Cigna Corporation, a US health insurance company accused in 2020 of fraud and in 2021 of exploitative working conditions. It also owns shares in Anthem Inc., another leading US-based health company.
Streeting, meanwhile, was revealed by The Sunday National earlier this year to have accepted tens of thousands of pounds from donors with links to private healthcare while advocating for the NHS to pay private firms for use of their resources.
His register of interests shows that he accepted donations totalling around £175,000 from two donors, including £48,000 from OPD Group Ltd, which is listed as a company “controlled by” Peter Hearn.
He had accepted a donation of £12,000 from the same source on December 6, 2023, and another of £35,475 from a second firm controlled by Hearn between February 28 and September 8, 2023.
Hearn is a recruitment executive whose firms work with “senior NHS executive recruitment and helps private healthcare providers recruit healthcare professionals”, according to EveryDoctor, a medic-led group which campaigns for a better NHS.
Streeting has also accepted a total of £80,000 from John Armitage, a hedge fund manager with more than $833 million invested in UnitedHealth, the largest private health insurer in the world by revenue.
Meanwhile, the influential Labour Together have added big-money backers to their board including Baroness Sally Morgan, a Labour Minister under Tony Blair whose subsequent corporate career included being director of PFI giant Carillion when it collapsed in what a Parliamentary investigation called “a story of recklessness, hubris and greed”.
