FRESH data has revealed the millions of pounds Unionist MPs are raking in from financial links to companies in the private health sector.
Campaign EveryDoctor – which seeks to protect the NHS from privatisation - has taken a close look at how much MPs earnt from private healthcare organisations, or individuals linked to private healthcare organisations, since the last General Election in 2019, whether that’s via donations, earnings, shares in companies or hospitality offerings.
The MP who has taken the most cash is Tory John Redwood who has amassed a haul of almost £700,000 in earnings from Charles Stanley - investment managers with investments in the global private healthcare sector.
Meanwhile, Labour party leader Keir Starmer has raked in more than £157,000, the party's shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper has earnt almost £300,000 and shadow health secretary Wes Streeting more than £193,000.
Orkney and Shetland LibDem MP Alistair Carmichael has also earnt £20,000 in donations from the former vice chair of C&C Alpha Group, Sudhir Choudhrie. The company invests heavily in private hospitals and dementia care homes in the UK.
Our maps below allow you to explore how much the top 10 Tory and Labour MPs across the UK have earned from links to the private healthcare sector.
EveryDoctor is running a petition to ban MPs receiving donations and hospitality offers from companies with links to the private healthcare sector, which has now garnered almost 18,000 signatures.
Julia Patterson, founder of EveryDoctor, said politicians need to be held to account over these earnings.
She said: "The NHS is a system in collapse. Patients are being failed, staff are poorly supported, the system has not been invested in, and privatisation is creeping in in various ways.
“We have built a map to illustrate the links between our decision-makers and the private healthcare sector.
“Politicians exist to serve constituents. And we cannot see how these links, these transactions, these relationships, benefit the public. And if they do not benefit the public, then why do they exist?
“Who is benefitting from the links between our politicians and the private healthcare sector? We all need to start asking these questions and holding politicians to account."
The Scottish Greens has said the “gradual erosion” of the NHS in England was concerning and insisted MPs’ links with private healthcare firms were a risk to democracy.
Green MSP Gillian Mackay said: “Big companies and vested interests don't give out eye-watering sums to MPs out of the kindness of their hearts. They do it because they want to buy influence and favour and to make powerful friends.
"When big businesses are allowed to pull out its chequebook and develop these cosy relationships with so few protections it's a risk to the integrity of our politics and to our democracy.
"The creeping and gradual erosion of the NHS in England is one that should concern us all. Successive governments have allowed even more of it to slip into private hands, which many of these companies will have encouraged and profited from.
“The Scottish Greens will always act to ensure that Scotland's NHS remains in Scotland's hands and that vital functions and services aren't outsourced to the highest bidder."
SNP MP Martyn Day added: "MPs profiteering from private hospitals highlights in no uncertain terms the danger our NHS is under.
"If Tory and Labour MPs - including Scotland's only Labour representative - are content with earning thousands of pounds on top of their salary from private hospitals, who knows where they will stop.
"For as long as Scotland remains under Westminster control, our NHS will continue to be vulnerable."
A UK Government spokesperson said: "The Code of Conduct for MPs sets out the rules on the Registration and Declaration of Members' Interests."
