Health secretary keeps taking donations linked to private health

Wes Streeting may have started as health secretary back in July, but the donations he’s been taking from companies and individuals with interests in the private health sector are still rolling in. The MP for Ilford North has been raking in support at a rate of almost £10,000 a month.

The £58,000 of office support Streeting has bagged from these sources since July 2024 are the latest in a long series of payments. Last year we showed how more than 60% of the donations accepted by Streeting since he entered parliament in 2015 were from companies and individuals with links to private health.

In February, Streeting took £53,000 from OPD Group Ltd to pay for staffing in his constituency office. OPD is owned by Peter Hearn, whose companies work with “senior NHS executive recruitment” and help “private sector providers recruit healthcare professionals”.

And in the same month, the health secretary accepted £5,000 worth of support for his constituency campaigning from Sir Trevor Chinn, a senior advisor to a firm holding investments in several private health companies.

These latest donations bring the total Streeting has accepted from private health-linked interests since 2015 up to £372,000 as declared to parliament and the Electoral Commission. 

When we put these figures to the health department, it didn’t respond.

The health secretary has long tried to make the case that treating NHS patients in the private sector is not only the “pragmatic thing to do” but also “principled”. But the economist Faiza Shaheen argued on Question Time that these donations raise difficult questions for Streeting: “You have to look behind every politician.”

And now the health secretary has started on a radical reorganisation of NHS England that even he admits will bring “up-front costs” and “a risk of disruption”

“The private healthcare market is worth about £13bn in the UK – a fraction of 1% of GDP,” said Good Law Project’s executive director, Jo Maugham. “Yet Wes Streeting’s financial backing comes overwhelmingly from those with interests in private healthcare.

“Those backers are not stupid and this is not a remarkable coincidence. What do those backers think they are getting for their money? It’s our NHS and we have a right to know.”