Tory donors’ firms landed lucrative government contracts


by Guest    
1:44 pm - July 30th 2012

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contribution by Alice Ross

Two separate stories over the weekend link prominent Conservative Party donors and government contracts worth millions of pounds.

The Guardian reports that an investment firm set up by two donors has seen a training company it owned awarded contracts with the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) worth £73m, for helping get the unemployed back into work.

Until it was sold last Monday the training company, Employment and Skills Group (ESG), belonged to Sovereign Capital, an investment company set up in 2001 by John Nash and Ryan Robson, among others.

Robson left Sovereign in March 2011 but was a director of ESG when the firm was awarded its contracts. Sovereign also has significant interests in healthcare, another area that stands to benefit from government schemes, the Guardian notes. The DWP notes, ‘All our contracts are awarded in fair and open competition.’

Nash, who with his wife has donated a reported £182,500 in the past six years, is a member of George Osborne’s Independent Challenge Group. The group is tasked with ‘thinking the unthinkable’ about where budget savings could be found, the Guardian reports. Michael Gove appointed Nash to the Department for Education board.

Meanwhile, Robson has donated a reported £267,000 to the party and has run for parliament as a Conservative candidate. He is a director of Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice, which comes up with ways to cut the benefits bill.

Last year the Bureau revealed that over a quarter of all Tory donors were from the financial sector.

Elsewhere, Labour blogger Dr Eoin Clarke claims on his blog The Green Benches that a nursing staffing agency that is making big profits from NHS cuts is linked to former Conservative Party treasurer Lord Ashcroft.

Medacs Healthcare is providing millions of hours of agency staff to the NHS, where hiring freezes mean many trusts are unable to fill vacancies and must rely on temporary cover. Medacs is owned by the Impellam Group, a company in which Ashcroft and his family own an interest.

Clarke points to TUC figures showing Medacs earns a profit of £31,902 per employee each year – much of which is coming from cash-strapped NHS trusts that are being forced to turn to expensive agency staff. NHS contracts have ‘rocketed’ in the past two years under the tough new budget conditions, he says.

‘The conflict of interest is clear, Tory donors are profiting directly from the dismantling of our NHS’, Clarke claims.

—
cross-posted from the TBIJ

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Reader comments


1. Laban Tall

Those evil Tories, eh ? You’d never get that with Labour, would you?

“In 2006 Aldridge resigned as chairman of Capita after it was revealed that he had lent the Labour Party £1 million. The loan, which was secret at the time it was made, was controversial, in part, because Capita is a major public sector supplier.”

Now colour me cynical, but my recollection is that loans didn’t have to be declared in those days, and you never know, the lender might have ended up forgetting to ask for the money back.

I dislike outsourcers as much as the next man. They’re basically a deniable-arms length way of reducing people’s wages and conditions – as the outsourcers do things that a state body might not get away with. There’s also huge scope for corruption where one big contract can be the making of a company.

But don’t pretend that Labour weren’t in this up to their neck.

I suppose it’s all part of Sunny’s “amplify the micron-sized differences between the parties” strategy. The Tories/Lib Dems are basically following Brown/Darling’s strategy

a) slightly reduced state spending (Tories slightly more than Labour, but we’re talking maybe one or two percent here)
b) money printing
c) lowest-ever interest rates
d) mass immigration to keep wages flat while inflation reduces real living standards
e) banks to be bailed out by indebting the taxpayer for generations to come.
f) reduced state spending AND reduced terms and conditions via outsourcing

But the poor proles need to be constantly reminded that one party is good and one evil, although the actual policies are near-identical. It would never do for people to realise that there’s not a fag-paper’s breadth between them.

It’s like the Blues and the Greens in Byzantium, and look at the passions that aroused.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nika_riots

2. Max

@1

No doubt Ms Ross will be along shortly to explain why this is completely different and Thatcher’s fault. Waits…..

3. Richard Carey

@ Laban,

well said.

4. Rentergirl

We know this is happening. It was always going to happen. Outraged articles are published, twitter goes into meltdown, and yet it continues. Can we take anyone to court over this – is there a process for judicial review? Hot air is getting us nowhere.

5. Laban Tall

“But the poor proles need to be constantly reminded that one party is good and one evil, although the actual policies are near-identical.”

And on cue Rentergirl turns up, asking “OMG !!! It’s so bad !! What can we do ??”.

Rentergirl, try and get this into your cranium – the differences between Labour and the Coalition are differences of style and not of substance. There’s practically nothing to choose between them in terms of what happens at the sharp end.

“twitter goes into meltdown, and yet it continues.”

Seems almost impossible to comprehend that policy’s not determined by tweets, doesn’t it?

(It’s called representative democracy. Worst system bar all the others.)

6. Chaise Guevara

@ 5 Laban

“And on cue Rentergirl turns up, asking “OMG !!! It’s so bad !! What can we do ??”.

Rentergirl, try and get this into your cranium – the differences between Labour and the Coalition are differences of style and not of substance. There’s practically nothing to choose between them in terms of what happens at the sharp end.”

So, Rentergirl doesn’t actually say anything about Labour and the Coalition, yet you “correct” her about the differences between the two in a massively patronising way, along with “paraphrasing” her entirely reasonable comment to suggest (contrary to the evidence) that she’s illiterate.

What precisely were you hoping to get out of this, other than making yourself look like a nasty piece of work?


Reactions: Twitter, blogs
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