Virgin on the obscene to sue our ailing NHS
AS it’s all the rage for politicians to be talking about their “red lines” I thought I’d throw in a few of my own.
Never cross a picket line, watch The One Show, go on a skiing holiday, allow one of your kids to vote Tory and still sleep in your house, wear combat trousers when you reach 40, buy a half-andhalf football scarf or sue the NHS.
That last line is so red it’s drawn in blood. Twice I’ve been told my family had grounds to sue a hospital for negligence and twice I told compo lawyers to chase another ambulance as the failings were down to staff pressures caused by cuts, and if we sued those hospitals we’d only be suing ourselves. Because the NHS belongs to me. And you.
And your NHS had to pay £1.7billion to settle negligence claims last year, double what it paid in 2010, with £700million going to lawyers. That’s money being sucked out of an already cash-strapped service, ratcheting up the strain on doctors and nurses, thus making errors even more likely and hastening the death of our greatest institution.
I’m not saying everyone who sues is wrong. There are clearly examples, like a child left disabled through negligence where compensation is due to settle future care costs.
And although I don’t approve, I don’t blame people with little cash being seduced by no-fee lawyers after slipping in a hospital corridor.
What makes me want to go to A&E with slashed wrists though, is seeing rich businessmen sue the NHS for vast sums, knowing that if they win the knock-on effect will be cancelled operations, pain and death. Then claiming they have right on their side.
Businessmen like Richard Branson whose company Virgin Care sued the NHS after failing to win a contract to provide children’s health services in Surrey. When that county felt care would be better provided by a partnership of NHS organisations, Virgin claimed the bidding system was flawed and took legal action. The NHS has had to pay at least £328,000 to settle the dispute.
Outraged locals have started a petition, signed by almost 90,000 people, which points out that cuddly old Beardie, with an estimated wealth of £3.5billion, doesn’t need this money but their hospitals do.
The petition (which you can sign at change.org – bit.ly/2B5MyCY) asks “Richard Branson to apologise and make a personal commitment that Virgin Care will never again sue the NHS after losing out on a contract”.
I wish them luck because they’ll need it. I believe Branson, who has already been awarded NHS contracts worth more than £2bn since 2010, would be chuffed to see the NHS go bankrupt because Virgin Care has positioned itself to be one of the privatised companies allowed to fill their boots if it happens.
He knows, thanks to the billion-pound taxpayer subsidies he’s been handed through railway contracts, that our public services are big, fat cash cows primed to be sucked dry by private profiteers.
And unlike you and me, when Branson sues the NHS he’s not suing himself because the Caribbean exile no longer pays his taxes here. So he’s laughing all the way to the bank.
Or, as that other over-hyped beardie who lives a long way away but visits once a year would put it: he’s ho, ho, ho-ing all the way to his Virgin Money account.
Suing health service is crossing the reddest line of all