For a full breakdown on Luciana Berger's register of interests, you can look at http://www.theyworkforyou.com/regmem/?p=24924
One donor is Deloitte MCS Ltd who are currently reviewing the options for NHS Professionals who supply staff to the NHS (story here). They are currently publicly owned, but Deloitte are in charge of the review. I hope for Luciana's sake that they recommend that it is retained in the public sector, otherwise things might become a bit awkward for the Shadow Minister for Public Health.
Addition:
The Morning Star have already covered this story here.
1 comment:
There are no real surprises to be found in this. Of the three so called Main-stream parties, all seem to draw an increasing amount of funding via donations and sponsorships from both very wealthy individuals and most especially what can best be described as "the corporate sector". Historically, of course, The Labour party has drawn the bulk of its funding from the Trade Union movement. Again, entirely unsurprising, given that the modern Labour party was created - in the form of the Labour Representation Committee - by the 1899 Trade Union Congress. This was because the union movement and most specifically, its members, had become unhappy with the poor level of Parliamentary representation in the interests of ordinary working people. Up until this point, such representation had been achieved through a mish-mash of sponsorships of individual Liberal Members of Parliament, together with a handful of independent members and a few "independent Labour Party" (ILP) candidates. Perhaps ironically, ILP members withdrew from the LRC (Labour Representation Committee) soon after its inception; on the grounds that its stated policies and objectives were not radical enough.
Another irony, given the subsequent history of industrial relations, is that one of the last Trade Unions to hold out against dedicated LRC candidates, preferring instead to retain their established links with the Liberal MP's they already sponsored; was the Mine workers union.
It is notable that both the Lib Dems and Conservatives; and of course, the opinion formers of the mostly right wing press, waste no opportunity to attack the Labour Party for its relationship with the Trade Union movement. They do this, whilst defending their own business links and corporate sponsorships and donations.
The Trade Unions, naturally, expect some influence over the policies espoused by their Parliamentary representatives - as most certainly do those who pour £millions into the Tories and Lib dems.
Back to the business of a certain shadow health spokesperson and the monies backing the campaign. A simple question here - What exactly would we imagine the sponsors might require in return for their financial support? Answer that question, and you have a very good reason why our political system requires radical reform - AND - why it is that you CAN NO LONGER trust the Labour party to keep private enterprise out of our public services. It was, just in case you need reminding, the Blair administration that presided over what was probably the largest influx of private money into the NHS. This was in the form of the Private Finance Initiative - an objectionable printing press for private capital to drain public money from the NHS, Schools and many other public works programmes.
Our political system is systemically corrupted by the corporate lobby system and the whole murky world of donations and sponsorship. Look across the Atlantic towards America, to see just how bought and paid for the US system now is. Do so, and you will both see the here and now within the UK better, as well as gaining a rather nasty glimpse of the future that awaits us all; if things are allowed to drift on in the same mendacious manner.
I wish good luck to all the Greens standing in both local and national elections during 2015.
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