Buy Circle Holdings PLC - make Ali rich!

It's probably considered infra dig to talk about people one used to know at school or university who are now public figures, but I can't help myself! It's one thing resenting fat cats, but when you knew the fat cat personally and how they operate it becomes all the more intolerable seeing them making (or seeking to make) profits from the privatisation of our public services.

In this case I am talking about the announcement this morning that Circle Holdings PLC's bid to run Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire has been approved. The hospital has big debts and one stipulation of the contract is that Circle will wipe them out.

Staff will remain on NHS contracts - what, really? Fully? All of them? - and the buildings revert to the NHS at the end of the contract. But what about the equipment bought in the interim? You see, we here in One Barnet are getting wise to the wrinkles that can make an outsourcing deal better or worse for us, the poor saps who are paying for it.

It's interesting that the Hinchingbrooke contract is for about £1bn. We are looking at that sort of figure for the big customer service contract that Barnet council are currently negotiating. Circle beat Serco to the Hinchingbrooke contract.

The Daily Mail quotes Nigel Beverley, interim Chief Executive for Hinchingbrooke Health Care NHS Trust, saying:

'We have been bowled over by Circle's enthusiasm and the efforts they have taken to engage with staff, patients and our other partners.'

The only engagements that the companies bidding for Barnet's contracts have had are with council bigwigs and lawyers. The residents have not been consulted at all, so at least Circle have that over them.

What's my particular beef in the Circle/Hinchingbrooke case? The slick public presentation of this contract as representing win:win for the public and the company taking the hospital over. Circle is presented in the media as a John Lewis-type company, owned by staff. It isn't. The London Stock Exchange explains:

The Company's principal asset is its holding in Circle, an employee co-owned healthcare provider. Circle is 50.1 per cent. owned by the Company and 49.9 per cent owned by the Circle Partnership which is 100 per cent beneficially owned by Circle's clinicians and employees. 

(Naturally, Circle shares have gone up this morning.) What else? Perhaps Circle will deliver on what they have promised in this contract, but their game is not actually rescuing "failing" hospitals such as Hinchingbrooke. It is to make money from public services, that is, a portion of our taxes will go into the pockets of private shareholders and fat cats, such as chief executive Ali Parsa, the man I knew at university (he was then a leftist of sorts).

He will also seek to drive down staff pay and conditions. I would love to know what the terms for new employees will be.

Oh, yes, finally, where is Circle Holdings PLC incorporated? Jersey. You see, Ali wants to hang onto as much of our money as he can. Is this his just compensation for innovation, enterprise and risk-taking? No, it's just the dues we mugs pay when we fall for the spiel of a bloody good talker.

Comrade Private Healthcare

I was knackered this morning - insufficient sleep. I put on the "Today" programme and heard a familiar, irritating, high-pitched voice. No, it wasn't Sarah Montague laughing; it was someone going on about private "healt'care". I recognised the voice. It was Comrade Ali Parsa, the founder of and managing partner in Circle Health, crowing at the prospect of the Tories' NHS revolution announced today.

(I think I wrote about him once before on the blog, but can't find the post now.)

Circle Health is a private company, small but getting bigger, taking over and running "failing" NHS facilities as well as buildings its own private hospitals. It will probably get the contract in February to run Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Huntingdon. The picture at the top of this post is of the, alas unsuccessful, protest organised by Cambridgeshire Against the Cuts in the summer against the plan to get a private company to run Hinchingbrooke.

What particularly irks me about Ali's "success" is his cynicism. In a Times interview he gave last March, he joked about his career in student politics, first at UCL and then in the National Union of Students.

He was an independent, finding the Labour group too “Stalinist”.

What a laugh! Ali's hero was Gorbachev.

Circle Health make a big thing about how they value the input of all their staff. But half the company is owned by a fairly small number of private individuals, including Mr Parsa.

He recalls taking over a failing treatment centre in the north of England, after a coroner’s inquest. Circle’s strategy to galvanise the staff was to have meetings in which all of them, from consultants to cleaners, were asked a series of questions. What is wrong? Why is it wrong? What needs to be done to put it right?

“At the end of one of these sessions, a cleaner was almost in tears. I asked her what was the matter. She said: ‘I have been a cleaner in this hospital for 20 years. This is the first time I sat next to a consultant, working together.’ Think about it — this is hugely hierarchical.”

Correct, Ali. And I bet the consultant loved it... But tell me, Ali, when are you going to stop paying the cleaner peanuts? After all, that's how you'll make your money.