And not even a tender...
WORKERS, SEPT 2007 ISSUE
The word "marketisation", an attempt to prettify the word "privatisation", itself an attempt to beautify the phrase "flogging off", is often not strictly true. Sometimes contracts are awarded without the tender ever appearing in any kind of market.
Recently such an example was uncovered with a £12 million deal to set up the joint venture between the Department of Health Information Centre for Health and Social Care and the private company Doctor Foster which portrays itself as a "healthcare information analyst".
The Public Accounts Committee went so far as to say that "there was no fair and competitive tendering competition" and that Treasury guidance on joint ventures between the public and private sectors was "ignored". The report goes on to say "without the competitive pressure inherent in a tender process [sic] the information centre simply cannot demonstrate that it paid the best price for its 50% share of the joint venture. The £12 million that it paid, £7.6 million of which went straight into the pockets of Doctor Fosters' shareholders, was between a half and a third higher than its financial advisers' evaluation."
That was written by Edward Leigh, chair of the PAC, which shows how corrupt our public life has become. Leigh is an ardent Thatcherite. Things must be bad when he feels obliged to point out that corruption verging on criminality is now rife in the NHS – like Edward Heath's description of Slater Walker all those years ago as being "the unacceptable face of capitalism".