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Labour MPs are particularly angry because London’s University College Hospital – one of the best NHS brain treatment centres in the country – has been told to stop treating brain cancer patients and send them to HCA.

HCA is already at the centre of a massive row after being accused of overcharging the NHS by millions of pounds in a damning report released last week.

HCA has a chequered history in the US and has been fined more than $1billion for mis-selling healthcare.

A senior hospital source told the Mirror: “The radiotherapy community is very concerned about the way NHS England is handing out contracts for NHS patients.

Patients who were being treated there have been told to move to Barts. NHS England have told UCHL that they won’t pay for any more NHS patients to be treated there because they’ve signed a contract with two private hospitals – one of which is HCA

HCA, along with two other private hospital groups, was at the centre of a scathing report from the Competition Commission last week which showed that between 2009 and 2011 they overcharged by up to £193million

The NDP plan to hike corporate taxes could be a flashpoint in the debate as both the Conservatives and Liberals oppose it, saying it would be bad for the economy. The Conservatives are campaigning on their April budget, which cut taxes and promised balanced budgets and more infrastructure spending over the coming years. The NDP say they would balance the books as well, but would fund new programs with roughly $7-billion a year in tax increases, including raising the corporate tax rate to 17 per cent from 15 per cent.

On taxation, an NDP government led by Mr. Mulcair says it expects $3.7-billion a year from the corporate tax increase, making it the single biggest source of new revenue in the party's costing plan. "The NDP's fiscal plan that we have announced today is balanced and it is progressive," Andrew Thomson, a former Saskatchewan finance minister who is running for the NDP against Conservative candidate Joe Oliver in the Toronto riding of Eglinton-Lawrence, told reporters at an afternoon news conference. Mr. Oliver is the Finance Minister in the Tory government. But questions quickly emerged Wednesday as to whether the corporate-tax estimate may prove optimistic, given that corporations could shift profit to countries with lower rates.

With the economy at the top of the list of issues on the minds of voters, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair hopes to persuade Canadians that he is a prudent fiscal manager, and someone who can chart a course to prosperity without driving up debt. The seven-page document released Wednesday in Ottawa includes a chart titled "A balanced plan," but total new spending and total new revenue are not in balance. The chart lists seven sources of new revenue, which add up to $7.2-billion in 2016-17 and increase to $7.5-billion in 2019-20. The chart also lists eight categories of new spending, which add up to $5.8billion in the first year and rise to $11.3-billion in the fourth year.

In the document, the NDP says it will rely heavily on a twopoint increase to the corporate tax rate on Jan. 1 as a key source of revenue to pay for billions in new spending on health transfers, daycare spaces and new infrastructure. The party says it can do all of this while planning for surpluses of at least $3-billion a year in each year of a fouryear mandate. The NDP says the document is not the party's full platform, as it still plans to make more detailed announcements throughout the campaign. Critics questioned the New Democrats' reliance on the April budget numbers to project surpluses given that forecasts for economic growth have since been lowered substantially, which will lead to less federal revenue.

The Liberals are planning to run deficits for three years to fund major investments in infrastructure, but have not released specific spending and revenue figures for each year. The New Democrats are locked in a tight three-way battle with both the Conservatives and the Liberals as the election campaign enters its final month.

Over all, the lack of detailed information provided by the New Democrats made it difficult to determine whether their numbers add up. But, it was clear that some of the promises being made by the NDP Leader have had to be modified to meet his commitment of a balanced budget. Since late 2011, NDP politicians have accused the Conservative government of planning to cut $36-billion over 10 years from health care, starting in 2017-18, by replacing the annual 6-percent increases in health transfers to the provinces with increases based on the growth in nominal gross domestic product.

The New Democrats have said they would reverse that decision. And Peggy Nash, the party's industry critic, told reporters on Wednesday that the 6-percent increases to transfers would be restored. But, she said, they would be used to pay for the slate of new health-care initiatives included in the NDP campaign platform such as a mental-health innovation fund, a half-billion dollars over four years for new clinics and to hire doctors and nurses, an Alzheimer's strategy, a seniors-care strategy and whatever other health announcements Mr. Mulcair has yet to make. Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins said the Conservative decision to slash the Canada Health Transfer would result in $8-billion less for health care for Ontario over 10 years and accused the New Democrats of making health-care decisions without provincial input. Absent from the NDP document is a major pledge to increase foreign aid. Mr. Mulcair had promised in May to set a multiyear target to increase foreign aid to 0.7 per cent of GDP, a pledge that could cost more than $8-billion a year if fully implemented. The party confirmed Wednesday that the foreign-aid target will not be met during the first mandate of an NDP government.

Canada's federal corporate tax rate had declined to 21 per cent between 2000 and 2007 from 30 per cent in 1980. It has since declined gradually under the Conservatives to 15 per cent as of 2012.

In response, the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) pointed out that in the two years following the April 2013 move in British Columbia to increase corporate income tax from 10% to 11%, the BC economy actually added 37,000 jobs. 

A large portion of those profits are possible because of unregulated "hospitality" fees, and an operational funding model that does not require government funds for front-line staffto actually go toward staffpay. No regulation exists for staff-to-patient ratios or to ensure patient and family councils are welcomed at each facility. Contracts between these providers and the government are confidential, meaning Albertans do not have the right to know how much public money is being doled out or what the terms of the contract are, and whether or not care is the No. 1 priority in these arrangements. This "wild west" model of continuing care providers was set up by the previous PC government, but it remains in place under the NDP government. However, there is hope positive change is coming. While the PC government significantly expanded the role of for-profit corporations in continuing care, the new government has taken a different position. Responding to promises from the previous government to open new care beds in Alberta, on Nov. 19, 2014, then-opposition leader Rachel Notley said in the legislature, "We don't argue with the need for more spaces for seniors; we do think that they should be publicly funded, publicly delivered."

In the same spirit, the NDP's election platform promised to open 2,000 public long-term care beds and "end the PCs' costly experiments in privatization, and redirect the funds to publicly delivered services." The previous government not only stopped building new public beds, but also unnecessarily closed hundreds of functional public long-term care beds and often funded the construction of replacement beds owned by for-profit corporations. Some of the closed facilities are currently empty and could still be reopened for public use.

In light of the problems the previous government created by funding private, for-profit care, the new government should begin by standardizing and limiting fees charged to residents, disclosing the amounts these corporations are being given and spending on direct care and how much of the public money is going to their shareholders, and setting standards for staff-topatient ratios. The most meaningful sign the new government can send would be to make good on their promise to open 2,000 public long-term care spaces, where profit is not a factor and care is the No. 1 priority. Fulfilling that promise should be the government's first step to phasing out private, for-profit continuing care. Our public health care dollars should not be given to corporate shareholders; it should be spent on care for Albertans. Private, for-profit care facilities are no more acceptable than Ralph Klein's short-lived private, for-profit hospitals. Noel Somerville is the chair of Public Interest Alberta's Seniors Task Force. Sandra Azocar is the executive director of Friends of Medicare.

45 percent of the population."

middle class

Pew Research Center,

CEOs who have, broadly speaking, seen their compensation grow by 997 percent since 1978.

Workers, by contrast — as a recent report by the the Labor Center at the University of California, Berkeley points out — are forced to rely on federal assistance to compensate for their minuscule wages.

Nursing homes that underwent chain-related transactions such as mergers and acquisitions experienced a larger number of deficiency citations both before and after transactions than nursing homes that did not change ownership.

The research, led by David Grabowski, professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, measures the implications of corporate ownership changes, which policymakers have long worried negatively impacts nursing home quality of care. The findings are published in the May issue of the journal Health Affairs.

Thus the board's justification for putting him on contract to provide advice on projects: "The former CEO has specialized knowledge and experience with partnerships solutions." Still, the Partnerships brass were not oblivious to the conflicts that might arise if Blain were retained as a consultant on a project that was also being vetted by the board.

"In order to mitigate the risks of any conflict of interest arising from this arrangement," the review reported, "the board chair was required to recuse himself from any meetings where his projects or his contract were being discussed." Instead, another member of the board was designated to serve as temporary chair. The designated lead director also oversaw the authorization of Blain's consulting contract. "While this conflict of interest issue appears to have been generally well managed," the finance report went on to say, "there could be the perception by some stakeholders that the contractor role still conflicts with the board chair's role of providing independent oversight." Any such perceptions were history by the time the report was completed in July 2014. Blain had already departed as board chair earlier in the year, replaced by Dana Hayden, a former deputy minister turned private consultant.

The internal auditors didn't let Partnerships entirely off the hook for tolerating the unorthodox arrangement in the first place. "The government should consider reinforcing the conflict of interest guidelines for board members of crown corporations and government agencies and ensure that those guidelines are appropriately followed." In other words, "not guilty, but don't let us catch you doing it again." The audit findings, including recommendations to rectify other questionable procedures at Partnerships BC, were forwarded to a steering committee of government and industry representatives, chaired by deputy finance minister Peter Milburn. The committee reported back to Finance Minister Mike de Jong on Oct. 23 with further recommendations for tightening up procedures at Partnerships.

De Jong released both reports and accepted both sets of recommendations in the course of announcing the change of direction for Partnerships BC on Dec. 16 of last year. That was the same day the Liberals chose to announce they were greenlighting construction of a hydroelectric dam at Site C on the Peace River. Just one of those amazing coincidences, but it goes some way to explaining why there was relatively little reporting of the findings regarding Partnerships BC.

There matters stood until this week, when the New Democrats, drawing on a wealth of material gathered by their research department, challenged the Liberals over Partnerships' dealings with Larry (Two Hats) Blain. The highlights package: The contract with Blain's delightfully named consulting firm, Aardvark Insights, was worth $219,000. During that same four-year span he also collected $188,836 in fees and expenses as chair of the board. All this atop the $264,000 he was paid to serve as a director of three other government-owned corporations, and the almost $4 million he was paid for his eight-year service as CEO.

"There's plenty of Blain to go around," quipped one press gallery wag as the New Democrats built their case against the Liberals during question period Wednesday. Another joke making the rounds rebranded P3s as B3s, for "Blain, Blain and Blain" Responding for the government, de Jong paid tribute to Blain's well documented contributions to the agency and cited the audit findings that "the conflict issue appears to have been generally well managed." But he also said this: "Whilst one can suggest that by recusing and taking (other) steps ... the procurement process is properly followed, the standard that we set and expect of agencies, the leadership within those agencies, goes beyond that. There must not only not be a conflict; there must be no appearance of a conflict." Which is as close as the finance minister came to admitting his sense of relief that when the audit branch blew the whistle on this arrangement, Blain had already left the building at Partnerships BC.

? full privatization: where a government enterprise is sold in full to private investors. ? publicly funded with services and management delivered privately, sometimes unknown to the consumer. ? public funding of private services: government provides vouchers to consumers for the purchase of goods and services from private providers.

? public/private partnerships (P3s): full outside contracting, management and service delivery of traditionally delivered public services such as hospitals, roads, schools and prisons. This can include private finance, design, building, operation and possibly temporary ownership of an asset. Can privatization deliver? After decades of experimentation with privatization in different forms across Canada, the data is clear on the failure to deliver on its promises and the high cost society pays - multiple costs, not only in economic terms but also quality and access to services, quality and quantity of jobs, as well as transparency and accountability.

Public/private partnerships (P3s) are the fastest-growing model of privatization in Canada. The P3 models vary but all include the reliance on private sector borrowing to finance the development of public infrastructure projects in a long-term lease arrangement; it is effectively leasing rather than owning and sometimes that lease includes maintenance as well. P3s cost more. Governments have always been able to borrow money more cheaply than private corporations. According to a University of Toronto study of 28 P3 projects in Ontario, P3s cost, on average, 16 per cent more than a traditional public contract. A recent auditor general of Ontario report found that P3 projects cost the province $8 billion more than if they were done under the traditional model.

If they cost more, why do politicians promote them? Political expediency - in P3 lease agreements the debt stays off the books or is postponed for decades. P3s hide debt - which is a dream for politicians looking for easy wins in hard economic times. It is also ideological and it is about private sector lobbying and influence. Public services are a boon to private sector deliverers with guaranteed public payments and profit margins over the long term. Supporters of privatization claim that it leads to better pricing for the public as consumers. A comparison of privately owned Manitoba Telecom Services, privatized in 1997, to SaskTel, Saskatchewan's publicly owned telecommunications crown corporation shows this to not be true. Twenty years after privatization of MTS, the cost of a basic phone with SaskTel is $8 less per month than from MTS.

Private corporations demand a shroud of confidentiality in order to protect their competitive position. This means that privatization reduces both transparency and accountability. An example of this is the Ontario privatization of municipal water testing which has been linked to the May 2000 bacterial contamination of municipal water in Walkerton, Ont., led to the deaths of at least seven people and the serious illness of 2,300 more from water contaminated with E. coli. The absence of criteria governing quality of testing, and the lack of provisions made for notification of results to authorities contributed to the worst public health disaster involving municipal water in Canadian history.

Health care is a sector where there is huge pressure on government to control cost, particularly in Newfoundland and Labrador with the aging demographic. Private interests see great profit opportunities. But in health care, for-profit does not deliver. In Manitoba, living in a for-profit long-term care facility increased the odds of dying in hospital or being hospitalized.

In a metadata analysis of hospitals in the U.S., Dr. Philip Devereaux, a cardiologist at McMaster University, concluded that the death rate in for-profit hospitals was two per cent higher than in not-for-profit facilities. In Alberta, the Health Quality Council of Alberta's Long Term Care Family Experience Survey in 2012 found that, on average, private and volunteer operated facilities offered poorer quality in terms of staffing levels, care of residents' belongings, and assistance with daily living activities such as toileting, drinking and eating, than publicly operated ones.

The scathing Ontario auditor general report indicates that there needs to be extensive and comprehensive reviews of provincial privatization projects. Until proper cost-benefit analyses and public reviews and reform of private funding and procurement models occur, governments and public bodies should place moratoria on further public-private infrastructure contracts. The citizens pay either way, but they pay more in a privatized model - either as tax payers or out of pocket.

The government has alternatives. The Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Labour has published a number of reports and fact sheets on the progressive revenue options open to the provincial government. There are a variety of progressive revenue options open to municipalities as well. There are no silver bullets. It is time to stop stigmatizing government and public services and recognize them for what they are: the way we pool our resources to buy services cheaper, control costs, and maintain accountability for quality.

his should be a debate based on evidence, not ideology. Mary Shortall, president, Unifor Local 597

Fifteen years later, the “movement of movements” has another opportunity to strike a dramatic blow to neoliberalism — this time by stopping the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The TPP is a deal the United States is negotiating with 11 countries in the Asia-Pacific region (Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam) allegedly to boost “free trade.”

access to medicines

But labor and environmental standards are just the tip of the iceberg. The GAO studies don’t even touch upon the rules found in modern “trade” pacts’ chapters on financial services, food safety, public procurement, medicine patents, investment, and so-on, all of which the TPP would expand to an estimated 40 percent of the global economy — with a built-in mechanism to cover more countries still.

Given the smaller number of negotiators at the TPP table than at the WTO — and the fact that so many seem willing to sell out their nations’ public health programs, family farms, financial stability measures, and just plain sovereignty in order to cut a deal with the United States — it’s unlikely that protests in the United States are going to appeal to their sense of morality. Thus, the anti-Fast Track strategy is not only more feasible than centralized mass protest; it’s probably more effective.

TPP supporters and opponents alike both know that, with the U.S. presidential elections gearing up in the latter half of 2015, the window of opportunity for concluding the TPP is fast closing. Neither political party in the United States wants an unpopular trade debate on its hands while it’s trying to take the White House.

£7 an hour, receives an extra £1 an hour for a night shift and £2 an hour for weekends.

"The NHS encourages you to have these NVQs, all this training, improve your knowledge, and then they [private care companies] come along and it all comes to nothing.

Care UK expects to make a profit "of under 6%" by the end of the three-year contract

£700,000 operating profit in the six months between September last year and March this year,

In 1993 the private sector provided 5% of the state-funded services given to people in their homes, known as domiciliary care. By 2012 this had risen to 89% – largely driven by the local authorities' need for cheaper ways to deliver services and the private sector's assurance that they could provide the answer. More than £2.7bn is spent by the state on this type of care every year. Private providers have targeted wages as a way to slice out profits, de-skilling the sector in the process.

1.4 million care workers in England are unregulated by any professional body and less than 50% have completed a basic NVQ2 level qualification, with 30% apparently not even completing basic induction trainin

Today 8% of care homes are supplied by private equity-owned firms – and the number is growing. The same is true of 10% of services run for those with learning disabilities

William Laing

report on private equity in July 2012

"It makes pots of money.

Those profits – which are made before debt payments and overheads – don't appear on the bottom line of the health firms' company accounts, and because of that corporation tax isn't paid on them.

Some of that was in payments on loans issued in Guernsey, meaning tax could not be charged. Its sister company, Silver Sea, responsible for funding the construction of Care UK care homes, is domiciled in the tax haven of Luxembourg

Bridgepoint

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And while estimates put the cost to Canadian tax coffers at $6-$7.8 billion per year, the effect on developing countries is far greater, said Haroon Akram-Lodhi an economist and professor of international development at Trent University. "The amount of capital flight from sub-Saharan Africa is absolutely huge and it's all going into these tax havens," said Akram-Lodhi, one of the signatories of the letter. "This is reducing the ability to fight poverty on a global scale." The letter, made public on the eve of this week's global anti-corruption summit in London, calls on world leaders to act against financial secrecy both in tax havens and at home. "To lift the veil of secrecy surrounding tax havens we need new global agreements on issues such as public country-by-country reporting, including for tax havens. Governments must also put their own houses in order by ensuring that all the territories, for which they are responsible, make publicly available information about the real 'beneficial' owners of company and trusts." On Monday, Transparency International Canada issued a parallel call for the Canadian government to make its own corporate registry more transparent.

There is a pressing need for the Government of Canada to take concrete steps to address the ability of some Canadians to shield themselves, and their financial activities, from Canadian authorities," said Peter Dent, president of Transparency International Canada. "That some can rig the system to hide their wealth, whether amassed legally or not, is not merely unjust. It also masks corruption and harms global development by siphoning off revenues that could be directed to education, health care and infrastructure," Dent said in a statement. While the growing movement to crack down on tax havens has been spearheaded by the richest countries through the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, the negative effects of depleted government revenues hit the poorest countries the hardest. Uganda, an East African country which has often been described as a "donor darling," remains stuck in a cycle of poverty largely due to its inability to provide state services, said Akram-Lodhi.

They don't collect enough tax (because) multinational corporations evade their fair share," he said. While the U.K. government collects 25 per cent of its GDP in tax revenue, Uganda is only able to get 11 per cent, according to World Bank statistics. Instead of having to wait longer for a new subway, low tax revenue has far graver consequences in the developing world, he said. "Tax avoidance in Canada doesn't lead to people going hungry. Tax avoidance in sub-Saharan Africa leads to people dying of hunger. It's that clear," said Akram-Lodhi. "It's criminality that ruins people's lives." Another signatory of the letter, Peter Dietsch, a professor of philosophy and economics at the Université de Montréal, said the Panama Papers have "opened a window of opportunity for action." Describing the underlying conflict over tax havens as being between people who have capital and those who don't, Dietsch said anti-tax haven forces are growing.

"There's now a growing coalition of individuals without capital who pay their taxes and small and medium enterprises who don't have resources to move their assets abroad." Canadian signatories A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi, professor of international development studies, Trent University. Peter Dietsch, professor of philosophy, Université de Montréal Hashmat Khan, professor of economics, Carleton University Kiari Liman-Tinguiri, president of IEDAS Inc., Ottawa Patricia E. Perkins, professor, faculty of Environmental Studies, York University Toby Sanger, senior economist, CUPE

St. John's (28 June 2016) —Jerry Earle, President of Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Public and Private Employees (NAPE/NUPGE) is supporting recent recommendations by the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) that Eastern Health release the contracts for privatized health care services to the public. Three corporations fought the release of health care service contracts

Transparency key when corporations receive government funding

Public has a right to know if checks and balances are in place with private contracting