FORMER Labour health secretary Alan Milburn and his immediate family got a £2,141,000 payout from his corporate consultancy business this year, according to the latest accounts.  

That’s up on their payout last year of £1.338m. Milburn himself gets the lion’s share of the money — by my rough calculation he will have taken about £1.5m of the dividend.  

Milburn was the New Labour secretary of state for health from 1999-03 and he promoted NHS outsourcing, including buying NHS operations from private hospitals and PFI outsourcing, while in post.  

He has had a lucrative post-politics career with corporate consultancies, including for firms profiting from his health “reforms.” Milburn channels some — probably all — of this income through his firm AM Strategies.  

The latest AM Strategies accounts show the bumper £2.141m payout to shareholders. There are four shareholders, Milburn, his wife and their two grown-up children. Assuming the dividend was paid in proportion, Milburn got about £1.5m, his wife about £329k and his children each got £107k.  

Milburn is also chancellor of Lancaster University, which describes his business interests.

It says: “His advisory business has corporate and government clients across the world. Among others, he advises Mars Incorporated and the Centene Corporation. He is chair of the advisory board at Bridgepoint Capital the leading mid-market private equity group and serves on a number of its portfolio company boards.  

“He is a board director at Ribera Salud one of Europe’s most integrated healthcare systems and is board chair of Huma, the digital health business. He is senior advisor to PricewaterhouseCooper’s (PwC) government and health industries practice.”

So it looks like this advisory business is behind Milburn’s handsome payout. Milburn has been working for Bridgepoint Capital since 2004. This private equity firm in turn does well from NHS outsourcing by buying and selling private health firms that were NHS suppliers.

US health giant the Centene Corporation has been trying to break into outsourced NHS services for some years.  

Management consultants PwC profited from NHS PFI schemes and advising other clients looking to profit from NHS privatisation.

The Mars Corporation is, I assume, interested in advice from a former health minister so the manufacturer of Bounty, Snickers and Mars bars can deal best with health and anti-obesity regulation.  

As well as privately advising these firms, Milburn also publicly promotes NHS outsourcing — though not without controversy.

Last year the BBC issued a rare apology for failing to tell viewers that its Newsnight pundit pushing NHS privatisation, Milburn, was not just a “former health secretary” but also has much more current and very lucrative interests in health privatisation.  

Milburn appeared on Newsnight last November on a segment on the NHS, where he pushed his familiar call for more “partnerships with the private sector.”  

Newsnight identified Milburn as the “former New Labour health secretary,” even though that was 18 years ago. It failed to identify his more current potential interests in health outsourcing due to his roles with Bridgepoint, Centene or PwC.  

Just before last Christmas the BBC responded to a complaint about the failure to identify Milburn’s health interests, saying they “understand the importance of including sufficient detail for viewers about contributors,” adding they “accept that we could have been clearer about his position and we could have done more to provide more context to this during his introduction.”  

Milburn, like the other New Labour players, no doubt very sincerely believed that a more corporate-friendly Labour that would get into NHS outsourcing was politically necessary.  

But his handsome post-politics income does show that there are always rewards for promoting corporate-friendly politics: corporations can become your friend in turn — and they have got a lot of money.  

Bankers’ lobby  

THE Sunday Times reports that bankers are lobbying the Tory government against potential tax increases on their banks — although the paper was too polite to say that the bankers doing the lobbying already have strong connections to the Tories.  

Jeremy Hunt is said to be considering a windfall tax on banks, which are expected to enjoy bumper profits. Instead of an increased tax on their profits, banks want their taxes cut. At present, banks pay an 8 per cent surcharge on their profits, via the corporation tax surcharge.

Most firms are currently paying corporation tax on their profits at 19 per cent, but banks pay 27 per cent corporation tax. This is to reflect both banks’ high profits, and all the state support they have had since causing the 2008 crash.  

As chancellor last year, Rishi Sunak proposed reducing this surcharge from 8 per cent down to 3 per cent, and the bankers’ lobby wants this to go ahead instead of Hunt’s theoretical new windfall tax. 

The Sunday Times quotes two bankers lobbying against tax increases on banks.

The first, William Vereker, chair of Santander UK, said a windfall wax “would be an extremely negative signal to international investors in the UK.” Vereker is a mid-level Tory donor, having given the party around £43k.  

The second banker quoted by the Sunday Times was Rishi Khosla, founder of Oaknorth Bank.

It is a new “challenger” bank, that hopes to use lots of “tech” solutions to challenge the existing big banks.  

Khosla said a windfall tax would be make banks “internationally uncompetitive.” He did suggest that perhaps smaller banks like his could be exempt while bigger banks were taxed.  

Khosla is an even bigger Tory donor. He’s given the party about £450k through one of his companies and has hosted the so-called “advisory group” of top Conservative donors at his home in Kensington.  

Khosla’s Oaknorth Bank also employed former chancellor Philip Hammond. So the bankers fighting against potential new taxes already have close relations with the Tory Party.