BORIS JOHNSON’S Conservatives were worried fears about the NHS — about cuts, privatisation and US companies grabbing bits of the health service — could eat into their votes during the election.

So they took the obvious route — lying.

Conservative Central Office said that arguments about privatisation were “just scaremongering from Labour. There has been no increase in NHS privatisation and there won’t be under a Conservative government.”

It also said the NHS was not “on the table” for US firms.

But if we look at mental health hospitals, the NHS service is largely run by private hospital companies.

One of the biggest is US-owned, has treated patients very badly, but has bought itself plenty of political support.

US-owned Cygnet Healthcare runs British mental health hospitals for the NHS.

It has a £375 million annual turnover. Around £100m comes directly from NHS England.

Local NHS commissioning groups pay much of the rest, with local authorities also funding “social care” beds.

That’s a huge amount of NHS cash going to a US firm. But it doesn’t guarantee good conditions for patients.

BBC’s Panorama exposed abuse at one Cygnet hospital for patients with autism and learning difficulties in May 2019.

One member of staff at Whorlton Hall, Cygnet’s 17-bed hospital in Co Durham, referred to the place as a “house of mongs.”

Patients were deliberately frightened and “restraint” was overused.

This was deeply embarrassing for the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the official inspectorate that regulates hospitals and care homes, because its inspectors had rated the hospital as “good.”

The CQC had obviously failed, so it went back and inspected the whole firm. Its subsequent inspections found broader problems at the firm.

This January the CQC published a well-led assessment of Cygnet as a whole. It shows the firm is not well led.

Inspectors found “governance systems and processes were not effective in maintaining sustainable and high-quality care” as they “had not prevented or identified significant issues” that meant hospitals were “placed into special measures due to inadequate ratings.”

The CQC said “not all senior leaders could provide a clear explanation of how governance systems and processes were implemented in the organisation.”

The executive team “did not ensure all locations had a registered manager in post.” 

Eight per cent of Cygnet sites had no registered manager. Three had not had one for six months.  

The CQC asked staff to share their experiences, who said: “managers were absent at important times, ignored the concerns of others and failed to provide enough staff.”

Most alarmingly, staff said: “There was active deception by hiding incidents and low staff numbers from the CQC.”

Cygnet admits it had problems, but tried to argue these were mostly at hospitals for patients with learning difficulties, like Whortlon Hall, which it had only recently purchased. However, the CQC inspections show this is not true.

Nine Cygnet hospitals were graded inadequate and put in special measures. The November 2019 CQC report into Cygnet’s 50-bed Coventry hospital shows what this means: “This is a psychiatric hospital for women, not a hospital for patients with learning difficulties like Whorlton Hall. It is not one of the hospitals Cygnet purchased recently.”

The CQC found Cygnet Coventry “did not provide safe care,” wards “did not have enough nurses,” one ward was “loud, chaotic and not a therapeutic environment.”

Staff managed risk by “increasing restrictive practices.”

One ward was “dirty, unhygienic and poorly maintained.”

Both “staff and patients had been telling managers for more than five months that a lack of regular staff was a problem, but no effective action had been taken.”

Cygnet did also get many poor reports on hospitals for patients with learning difficulties. In December 2019 the CQC ruled Cygnet’s 17-bed Newbus Grange hospital “inadequate” with nursing shortages.

Patients “were routinely denied access to their own possessions” without proper assessment.

There was “a very substantial increase in the use of restraint.” 

Overall, “patient safety, privacy and dignity was not a sufficient priority.”

US private health corporation Universal Health Services (UHS) bought British private hospital firm Cygnet in 2014, and has been expanding the company by buying other smaller British mental health providers ever since.

US UHS rates its British branch highly: it has amended its logo to show two “head office” locations, one in the Pennsylvania town King of Prussia, where the firm was historically based, and one in the Cygnet office in Millbank, central London.

NHS England says private companies like Cygnet are its “partners.”

However, UHS latest annual report describes the NHS as a “competitor.”

Outlining challenges faced by the firm, UHS says: “Some of our competitors include hospitals that are owned by tax-supported governmental agencies,” which is a US way of describing the NHS.

UHS expands on the subject, saying it operates “health care facilities in the United Kingdom where the National Health Service (the NHS) is the principal provider of healthcare services.

“In addition to the NHS, we face competition in the United Kingdom from independent sector providers and other publicly funded entities for patients” — the meaning of “in addition” in this sentence is that UHS views both NHS-run beds and beds run by other private providers supplying the NHS as two equivalent forms of competition for their own contracts.

NHS England might want Cygnet to be its “partner” in treating mental health patients, but Cygnet’s US bosses view the NHS’s own beds as a form of competition to be overcome.

UHS and Cygnet do want some “partners” in their corner.

Cygnet employs “political consultancy” GK Strategy to help their “communications.”

In turn GK Strategy employ David Laws, a Lib Dem who served as a minister in David Cameron’s coalition, until he had to resign for wrongly claiming £40,000 in housing expenses.

GK Strategy says Laws’s “Cabinet-level experience and understanding of decision-making at the heart of government will be invaluable to the engagement campaigns we support our clients to deliver.”

In short this is how NHS privatisation works: a big US corporation gets NHS money. The patients are treated badly. But the companies that hire ex-ministers get paid.