That is a very Liberal Democrat statement to make (sorry, I don’t want to offend you, but I have had this said to me by countless numbers of LD politicians and supporters). The things is: it is not true.

The British public does have quite an irrational love for the bricks-and-mortar of the NHS and when they see an NHS hospital close the public start to get angry. Yet your statement would do just that: close NHS hospitals. The British public *do* care who treat them, but they do need reminding the consequences of being treated by a non-NHS provider.

I usually ask people who they would complain to if they use a private provider and whether the chief executive could give a fuck about them. With PCTs and NHS Trusts (and from April next year, *all* Foundation Trusts and CCGs) you can go to a board meeting and tell the chief executive what you think of them: and they know this. Private companies do not allow you to attend their board meetings and their minutes are not made public. They could be planning to inject all patients with monkey glands extract and there is no way that you can find out.

The other: NHS trusts are conveniently “failing” in order to meet that same agenda. While the NHS has accumulated an UNDERSPEND of £2.9bn, this is being returned to the treasury and NOT spent on the NHS, while Circle Health’s privatised former NHS hospital, Hitchingbrooke, is bailed out to the tune of £4m this year with our money.

My sense on the Dispatches programme is that 1) It is good some news of the destruction of the NHS is finally making it to mainstream TV, but 2)a lot more could have been said about Virgin’s dirty role, as anecdotal evidence of failings can be found on anything, the really serious issue (which Dispatches also covered to a point and you mention) is how profoundly the profit motive hollows out the whole point of a formerly universal, formerly public national health service (into which fall Branson’s consistent dirty dealings such as trying to get his doctors as a means of referring patients to his services instead of what best suits the patient, both recently and in 2008 [http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/apr/09/nhs.health2], foiled on both occasions by public outcries on ethical grounds).

Finally, last month we asked Richard Branson to comment on the privatisation of the NHS. This was his response: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFN8dZ8ZuuU&feature=player_embedded

You could not be more wrong! Most patients are revolted at the thought of money that should be spent on treating the sick, the disabled, the most vulnerable in society – is going into the pockets and Offshore Bank Accounts of greedy entrepreneurs/vulture capitalists like the greedy Mr Branson!

In fact we should rebrand the country as Virgin plc – as he appears to have been handed ownership of it by his revolting Tory mates! So while the sick get sicker – fat old Branson expands his profits and empire on the back of them. Disgusting man.