HEALTH Secretary Wes Streeting says he put Alan Milburn, who was health secretary under Tony Blair, onto the board of the Department of Health “to help government fix health and care.”
 
But Milburn can’t talk about anything relating “to nutrition, diet, and food, including any work related to the department’s sponsorship of the Food Standards Agency” on that board because he has a part-time job working for Mars Inc.
 
Appointing someone who works for the firm making Mars Bars to the Department of Health board in the middle of an obesity crisis shows how Streeting values corporate interests above public services.
 
Milburn was health secretary under Blair from 1999 to 2003. He oversaw the wide-scale privatisation of the NHS. He continued the Margaret Thatcher and John Major governments’ plans to privatise NHS “support services” like cleaning, catering and building management, with the disastrous PFI scheme expanding on his watch.

Milburn also broke new ground by privatising “clinical” services by buying in private operations or giving NHS money to set up privately run clinics. Milburn then cashed in his experience by leaving government and taking on lucrative corporate jobs.

Milburn and his family get around £1-2 million a year from his “advisory” firm, AM Strategy, where all the funds for his “advisory” jobs are collected. Streeting clearly admires both Milburn’s record of privatisation when he was a minister and his highly paid post post-ministerial corporate work.
 
The Department of Health says Milburn will give up his job as an adviser to Mars Inc at the end of this year, so next year, he will be able to forget all about working for Mars Bars and start discussing obesity.
 
But Milburn will hang on to more important corporate jobs. He will remain an adviser to, and shareholder in, Bridgepoint Capital, a private equity company with important health investments.