Levelling Down

Monitor, the body set up under Twizzler Lansley's anti-NHS law to ensure that competition trumps co-operation, has been getting complaints from the profiteers already. Public sector hospitals, which are not run for profit, don't have to pay corporation tax; private corporations, which are run for profit, do have to pay corporation tax; and the result is an "unfair playing field" whereby the profiteers have to pay tax on the profits they make while non-profiteers don't pay any tax at all on the profits they don't make. This makes for a "significant economic distortion" which is getting in the way of patient choice and, no doubt, preventing more than a few cancer patients from finding the job that is right for them during their last few months on this earthly plane.

In its unique lansleyish way, the idea of giving health profiteers tax breaks as a reward for carving up the NHS is so brilliant that even New Labour balked at trying it: "This looks like pandering to special interests to me," said one uncharitable academic, who reported on the issue for the Department of Health four years ago. "If companies wanted to provide NHS hospital services and not pay tax then they could do so by becoming charities." Well, I wonder what Jeremy C Hunt's Department of Health and NewsCorp will make of that.