Was the Hinchingbrooke healthcare trust the vicim of political spin?

Last Sunday the Labour leader Ed Miliband declined five opportunities to deny that he had said he wanted to "weaponise" the NHS. This week we appear to have had an example of what Labour "weaponising" the NHS might mean.

This week the Daily Mail has been running a series of stories asking whether a private trust which had been given a contract to run an NHS hospital had been "set up" by Labour activists and opponents of privatisation.

It is worth mentioning that Circle, the parent company of the trust concerned had been brought in under a process started, not by a Tory secretary of state such as Andrew Lansley or Jeremy Hunt, but by the then Labour Health secretary and current Labour shadow secretary of state, Andy Burnham.

There does seem to be something inconsistent about the saga of Hinchingbrooke Health Care Trust.In May, Hinchingbrooke won a prestigious ‘quality of care’ award by data management firm CHKS for being statistically Britain’s best performing hospital. It has also performed consistently well in the ‘friends and family test,’ a survey asking patients if they would recommend the hospital to loved ones.

Yet somehow by September, when Care Quality Commission inspectors visited and produced a damning report which has resulted in Circle withdrawing from the contract and put the future of the hospital in jeopardy, it had become the worst hospital they’d ever seen.

The Daily Mail's concerns are set out in an article here.

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