US companies criticise UK healthcare firms' charitable status and tax breaks
Source: the guardian
A flyer for the St John's hospice summer fair recently dropped on doormats across north London. The top half of the leaflet advertised the bouncy castle and candyfloss; the bottom half promoted Casualty First – "your private walk-in urgent care centre."
Both the hospice and walk-in centre are parts of the Hospital of St John & St Elizabeth, a private healthcare operator that is also a registered charity. According to a new analysis by experts at Cass Business School, such operators are benefiting from tax advantages worth millions of pounds a year.
Nuffield Health, which describes itself as a social enterprise, is a private hospitals group that has become Britain's leading provider of fitness and wellbeing facilities for corporate clients. It pays its chief executive more than £850,000 a year. In 2011, the Cass research suggests, its charity status was worth almost £18m.
Labour MP Fiona Mactaggart, who was charities minister in the Blair government and is now a member of the Commons public accounts committee, is calling for an investigation into the public benefit Nuffield and other private healthcare charities are providing in return for their tax breaks.
Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jun/19/uk-health-firms-charities-tax-breaks