You couldn’t make it up

**UPDATE: Within minutes of 38 Degrees members starting to contact Monitor, they told the Guardian they’d changed their position and “will not be recommending that private sector providers should be exempt from paying corporation tax.” That’s a brilliant win! But so far they’ve only ruled out exemptions for Corporation Tax – keep contacting them and demand they rule out ALL tax breaks for private health companies.** 

Revealed: private health companies taking up NHS contracts are lobbying hard for special new tax dodges. You couldn’t make it up, but that’s what a new government review of competition in the NHS is considering.

Private health companies are lobbying Monitor, the government body in charge of the review. They want to be exempt from paying taxes like corporation tax on the profits they make from taking over NHS contracts. If they’re successful, millions could be lost in tax revenue and NHS contracts will be even more profitable for private health companies.

Monitor are preparing the report right now. We haven’t got long. We know they’ve heard from the big health companies, and now we need to make sure they hear from patients like us. Let’s send thousands of emails to Monitor and make it clear we don’t want private health companies let off paying any of their taxes.

Monitor are a new organisation who haven’t felt the force of people power yet. They won’t be expecting a public backlash like the kind 38 Degrees members can deliver. Together, if enough of us email in, we can stop the proposals in their tracks.

38 Degrees members have a powerful history of campaigning to protect our NHS from privatisation and to crack down on tax dodging. The last thing we want are new tax dodges to promote the privatisation of the NHS. We’ve got the numbers and the influence to make the difference and stop Monitor from including the proposal in their report.

Join other 38 Degrees members and email Monitor now.