Skip to main content
League tables are a weapon for NHS privatisation
The Stafford Hospital scandal’s false mortality statistics led to devastating service cuts despite evidence disproving the whole debacle, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE, warning of similar threats under Labour’s new plans for league tables
UNFAIRLY TARGETED: A support group protests before the publication of the final report about the future of services at the hospital, December 2013

HEALTH SECRETARY Wes Streeting’s plan to introduce hospital league tables is deeply damaging, counterproductive and will ultimately be used as a means of closing hospitals.

At the beginning of the Tory-led coalition government, under David Cameron, the Tories and the media latched onto the so-called “Stafford Hospital scandal” that emerged from an inquiry ordered by Andy Burnham in 2009 into claims of poor care.

The Daily Mail made a lurid claim that up to 1,200 people had died avoidably at the hospital between 2005-08, and this idea was eagerly promoted by Cameron and co as an opportunity to attack the previous Labour government’s record on the NHS.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
Selling us out: Keir Starmer signs a deal with Donald Trump
Features / 8 July 2026
8 July 2026

CLAUDIA WEBBE says the horrific price British patients will pay for this NHS deal is now clear — and there’s time to get out of it, if MPs will only force the issue

SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENT: At Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis Baraa Heikal mourns over the body of his brother Fadi Heikal, killed in an Israeli strike, May 10 2026
Policing / 14 May 2026
14 May 2026

The Met Police's refusal to act against British nationals accused of war crimes in Gaza is a green light for Israel's genocide, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE

TRAILBLAZING RESEARCH: Dr Aggrey Burke in 2022; Jamaican immigrants met by the Colonial Office officials as they disembark from the Empire Windrush one in four will commit suicide / Windrush pic: Whispyhistory/CC
Obituary / 31 December 2025
31 December 2025

1943-2025: How one man’s unfinished work reveals the lethal lie of ‘colour-blind’ medicine