Last week Labour politicians got themselves into a frenzy over an IEA report that demonstrated the NHS had not performed any better than European healthcare systems over the course of the pandemic. This blaspheming research was too much for Deputy Leader Angela Rayner, who fired off a scathing letter to Health Secretary Matt Hancock demanding he distance himself from an organisation that would dare to look into such dangerous facts. She even demanded Hancock pay back donations from IEA Chair Neil Record.
Hitting back today, Record demands Rayner “publicly apologise” for falsely alleging that the IEA “bankrolled” Hancock, a claim that is simply false. In reality, personal donations unrelated to the IEA were made by Record to Hancock more than half a decade ago, before he was Health Secretary. The letter to Rayner explains:
“You state that the IEA ‘bankrolled’ the Health Secretary. This is completely untrue – not only did the IEA not bankroll the Health Secretary, the IEA did not even know that I had made donations to Mr Hancock prior to his becoming the Health Secretary. Furthermore, the IEA is an educational charity, and as such would never contemplate, and indeed is forbidden from, ‘bankrolling’ a Government minister.”
The IEA will be discussing the whole affair this evening with John Rentoul, Mike Graham, Dehenna Davison MP, and Kristian Niemietz on tonight’s Live with Littlewood. Read the admonishing letter in full below:
