Medacs Global Group

Lord Ashcroft and tax 

The original owner of Medacs Healthcare was Impellam Group, whose primary shareholder was Lord Ashcroft, one of the Conservative party’s biggest donors, an ardent supporter of brexit and an enthusiastic user of tax havens.

He was made a Conservative life peer in 2000 and sat on the Conservative benches of the House of Lords until 2015. However, his appointment was always controversial as he is not a resident of the UK, having become a resident of Belize to avoid tax many years ago.  He promised that he would take up permanent residence in the UK for tax purposes, but the Guardian reported that he had failed to comply with this request. He is what is known as a “non-dom” and does not pay tax in the UK on his earnings abroad. According to documents filed with Companies House, his nationality is listed as Belizean/British and his country of residence as Belize.

Lord Ashcroft is at the centre of the Conservative party. He is a former party treasurer and deputy chairman and has given millions to the party. Ashcroft is also influential in British politics via his polling company and the website ConservativeHome, a centre-right blog aimed at grassroots party activists. In 2012, he was appointed a member of the Privy Council and was made the Prime Minister’s Special Representative for Veterans’ Transition; he stepped down from this role in 2018.

The leak of the Paradise Papers in 2017 revealed that Lord Ashcroft had a previously unknown trust sheltering his vast wealth. Emails and financial statements exposed the Bermuda-based Punta Gorda Trust from its creation in 2000, just after Lord Ashcroft became a peer. The trust was set up with his children as beneficiaries, although the leaked emails and papers show that they were unaware of the trust. The value of the trust fluctuated, but a leaked financial statement recorded it as having assets of $450.4m (£341m) in 2006.

Quality of care

In January 2019, a Care Quality Commission report on a homecare service run by Medacs Healthcare rated it "inadequate". The CQC found the care that people received was not safe. The inspection found breaches of regulations in relation to staff training, the safety of care, staff deployment, person centred care, complaints, governance and statutory notifications.

The majority of people's care calls were not delivered at the time they were expected. Records relating to risks people faced were inconsistent and inaccurate. People's medicines records were not kept up to date and CQC identified instances where medicines records showed a potential overdose.

The CQC also noted that care plans lacked information about how to provide support to people in a way that responded appropriately to their needs. People and relatives told us their complaints were not responded to and inspectors saw that numerous concerns about staff punctuality and care delivery had not been picked up through monitoring.

Investigations into excessive charging of the NHS

An investigation by the Daily Mail into the amounts charged by staffing agencies to provide staff to the NHS found that one agency alone charged the NHS nearly £40 million for temporary nursing staff in 2015/16 and five of the major nursing agencies were paid £97 million. The figures were not complete, suggesting the true cost was far higher as the Daily Mail noted that about a third of trusts refused to divulge what they spent. Figures of £2000 for a single nurse shift were found in the investigation. The investigation found that Medacs Healthcare plc, had charged £11.4 million (for supplying 43 hospital trusts) in 2015/16, up from £9.2 million in 2014/15 (for 38 trusts).

The Daily Mail investigation followed media reports of the cost to Foundation Trusts of agency staff rising from 3.5% of total spend in 2004 to 7.2% in 2015, around £2 bn in spend. In late 2015 Monitor and the NHS Trust Development Authority issued “ceilings” to each provider on the proportion of nursing expenditure they can spend with temporary staffing agencies.