Business or pleasure? Who paid for Daniel Hannan’s trip abroad to badmouth the NHS?

By Theo Blackwell

David Cameron has tried to kill the Hannan-NHS story, but more questions surely need to be asked. The one that springs to mind is whether Hannan attacked the NHS out of the goodness of his heart, or whether he was invited to do so.

Let’s recap. Daniel Hannan MEP went to Washington and talked at an exclusive place called the Army and Navy Club, where he publicly rubbished the NHS. Hannan himself says it was a three day visit, which to me seems a rather short space of time unless you are there for a specific purpose.

Sponsored visits should be declared for elected politicians in their register of interests – with the taste of popularity from his comments earlier this year, I ask:

Was Hannan paid to speak at this event, and if so was he paid by the US private medical insurance lobby?

It’s one thing to speak your mind on an issue and be challenged on it – it’s another altogether if you are compensated for it. So, did a Tory MEP get a free, or subsidised trip to the USA, to smear the NHS on the expense account of the private healthcare lobby?

Come clean Hannan – did you get money to rubbish the NHS? If so, who paid you?

Clearly if the answer is that he did receive remuneration from private sector vested interests, David Cameron can’t just wave his hand and dismiss Hannan’s comments as “eccentric“, as he has done so far.