The Conservative Party chief executive has taken on a leadership role at a private cancer care company that said in its annual report it had benefited from rising NHS waiting times.
Stephen Massey was appointed chief executive of the party in November 2022, months after donating £25,000 of his personal wealth to support Rishi Sunak’s first, and failed, bid to become Tory leader.
The financier, who has given the Conservatives £343,000, was appointed director of GenesisCare in February this year. It operates 14 diagnostic and treatment centers and is a leading provider of private cancer care in Britain.
GenesisCare’s most recent annual figurescovering the year to June 2023, shows a turnover of £122m, up 20% on 2022, with operating profits totaling more than £7.5m.
In the report, company executives said they expected GenesisCare to remain profitable for another year. They noted that “positive sales and earnings momentum” for the year ending 2022 had continued, with “increased demand for private healthcare due to the NHS backlog post-Covid”.
The national NHS target – which requires at least 85% of people to start treatment within 62 days – was last met in December 2015, with the number of people experiencing long waiting times tripling over the past decade. In 2023, around 75,000 cancer patients waited more than two months, the highest annual figure ever.
NHS data from March shows that only two-thirds of cancer patients in England received their first treatment within 62 days of an urgent GP referral.
Professor Pat Price, an oncologist and co-founder of the Catch Up With Cancer campaign, said the data is “a timely reminder that the cancer crisis continues and dangerous delays have been normalised”.
Massey was appointed to GenesisCare, which is headquartered in Australia, following a restructuring aimed at halting bankruptcies in the US. Genesis is partly owned by the Chinese state-owned company China Resources.
Last December, Massey reportedly told this to a CCHQ staff call that he had sought advice from sister parties around the world on how to recover from a massive defeat. It left some Tory insiders feeling he had given up their election hopes.
Total NHS waiting lists rose to an estimated 7.57 million treatments at the end of April, affecting 6.33 million patients, according to NHS England figures released on Thursday. This is an increase compared to the 7.54 million treatments and 6.29 million patients at the end of March.
GenesisCare and the Conservative party have been contacted for comment.