“Every lie is a poison – there are no harmless lies,” Leo Tolstoy declared.
Yet, Chris Fearne, Minister for Health, sat beside Ram Tumuluri on June 19, 2016 and fed the country pure lies. Vitals, he claimed, would invest €220 million in three of the country’s hospitals. Vitals would provide 450 new beds at Gozo General Hospital, 350 at St Luke’s and 320 at Karin Grech. The biggest lie was that Vitals would improve the quality of healthcare with no additional cost to the government.
Those lies weren’t Fearne’s. They were Joseph Muscat’s. For two years, Muscat kept his parliamentary secretary and later health minister completely in the dark about the most fundamental decisions affecting the health service. Fearne testified that, until June 2016, he had no clue what the Vitals agreements contained.
So, when facing the media that June morning to “inform” the public about the amazing deal Muscat and Konrad Mizzi reached behind his back, Fearne was put in an impossible situation.
Muscat exploited Fearne’s credibility to ram lies down the public’s throat.
What Fearne didn’t know then was that the Vitals agreement did not include any €220 million investment.
Vitals was not contractually obliged to invest any money at all. The multi-million investment listed in the Request for Proposals was quietly dropped from the signed agreement. There was no way Vitals could invest any money anyway – its share capital was a meagre €1,200.
Fearne only found out what the agreement contained when the first payment was due. In the first year the government paid Vitals €16 million despite not reaching a single agreed milestone. Mizzi signed waivers and side agreements to release Vitals from even the most basic obligations, such as submitting a handover plan or providing the government with financing agreements. Mizzi ratcheted up Vitals’ remuneration as services were cut.
Vitals received almost €73 million, at which point it grabbed the money and ran, leaving an additional €27.3 million in debts. Steward Health Care, which inherited the concession, continue to siphon off millions of taxpayers’ money. Malta has paid the concessionaires €263.9 million in six short years, with no improvement in quality to show for it. Fearne’s bold claims were nothing but pure hogwash.
So why did Fearne let Muscat and Mizzi make such a fool of him? Why did Fearne accept the health portfolio and the humiliation of watching Mizzi negotiate and sign key health agreements in his place? Why did Fearne not insist to, at least, see those agreements? Why did he disgrace himself by sitting beside Tumuluri to deceive the public on Muscat’s behalf? Why did he embrace Muscat on stage, even as Michelle conspired to wreck Fearne’s leadership bid? Whatever Fearne’s reasons are for selling those absurd lies, he never apologised.
Joseph Muscat exploited Chris Fearne’s credibility to ram lies down the public’s throat- Kevin Cassar
If Fearne had been in the dark until June 2016, he no longer was when, in October 2016, he tabled in parliament three Vitals agreements, which were so heavily redacted they were absolutely useless. In one agreement, 43 consecutive pages were redacted. Where whole pages had not been deleted, blank spaces replaced key details.
Fearne was complicit in covering up the deeply damaging agreements Mizzi signed. Through those ‘covert’ agreements, Labour fragmented our national health service and damaged the nation’s finances and, of course, hugely enriched a select few.
Our health service was inspired by the British NHS, the brainchild of a true socialist, Aneurin Bevan. Bevan came from an extremely poor Welsh family and became a coal miner at the age of 13. He won a scholarship and studied at the Central Labour College, in London after which he returned home to Wales to endure five years of unemployment.
The deprivation, social injustice and abject poverty he experienced made him a tireless defender of the weak and vulnerable. His honesty and integrity brought him respect and, at the young age of 31, he became an MP. On Labour’s great 1945 electoral victory, Prime Minister Clement Attlee made Bevan minister of health and housing.
Bevan knew that health services in his country were patchy at best and depended on charitable hospitals, local councils or insurance companies. Falling ill often spelt financial disaster. Bevan built a spectacular NHS, free at the point of delivery and excellent wherever it was offered. He faced fierce opposition, not least from the medical profession, who resented being turned into “servants of the state”. But he overcame resistance by tempering his idealism with pragmatism.
In 1951, Attlee’s government attempted to divert money from the NHS to a rearmament programme. Labour proposed introducing prescription charges for dentures and glasses. This was a step too far for the principled Bevan. He didn’t bend his principles, he didn’t put his own personal career prospects first.
Bevan resigned but not before delivering a scathing condemnation of his own Labour government. “I do not represent the big bosses ‒ I represent the people at the bottom,” he declared. Referencing Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, he warned: “The health service will be like Lavinia – all her limbs cut off and eventually her tongue cut out too.”
Bevan’s NHS has stood the test of time and remains a uniquely powerful engine of social justice. What Bevan left Britain is Labour’s greatest and proudest ever accomplishment.
Malta’s health service was once Labour’s greatest, proudest ever accomplishment. Sadly, no more.
Muscat systematically dismantled that most socialist of institutions with reckless disregard for the nation’s health. Through his covert role in the negotiations, cynically bypassing his own health minister, Muscat funnelled millions of taxpayers’ funds into Vitals’ black hole. Resurfacing as the new concessionaire’s lobbyist, he secured thousands of euros into his own bank account.
Bevan “built something that has meant so much to so many – the imprint of a great human being”. Muscat, in contrast, intentionally demolished Labour’s proudest legacy to benefit himself.
Unlike Bevan, Muscat was no “great human being” ‒ he was no socialist either. Yet, Labour continues to protect him and his enabler, Mizzi.