NICE: Daily Mail ‘misled’ readers
pharmafile | January 13, 2014 | News story | Sales and Marketing | Dillon, NHS, NICE, mail
UK drugs watchdog NICE has hit back at an article in the Daily Mail headlined “Champagne perks of NHS drug watchdog”, saying that it “doesn’t spend public money in champagne bars”.
The article, published on 10 January, detailed a series of payments made by NICE employees on government credit cards, including ‘£3,346 at Searcy’s, a chain of champagne bars in London’.
But the watchdog says that the payments were not for fizz, but for venue hire. “Searcy’s hires out venues and manages room hire at the Royal College of GPs and Commonwealth Club where NICE has held some advisory committee meetings,” NICE insisted.
In a letter to the paper, Sir Andrew Dillon, chief executive of NICE, said the article had “misled the public and damaged our reputation”.
“All the expenditure you refer to was committed appropriately,” he added.
The article said: “The body in charge of rationing NHS drugs has spent thousands of pounds on five-star hotels, champagne and a John Lewis shopping spree.”
It made a direct link between NICE’s spending and the capability of the NHS to treat patients.
“The money comes out of the NHS’s £106 billion budget, so the more that NICE and other bodies spend on credit cards, the less there is available for treatments, scans and frontline staff,” the piece continued.
The Mail article also highlighted money spent by NICE staff on ‘luxury hotels’. This includes £800 at the Fairfont Miramar in California, £820 at the Empire Hotel in New York, £522 at the “five-star Ritz Carlton Hotel in Osaka, Japan” and another £1,382 at the Melia Hotel in Berlin.
Sir Andrew says: “These hotels used outside the UK were selected on the basis of the business requirements of the work involved.”
The Mail also questions separate bills of £600 and £550 at John Lewis, and another £624 on a website specialising in home and garden equipment.
NICE explains that the John Lewis bills were for mobile devices used by the web development team and that the £624 was for ‘office storage cupboards’.
Another £3,800 on camcorders was “for video equipment used for training and other media-related work”.
The Mail quotes Robert Oxley, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, as saying: “The contrast of people dying of thirst on wards while officials blow taxpayers’ money at a champagne bar could not be more striking. The NHS should cut out waste, axe this quango and focus budgets on patient care.”
In his letter to the paper, Sir Andrew said: “We use the public money entrusted to us carefully, not just because of our responsibility to advise the NHS on the effective and cost-effective use of treatments, but because it’s rightly what we are expected to do.”
He also hit out at the Mail: “You have a right, you might say a duty to examine how public bodies spend their money,” he wrote. “But if you’re going to do it, you should do so with due care and attention. You haven’t done so in this case and as a consequence you’ve both misled the public and damaged our reputation.”
NICE explains that some senior staff have access to corporate credit cards for use on official business. “They are mainly used to pay for hotel accommodation but can also be used to meet travel costs, for meals and other incidental expenditure,” the organisation says.
“Senior procurement staff also have access to a card to purchase goods and services that cannot be paid for by any other means,” it adds.
Adam Hill
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