Claim a5bc82a0Checked 09 Jul 2026
Weak EvidenceOn the evidence scale
“Without those profits, we can’t have the hospitals we need in this country.”
Reasoning & Evidence09 Jul 2026
The evidence shows a real fiscal link, but not the strong necessity implied by the claim. The NHS is funded through national taxation, not from a dedicated pool of City profits, so hospital funding comes from the general public revenue base rather than from financial-sector profits alone. (gov.uk) The OBR also says the financial sector’s high profits made it a major tax contributor and that falling financial-sector receipts were one of the primary drivers of the deterioration in the UK public finances; Hansard records £26.6 billion in PAYE and NICs from financial intermediation in 2010-11. (obr.uk) But that supports, at most, the inference that finance materially contributes to the taxes that help fund hospitals — it does not establish that, without those profits, the UK could not have the hospitals it needs. (gov.uk) Sources: Office for Budget Responsibility, 'Tax revenues from the financial sector' (`https://obr.uk/box/tax-revenues-from-the-financial-sector/`); NHS Constitution for England, GOV.UK (`https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-nhs-constitution-for-england/the-nhs-constitution-for-england`); House of Commons Hansard written answers, 20 July 2011 (`https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm110720/text/110720w0001.htm`).
From article
The pressure of being a market-maker in a busy market, when you’ve got people all around you screaming and shouting at you and you’re dealing in numbers and it’s like that, that, that, that – that’s pretty pressurised. That’s why it’s a young man’s job. You don’t get many 50-year-old money-brokers: they can’t do it any more. Goodness me! It’s not an easy job. Not an easy job.
When I joined the City, it was the dying days of a gentlemen’s club: magnificent, socially wonderful but going nowhere – there was still a whiff of P G Wodehouse about people who toddled off to the City all day and did things that nobody understood at all. But what I saw in the Eighties and Nineties was London becoming in many ways a genuine global centre for entrepreneurial flair, for innovation, for very hard work – and for creating profits. And without those profits we can’t have the schools and hospitals we need in this country – it’s very, very simple. I am absolutely not conflicted in any way at all about the fact that what we did, overall, was for a social good.
Sources opened+ 68 search hits considered
| [1] | obr.uk |
| [2] | assets.publishing.service.gov.uk |
| [3] | publications.parliament.uk |
| [4] | gov.uk |