complained to the NHS and the health secretary last year over problems his IT business had bidding for a contract, documents show.
Asked why he had copied Barclay into the email about procurement and whether he had wanted the health secretary to intervene in the complaint, Hester and his company, the Phoenix Partnership did not respond to a request for comment. A source close to Barclay said he had not taken any action and had no involvement in the investigation.in the last year, which has made him the party’s biggest ever donor.
In Hester’s initial complaint to Meddings in December 2022, which was copied to Barclay, the businessman claimed his company was being blocked by the NHS from going ahead with a multimillion-pound deal with three hospitals in Norfolk. When Hester persisted in raising the complaint and asked how he could escalate it further, again copying in Barclay as the health secretary, Meddings wrote another letter on 22 February last year, saying the businessman had made “manifestly false and defamatory” statements about senior NHS officials in his original complaint, and asking him to stop repeating his allegations.
The businessman has said that he gave the money to the Tories because of Sunak’s engagement with artificial intelligence. In an interview with the Telegraph last month, when asked if was giving money to help secure more contracts, Hester said politicians did not interfere in hospital procurement.