A crisis-hit health board caught spying on patients is paying £15,000 a year to a private firm linked to the disgraced Cambridge Analytica company.
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board is giving US firm Meltwater public money for its investigation software, which was used to monitor widow Louise Slorance and her dead husband Andrew. We can reveal the social media monitoring firm Meltwater invested in a company owned by disgraced Cambridge University scientist Alex Kogan, who harvested personal information from 87million Facebook users without their consent.
Louise, who has been fighting to get answers about Andrew’s death, said the health board had to be axed following our new revelations.
She said: “It’s obscene that they’re spending £15,000 a year on this. That money should be spent on improving patient care or staff pay and conditions but this way it will have absolutely no impact.”
Since we revealed the scandal last month, NHSGGC has stopped monitoring Louise and admitted it was an “error of judgement”.
Louise said: “When the NHS is on its knees and we are in a cost-of-living crisis, with people unable to feed themselves, how can this use of public money be justified?”
The mum-of-three has been fighting for answers about her husband’s death after discovering he had contracted an Apergillus infection while in the £842million Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) awaiting a stem cell transplant. Andrew was a Scottish Government employee and worked closely with Nicola Sturgeon during the pandemic before contracting covid himself and passing away in December 2020.
Louise said the cost of the private spying programme was “unjustifiable” and also criticised NHSGGC’s handling of the fiasco. The health board sent an apology to her at 9.30pm on Thursday – more than 10 days after we first reported the story and 283 days after they started spying on her.
Louise said: “The focus at NHSGGC is to bury mistakes and undermine complainers. Their late-night apology is, doubtless, a badly designed attempt to minimise damage rather than a sign of any regret. It was too little, too late.”
She is meeting with First Minister Humza Yousaf this week to discuss Andrew’s case and will personally ask him to put NHSGGC back into special measures at the highest level and sack senior management.
She said: “Humza Yousaf needs to show the leadership expected of Scotland’s First Minister and take a grip of the QEUH scandal. I will be calling on him to immediately escalate GGC to level five, replace the board and guarantee families receive the answers they deserve without delay.”
Healthboard bosses can be removed by the Government if it is in level 5 special measures, which happens when its organisational structure is blocking effective care. The decision has to be taken by the Health Secretary.
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has also criticised the NHSGGC’s spending and lack of Government action.
He said: “The blatant disregard that the SNP show towards the families involved in this scandal is shocking. Not only have those involved in spying and cover-up kept their jobs, they have received massive rewards at a time when ordinary NHS workers are struggling to get by every month.
“The grieving families affected by this scandal will no doubt be disgusted to hear that the incompetence and cover-up at the heart of the health board has been rewarded. The First Minister shouldn’t have to wait for an inquiry to know that spying on the families of dead patients is wrong – and that those responsible shouldn’t be receiving bonuses from the public purse.
“It’s time for the First Minister to finally do the right thing and sack the rotten leadership of this failing health board.”
A NHSGGC spokesman continued to deny they had used private investigators to spy on patients and their relatives and said the Meltwater software was used by many organisations. He claimed Andrew Slorance was not included on their social listening logs, despite emails seen by the Sunday Mail confirming content around his name was on their spying list.
He said: “Any mention of Mr Slorance would have been a result of references from Mrs Slorance’s account. We would once again apologise to Mrs Slorance for including her public account in our social listening query.”
The Cambridge Analytica controversy profoundly impacted the world of data privacy, political campaigning, and social media. Personal data belonging to millions of Facebook users was collected without their consent by consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, predominantly to be used for political advertising.
The data was collected through an app developed by data scientist Aleksandr Kogan and his company Global Science Research. The app harvested the data of millions of Facebook profiles. Meltwater would later invest in Philometrics, another Kogan firm that did not use Facebook data. The scientist also worked with Meltwater in San Francisco.
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