MP protests over `NHS freemasons' spacey

BY CHRIS BLACKHURST

Westminster Correspondent

Freemasons are being appointed to senior posts in the National Health Service, it was claimed yesterday.

According to a motion tabled in the Commons, David Crosby, the new chairman of the Cardiff Community Healthcare Trust, is "a prominent Tory and Freemason".

Rhodri Morgan, MP for Cardiff West, who tabled the motion, has written to the Nolan standards in public life inquiry - already looking into political bias in quangos - asking that it extend its investigation to cover masons.

"The amount of masonic influence in the NHS is positively creepy," Mr Morgan said.

He had asked Lord Nolan, to "investigate tie-ups between the Tory Party and masons in NHS appointments".

Mr Morgan claimed that masons were able to secure better jobs than counterparts who were not members of the secret society.

The MP has referred two cases to Nolan: Derek Morgan, president of Bridgend Constituency Conservative Association, who has just been appointed head of the University Hospital of Wales-Cardiff Royal Infirmary Trust; and Mr Crosby.

"They are examples yet again of the same old names and the same old games," the MP said. He claimed that six of the seven NHS trusts in the Cardiff area were now chaired by Tories.

Mr Crosby said his alleged masonic membership was "nobody else's business". Asked by the Independent if he was a mason, he replied, "Are you a Jew?"

On his claimed support for the Tories, Mr Crosby again said it was private.

"I regard myself as very privileged to carry on working for the NHS. How I vote is another matter."

There was no difference between himself and other NHS employees, Mr Crosby said, yet their political allegiances were never questioned.

That was not the point, Mr Morgan said. As chairman of a trust, Mr Crosby was a representative of the Government.