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A PRIVATE health firm with close Tory links has won a £53million prison hospitals contract... ­despite an NHS bid offer-ing a better service.

Care UK’s then boss John Nash and wife Caroline donated £200,000 to the Conservatives before the general election, including £21,000 to Health Secretary Andrew Lansley’s ­private office.

Now the company has won the huge contract to run health services for 5,000 prisoners at eight jails in north east England – with its cheaper, lower quality bid.

It means about 200 nurses’ jobs and pay could be under threat while tens of millions in taxpayers’ cash is funnelled to fatcats. Anger at the decision was laid bare in an email from an NHS executive who lost the contract. The damning email – passed to the Sunday Mirror – was sent by Les Morgan to the North-East Offender Health Commissioning Unit which decides who should run healthcare at the eight jails.

In it, Mr Morgan details how the NHS beat Care UK on all but price and angrily demands to know why they missed out. He wrote: “Our bid was judged better on quality, delivery and risk.

“We are keen to understand the large difference in scoring on price.” Care UK is believed to be charging £4m less than the NHS. The decision shows the Tories hellbent on privatising large swathes of the NHS in David Cameron’s savage “reforms”.

Care UK – which already runs services for about 500,000 people including hospitals – will be one of the biggest winners.

In the run-up to the General Election John Nash and his wife made several donations totalling £203,500 to the party, would-be MPs and Mr Lansley’s office.

The first was made in February 2006 by Care UK’s then chairman John Nash who donated £6,000. Hedge fund boss Mr Nash – who stepped down as chairman last April – also donated £4,000 to Tory central office in December 2006.

The other eight donations were personal handouts from Mrs Nash. Yesterday, Commons Health Select Committee member ­Grahame Morris blasted: “The ­commissioners need to answer some serious questions. They have gone for cut-price services. Tory ­ministers breaking up the NHS are in the pockets of private healthcare.”

Glenn Turp, of the Royal College of Nursing, said he was worried about infection control as Care UK “had no plans in place”.

Bosses who awarded the contract said: “We followed a transparent, competitive process for quality of service and value for money.”