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Taxpayers will be frustrated, to put it mildly, that billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin healthcare group hasn’t paid a penny corporation tax on NHS and local authority contracts worth £2billion.

When the UK-based company exists to make a profit and Branson himself lives most of the year in a Caribbean tax haven the reported annual losses since Virgin Care’s creation in 2010 are certainly raising eyebrows.

Controversy over expanding NHS privatisation and private firms pocketing public funds is intensified by the ongoing debate about how much tax is paid by big corporations – particularly businesses which lead back to wealthy tycoons living on their own treasure islands.

We believe the best value for money is an NHS publicly run and owned by Great Britain in the interests of patients, never fatcats.

Virgin Care insists everything is above board and therefore we imagine it would be only too willing to co-operate fully with the official forensic inquiry we’re demanding into the organisation’s structure.

NHS virus test

Experts fear the coronavirus epidemic could reach Britain this week and there are serious worries an underfunded, overstretched NHS would struggle to cope.

Years of Tory austerity leave it struggling as it is with, as we reveal today, record numbers of patients being left on trolleys.

(Image: Alex Lentati/LNP)

Unlike Ebola and Sars, the coronavirus is infectious even when sufferers show no symptoms, which means the risk of it spreading from people who don’t even know they’re ill

is very real.

The NHS should be much fitter – instead of being brought to its knees by Tory austerity.

Daisy snipped

Pop star Kelis proved to be a precious petal when her Daisy lost out to Monster on ITV’s The Masked Singer.

The pro singer may have been left wilting by the result but this celebrity guessing game is bloomin’ marvellous fun for viewers.