Actress Maxine Peake hits back at Mail on Sunday's NHS advert fee claims
British television actress Maxine Peake, best known for her roles in Dinnerladies and Shameless, has hit back at the Mail on Sunday after it said she had accepted a ‘four-figure sum’ as payment for an NHS advert.
Shameless star Maxine Peake pens vocal Mail on Sunday Twitter putdown / Maxine Peake
The paper went on to suggest that this payment was hypocritical in light of Peake’s presence in a Labour party political broadcast last year in which the actress accused the governing conservatives of presiding over a decline in the healthcare provider.
Offering her own clarification of the article, Peake pointed out that she had donated the contentious fee to The Salford Foundation Trust, provider of local health services to the City of Salford and specialist care services for Greater Manchester.
In a statement posted on Twitter Maxine Peake wrote: “To clarify, I was not employed by the NHS, but by an advertising agency who hold a pre-agreed budget for the whole of the campaign. If I had refused the fee, the money wouldn’t have been returned to the NHS, but to the commercial agency."
A statement in response to the @DailyMailUK @mailonsundaySTL @MailOnline article about my recent voiceover work for an NHS recruitment campaign. pic.twitter.com/ahJwJsW7g9
— Maxine Peake (@MPeakeOfficial) August 5, 2018
Peake concluded: “Thank you to the Mail on Sunday for allowing me to highlight the wonderful and tireless work of the Salford Foundation Trust.”
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The National Health Service is the publicly funded national healthcare system for England and one of the four National Health Services for each constituent country of the United Kingdom. It is the largest single-payer healthcare system in the world.
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