Jeremy Hunt: no promises on the NHS ringfence

In this week’s Spectator James Forsyth interviews new Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt about how he will continue Andrew Lansley’s legacy on NHS reform. He says his ‘burning mission’ is to ‘demonstrate that we have as much to offer the NHS as Labour ever did’. But while Hunt is keen to praise the work of his predecessor, he takes a strikingly different line on the health budget. James writes:

Another striking difference between them is their views on the future of the NHS budget. When The Spectator interviewed Andrew Lansley at Christmas, he was clear that he believed that the health budget would have to carry on rising in real terms until, well, kingdom come — and that the next spending round and Tory manifesto would have to commit to that. Hunt is not prepared to guarantee this. ‘I don’t think it’s possible to make a prediction because there is so much uncertainty in the economic outlook and no one knows what is going to happen with the eurozone.