Jeremy hunt

On Monday morning, Jeremy Hunt’s diary secretary rang me to arrange a time for me to speak to the Secretary of State over the telephone. I had already received an email from his special adviser the previous week, saying, ‘The two points which the independent research make clear are central to what you’ve been saying for a long time; namely that health tourism is a huge problem with a substantial cost to the NHS and the current system is an unfair burden on frontline staff.’ When Jeremy rang, he was charming, full of praise, and eager to tackle the issue of health tourism — the exploitation of the NHS by

Remember the name Simon Stevens. He’s is the new chief executive of the NHS in England and is going to be absolutely crucial to whether the government can make its health reforms work. Stevens is a former Labour special adviser. However, he comes from the reformist wing of the party. He used to advise Alan Milburn and Tony Blair on the NHS. But a profile in today’s Guardian reveals just how impressively radical Stevens is. Denis Campbell writes that Stevens favours local pay in the NHS. He is also, Campbell says, keen on the idea of independent GPs competing with existing GP surgeries for patients, in the hope that this

David Cameron is currently trying to work out what his position on jumpers is after Number 10 was forced to issue an amazing clarification this afternoon. A spokesman said: ‘To be clear, it is entirely false to suggest the PM would advise people they should wear jumpers to stay warm. Any suggestion to the contrary is mischief-making. The Prime Minister would point people to a range of things being done to help people with their fuel bills, such as legislating to put everyone on the best tariff for them. He believes Labour’s “price freeze” policy is a con – and certainly would not advise people on what they should wear.’

Jeremy Hunt has an unusual way of delivering a forceful speech. He pulls a worried, frowny face, and speaks in a special growly sort of voice when he wants to criticise his opponents, but doesn’t shout, or indeed really raise his voice at all. Today he delivered a particularly forceful speech to the Conservative conference on why the Tories are the ‘party of the NHS’. He used that phrase ‘our NHS’ that Andy Burnham likes to deploy as part of his emotive pitch to voters on the health service. Hunt used the same emotive pitch today, arguing that Labour placed ideology above what works for patients, and that it failed

Are David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt going about fixing the NHS in the wrong way? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, former No.10 advisor Sean Worth and director of Reform Andrew Haldenby discuss Dr J Meirion Thomas’s Spectator cover feature on the problems with the Health Secretary’s plans to reshape the NHS. Is Dr Thomas right in saying we need more focus on training GPs, and not centralised technological solutions? Will the government’s reforms be remembered in 100 years as a landmark moment for the NHS? And do we need more focus on recruiting British doctors, to improve the quality of care? Freddy Gray and the Economist’s Daniel Knowles

Jeremy Hunt’s quiet demeanour is deceptive. The Health Secretary has a bit of what my late grandfather called ‘iron in the soul’ – a measure of self-confidence, calculation and the determination not to let the bastards get you down. ‘Iron in the soul’ came in handy during the Burma campaign in the Second World War. And I imagine that it’s vital if one is to prosper as Secretary of State for Health. Hunt was sent to the Department of Health last year in order to clean up the political mess left by Andrew Lansley. Hunt’s tenure has been beset by scandals beyond his or his predecessor’s control – from Mid

One of the many problems that Andy Burnham has encountered this week is that he has had to spend more time defending his record in the last Labour government than scrutinising the current government’s changes to the health service. He has performed the first task in a rather emotional manner, and the Conservatives may well feel that politically this week has been rather successful. But now they’re going after him on the policy side of things too, perhaps to underline how preoccupied Burnham is with his own reputation. Jeremy Hunt has this afternoon written a letter to Ed Miliband, seen exclusively by Coffee House, which demands to know whether Labour

Alan Johnson and Stephen Dorrell have just conducted an impressively reasoned debate on the NHS on Radio 4. This was all the more impressive given both their parties have boxed themselves into corners on NHS care scandals, from which they will continue to lash out today at the last PMQs of the summer. Whether or not Andy Burnham bears responsibility for the hospital failings detailed yesterday, his circumstances significantly constrained his ability to scrutinise the policies the government announced. Because he is in the extremely uncomfortable position of shadowing the brief he held in government, Burnham spent more time defending his own record than he did anything else. And his

The health service that employs you is under more scrutiny than ever before, with shocking cases of bad care, ‘never events’ and serious lapses crawling out of the woodwork. The regulator that was supposed to keep an eye on all of this is under attack, not just for missing it, but also for apparently deciding not to publish what details it did know, and then deciding to withhold key names implicated in a ‘cover-up’. So what, in its eternal wisdom, does the trade union representing you do? The British Medical Association, which has always managed a veneer of respectability over and above many other public sector unions, today passed a

That former Care Quality Commission chief executive Cynthia Bower resigned so quickly from her current job after being named as one of the three executives involved in a discussion about covering up the Commission’s failings simply underlines what an appalling mess this case has been from start to finish. The names were withheld ostensibly because of data protection, but when they appeared, it was clear that this was about another sort of protection. Perhaps this will be the tipping point against unaccountable NHS managers and inspectors staying safe whatever their failings. Jeremy Hunt certainly seemed to think that it could be, tweeting: ‘Pleased to receive CQC letter naming the individuals involved. Clear sign

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt is correct to say that there was a ‘dramatic fall in confidence’ in alternatives to Accident & Emergency units. He says that this has built up steadily since GP contract changes in 2004. He is right of course, and who can blame him for making the obvious political point that Labour government negotiations have helped fuel this present mess? They may have caused it, but he is in power to help solve it. As a group of NHS Trusts has warned that casualty departments could collapse within six months as a result if ‘huge pressure’, any long term strategy will frankly not alleviate today’s problems. Patients