Sunday, 16 October 2022

Our new chancellor Jeremy Hunt


Jeremy Hunt is back in mainstream politics. My children remember him from me shouting at the radio when he was health secretary and would lie repeatedly about the NHS. I could spend hours talking about his failures but I shall limit myself to just a few.

One of his lesser crimes was to use A&E inappropriately when he took one of his children there because he could not get help from a GP.  Back then, the out of hours GP service was not as stretched as it is now.  Also, at the time, just as now, the advice given was and still is not to attend Accident and Emergency just because you could not see a GP and to only attend if you have a genuine accident or emergency.

As noted by Nadine Dorries, he ignored the findings of Exercise Alice and Exercise Cygnus which would have prepared the nation more against COVID if the recommendations had been carried out. Considering the numbers in the UK who have been killed by COVID-19, those two omissions are the worst crimes. 

While Jeremy Hunt does come across well on the media, that is helped by the way the media do not challenge him.  The business community may trust him, but I would advise against doing so considering the way he broke his promise to recruit 5000 more GP's for the NHS and the way the NHS was in a worse state when he handed it over to Matt Hancock than it was when he started to look after it.