As we witness the public humiliation of Health
Secretary Matt Hancock isn’t it quite something that our SW Surrey MP Jeremy Hunt and former Health Secretary is beginning to look impressive despite the fact that he:
- Kick started the Australian trade deal by exporting all our Junior Doctors. But saying today that we need to train more doctors!
- Has never publicly apologise for not following the recommendations of Exercise Cygnet? Which could have a least prepared us to meet the demands of a global pandemic.
- Not forgetting Jeremy Hunt’s 2005 book Direct Democracy in which he states:-
“Our ambition should be to break down the barriers between private & public provision, in effect denationalising the provision of health care in Britain” The NHS is “no longer relevant in the Twenty-first Century”.
- And here’s Jeremy positioning himself vis-a-vis Boris’ decimation of the vulnerable:
As you will see these comments contain some sensible stuff looking forward, and some passing mea culpa, but Jeremy Hunt only tiptoes towards grasping how inherently limited Whitehall’s outlook is.
That’s reassuring for “sensible” Tory voters (sounds like the ex-Head Boy could pull things back into shape) but he then offers no strategy for transforming the Whitehall mindset. But does at least grasp that he’s part of it.
No, the Tories certainly weren’t going to call on Jeremy to lead them out of the current mess calling on Sajid instead. His most recent support for the beleaguered Matt Hancock has done him no favours either – so now its up to Sajid Javid who Hunt endorsed on the Andrew Marr programme this morning , saying:
“He (Javid) will make an excellent Health Secretary”.
The Tories gave up “sensible” when they gave the Constituency Parties total control of the leadership vote. Like letting the Tory Conference run the country – Macmillan would have been appalled.
And Jeremy hasn’t even started to set out a new strategy? Not his forte strategy though is it? Though he is absolutely right when he says the long-term challenge is managing social care; safety in maternity wards and the other elephant in the room – anti-microbial resistance.
But plenty of media fees if he wants to spend the next few years in TV studios?
Here’s an early take ontwo bumper select committee grillings recently – Dominic Cummings and Matt Hancock. A thread…
Given that most East Asian countries had fewer lockdowns (in Korea’s case no lockdowns) this was a serious failing in our structures, perhaps caused by a ‘pandemic flu’ mindset although to the credit of our scientists this did not extend to vaccine R & D.
This delay meant infections were > 2000 cases/day by the time T&T got going, much higher than in Asia, which set it up to fail, alongside central rather than local contact tracing (which has now been sensibly reversed) and not offering a blanket salary replacement guarantee.
I also think (I was part of this groupthink) that we were over-focused on testing targets (100k, then 500k, then 1m/day) so didn’t focus on the one metric that matters in a pandemic: proportion of potentially infectious isolating. At times 20-40% of those meant to isolate weren’t
Set against this must be our national vaccine triumph: not just securing 400m doses before we knew they’d work, but a flawless NHS roll. So the paradox is that the biggest failures in the performance of the state have to be balanced against some of its most stunning achievements.
Given that most East Asian countries had fewer lockdowns (in Korea’s case no lockdowns) this was a serious failing in our structures, perhaps caused by a ‘pandemic flu’ mindset although to the credit of our scientists this did not extend to vaccine R & D.
This delay meant infections were > 2000 cases/day by the time T&T got going, much higher than in Asia, which set it up to fail, alongside central rather than local contact tracing (which has now been sensibly reversed) and not offering a blanket salary replacement guarantee.
I also think (I was part of this groupthink) that we were over-focused on testing targets (100k, then 500k, then 1m/day) so didn’t focus on the one metric that matters in a pandemic: proportion of potentially infectious isolating. At times 20-40% of those meant to isolate weren’t
Set against this must be our national vaccine triumph: not just securing 400m doses before we knew they’d work, but a flawless NHS roll. So the paradox is that the biggest failures in the performance of the state have to be balanced against some of its most stunning achievements.
Our joint report will set out key lessons to be learned and I won’t pre-empt. But for me two early lessons stand out: being as nimble, searching and pragmatic in our pandemic response as we were in our vaccine response is one…