Hunt fights back over Stephen Hawking’s NHS ‘falsehood’
JEREMY HUNT and Stephen Hawking have become embroiled in a row after the renowned physicist accused the Conservatives of weakening the health service. The Health Secretary accused the scientist, who has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, of a “pernicious falsehood” after he said the NHS is heading towards a US-style insurance system. Writing in today’s Telegraph, Mr Hunt said the scientist’s claims were made “without any evidence at all”.
Stephen Hawking is arguably our greatest living scientist. He is also a personal hero of mine. Who could not be overawed at the extraordinary contribution he has made to human knowledge despite his illness?
Yes he is a very public supporter of the Labour Party, but that should be irrelevant to our respect for his genius.
But sadly, someone who normally champions looking at the evidence has made a series of claims about the National Health Service without any evidence at all.
He talked about the “direction of change… towards a US-style insurance system”. Since 2009, Labour’s last full year in office, however, the number of people insuring themselves privately in the UK has actually fallen by 9.4 per cent or nearly three quarters of a million people.
Far from progressing towards an insurance-based system, the evidence suggests the opposite.
Even more seriously he implies that we are moving away from universal health coverage.
Yet only last month the Commonwealth Fund, an independent American think tank, rated the NHS as the fairest healthcare system in the world with the smallest differences in healthcare accessed by rich and poor of any major country (it also said we were the best).
And as for use of the private sector, well, last year it was 7.7 per cent of NHS spend – up just 0.1 per cent on the previous year. At that rate it will take another four centuries before the majority of NHS spending is subcontracted to the private sector.
For the record, neither I nor the Government do want to move towards an insurance-based system.
These systems are often the least effective at containing costs at a time when, with an ageing population, cost pressures are set to rise significantly.
If you want to see how things can go wrong with insurance-based systems, just look at our car insurance premiums.
Professor Hawking also alleged that I “cherry-picked” research on what is known as the “weekend effect” in hospitals during last year’s junior doctors dispute.
Researchers often disagree so you do have to make a judgement – and I based mine on the Fremantle study of 2015 because it was quite simply the most comprehensive and detailed paper ever done on the topic. No responsible health secretary could have ignored it, not least one wanting the NHS to be the safest healthcare system in the world.
Unfortunately, the “cherry-picking” on this occasion was done by others not wanting to believe what every doctor in their heart knows to be true: we desperately need to improve the quality of care offered to those admitted at weekends.
These messages aren’t new – our policy has always been to push for higher standards at the same time as maintaining a universal system free at the point of use. So why is it that so many on the Left put aside evidencebased thinking when it comes to health policy?
Health policy is probably the best example of cognitive dissonance in British politics today. Doesn’t it make life easier if your reason for supporting Labour is because “the Tories want to destroy the NHS”?
But wanting to believe something doesn’t make it true – especially as it means ignoring record funding (above both the OECD and Western European average), record numbers of doctors and an NHS delivering more operations more safely than ever before in its history.
Labour may have set up the NHS in 1948 but, to thrive today, it is a Conservative vision that is needed.
We need not just universal care but care that is universally good – which means focusing on standards as much as resources.
It also means asking difficult questions, not just about the “weekend effect”, but about other patient safety issues such as wrong site operations (three a week), brain damaged babies (four a week) and avoidable deaths (potentially 150 a week).
If we want a thriving NHS in 100 years’ time, we will certainly need increased funding from a strong economy.
But we will also need something else only the Conservative Party appears able to deliver: a relentless focus on making sure that the care we deliver is always as world-beating as the care Stephen Hawking has received.
Jeremy Hunt is the Secretary of State for Health
Donald Trump’s ideological back and forth has replaced American football as the preferred spectator sport of Washington. The tone he adopts is a good barometer for who has his favour. That it changes so dramatically from one day to the next is a reflection of the intensity of the battles being waged in the West Wing, and the influence of the man atop the scrum; as Steve Bannon learned, no one below the president is allowed to remain too powerful for too long.
Trump’s response to the Unite the Right rally and domestic terrorism in Charlottesville last weekend fits this pattern. He was initially ambiguous about who to blame for the violence. Instant bipartisan backlash brought a contrite reversal on Monday, in which he unequivocally condemned racism. Then Trump chose to re-reverse his position on Tuesday, condemning both sides. These contradictory statements, and the merry-go-round of White House staffers, hearken back to the campaign, which was successful in part because it kept the Right guessing as to whether Trump was really a nationalist populist or just an idiosyncratic businessman willing to shake up Washington.
Some believe Bannon’s departure to be a victory for the moderates; he has himself suggested that “the Trump presidency we fought for, and won, is over”. But the White House agenda this past week provides little optimism for those hoping for an end to
‘Labour may have set up the NHS in 1948 but, to thrive today, it is a Conservative vision that is needed’
The White House agenda this past week provides little optimism for those hoping for an end to nationalist, protectionist Trump
at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion