Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt – inexplicably to many observers – not only survived Theresa May’s last Cabinet reshuffle, but gained an expanded title. NHS-watchers were horrified that the man on whose watch the NHS has fallen into permanent crisis was protected yet again.
Today, he appeared before MPs to make a shocking admission of further failure:
The English breast-screening programme – in other UK nations, devolved government manages the NHS – is supposed to provide free screening for breast cancer every three years to all women.
Hunt was forced to admit that a staggering four hundred and fifty thousand women had not received an invitation to at least one screening – and that this had resulted in up to almost three hundred premature deaths.
Even the spread of possible deaths given by Hunt is misleading. As the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg noted, the computer modelling used suggests 270 deaths, not the 135 Hunt mentions as a lower limit.
He also later admitted that there were women only recently who will have received a belated invitation just after being informed that they have breast cancer – including some told that they are terminally ill with a disease that may have been cured had there been no delay.
Will any Tories dare defy the whip when the principle is this important and the damage the government has done is so enormous? Recent history does not lead to optimism, which is in itself a disgrace on the government.
Comment:
Hunt’s mealy-mouthed apology – in which he blamed ‘administrative incompetence’ – is utterly inadequate.
His position has long been untenable for the cuts, deaths, needless reorganisations, privatisations and fragmentation of our NHS – and maintained only with the help of the mainstream media and successive weak prime ministers.
His admission that he oversaw avoidable deaths and suffering on such a scale must be his last statement as Health Secretary.
He must go. Now. For those women and their loved ones – and for the sake of all of us who depend on our National Health Service.
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This needs closer perusal. We need to be shown how the algorithm referred to produced the result it did. There have been claims for some time now that late age breast screening was counter productive. We need absolute reassurance that this was a mistake, and not a piece of illegitimate research.
IT is the perfect patsy for the slithery one because everyone already knows Gov’t IT projects always cost ten times what they should for a tenth of the touted benefit.
I’ve read on occasion that proofs exist – from their own mouths and pens – that the neoliberals’ plan always did depend on choking our cherished national assets so close to death they could be privatised with little complaint.
Google doesn’t work great for me on finding/collating such evidence but if the evidence & the timeline were all on one website might it not help to convince doubters and floaters of the Tories’ true intent? (by ‘true’ I mean ‘devious’ of course)
Well you could start here David
sorry posted too early
Jeremy Hunt co-authored book calling for NHS to be replaced with private inshttps://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-hunt-privatise-nhs-tories-privatising-private-insurance-market-replacement-direct-democracy-a6865306.htmlurance
The full text of the book can be downloaded here (pdf)
https://whatwouldvirchowdo.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/direct_democracy___an_agenda_for_a_new_model_party.pdf
It’s an interesting read
corrected URL
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-hunt-privatise-nhs-tories-privatising-private-insurance-market-replacement-direct-democracy-a6865306.htmlurance
& he had the front to wear an NHS badge in his jacket as he read his apology…..what a #UNT
Shabana Mahmood MP just gave an excellent hard hitting speech in parliament, Especially the section concerning the lack of protection afforded by a British Passport for some of our citizens,
“Nothing to do with me mate” seems to be the mantra for Tory Minisers including May at the top of a Rotten Cabinet of Tory Millionaires!
Sack this ‘private health interests’ creep!
There’s no shortage of texts Steve, but are any of them likely ever to be read by anyone not already committed? Not exactly S*n-reader-friendly any of them, surely?
I’m wondering more about, say, snippets of the source stuff – letters, papers on the project by Letwin, Redwood, Joseph, Portillo etc. that made up the how-to’s of privatisation.
Statements by Tories at the time that they’d rather were forgotten, Spitting Image sketches that hurt them then might still echo – hopefully some will have even greater relevance when set against what we see today?
If our smarter, younger friends can trash and humiliate the Tories in pictures maybe we can find something to spark some insight in or connect with the older, now-right-leaning-but-worried-for-their-grandchildren sector that I assume we need to reach the most?
Not saying by tomorrow and not saying I know how to do it, just wondering if it would be worth a pilot.
Anyone else notice how keen he was to say it happened in 2009?
That makes me wonder whether the specifications were decided then, the code was written, analysed, pilot tested or fully implemented in 2009… whether budgets were cut after 2010 and warnings given and ignored.
Also wonder whether anyone has raised any alarms since then and been ignored or shut down.
Some doctors and nurses’ mothers must have been in the affected cohort – anyone else have trouble believing that in nine years none of them noticed?
Given that there was a backlog before this disaster was “discovered” despite the numbers being fewer than expected the screening system has clearly been massively underfunded.
If nobody had noticed that people weren’t being invited that would have been scandal enough.
If austerity cuts are the real cause that will be a completely different scandal.
As always with Tories, follow the money.
He waits 9 YEARS to tell us this, with his “estimate” of the effect on the day before the elections. Weird. I smell a rat.
Note the truly sickening use of the term ‘lives shortened’ rather than ‘deaths’ or ‘killed’!!!!