‘I’m entitled not to listen to Sage’: an interview with Sajid Javid

In six years Sajid Javid has had six cabinet jobs. He has been culture secretary, business secretary, communities secretary, home secretary and chancellor — and, just over 100 days ago, he was made Secretary of State for Health. When we meet on stage for an interview at Tory party conference, I ask him about his credentials for the job. He has none. ‘But that’s not unusual for a health secretary,’ he chirps. And experience? He has visited a few hospitals. He then offers the story of his early run-in with the NHS.

As a child, he had his appendix removed in hospital. ‘Next thing I remember is being back at home in bed, being cuddled by teddy and feeling much better.’ Soon he was in pain again. ‘I go to the hospital, they do a scan and it turns out they left an instrument inside me.’ His mother, he says, was so traumatised that she still can’t remember the details. ‘She thinks it was a pair of scissors, but isn’t sure.’ Five-year-old Javid’s abdomen was reopened and the object was retrieved.

It’s an experience which might have persuaded Javid of the need for reform of the country’s healthcare system. But in recent years, the Tories have instead positioned themselves as cheerleaders for the NHS. Javid’s predecessors, Matt Hancock and Jeremy Hunt, wore an NHS lapel badge to work every day. Boris Johnson proclaimed that the Conservatives are the ‘party of the NHS’ as he announced its third funding increase in four years. The latest cash injection is funded by a tax rise, in defiance of the Tories 2019 manifesto pledge — a pledge that was put there at the insistence of the then chancellor, Sajid Javid.