Andy Burnham summoned Jeremy Hunt to the Commons this afternoon for a shouty hour about who loves the NHS more. The Health Secretary’s answer to Labour’s urgent question on the government’s plans for changes to the GP contract and the crisis in Accident and Emergency departments was largely a direct attack on decisions the opposition took when it was in government.
He decried Labour’s ‘disastrous changes to the GP contract’ which had led to a significant rise in the number of patients visiting A&E, and ‘the disastrous failure of Labour’s IT contract’. He also told Burnham that his government had failed to address the disconnect between social care and the health service. Later, he said:
‘I’m not blaming any doctors, I am blaming the party opposite for the disastrous decisions that they made when in government.’
Hunt has been positioning himself as the ‘patients’ champion’ for months now. But thus far he has been fortunate to have a clear distance between crises that happened under the last government and his response to them. Now the crisis is happening on his watch, he knows he has to be more aggressive about pointing back to Labour’s decisions. There was a section in the shouty hour where he repeatedly asked Burnham whether he was ‘prepared to take responsibility’ for the decisions his party took.
Tory MPs are getting nervous not just about a crisis unfolding in A&E, but also about the effects of greater scrutiny on the NHS in general. One backbencher I spoke to recently said: ‘I’m obviously completely behind the Lansley reforms, but the problem with increased local accountability is that more scandals will emerge while we’re in power and we’ve got to show that it’s not our fault.’ Similarly, Therese Coffey intervened in the Commons debate today to ask Hunt to ensure that ‘patients realise that we are on the side of them’. Hunt will have to show similar aggression over a sustained period to steer voters away from punishing the government for NHS crises.
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