Jeremy Hunt says new junior doctors’ contracts are ‘essential’ for seven day NHS

Jeremy Hunt isn’t going to back down on the changes to junior doctors’ contracts despite a growing row over the issue. When asked by Danny Finkelstein at a Times fringe about whether he might change his mind on the matter, he replied that the changes to the contract were essential to the introduction of the seven day NHS and so there would be no backing down. Hunt, who normally prides himself on his reasonable manner, was particularly critical of what the British Medical Association has been saying about these changes; claiming that they were systematically misleading people.

There was no danger of triumphalism on Hunt’s part when he talked about Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader. He described it as a defeat for the centre-right as it meant there is no longer a cross-party consensus on the market economy and the like. He was also dismissive of the idea that this rise of the Corbynite left represents some kind of new politics, suggesting that the hostile crowd gathered just outside the Tory conference venue was typical of the worst of the old politics.

Back in the day, some Tories flirted with the idea of changing the title of Secretary of State for Health to the Secretary of State for Public Health and Hunt was particularly interesting on the obesity crisis. He said that as a Tory he was instinctively reluctant to nanny adults, but he thought it was alright to nanny children. He complained that it was a ‘national disgrace’ that 1 in 5 children leave primary school clinically obese. He warned that this is too closely correlated with social class and suggested that a troubled families-style initiative might be needed to solve this problem.

But, perhaps, the most striking part of what Hunt said was his futurology. He warned that on current trends, Britain’s aging population would require 100 new care homes a month to open between now and 2020. He argued that this was simply not possible and so it needed to be made easier for elderly relatives to move in with their families. He indicated that making this easier would be a significant part of social care reform.