Former Tory health secretary Jeremy Hunt has admitted he left the NHS underprepared for the pandemic because he was “too slow to boost the NHS workforce”.
In a frank interview with the British Medical Journal, Mr Hunt said: “We’ve really been on the back foot from the start on test and trace, and in some ways it dates back to the period when I was Health Secretary.
"If you don’t plan for the NHS workforce strategically, it ends up costing the taxpayer much more because the NHS then ends up recruiting locum doctors and agency nurses who are much more expensive.”
Mr Hunt, Britain’s longest-serving Health Secretary, oversaw the Tories’ austerity drive on the NHS from 2012 to 2018.
Years of record-low funding rises saw waiting lists spiral as the UK was left with one of the lowest number of hospital beds per head of population in the developed world.
Now chairman of the Health Select Committee, which is set to publish its report into lessons learned from the UK’s Covid-19 response, he has supported the call for a public inquiry into the handling of the pandemic, but not until it is “under control”.
After reinventing himself as a “critical friend” of the Government’s stewardship of the NHS in his new role, Mr Hunt will today join 28 figures from across the political spectrum demanding reform of the social care system.
Dame Donna Kinnair, Royal College of Nursing chief, said: “The pandemic means the fragility of the nursing workforce is now an inescapable reality.”
