Any lessons Jeremy Hunt learns from the junior doctors’ dispute will be bad for the NHS
![Jeremy Hunt said he had come to appreciate there was a lot of anger during the protracted dispute with junior doctors [Image: Neil Hall/PA].](https://voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/160512-Hunt.png)
Jeremy Hunt said he had come to appreciate there was a lot of anger during the protracted dispute with junior doctors [Image: Neil Hall/PA].
I don’t.
When Tories come back from industrial disputes and say there are lessons to be learned, they mean just one thing:
They regret any compromises and intend to impose their will more successfully next time.
Jeremy Hunt has said he has “lessons to learn” from his protracted dispute with junior doctors over plans to overhaul their contracts and reorganise NHS services.
The health secretary’s comments came a day after he emerged from talks with the British Medical Association with a new deal which they hoped would end the row, which has led to eight days of unprecedented strike action by doctors.
Speaking on the Today programme on Radio 4, Hunt insisted the government had secured its “red lines” for delivering its commitment to a seven-day health service by driving down the cost of employing doctors over the weekend.
But he added: “I don’t think you can go through what we have been through for the last 10 months and say that everyone hasn’t got lessons to learn, including the health secretary.
“What I do say is we have come to appreciate that there was a lot of anger, a lot of frustration felt by junior doctors about things that extended well beyond their contract.”
Source: Jeremy Hunt: I have lessons to learn from junior doctors’ dispute | Society | The Guardian
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Hunt has probably learned how to be more vindictive in future. If he didn’t know already, then he has probably also learned just how hated and reviled he is by the vast majority of the population.
a lot of frustration felt by junior doctors about things that extended well beyond their contract.
What’s the silent message behind this vague utterance?
Words of ‘wisdom’ from the book that Hunt co-authored with Douglas Carswell outlining the privatisation of the NHS in 2005:
Doctors have been subjected to growing numbers of national standards frameworks that impinge on their clinical autonomy and deny them scope to respond to the particular needs of their patients.
Doctors have to chase meaningless targets set by the NHS quangoes that run the health service, whilst patients wait months for operations.
The centralisation of power in the hands of remote élites is denying people the public services they have a right to expect.
Throughout, we are guided by three principles:
Decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the people they affect
Law-makers should be directly accountable
The citizen should enjoy maximum freedom from state control
The problem with the NHS is not one of resources.
Rather, it is that the system remains a centrally run, state monopoly, designed over half a century ago