Mini Budget aka Fiscal Statement

[Lost It]

Really?

If you look at Hunt's history you will soon discover that when you looked past his press releases, you found a very different story – one of missed targets, lengthening waits, crumbling hospitals, missed opportunities, false solutions, funding boosts that vanished under scrutiny, and blaming everyone but himself.
Hunt’s hospital legacy?


Hunt took over responsibility for the NHS in 2012. By the time he left the post six years later, patient experience and staff morale had both taken a dramatic turn for the worse across many key indicators. The Winter crises deepened, with official figures showing 2017, 2018 and 2019 were successively “worst on record” up to that point. The British Medical Association (BMA) reported that by 2018, “the “winter crisis” has truly been replaced by a year-round crisis”. He took an axe to the NHS. Promised funding that was a rehash of what had been promised the year before, funding that never appeared.

The man systematically took apart everything that Labour had done to cripple the NHS. That's his "legacy".

NHS rules say 95% of patients visiting A&E should be seen within a maximum of four hours. When Hunt took over, the performance was just below target – 94.9%. Performance worsened steadily during his tenure and was 84% by the time he left, with the target having been missed every winter since 2013/4, and every single month since July 2015. That meant three times more patients waiting over four hours to be seen in A&E when Hunt left office than when he started. He damaged the NHS so much that even without Covid the figures were still climbing.

Hunt’s answer aside from making it harder to access the figures was to float the idea that patients could perhaps be banned from just walking up to A&E – an idea that he was forced to disavow, but that has resurfaced recently.

A&E is a bellwether for the NHS. The number of hospital beds (already low compared with those in most developed countries), also dropped significantly – from 135,559 beds in the quarter that Hunt took over, to 127,305 when he left, a loss of over 8,000 beds. Bed occupancy rates over 85% are considered overcrowding, and increase infection risks, cancelled operations and pressure on nurses. They peaked at record levels of over 90% in Hunt’s last winter – and this was an average, with some hospitals repeatedly hitting 100%.

Other targets – notably cancer referral times and waiting times for planned operations – also went from being comfortably exceeded to being missed every month under Hunt’s watch.

I was particularly concerned about the Cancer figures... Vested interest here.

Nationally and locally, a range of treatments were restricted. Hernia, hip and knee operation patients weren’t treated until they were in severe pain. Cataract operations and hearing aids were restricted to one eye or ear (who needs two anyway?). Vasectomies, erectile dysfunction treatment and diabetes monitoring were scrapped or severely restricted in growing numbers of areas. In response, NHS hospitals increasingly turned to offering ‘self-pay’ options to private patients.

Hunt oversaw years of historically low funding increases (around 1%, compared with an average of 6% in the years between 1997 and 2010, and compared with the 4.3% recommended by the Office of Budget Responsibility and the likes of the Kings Fund, Health Foundation and Nuffield Trust, as the minimum to keep up with health inflation and increasing demand). Perhaps most damagingly, he oversaw a significant cut to the amount that hospitals were paid per procedure (payments which make up three quarters of their income).

Hospitals now receive on average 10% less for treating a patient than the treatment actually costs the hospital (by the admission of the head of the then regulator, Ian Dalton). And when cash-strapped hospitals missed financial and performance targets that the Public Accounts Committee said were ‘unrealistic’, they were fined, something that – unsurprisingly – has been shown to do nothing to improve performance.

I stand by what I said. Hunt is the destroyer of the NHS.

[malvolio]

Hunt The NHS Destroyer can't lose can he? If he fails to steady the ship it's because Truss did them up like a chicken, if he does steady the ship it's because of his own brilliance. I bet he thought his front bench career was done, he;'s been handed a gilt edged reprieve.

You can't blame Hunt for the state of the NHS. I know several senior NHS people who think he did the best of an impossible job (those same people also know the answer - bin targets, centralise purchasing and sack all the non-clinical managers).

But apart from that, I agree that if he can get things back on course, which is not beyond him, it will do him no harm at all.

Meanwhile assorted papers are suggesting that the Tories are looking to Boris, May, Wallace, Braverman and Sunak to replace Truss, which rather demonstrates just how unfit to govern they really are. If only there was a half decent alternative...

[Lost It]

Hunt The NHS Destroyer can't lose can he? If he fails to steady the ship it's because Truss did them up like a chicken, if he does steady the ship it's because of his own brilliance. I bet he thought his front bench career was done, he;'s been handed a gilt edged reprieve.

[AtW]

“A Tory who has discussed the plans with senior figures in Downing Street said: “Jeremy thought [Truss] needed to U-turn on more than corporation tax. He thinks we need to be way more open to doing more. Kwasi also did the dividend tax cut, 19p, IR35 [tax avoidance legislation]. That’s a lot of billions going out of the door.””

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/n...-cut-r7nk6qtv7

[AtW]

"Hunt is expected to delay a 1p cut in income tax to help plug a black hole in the public finances that had reached £72bn, the Sunday Times reported.

He is expected to announce that plans to reduce the basic rate of income tax next April will be pushed back by a year.

According to the newspaper, the cut to 19% is to take effect at the time previously proposed by Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor, who was Truss’s main leadership rival."

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...truss-mistakes

So the only new thing is cutting NICs - will see if that survives...

[AtW]

So Kwarteng is gone, apparently. Hilarious. Truss will be following momentarily...

Banana republics got more credible, more predictable Govts - and low taxes too…

Corp tax going up - so FOCK BUSINESS never left the room.

Two other cut taxes are more than she u-turned on

[jamesbrown]

So Kwarteng is gone, apparently. Hilarious. Truss will be following momentarily...

[SueEllen]

He's a ******* nutjob and a danger to the country: https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/how-e...y-laws-gravity

Yep.

He's Professor Poll Tax, decimation of British Car Industry, Brextulip and now Kami-Kwasi economics.

As I remember Poll Tax brought down Thatcher as it got True Blue Tories out protesting as well as the great unwashed.

Found some of the interview -
https://twitter.com/LBC/status/15806...6RnXN1f9A&s=09

[darmstadt]

Interesting
https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/people/vie...inford-patrick

He's a ******* nutjob and a danger to the country: https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/how-e...y-laws-gravity

[SueEllen]

Just missed listening to Professor Mingford talking on LBC to the former Tory candidate Iain Dale who is a fan of any Tory but Truss.