Conference season is all but over and MPs are back in Westminster ready to hit the ground running. Jeremy Hunt may have quipped that he was not the most interesting Jeremy in politics, but he managed to cause some interest nonetheless. Mishaps with trains and comments beyond his brief arguably overshadowed his speech.
Maybe for Hunt things would get better when he got back to the safety of Westminster.
Hunting for Jeremy
The state of NHS finance has been high on the news agenda for weeks. Recent reports about the £930m deficit in hospitals for the first three months of 2015-16 bought home just how serious the financial problems of the NHS have become. This is even before winter pressures put the NHS under further strain.
Shadow Health Secretary, Heidi Alexander, secured an urgent question in Parliament to challenge the Health Secretary to respond on these issues. However, ‘diary commitments at the Department’ prevented him from facing his opposite number in the chamber.
In his place Health Minister Ben Gummer did his best to reassure colleagues that the £10bn additional funding already committed to the NHS will help to secure its future, although big questions remain about this year. The upcoming Spending Review will provide an interesting insight into how the Chancellor responds to the challenge – one that is sure not to be dropping off Labour’s agenda in the near future.
Heidi on the hunt
.jpeg "Heidi Alexander MP")
This week Hunt also faced his first Health Questions against Alexander. It was a confident start from the new (but not New) Labour shadow, who will hope to establish her national profile in a traditional area of Labour strength.
In doing so, she’ll not only need to cross swords with Hunt, who has a deserved reputation as an effective communicator, but will also need to carve out a voice for herself beyond that of her predecessor, Andy Burnham, who has long been the face of health for the Labour Party. Her focus on quality – an issue that Hunt has also championed and where she might be expected to strike a difference in tone to her predecessor – and her ability to effectively scrutinise the performance of the NHS over winter, will be early determinants of her success.
The other Jeremy
The other Jeremy made his second appearance at Prime Minister’s Questions, where he once again chose to showcase his ‘new politics’ with questions from the public. Although the focus was on tax credits and housing, the new Leader of the Opposition for the first time raised a health issue. Kudos goes to Breast Cancer Care whose supporters raised the issue of data collection on secondary breast cancer. This is an important issue that in the past would rarely have registered with leaders of the Opposition as a candidate for PMQs. The new politics is evidently creating new lobbying opportunities.