Hunt’s Legacy as Health Secretary is ‘Better Settlement’ Than Expected, says NHS Confed chief

In response to Jeremy Hunt leaving his post as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and becoming Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Niall Dickson, Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation, said:

“The great survivor as health secretary has moved on. His legacy will be a better settlement for health than many had expected and a real focus on patient safety.

“He inherited a tangled mess of a reorganisation from his predecessor and he had to live with a succession of austere funding settlements which were never going to meet rising demand.

“Given so little to play with, Hunt deserves credit for helping to keep the show on the road, but the health service – better in many ways – has also slipped back when it comes to meeting many of its core standards.

“His successor has one overwhelming challenge – how to help the NHS and the social care system to become sustainable in the face of rising demand and a severe workforce crisis.”