B IG I N T ER VI EW
THE CONTINUITY CANDIDATE
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It was the wrong argument,” says Jeremy Hunt MP about the row over remote working that has plagued the GP profession over the last year. “We should have been having a discussion about continuity of care and stopping the ‘Uberisation’ of general practice than the much more mechanical issue of the nature of consultations.” Mr Hunt, 55, a former Health Secretary, Foreign Secretary and Prime Ministerial candidate, is on a mission to reinvigorate continuity of care in general practice, indeed across the NHS. Now Chair of the influential Health and Social Care Committee (HSCC), he continues: “We had a fake debate about face to face versus virtual meetings [but] if people were seeing a regular doctor that they knew, they’d be happy with a phone call or a text message, or an email. It’s when they think they’re seeing someone completely new they feel uneasy about not being able to see someone face to face.” “We know from last year’s Norway study,’ he continues, “that people are 30% less likely to go to hospital if they have a family doctor over a long period of time, and that’s the role we want GPs to be doing.” Hunt suggests a move back towards GPs having their own patient lists would both instil continuity of care and improve morale in general practice, though he’s realistic it couldn’t ‘happen overnight’. “GPs who remember the days when they had their own lists say that was the best bit about it,” he says, “knowing a patient as they grew older, knowing a patient’s family, having those links with generations, that’s what makes being a GP more rewarding than being a surgeon, because surgeons see someone once, GPs see someone over the course of their lives. “It’s relationship-based care,” he says coining the description used by College Chair Martin Marshall, “and I think that’s what patients want too, so I firmly believe that in terms of patient safety and restoring joy, if it’s not too inappropriate a word, in general practice, it’s what we need to work towards.” At this he rushes off to vote. We’re meeting on the afternoon that amendments to the Nationality and Borders Bill are being voted on in the House of Commons. Hunt has set up camp to take meetings in the bustling Pugin tea room
04 | BIG INTERVIEW
in the Palace of Westminster where he can disappear off down the corridor to the voting lobby as necessary. It’s a cacophony of clattering tea cups, high-spirited discussion and occasional voting bells. Familiar faces come and go and people stop to thank and congratulate Hunt for speeches and interventions he’s made. He’s clearly still at the centre of the action, despite not being in Government, and he relishes it. “On the backbenches you can say exactly what you think, you don’t have to follow the party line. I love that,” he says. Hunt, who was Health Secretary between 2012–2018 – the longest-serving in British political history – has been a prominent critic of Government in its handling of the pandemic. He’s on record as saying the country should have locked down earlier and elaborates: “With hindsight it is clear that we should have worked much more quickly to adopt a mass test, trace and isolate system to prevent the need for a full lockdown. Without that in place, we should have adopted a comprehensive lockdown much earlier which would have prevented virus spread and saved many lives even though that meant going against the scientific advice which was aimed at moderating the speed of infection.” Hunt has also spoken out against aspects of the Health and Care Bill, currently going through Parliament, defying the Tory Whip to support an amendment that would strengthen NHS workforce planning by forcing the Government to publish independently verified workforce projections every two years. He admits he ‘didn’t get everything right’ when he was Health Secretary and that he was ‘very disappointed’ at the progress he made in building the GP workforce, particularly as the 5,000 target – upped to 6,000 by Prime Minister Boris Johnson on his first day in office in 2019 – was one he had personally chosen to make. “We've been talking now for a decade about the principle that prevention is better than cure and GPs have a central role in the prevention agenda. The NHS will literally fall over if general practice isn't functioning and indeed it's starting to because we don't have the capacity in general practice that we need.” He says recruitment efforts were successful with 3,250, half of medical students, choosing
Grainge photography
Jeremy Hunt MP was Health Secretary for six years, now Chair of the influential Health and Social Care Committee, he speaks to Daniel Openshaw about his plans...
