How ironic Jeremy Hunt would have failed his own social care test – The Yorkshire Post says

A political insult, it would also have compromised the integrity of these committees which have grown in stature thanks to their sound stewardship and unerring ability to expose the fallibility of Ministers and officials – the regret is that so many of their common sense pronouncements are routinely ignored.

These include the Health Select Committee which is today launching a new evaluation system in which Government progress on key health and social care targets will be judged by CQC-style ratings – the benchmark used to measure hospitals, care homes and so on. It certainly has the potential to hold Ministers to account more effectively – especially if they’re also required, by law, to explain themselves to Parliament when key targets are missed.

Yet here’s the irony. The committee is currently chaired by Jeremy Hunt who now accepts that he should have done far more to bring about lasting – and meaningful – social care reform when he was Health Secretary from 2012 until the summer 2018 and his elevation to the Foreign Office after Boris Johnson quit over Brexit.

Not only would he, and others, have been regularly censured if this format had been in place previously, but it is also doubtful that he would have been elected to head such a key committee and effectively judge his own homework – a concern of many that Mr Hunt has still to sufficiently dispel.

Editor’s note: first and foremost - and rarely have I written down these words with more sincerity - I hope this finds you well.

Almost certainly you are here because you value the quality and the integrity of the journalism produced by The Yorkshire Post’s journalists - almost all of which live alongside you in Yorkshire, spending the wages they earn with Yorkshire businesses - who last year took this title to the industry watchdog’s Most Trusted Newspaper in Britain accolade.

And that is why I must make an urgent request of you: as advertising revenue declines, your support becomes evermore crucial to the maintenance of the journalistic standards expected of The Yorkshire Post. If you can, safely, please buy a paper or take up a subscription. We want to continue to make you proud of Yorkshire’s National Newspaper but we are going to need your help.

Postal subscription copies can be ordered by calling 0330 4030066 or by emailing [email protected]. Vouchers, to be exchanged at retail sales outlets - our newsagents need you, too - can be subscribed to by contacting subscriptions on 0330 1235950 or by visiting www.localsubsplus.co.uk where you should select The Yorkshire Post from the list of titles available.

If you want to help right now, download our tablet app from the App / Play Stores. Every contribution you make helps to provide this county with the best regional journalism in the country.

Sincerely. Thank you.

James Mitchinson

Editor.