Jeremy Hunt’s hypocrisy over social care – The Yorkshire Post says

Words that many will regard as hypocritical, they came as Mr Hunt began a Parliamentary inquiry of the Government’s handling of Covid in his current capacity as chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee.

And while The Yorkshire Post has previously maintained that former Ministers should not be in a position to effectively mark their own homework, especially given how the Department of Health’s pandemic planning during Mr Hunt’s tenureship is open to debate, he was right to admonish his successors for allowing hospital patients to be discharged into care homes while carrying Covid symptoms.

It did prompt this admission from Helen Whately, the Care Minister, that “some care homes had felt under pressure to accept people who had been discharged, and that should not have been the case”.

A telling admission of failure that must not be repeated in the second wave of cases, it came just as the Scarborough-based Independent Care Group said deaths in its sector were “creeping up” and that the Government needed to “provide urgent, emergency short-term support”.

Specifically, it also said the ability of care homes to respond to Covid had been undermined by under-funding and political neglect by successive governments, including the period from 2012-18 when Mr Hunt was Health Secretary. Perhaps he’d like to care to respond to this before his next self-serving lecture in sanctimony.

Support The Yorkshire Post and become a subscriber today.

Your subscription will help us to continue to bring quality news to the people of Yorkshire. In return, you’ll see fewer ads on site, get free access to our app and receive exclusive members-only offers.

So, please - if you can - pay for our work. Just £5 per month is the starting point. If you think that which we are trying to achieve is worth more, you can pay us what you think we are worth. By doing so, you will be investing in something that is becoming increasingly rare. Independent journalism that cares less about right and left and more about right and wrong. Journalism you can trust.

Thank you

James Mitchinson