Who is Jeremy Hunt?

by Nima Ghadiri

Jeremy Hunt is the United Kingdom’s Secretary of State for Health. He is currently engaged in a colossal dispute with junior doctors over a new contract proposal which he states is better for junior doctors and will make the hospital a safer place at weekends. His detractors believe that the new contract is in practice less safe, spreads doctors too thinly over the week and is already resulting in an exodus of doctors from the health service. Many have observed that he has wilfully misinterpreted cause-and-effect in quoting data about weekend mortality rates, and that a routine 7-day health service is a noble goal, but needs to be matched with an increase in spending — when in practice the opposite is happening in the United Kingdom.

In anger over this proposed contract, Junior Doctors went on strike for the first time in forty years on Tuesday 12th January, providing emergency care only. This is to be followed by a further 48-hour strike on Tuesday 26th January and a strike of all services (including emergency) on Wednesday 10th February. Jeremy Hunt believes that junior doctors are being misinformed by their union, and has threatened a “nuclear option” of introducing a contract regardless of…