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Jeremy Hunt was appointed health secretary with a simple objective – keep negative NHS stories out of the news. While the goal is simple, achieving it is becoming more difficult. Especially with issues like the revision of the Cancer Drugs Fund, the junior doctors strike and the recent controversy over safe staffing levels becoming more prominent.

Roy Jenkins memorably compared Tony Blair, in maintaining Labour’s lead over the Conservatives in the run up to the 1997 election, as being ‘like a man carrying a priceless vase of Chinese porcelain across a slippery floor’.

Hunt is in the same position with his stewardship of the NHS. The health service has often been a weak point for the Tories. Cameron managed to do a decent job reassuring the public that the vase would be safe in his hands in the run up to the 2010 election. Andrew Lansley then fumbled it.

Hunt’s mission was to get things back on track, and he this did fairly successfully. Health was largely negated as a highly damaging issue for the Tories in last years’ election. But that was just the easy part.

With funding becoming tighter many people in and around government are now finding the low hanging fruit has already been picked. The relatively easy cuts were made in the last parliament, things are starting to hurt.

The problem for Hunt is that the significant additional resources the government has committed to NHSE over the course of this parliament are not enough. The NHS in England, used to large budget increases, saw its budget remain flat over the course of the last parliament. At the same time it faced increased demographic pressures and additional costs, such as the introduction of new technologies.

NHSE is now facing additional strains on its precious resources with structural changes on the cards throughout the service and the introduction of policies such as the Seven Day NHS.

In the last parliament satisfaction with NHSE remained high. Whilst there were grumbles about the NHS, and there always are, the major public complaint was difficulty in getting GP appointments. However, additional problems are beginning to spill into the public consciousness.

The Cancer Drugs Fund is on the agenda again, with patient groups ready to campaign against the likely rationing of critical treatments. It has emerged that NICE proposed stronger staffing levels than are currently being implemented, which will lead to difficult questions to answer if a quality failure emerges. To top it all off, the junior doctors’ strike has been at the top of the news agenda in recent weeks.

It is likely that problems such as these, which all stem from budget constraints, will continue to emerge over the near to medium term.

Are we reaching a tipping point where enough interest groups are angered by the state of the health service that guns will turn on Hunt? There are already rumours that Boris Johnson will be handed the brief in order to damage his leadership challenges. But that seems too much of a risk in the run up to the 2020 election.

Hunt’s time isn’t up yet but he will need to move more swiftly to head off emerging problems. In particular, he will need to find creative solutions to ensure efficiency savings and local structural reforms don’t damage patient care. The hard work is just beginning.