JEREMY HUNT & PROFESSOR STEPHEN HAWKING

Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, has accused Professor Stephen Hawking of lying over the future of the NHS.

Professor Hawking (seen here presenting the prize to Rebecca Dann in our [Disability Talk’s] photographic competition “A World Of Unfairness”) claimed ‘that the direction of change [in the UK] is towards a US style insurance system’.

But Mr. Hunt hit back in a string of tweets stating, “most pernicious falsehood from Stephen Hawking is idea govt wants US style insurance system. Cons[ervatives] has seen more money, more doctors and more nurses than ever in history. Those with private med[ical] insurance DOWN over 9 per cent since 2009.

Professor Hawking’s attack also criticised the Government for landing the NHS ‘in a crisis’ by ‘underfunding and cuts, privatising services, the public pay cap, the new contract imposed on junior doctors, the removal of the student nurses’ bursary’.