'I owe the NHS my life!' Rachel Johnson speaks out over Britain's health service

15 May 2022, 21:28

Rachel Johnson has given a moving tribute to the NHS, which she credited with saving "my life", "the lives of my three children" and "the life of my husband".

The LBC presenter was responding to comments from Jeremy Hunt, the former health secretary, who said the NHS has "major structural problems" in a new book.

Rachel said: "Speaking personally for a second the NHS has been absolutely fantastic and I owe the NHS the lives of my three children, I owe the NHS the life of my husband who gave him a successful liver transplant, I owe the NHS my life when a childbirth went wrong and I had to have an emergency cesarean.

"I want to name a particular hospital where all this happened which is St Mary's Paddington in London."

Whilst insisting it is "very fair and proper" to question the NHS "when things go wrong", Rachel questioned Mr Hunt's "motivation" in making his comments at this point.

She commented: "I'm sure there's a lot of truth in what Jeremy says but I question the motivation and the point of saying it like this, given we've got an incredibly hard working, hard pressed NHS.

"We've got many millions of English people on waiting lists.

"To debilitate, psychologically, the service at this time I find a bit questionable."

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'I'm frightened for my patients.'

Mr Hunt, who now chairs the Health Select Committee, has been tipped as a potential Tory leadership contender.

He has been promoting his new book "Zero: Eliminating Unnecessary Deaths in a Post-Pandemic NHS", in which he described elements of Britain's health service as "a rogue system".

Mr Hunt wrote: "Too often managers who had failed were recycled to jobs in a different part of the country, where they continued to make the same mistakes.

"And because of the secrecy, the wheels of change ground slowly.

"It was not about rogue staff or a rogue hospital. It was about a rogue system.

"A rogue system that I, as health secretary, sat at the top of."