Hunt says the ‘10,000 more NHS staff in psychiatric hospitals’ will be there as patients

He’s even got his own little badge

Jeremy Hunt has vowed to bear down on NHS staff strongly enough so that 10,000 of them are admitted to psychiatric care by 2020. “That’s 10,000 more, on top of those already there”.

“More doctors, more nurses, and more health workers, all in the care of a strong and stable government. You know, that sounded rather Churchillian, don’t you think?”

“We’ll be using cognitive behavioural therapy” explained Hunt “Partly because doctors we’ve paid to say so say it’s effective, partly because CBT is easier to say than psychotherapy, but mostly because it’s cheap.”

“Then, when the staff patients are feeling a bit more chipper, say after six 20-minute sessions, they might do some occupational therapy. Perhaps some unpaid volunteering work, maybe at their local hospital. There’s always something there that needs doing and it’ll make them feel better about themselves, giving something back to society.”

“This is new money,” he was keen to emphasise. “When I say ‘new’, I mean it’ll be paid in the new plastic bank notes, all ten of them. Obviously you need something that’s wipe-clean in a hospital environment.”

In a wide-ranging discussion on health matters, Mr Hunt also told the BBC on Sunday that a failure to hit A&E targets was “not acceptable” and pledged to find out who is responsible, if he’s ever in a position to do so.