Ralf Little has launched an incredible takedown of Jeremy Hunt after a “double dare” on Twitter escalated into a weeks-long war of words between the pair.
The actor was incensed by the Health Secretary’s comments on mental health provision made on The Andrew Marr Show last month after which he accused him of lying to the British public.
Hunt responded to the challenge with his own “double dare” and after a hefty amount of research Little came back at him.
Here’s a summary (tap here full the thread in it’s entirety):
HOW IT BEGAN
Little introduces the tale...
The actor is referring to Hunt’s appearance on The Andrew Marr Show during which he said his tern Secretary of State for Health had seen “the biggest expansion of mental health provision in Europe”.
It’s worth noting that Hunt had already been called out and forced to admit that he misled MPs over the number of mental health workers in the NHS last month.
Undeterred, he fired Little’s challenge right back at him.
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED
‘I’M JUST AN ACTOR’
ONE - NIL
Little then dissects Hunt’s claims that “1400 more treated every day since 2010” and the numbers of people “in contact with doctors”, both of which he finds issue with.
IN SUMMARY
THE NEXT CHALLENGE
After that tsunami of facts Little then offered Hunt an opportunity to sit down for a little chat.
HUNT’S REPSONSE
The Health Secretary came under fire last month for claiming in the Commons that there were 30,000 more people working in mental health today than when Labour left office.
But when questioned by Channel 4′s FactCheck, the Department of Health admitted the figure included all professionally qualified clinical NHS staff in England, not just mental health workers.
The real increase is just 692 people - and the number of mental health nurses has in fact fallen by 5,000 since 2010.
A spokesman told Channel 4 that Hansard, Parliament’s official record, had been corrected but Hunt would not be making an apology.