Jeremy Hunt accuses Stephen Hawking of 'pernicious falsehood' in NHS row

Jeremy Hunt has accused Stephen Hawking of a “pernicious” lie after the physicist said it seemed the Tories were steering the UK towards a US-style health insurance system.

Hours after the health secretary was criticised for claiming Hawking was wrong in the row about the government’s seven-day NHS plan, he leapt back into the fray with two tweets defending the Conservative party’s record on the health service.

Hunt was responding to criticism from the renowned 75-year-old physicist and author of A Brief History of Time ahead of a speech at the Royal Society of Medicine on Saturday.

In the speech, Hawking will accuse the health secretary of “cherrypicking” favourable evidence while suppressing contradictory research to suit his argument.

In a Guardian opinion piece published on Friday, Hawking also criticised the power of profit-seeking multinationals, which he said had contributed to the inequalities rife in the US healthcare system.

“We see the balance of power in the UK is with private healthcare companies, and the direction of change is towards a US-style insurance system,” he wrote.

Responding to the criticism, Hunt tweeted:

Hunt’s outbursts on Saturday afternoon appeared on his Twitter timeline came immediately two more tweets laying into Hawking in which he said: “Stephen Hawking is brilliant physicist but wrong on lack of evidence 4 weekend effect.”

The shadow health minister, Justin Madders, weighed in on the row: “It doesn’t take a genius to work out the Tories are wrecking the NHS.

“Professor Hawking has given us answers to many of the universe’s most challenging questions, and even he can’t work out why Jeremy Hunt is still in his job.”

Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, said Hawking was a “brilliant scientist” with a “brilliant mind” and “brilliant thought process” who should be listened to.

Speaking to broadcasters in north Wales, Corbyn added: “And if Stephen Hawking is saying that our NHS is under threat and in danger and in crisis then I think we need to listen very very carefully with what he has to say. I admire Stephen and I agree absolutely with what he said.”

The former Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said: “A renowned scientist such as Stephen Hawking questioning your evidence might normally be cause to think again, but sadly it looks as though Jeremy Hunt has joined the chorus of those who have had enough of experts.

“It’s easy to accept evidence when it supports your ideological view of how a service should be provided, but we see this government ignoring the evidence time and time again when it suits them, be it on the NHS, our school system or leaving the single market.”

Social media users, including many doctors and scientists, mocked Hunt for taking on the “world’s most famous scientist”.

Martin McKee, professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, responded directly to Hunt, citing studies and articles that contradicted his argument.

McKee, who said he has been writing on the subject of hospital mortality for 22 years, added: “I’d appeal to those commenting not to personalise this with attacks on Hunt – let’s stick to evidence – it’s strong enough on its own.”

Trisha Greenhalgh, professor of primary care health sciences at Oxford University, said: “Awake to tweet from Jeremy Hunt telling Stephen Hawking he doesn’t know how to interpret evidence. Replies are good.”

In his speech, Hawking will single out Hunt, who claimed that 11,000 patients a year died because of understaffing of hospitals at weekends. He will say that four of the eight studies cited by the health secretary were not peer-reviewed and that he ignored 13 papers that contradicted his statements.

“Speaking as a scientist, cherrypicking evidence is unacceptable. When public figures abuse scientific argument, citing some studies but suppressing others, to justify policies that they want to implement for other reasons, it debases scientific culture,” Hawking will say.

Dr Lauren Gavaghan, a consultant psychiatrist‏ whose speech about the junior doctors dispute on James O’Brien’s LBC radio show last year went viral, told the Guardian that Hunt “purposefully misinterpreted statistics from a faulty paper around NHS weekend deaths, when the authors explicitly said that to use the figures would be ‘rash and misleading’. As a consequence of this, sick people did not seek medical help at weekends.

“Subsequent research has shown his ‘analysis’ to be wrong, yet the harm has unfortunately already been done. For Jeremy Hunt to now have the audacity to dispute Professor Stephen Hawking, arguably the world’s most brilliant mind and a man who has dedicated his life to the complex analysis of data, on the interpretation of these academic papers is quite simply laughable.”

Gavaghan called for Hunt to debate with Hawking on live television. “Given also that Jeremy Hunt enjoys presenting himself as a patient advocate, it would seem that he has an opportunity at humility here, to perhaps learn something from an experienced patient – for Professor Hawking has of course himself been a lifelong patient of the NHS.

“He has much to say about the rapid privatisation of the NHS that is taking place currently, and fears this will lead to an unequal, unfair two-tier health service. I wonder if Jeremy Hunt might take up my offer,” she said.