Doctors are quietly celebrating the departure of long-standing health secretary Jeremy Hunt to the Foreign Office, after years of fraught relations between the health secretary and the medical profession.
Hunt was appointed foreign secretary on Monday evening after the dramatic resignation of Boris Johnson in a rebellion against prime minister Theresa May's proposed Brexit deal. Former culture secretary Matt Hancock will replace Hunt as health secretary.
"Jeremy Hunt did not have the trust of the medical or nursing professions and change is long overdue and very welcome," Taryn Youngstein, an NHS rheumatologist in London told BuzzFeed News.
"Hunt found few friends with nurses and doctors, and he cost us a lot of staff in lost junior doctors to Australia and New Zealand, and the cuts to nursing bursaries," Philip Lee, an elderly care and acute medicine physician at an NHS hospital in London, said.
Lee, however, did defend Hunt's passion for patient safety. Hunt pledged to be a committed advocate for patient safety when he was appointed as health secretary shortly after the Mid Staffordshire scandal, in which several patients died as a result of poor care.
Hunt had been health secretary since 2012, and the last few years have been especially tumultuous.
In 2016, doctors went on strike for the first time since the 1970s as a result of radical changes to their working hours and payment. While Hunt did manage to get much of his originally proposed contract through, he has since faced legal challenges from doctors.
The same year, Hunt oversaw the scrapping of funding to train new nurses, which led to a significant decrease in new applications. That, coupled with a decline in both doctors and nurses who come from other European Union countries as a result of concerns over Brexit, has exacerbated staff shortages.
While NHS finances have been an issue that has dogged Hunt's tenure as health secretary – with a deficit of more than £20 billion that he was tasked to eliminate – he did recently secure a significant funding increase for the health service.
"We decided we wanted to do something extra for the NHS frontline ahead of the 70th anniversary on 5 July," Hunt recently told BuzzFeed News. "We also decided that the best thing was to give the NHS a really detailed plan, so we needed to announce the money we were prepared to put on the table ahead of the Budget."
He admitted that the NHS still has significant staff shortages, and also hinted at further cuts to the health service in order to better sell tax rises to the public. "If the public see that the NHS has got a good plan to tackle waste and inefficiency and improve productivity and their money’s going to be well spent, then I think they will be very supportive," he said.
But critics say that even with a cash injection the service is underfunded, and as Hunt made his way to the Foreign Office on Monday, some doctors feared that a change in health secretary alone might not have significant impact on these issues.
"It is the same political party and same health policy so I see no reason to be positive about this name change in the Department for Health," David Wrigley, a GP in Lancashire, told BuzzFeed News.
"The mismanagement of the NHS was always bigger than Hunt," Dr Amar Mashru, an emergency medicine specialist who was involved in a legal challenge against Hunt last year, told BuzzFeed News.
"We need longevity, safeguarding and resource protection for this health service to be able to do what it can do best and that just isn’t going to happen if it continues to fall victim to the whims of manifesto promises, egos, reshuffles and power grabs," he added.
Dr Nadia Masood, an anaesthetic registrar who was involved in the legal challenge alongside Mashru, also doubted that Hunt's departure would make much difference.
"I don't think there'll be any celebrating as there is so much uncertainty and instability in this country at the moment with regards to Brexit and what the future holds for us all," she said.
"The only good shake-up for our NHS is one that involves a government committed to resourcing the NHS with what the population needs, which the current government have failed to do since they took power.
"With regards to the NHS I've lost faith in the current government."
But recognising that Brexit could have a huge impact on the future of the NHS, even some of Hunt's fiercest opponents wished him well in his new job.
"Jeremy Hunt is going to [a] role that is vital for our country so we should all wish him well and hope the whole government sees the error of their current path with Brexit," Dr Johann Malawana, who led the British Medical Association Junior Doctors Committee at the height of the contract negotiations, said.
"It is important for those in government to realise that it is more important to get the deal than declaring victory."