Jeremy Hunt defends mental health policies on Twitter amid Ralf Little criticism

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has launched a Twitter rant in response to online criticism from actor Ralf Little.

Mr Hunt posted 26 consecutive Tweets to “put the record straight” after Little called him out on his comments on mental health provision.

The Health Secretary said he would meet the Royle Family actor if he could “provide me with evidence that I was – as you claim – deliberately seeking to mislead the public about mental health”.

The pair have been having a war of words on the social media site since Mr Hunt appeared on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show last month.

Little said that Mr Hunt had “knowingly lied” to the public during the appearance, during which he said: “What has actually happened on my watch is the biggest expansion of mental health provision in Europe.”

The minister then “double dared” the actor to find a European country that has done more.

Little then wrote a series of 42 tweets about the state of mental health, including workforce statistics.

Responding, Mr Hunt wrote a series of tweets to “get to the bottom of the issue”.

The MP for south-west Surrey set out a series of measures that have been initiated to improve mental health services and workforce, and added: “There may be a European country with bigger expansion plans but I have yet to find it.

“I am sure I don’t get everything right but on the basis of the evidence no reasonable person could describe the claim as ‘knowingly lying’.”

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