Crosby, Hunt and Burnham.

I detect the hand of Lynton Crosby again – the prime minister’s Australian election strategist with a few skeletons in his cupboard.

Last week the health secretary, Jeremy hunt, accused his Labour predecessor Andy Burnham of ordering the Care Quality Commission to ‘bury’ a critical report into care standards at Basildon and Thurrock NHS Trust. At the same time some selective e-mails from the CQC were released to a Tory M.P.

Burnham bit back at the weekend – he pointed out that he had launched the enquiry into Basildon amongst others and demanded a retraction – then he threatened to sue.

Now the Cabinet secretary has apologised about the release of the e-mails which breached Civil Service guidelines and Hunt has sent a letter to Burnham saying that he never meant to suggest Burnham was “personally involved in covering up poor care” and did not doubt his rival’s integrity. (I took that from The Guardian, it’s their description rather than mine).

All the press stories went out, the minister’s tweet is still up there but there has been a mealy mouthed retraction of sorts, not amounting to an apology.

I doubt Burnham will sue – it’s a lot of wasted time and money. My view is that neither of them has anything to be proud of and that we are unlikely to ever find out what was really going on.

Meanwhile, some time ago I promised to review the frontrunners for the coming vacancy at the top of the NHS – something else we won’t be consulted over – I will do that in the next few days, while trying to avoid the lawyers myself.

Neil Harris

(a don’t stop till you drop production)