Political editor Paul Francis gives his opinion on the Rishi Sunak's healthcare debacle...

The continuing crisis in the NHS has put the government on the back foot over nurses’ pay, waiting times and bed blocking.

But these issues were put to one side by the burning question about whether the Prime Minister had private health care cover.

It was not a question he was comfortable with when quizzed about it at the weekend; indeed, he looked distinctly unhappy about it and fell back on the traditional political defence that what he and his family did in their private lives was off limits.

There’s some sympathy for our leaders on this; as a rule of thumb, what falls into the ‘private’ aspects of their lives is not something that ordinarily we would expect to know about.

On the other hand, what is indisputably something we should know is how much the Prime Minister’s salary is.

We know it is £161,401 but that is split between what the PM gets by way of salary for being an MP - £79,496 - and the rest for leading the country.

Declaring that you have private healthcare is something which falls into a grey area. The argument is not dissimilar to the one about which school the Prime Minister (and education secretary) send their children to.

'The PM’s failure to come clean has overshadowed an announcement on what is actually an important issue for Kent’s hospitals...'

When Michael Gove was appointed secretary of state for education, he decided that he would be upfront about the fact that he was sending his daughter to a state-run primary school.

Now, that’s the easy way to deal with it, as it’s seen as a vote of confidence in state-run schools. Imagine if the decision was to send the child to a fee-paying, independent and private school?

That’s harder to defend as it looks like a kick in the face for those who don’t have the money to make an alternative choice.

So, what should Sunak have done? For starters, he should have avoided using the word ‘distraction’ - a word which politicians deploy to put the media off the scent but has the opposite effect.

It’s hard to believe that he did not run through with his spin doctors how he should respond in a set-piece interview but his fumbling efforts to bury the issue was enough of a giveaway. If he had no private healthcare now but did in the past, then he could have safely said so.

If, on the other hand, he still had some kind of cover, that would be harder to explain or justify - although if you want to see how it should be done, Margaret Thatcher gave a masterclass in answering just such a difficult question when she was challenged on her use of private healthcare for a minor operation.

So, the PM’s failure to come clean has overshadowed an announcement on what is actually an important issue for Kent’s hospitals.

The government’s intention to ‘buy up’ care home beds to ease the pressure on hospital wards is an acceptance that the ‘crisis’ - another word politicians dislike - is real.

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