Health Minister says he never accepted hiring controls officials called crucial to the budget

Health Minister Simeon Brown says he never accepted a policy by senior health officials to keep tight controls on hiring frontline staff, despite a March briefing telling him those controls were crucial to meeting the health budget. Then commissioner Professor Lester Levy and interim chief executive Dr Dale Bramley advised Brown that hiring frontline workers required deputy chief executive sign-off. Brown says he wrote to Health New Zealand in November urging faster hiring. The gap between the briefing and that letter remains unexplained.