Desperate Kate Garraway admits she's cashed in her pension early to pay late husband's care bills

Good Morning Britain host Kate Garraway has revealed she has had to withdraw part of her pension early in order to pay off her late husband Derek Draper's outstanding medical bills.

Speaking on the show, Garraway was lamenting the growing number of people forced to fork out for private medical care for important surgery.

A panel discussed the knock-on effects of having to choose between expensive private treatment and 18-month-plus wait times for NHS coverage, citing a survey of patients who said they had to extract money from their pension pots or even get into debt in order to get treated in good time.

At this point, Garraway chimed in with the shock reveal that she was going through the same thing - and has had to draw on some of her own tax-free funds to cover her family's expenditure.

She told fellow presenters: "I am doing something similar myself.

"I have had to withdraw the bit you can tax free from my pension to pay for belated bills for my husband, who has now passed away.

"People are having to do things - it wasn't a huge pension in the first place - which aren't what they saved for."

Her pension confession comes after she previously admitted care bills for her late husband put her in debt, with costs soaring to £16,000 per month - more than her paycheque from ITV.

Draper had been in and out of hospital for years after a long battle with a Covid strain left him facing complications and invasive treatment - including a medically-induced coma.

And earlier this year, she made the tragic announcement that he had died aged 56.

But despite her and her husband's hardships, Garraway remained steadfast throughout; in March, she said she did not "regret or begrudge" covering Draper's extensive care debts, telling ITV's This Morning it was "the right thing to do".

She said: "I was lucky because I had a job where people understood and gave me time to rush off to hospital at a moment's notice, or be around, or go to the appointments, or be there to care.

"There was one time when they cancelled the care, which turned out to be a mistake, and in the end the carer did turn up even though they didn’t know they were going to get paid.

"And that’s the people that you’re dealing with, they’re travelling a long way, they don’t always live near you, they came.

"For those that are professional carers that are doing it on their own, it’s a massive thing and I don’t even think it’s political... I think it’s all of us, we’ve just got to realise that we have to make this a priority.

"As a society, we have to because we’re all going to get sick, we’re all going to be vulnerable, we’re all going to need it, or be the person doing the caring, probably both in a lifetime."