Speeches/Articles

Speaking at the Nursing Times Annual Summit in Buckinghamshire, Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: “When people think about the ideal standard of nursing, they often hark back to a traditional idyll in which nurses keep strict watch over immaculate wards and hospital infections are non-existent."

2008 was a difficult year. 2009 looks set to be even tougher: shrouded in economic gloom and ushered in against a background of recession and rising unemployment. Many people in Cambridgeshire are understandably worried about their jobs, their mortgage costs, or how they will keep their businesses afloat.

It is a pleasure to be with you in York today. I wanted to come to your conference for three reasons: because you asked me, and in Opposition you don’t take that for granted; secondly, because as the Healthcare Commission reported, Mental Health Trusts offer some of the consistently highest standards of management in the NHS, and, thirdly, because on your shoulders will fall some of the most serious consequences of our present economic crisis, and I want to tell you how I believe Government should help.

Thank-you for being here this morning. Thank-you, especially, to Reform for arranging this opportunity. Even if Reform and I don’t always see eye-to-eye on the future funding of healthcare, I have a great respect for the quality of the research and thinking they are doing on healthcare.

Over the last two and a half years, my colleagues and I have set out in considerable detail how we see the system design for the future of the NHS. In this, the diamond jubilee year of the NHS, I believe these are proposals which meet the needs of the service. They sustain the underlying values of the NHS. Indeed, for the first time, we would put the principles of the NHS into the statutory framework for the service.

Thank you for the opportunity to be with you today. I’m glad to have the chance to talk about the issues facing midwifery and maternity services. My colleague and I have become closely involved across the country in the defence of access to maternity services. Nationally, over the last year, we and the RCM have been at the forefront in identifying the implications of a rising birth rate and the consequences for maternity care.

Cancer services are better co-ordinated, building on the development of cancer networks since the Calman-Hine report published under the last Conservative Government. Multidisciplinary team working and an increase in the number of health professionals working in the cancer field have been important in enhancing services. Overall, survival rates continue to improve and have done since the mid-1980s.

I want to thank you for the chance to join you in your discussions. I do particularly want to welcome delegates coming from overseas and America to join us here in London. I do hope you will have an opportunity to enjoy your time in our great capital city – and perhaps even visit Cambridge, which is our premier city of Science and Technology and which I have in part the privilege to represent.

Good morning and thank you for joining us. Lots of you have come from far a-field, which emphasises just how important the
issue of patient and public involvement has become.

Next week, it will be one year since the bombings in London. My constituents, travelling into London via Kings Cross, were amongst those caught up in the blast. The London Assembly’s report into the 7th July bombings said of the members of the London Ambulance Service that “their many individual acts of courage, skill and initiative led to the saving of many lives that may otherwise have been lost”. It is vital we remember that next week, and express our thanks.