The question I sought to answer was: how did the former Secretary of State for Health make the case – particularly the Conservative case – for public health intervention?
Basic services – the NHS, policing, schools, road maintenance, refuse collection, you name it – have gone to rack and ruin. Life expectancy has fallen sharply. We still have, to our shame, by far the worst drug death levels in Europe.
A plurality of party members express support for a system under which employers and employees fund most healthcare, rather than having it provided by the state free at the point of use.
We have been looking at how we can strengthen our laws to provide the police with the clarity they need to stop serious disruption and will come forward with those plans in the coming weeks.
His plan for 2024 is to say: “I may not be most exciting politician in the world. But I’m the more reliable of the two before you. What I promise I then deliver.” It’s unlikely to be enough on its own.
The speed with which the Prime Minister agreed to impose restrictions on Chinese travellers is deeply concerning.
Research found that just a 30-minute drive by car to an alternative provider of NHS care, public or private, can shave 14 weeks off your waiting time, lowering it from 22 weeks to just eight.
Foreign labour is an alternative to ministers facing up to how successive governments have gummed up domestic training and recruitment of medical staff.
The Prime Minister must make up his mind whether or not to see through a policy to stop the small boats – now an issue of profound symbolic importance.
The performance of the service is a product of a series of poor choices over the years. Putting those choices right would see it improve quickly.
At the Parliamentary event I hosted, Ruth March from AstraZeneca explained how precision medicine meant we could eradicate all deaths from cancer in her lifetime.
We can avoid getting into an argument about whether or not the Government’s plan is an industrial strategy. The Conservative Party has got rather hung up on that term.
We are still trying to clear the backlog created by Covid-19; industrial action will mean more delays and more preventable suffering.