Wes Streeting

I am grateful for that thoughtful question. Let me say two things to the right hon. Gentleman. The first relates to the wider fiscal pressures on the Chancellor. I find it difficult enough to manage the different choices and trade-offs to be made between different parts of health and social care and the competing challenges that I hear from Members in all parts of the House, so I am always thankful that I am not the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who has to balance demands from the NHS alongside the demands of education, a rising welfare bill, rising child poverty and the threats to our nation. These are enormous challenges, which is why I am determined to ensure that every penny that goes into the health service is well spent. My second responsibility, in addition to ensuring that patients are treated at the right time, in the right place and in the right way, is ensuring that we have a sustainable healthcare system in which there is reduced demand. That means doing more on the prevention side, so that we can keep people out of hospital and not needing to knock on the door of their GP surgery, so that they do not achieve the frequent flier status in the NHS that so many people do achieve—the one frequent flier status to which they do not aspire. We can deal with this only through both health service reform and public health reform, and I want very much to build cross-party consensus on the latter.