Ms Polly Billington

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I agree that if we are to revive the high street, we will need to make sure that the online giants pay their way, and I look forward to making that argument in the future. I refer again to the 70-year-old woman I met on the doorstep in East Thanet who was told she had to wait 16 weeks for a potential cancer diagnosis. She also told me that this is impacting on her ability to provide childcare for her family. We sometimes do not appreciate the impact on society and our economy of having an inadequate healthcare system, but it has an enormously wide-ranging impact. Raising national insurance contributions on employers is a difficult choice, but given our economic inheritance and the dire state of our NHS, it is the right one. Do the Opposition think we should not increase NHS funding by £25.6 billion or that we should not recruit 6,500 new teachers for our schools? If they agree with these investments, how do they suggest we pay for them? There is a choice—stability, investment and reform, or chaos, incompetence and stagnation. I urge the House to support these measures to fund the NHS that the economy desperately needs.