Member

Lord Darzi has given his diagnosis. Now it is over to us to write the prescription, and we have three choices. The first is to continue the Conservatives’ neglect, and allow the NHS to collapse. That is the path on which they set the NHS, and the path that it is on today. Or we could—as some of my critics on the left demand—pour ever-increasing amounts of money in without reform, wasting money that is not there and that working people cannot afford to pay. That would be wasteful and irresponsible, so we will not take that path. This Government are making a different choice: we choose recovery and reform. We are taking action today to deal with the immediate crisis by hiring 1,000 GPs whom the Conservatives had left without a job while patients were going without an appointment, and agreeing an offer to end the strikes that they allowed to cripple our health service.