Speeches by Streeting.

“That is great; I am really pleased about that.”

“This is one of the things that I have a sharp eye on, and there is definitely inconsistency across the country in coverage and impact. Going back to one of my earlier points, if we can take the best and leading practice and make sure that it is consistently delivered across the country, that will be better use of taxpa…”

“To reassure people specifically on mental health, because I know there is lots of interest in it, bear in mind that in the first five months we have introduced the Mental Health Bill in Parliament, and not as a draft Bill or pre-legislative scrutiny; we have actually introduced the Bill. This will be the first time the…”

“This is definitely by way of reassurance: what you will not get from the 10-year plan is just a set of vision and values statements. We have done quite a lot of that, actually, and we have come into government with a clear sense of direction. We identified the three big shifts. Those three shifts—hospital to community,…”

“We are consulting on that at the moment. It is a genuine consultation. I do not want to pre-empt a live consultation and disrespect people who are giving up their time to input, but it will be about delivery, not simply about objectives and targets. It will be about the how, not just the what. So how do we shift from—”

“Yes, and, crucially, how do we shift from hospital to community, how do we shift from analogue to digital, how do we shift from sickness to prevention, and what are the priorities we are choosing as a Government to deliver those shifts?”

“Oh, we’ve got to make progress on all three shifts, otherwise we’re stuffed.”

“Choosing between children.”

“Oh, you knew where I was going with that!”

“I am torn on this one. I would say that if there is one thing that would make a demonstrable improvement in the patient experience, the level of personalised care and the extent to which we can run and lead this system more effectively and efficiently, it is around the shift from analogue to digital. When I talk about …”

“I really am. Since we launched change.nhs.uk back in October, we have had 1.2 million visits to the website. Over 100,000 people have registered, 70,000 have sent survey responses and over 10,000 have contributed ideas. Yes, some of the ideas involve firing me out of a cannon, or putting a Wetherspoons in every hospita…”

“That is a fair challenge, and in the spirit of transparency I will give you some other anxieties I have about participation, not least because it might help us to get the word out and drive up engagement. On children and young people, for very good safeguarding reasons, we have to tread carefully in how we engage with …”

“That goes back to my conviction on devolution, actually. I genuinely think that we will see better service coverage in all communities, but especially in rural communities, if those decisions are taken close to communities and close to people.”

“Absolutely. It is hard enough being the Health and Social Care Secretary without being the Chancellor as well.”

“I am not sure how you would disaggregate those pressures from all the other winter pressures we are seeing at the moment, but as I say, because of the protection the Chancellor put in for the poorest pensioners, including the maintenance of the winter fuel allowance for those pensioners, and because of our Government’s…”

“You are making a whole set of assumptions ahead of me setting out financial allocations for the year ahead. I come back to the central point, which I am afraid you cannot escape. You cannot say, “That £26 billion is great; I love the investment, but I really hate the way you are raising it,” unless you spell out which …”

“Completely.”

“—but that “drop in the ocean” complacency perhaps contributed to the £22 billion black hole.”

“I am definitely taking into account those pressures—”

“It is the right concern. I have been emphasising something in relation to the poorest performers in the country and the most challenged areas of the country; I can think about the south-west and Cornwall as an example. The areas at the bottom of the league tables today were also at the bottom of the league tables back …”