I became a Conservative in the late 1980s because I could see that the Conservative party had transformed Britain's economy and our standing in the world compared to Labour in the 1980s.
If I'm serious about patients and their GPs being able to have more control of their health care, I can't have a top-down system that imposes restrictions on the services they need.
I know that nurses are not only the largest healthcare profession but are responsible for the delivery of most healthcare, and are often in the best place to be able to see the whole pathway of care.
The job of the government - and my responsibility - is to help people live healthier lives. The framework is about giving local authorities the ability to focus on the most effective ways to improve the public's health and reduce health inequalities, long-term, from cradle to grave.
We will empower patients as well as health professionals. We will disempower the hierarchy and bureaucracy.
Tackling the environment should not be a licence to lecture people, because they have no excuse not to exercise, or eat their fruit and vegetables. Nannying - at least among adults - is likely to be counterproductive. Providing information is empowering; lecturing people is not. So, no excuses, no nannying.
The culture is about moving to a place where tobacco and smoking isn't part of normal life: people don't encounter it normally, they don't see it in their big supermarkets, they don't see people smoking in public places, they don't see tobacco vending machines.
We will never privatise the National Health Service.
There's a culture inside the NHS that is highly paternalistic. You know, 'We give them the service and they are grateful.' We have to move to shared decision-making.
Our interaction as patients with the NHS should be on the basis that there's a presumption that all information is shared with us.
Underperforming hospitals or units should accept that they have to improve the service they offer or that patients, quite properly, will go elsewhere.
If, over time, patients don't go to some services, then progressively they become less viable, so you do arrive at a point where the conclusion is: 'These are the right services for the future, and this is capacity we don't need.'
You don't come into government thinking it is going to be easy.
Especially some of the poorest in our society need to have the greatest support because health inequalities are too wide.
You should be able to choose which hospital you go to.
The NHS is a national organisation, but it is best delivered locally.
It is more important to engage the public positively with choice and competition to everyone than to be directed into a benefit for a minority.
When you have an election campaign,it has to be simple and something everybody can relate to.
I am not saying do not give people equal health services but do not pretend that giving more money for diabetes or chronic diseases means you are going to deal with the origins of health inequalities.
The NHS should be proactively using substantial resources across government to intervene and try to deliver positive improvements in people's standards of living.
