---

Welsh Affairs

I have no doubt that is important to compare records on the NHS. The Labour party founded the NHS—resisted by the Conservative party. We built and sustained it; all the Conservatives have done to it when they have been in government is to damage it. When I re-read the speech that I made 15 years ago—as I did the other day, not out of vanity, but to check what I had said—it made me go a little cold, because in spite of the desperate circumstances that people were in at that time, the then Tory Government proved that they did not give a damn. We had an NHS that had been driven almost to breaking point, despite the superb commitment of doctors and nurses, and the people who suffered most throughout the UK were those who relied entirely on the NHS for their treatment. My constituents were among the worst affected.