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Welsh Affairs

I share the hon. Lady's concern about budget difficulties in the health service, which are inevitable because demand will always be greater than can ever be satisfied. Nevertheless, more money has been pumped into the health service under Labour Governments than was ever pumped in when the Conservative party were last in government. My constituency, Wales and the UK have all been transformed in the past few years compared with the situation when I came here 15 years ago. Even now, however, the Tories have not learned any lessons. They look back on the years when they were in government as some sort of golden age. Frankly, they simply have not changed. While every country in Europe wants to maintain investment in the economy in the coming year, they say that if they are elected, they will start making cuts on day one. The Conservative party is the very same party that advocated standing aside and letting banks go bust, the very same party that was prepared to stand aside and see families evicted from their homes because they could not pay their mortgages, and the very same party that was prepared to see people thrown out of work because of a lack of Government support for business and industry. All that would be accelerated and would cause even more grief if they were to come into government and make sweeping cuts to public services. In 1995, I lamented the fact that we had no general hospital in Islwyn. Between 1993 and 1994, 30,000 people from my constituency went to the nearest out-patient department 15 miles away in Newport. If anything shows the change and the great investment that Labour Governments have made, it is the fantastic 21st-century hospital at Ystrad Fawr on the border between my constituency and that of the Under-Secretary of State for Wales, my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. David). Since 1999, investment in the NHS in Wales has nearly doubled, and investment in new buildings and equipment has trebled. There has been major investment in schools, with a massive rise in the number of nursery school places. There are smaller class sizes and we have new buildings and equipment, as well as extra teachers. For the working families I represent, education has been a pathway out of poverty—secured by a Labour Government. For me, that is the fundamental difference between a Tory Government and a Labour Government. The Labour party stands by the people, whereas the Tory party stands idle and lets the people suffer. It is all very well to look back—and it is especially tempting now, at my time—but it is also important to look forward. These have been great, reforming Labour Governments, whose one great legacy has been their attempts to eradicate poverty in every form. The great socialist James Maxton once said:""Poverty is man-made therefore open to change"." The Government have embraced that idea and have done much to try to reduce poverty. There is much more to do. The two poorest groups in our society are at the extreme ends of the age range—pensioners and children.