The Spectator

Jeremy Hunt’s Conservative conference speech, full text

“We have a great team at the Department of Health so let me start by thanking them: the wise Philip Dunne, the savvy Steve Brine, the smart James O’Shaughnessy, the street-smart Jackie Doyle-Price and our perfect PPS’s Jo Churchill and James Cartlidge.

Sometimes something happens that reminds you how lucky we are to have an NHS.

That happened right here in Manchester in May.

When that bomb went off at the Arena, we saw paramedics running into danger, doctors racing to work in the middle of the night, nurses putting their arms round families who couldn’t even recognise the disfigured bodies of their loved ones.

One doctor was actually on the scene picking up his own daughter when the bomb went off. Thankfully he found her – but instead of taking her home he quietly dropped her off with friends and went straight to work at his hospital – without telling colleagues a word about where he’d been.

It was the same heroism after the London attacks too. So let’s start by thanking all those superb NHS staff for being there when our country needed them.

Of course they’re there for us not just in national emergencies but in personal ones too.

When you’re losing a loved one, when you’re sick unexpectedly, when you’re knocked sideways by a mental health crisis – the NHS is there. A National Health Service and a national symbol of British professionalism and British compassion.

But it only exists because of its people. So today I want to recognise that supporting NHS staff is one of our most important priorities.

We need more doctors. So last year I said we’d increase the number of doctors we train by a quarter, one of the biggest ever increases.

We also need more nurses. So today I can tell you we’ll increase the number of nurses we train by 25% – that’s a permanent increase of more than 5,000 nurse training places every single year.

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