However, the emphasis is on 'years ago'. Now we have backdoor privatisation on a massive scale; closures of A&E departments and whole hospitals for purely financial reasons; GPs being portrayed as overpaid and underworked; and huge amounts of cash spent on overlapping quangos and layers of useless bureaucracy.

I could go on - but a doctor who was one of his own ilk has said it better. Dr Answara Ali, who was a Labour councillor and the Labour 'face of the NHS' in east London, has quit in disgust. She is reported as saying: 'Gordon Brown's obsession with top-down targets and a tick-box culture has ruined the morale and goodwill of national health staff.

'Ill health and early death in the East End is a direct result of Labour's failure to bring real reform to the NHS.'

Dr Cornel Fleming, Highgate, north London