I am pleased you have given me the opportunity to outline the support this government is giving to the NHS.

The Conservatives made clear in our manifesto in 2019 that the NHS will never be on the table in any trade deal with a foreign country or up for grabs to private companies.

As someone whose life was saved by the NHS, Boris Johnson is steadfast in his support for our great British institution.

And, yes, we have already enshrined our biggest ever cash boost into law.

This will provide money for 12,000 new nurses and 6,000 more doctors as well as state-of-the art cancer diagnostic machines while building 40 new hospitals and upgrading 20 more.

The Labour Party talks about us supporting privatisation and yet it was the party which lumbered the NHS with hundreds of billions of pounds worth of private finance deals, diverting money away from the front line.

A report in the left-leaning Guardian last September stated: “NHS hospital trusts are being crippled by the private finance initiative and will have to make another £55bn in payments by the time the last contract ends in 2050”.

But now the Labour Party is trying, via parliamentary procedures, to make it appear that it is the Conservatives who will not protect the NHS.

Voting records are not all that they might seem. I suggest you look for the story beyond them and the evidence that the Conservatives have consistently backed the NHS for decades.

The Conservative Party has been in power for 44 years since the NHS began its life in 1948. From Churchill to Johnson, successive Prime Ministers have had to fight the notion that we would privatise it.

It does make me wonder how long it has to be before a promise becomes an accepted fact.

In fact the other evening’s vote had absolutely nothing to do with future trade deals, the USA or President Trump.  The Bill clearly states:

“Regulations under subsection (1) may make provision for the purposes of implementing a free trade agreement only if the other signatory (or each other signatory) and the European Union were signatories to a free trade agreement immediately before exit day.”

This means that this Bill was only about rolling over the current trade agreements that we already have via the EU.  This is 100% proof that Labour’s claims that these amendments were about protecting the NHS from Trump were literally wrong, scaremongering and irresponsible.

But let me assure you again, I am proud of our wonderful NHS and being in a party which continues to support it with such vigour.