Regular readers of this column will be familiar with my attempts to convince the public of Thanet that the Government is doing a great job. I faithfully produce a catalogue of statistics that prove crime is falling, schools are getting better results and the Government is making the right decisions on the economy. But I suspect that, as often as not, your response is ‘he would say that wouldn’t he!’

So, this week I’m trying a different approach. I’m going to let someone else do the job for me.

"The Government was satirised for its deep clean of hospitals but MRSA and Clostridium difficile figures have both fallen 35 per cent in a year. Waiting times are lower than they have ever been. The Government is about to hit its target that 95 per cent of outpatients and 90 per cent of inpatients should be treated in 18 weeks. Despite the inevitable opposition from the BMA, more than 70 per cent of GP practices joined the scheme that pays them in return for opening in the evenings and at the weekend. 140 GP-run health centres will be open by the end of this year and legislation will follow to allow individual budgets in health care as in social care."

That last paragraph is not my own, it is from the leading article in last Monday’s Times. That’s the Times as published by Rupert Murdoch’s News International, a newspaper and an organisation not well known for taking an uncritical approach to this Government’s achievements!

Of course, if you won’t even accept the words of The Times as evidence that the NHS is improving I would ask instead that you look around Thanet. Look at the new GP led Health Centres we now have available to us, such as the Montefiore Medical Centre in Ramsgate or the Bethesda Medical Centre at Palm Bay, to name just two. Look at the extensive and modern facilities we now have at the QEQM. Next time you visit a doctor and need to be referred to hospital see for yourself how much easier it is to get an appointment at a time convenient to you and how much quicker you will be seen than would have been the case ten years ago.

Of course not everything works perfectly even in today’s NHS. As we saw from the recent report into the Mid-Staffordshire Hospital some services, in some places, are still not up to scratch. Even in our own community mistakes do get made, some people still receive standards of care that are below their expectations and some people still find themselves waiting too long for appointments and I will not be satisfied until errors are eliminated and everyone gets world class treatment.

But overall the NHS is in now in great shape. Of course, none of the improvements we have seen could have been delivered without the work of the many dedicated staff that the NHS employs but Labour promised we would restore the NHS to good health and we have delivered. We took some unpopular decisions but they have been proven right, we put in massive investment and faced up to the tough choices needed to raise that money and when facing opposition from all sides we soldiered on and have seen our efforts pay off. The NHS is again a service of which we can all be proud and the Government is entitled to take its share of the credit.