JOHN HUMPHRYS:                And let me turn to Northern 
Ireland where the Northern Ireland Secretary, John Reid, is waiting for 
us.  

                        Dr Reid Good afternoon.

DR JOHN REID:                Good afternoon John. 

JOHN HUMPHRYS:                David Blunkett, Alan Milburn, 
both of them have said in the last couple of days, that lessons should 
be learned from what happened on the floor of the House of Commons and 
the way the whole thing was handled on Wednesday and thereafter.  One lesson, 
surely, is that it is a mistake for the Prime Minister to get involved 
in individual cases in the way that he did and it's no good saying, well 
he had no choice because it was raised by the leader of the Opposition, 
he did have a choice of course because he could have said, I'll look into 
that later and in the meantime etc, etc, etc. 

REID:                        Well, how should 
this debate be conducted and I agree with the person who said that dredging 
up cases of personal misery is the lowest form of political debate. That 
wasn't me, that was Liam Fox, your last guest...

HUMPHRYS:                    ..though of course you 
did it yourselves when you were in Opposition time and again...

REID:                        I beg your pardon, 
we didn't do, we gave anonymous examples of the type of thing that happened. 
 Nevertheless, I agree with you, I mean the way to conduct this debate 
is not to count up individual complaints letters and then pit them against 
individual thank you cards, many of which are sent to the NHS. It's first 
of all to try and..and I'm very glad that we're now trying to separate 
the views of the various parties on this and that's why I think Iain Duncan 
Smith has made a terrible, long term blunder last week because there is 
a distinct difference.  We believe that the public ethos or public service 
should be supported, we should put in more money into the Health Service 
and that we should reform it in order to make its output more efficient. 
 The Conservatives believe in cutting back in the money in the public services 
down to thirty-five per cent of GDP, about twenty billion pounds out and 
running down the ethos of the public service and going, as you properly 
pointed out, towards private sector provision. In other words, we put forward 
an NHS solution and the Conservatives are putting forward, not an NHS solution 
but a DIY solution. It is not a National Health Service provision they 
seek to get to solve the problem, it's a do it yourself provision which 
is fine for the top ten per cent, but for ninety per cent of the people 
of this country, will leave them with a worse service. 

HUMPHRYS:                    But just to finish off 
that point about Tony Blair's handling of the case on Wednesday, I mean 
surely when he got it wrong and I mean it is simply not true that you did 
not use individual cases, though I think you acknowledged that, certainly 
David Blunkett acknowledged that yesterday, he said we did it ten years 
ago and I can remember us doing it and he suggested that perhaps lessons 
should be learned from that. But the point is, what was wrong surely, was 
for Tony Blair then, to go on and attack the family of this old lady in 
the way that he did. 

REID:                        Well, what Tony and 
the other Labour spokesmen did, was to repeat what was already in the public 
domain from the hospital themselves.  But I think you're right, what we 
ought to be doing is debating how we improve health provision in this country. 
Now, if we were to take the position that everything is perfect then I 
can see why the Conservatives might be justified in saying that everything 
is awful, but we have never done that. We have said that there is a lot 
being done to remedy the mistakes of the Conservative period but there 
is still a long way to go.  But don't forget that over eighty per cent 
of people who are served by our National Health Service, are satisfied 
with it, eighty-six per cent in the last opinion poll in a Conservative 
newspaper. That by definition means that we have a long way to go, so how 
do we do it? First of all we put in more money, as we are doing, secondly 
we provide through that better resources, something like twenty seven thousand 
more nurses over six thousand seven hundred new doctors. But we also have 
to support the ethos of public services.  What is the alternative being 
presented to people by Liam Fox and the Tories. It is to go back to the 
very policies that made the system at present incorporate deficiencies. 
 In other words, to cut back on the spending, to tell people they have 
to provide their own Health Service and to denigrate those, I mean to say 
that people in the Health Service are treating people worse than dogs, 
that sort of language is an attack on the whole ethos of the public service 
and that's why I think that Iain Duncan Smith last week, and I understand 
why he did it, on the view that any publicity is good publicity and they 
are worried about the fact that he's unknown. He will find it isn't, he's 
now fighting on the ground of the public services and he's made a very, 
very serious strategic blunder.

HUMPHRYS:                    Well but hang on a minute, 
I mean, it isn't as if it's just Iain Duncan Smith joining in this attack. 
We had two consultants, you'll have read about them this morning, or heard 
them on Radio Five this morning, two consultants themselves, no axe to 
grind, no political background, unlike the chap at the London Hospital, 
saying things are wretched, and the sort of thing that we heard about with 
this old lady happens over, and over and over again, and we have raised 
the question, now, there are, are they not allowed to do that themselves, 
damn it, they work in the Health Service.

REID:                        Of course they're 
allowed to do that, and of course we admit there are deficiencies, but 
if the debate is conducted in terms of letters of complaint versus thank-you 
cards to hospital staff, then fair enough, we can go on doing that. There 
are, you know, millions of people in this country who have sent thank-you 
cards, who are satisfied with what they've had, millions of people, including 
myself incidentally....

HUMPHRYS:                    ...of course...

REID:                        ...who owe our lives 
to the National Health Service, as a young man, my life was saved by the 
National Health Service, but that is not a very sensible way of doing it, 
by taking individual cases and swapping them and that is why the public 
last week got turned off. What they want to know is, who's committed to 
providing for the vast majority of people in this country, a National Health 
Service that is well funded, and we are doing that, the biggest ever sustained 
increase, who is intent on reforming the system, of persuading people, 
of arguing with them inside the Health Service to improve the output, and 
who on the other side, on the Conservative side, is arguing that actually 
public services are a bad thing, people in the public services are treating 
the patients awfully, and you ought to provide your own health service 
through private insurance...

HUMPHRYS:                    What they want to know...

REID:                        ...that is a debate 
I welcome.

HUMPHRYS:                    Well what they want to 
know surely is the government of the day is on their side, and not on the 
side of the system, or on the side of the NHS, on the side of the producers, 
and the trouble is that you gave us very strongly, Tony Blair in particular, 
gave us very strongly the impression in the earliest days of your parliament, 
when New Labour was a new thing, that you were on the side of the patient 
and if necessary you would take the producers, the doctors, the nurses 
and the system itself to task. Well now, what's happened is you have been 
forced to do a turnaround on that have you not?

REID:                        No we haven't...

HUMPHRYS:                    ...and this is the difficulty 
that you're now facing and so it was a bit of an own goal for Tony Blair, 
wasn't it?

REID:                        No we haven't done 
a turnaround John. When Tony Blair said a number of years ago that we were 
in difficulty arguing, persuading people to change, that was over things 
like literacy and numeracy. We took on that challenge and people now see 
that we were right to argue what we did, because we've improved the education 
system and we are prepared to meet that challenge in the National Health 
Service. But I tell you this, nobody can be on the side of their patient 
if they're against investment...

HUMPHRYS:                    No, no (INTERRUPTION)....

REID:                        ...no one, let me 
finish John, you've asked a legitimate question. It is a different thing 
to say that we want to invest and we want people in the Health Service 
to look at all the methods, to look all the potential demarcation disputes, 
to put the patient first as we want to do it, and to go out of your way 
to denigrate people in the National Health Service by accusing them of 
treating people worse than animals. That was the line that was used last 
week, worse than dogs from the leader of the opposition. Now that isn't 
just something that's plucked out of the air, there is an agenda behind 
that, it is denigration with a purpose, it is to say to the British people, 
you can never get health provision through the National Health Service 
and therefore you have to go private. It is a DIY health service...

HUMPHRYS:                    ...alright, but what 
they've done, is they've scored a direct hit one way or the other because 
you've had to...., let me remind you what Charles Kennedy of not the Conservative 
but Charles Kennedy leader of the Liberal Democrats said yesterday, Tony 
Blair now praises them, praises public service workers that is, because 
it suits him politically to do so. So they have had an effect haven't they, 
clearly?

REID:                        First of all John, 
I don't accept that there's been a direct hit. I welcome very much that 
the leader of the opposition has moved the ground of argument onto the 
future of the National Health Service and the public services. He may have 
won a few minutes of glory, but he has lost the hours. He has made a strategic 
blunder. And secondly I can give you an even more modern quotation from 
Charles Kennedy because he was on the television this morning, saying that 
it was irresponsible for the leader of the opposition to try and dredge 
up an individual case of misery. It's alright for members of parliament 
of course to privately raise cases, but when someone does resort to what 
Liam Fox himself called 'the lowest form of debate' he will get publicity, 
of course. I mean, if I'm an nonentity and want to get myself into the 
papers I will do anything to get publicity but I may win the minutes but 
I will lose the hours because the real question here is who will provide 
the investment and the reform to give patients in Britain a National Health 
Service that will meet their needs and who is telling them to go away and 
do it themselves, offering them tax cuts, reduction in investment and denigration 
of the public services, that's how we got into this mess with the last 
Tory government and it's no answer to the future of the Health Service.

HUMPHRYS:                    John Reid, I have to 
end it there, many thanks.

REID:                        Thank you John.