Andrew Lansley Health Quotations

Especially some of the poorest in our society need to have the greatest support because health inequalities are too wide.

The job of the government - and my responsibility - is to help people live healthier lives. The framework is about giving local authorities the ability to focus on the most effective ways to improve the public's health and reduce health inequalities, long-term, from cradle to grave.

You all know my commitment to the National Health Service. While I am Secretary of State, the NHS will never be fragmented, privatised or undermined. I am personally committed to an NHS which gives equal access, and excellent care.

In the first speech I delivered as health secretary, I made one thing perfectly clear: we need a cultural shift in the NHS: from a culture responsive mainly to orders from the top down to one responsive to patients, in which patient safety is put first.

We will empower patients as well as health professionals. We will disempower the hierarchy and bureaucracy.

We have to treat smoking as a major public health issue. We have to reduce the extent to which young people start smoking, and one of the issues is the extent to which display of cigarettes and brands does draw young people into smoking in the first place.

The government has done too little too late to protect the health of the population -- in June 2004 I told the government to produce a comprehensive strategy,

I was shadow health secretary for six years, and the beauty of being in opposition - if there is any beauty - is that you tend to get a pretty unvarnished view because no one bothers to paint the coal white before you turn up.

I am not saying do not give people equal health services but do not pretend that giving more money for diabetes or chronic diseases means you are going to deal with the origins of health inequalities.

We will never privatise the National Health Service.