“We have a great team at the Department of Health so let me start by thanking them: the wise Philip Dunne, the savvy Steve Brine, the smart James O’Shaughnessy, the street-smart Jackie Doyle-Price and our perfect PPS’s Jo Churchill and James Cartlidge.
Sometimes something happens that reminds you how lucky we are to have an NHS.
That happened right here in Manchester in May.
When that bomb went off at the Arena, we saw paramedics running into danger, doctors racing to work in the middle of the night, nurses putting their arms round families who couldn’t even recognise the disfigured bodies of their loved ones.
One doctor was actually on the scene picking up his own daughter when the bomb went off. Thankfully he found her – but instead of taking her home he quietly dropped her off with friends and went straight to work at his hospital – without telling colleagues a word about where he’d been.
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