And we must always remind ourselves that hospitals exist for the patient, just as schools exist for the pupil and public services exist for the public who are served.

Conference, when we came to power half our hospitals wards were wards built in the days of charity hospitals, and hundreds of our school classrooms were crumbling, built before the Boer War. Since 1997 we have started or completed 100 new hospitals - 40 finished, 60 on the way - and 550 schools, as we double public investment from Ł22 to Ł44 billion - the biggest programme of peacetime public investment in Britain’s history - and not private money replacing public investment as under the Tories, but private money additional to public investment, helping us to provide in constituencies that desperately need them schools and hospitals that I have to tell you but for PFI we simply could not have started so many so quickly in so many communities.

And of course, as John Prescott explained, it is right that as a party we continue to discuss the detailed issues.

But I have to point out that there are already independent reviews by the NAO into every major PFI project, with 25 already published; that for contractors that used to build the hospital and walk away, often leaving shoddy work, the purpose of

PFI is to bind them in to value for money, so that they - and not the public - bear the costs of flaws failures overruns and delays, but most important of all because I know all of us gathered here care passionately about public services, I say to you directly - having promised to the people of this country - kept waiting for schools and hospitals for 18 years under the Tories-- that we would build schools and hospitals.

Having promised at the election that we would put schools and hospitals first, we must keep our promise to the people: it is our duty to deliver. When the plans are drawn up, the building workers are there, and the money provided, the public will not tolerate delays.

It is, friends, a question of trust and with promises to keep and fiscal discipline to maintain it is my duty to say to the British people that we will hold to our long term course for building schools and hospitals so that every community has the high standard of public service they need and deserve

And whatever our disagreements on the details of PFI let us remember that PFI is private money being used to build hospitals to deliver a public service - and there is a world of difference between using private money to rebuild the NHS for the long term interests of the many - and the agenda of our opponents designed to undermine the NHS in

the short term private interests of the few.

Conference, because we the party who created the health service, believe in the health service we will hold to our long term course in resisting Tory privatisation.

Be under no doubt that as the Tories meet in Bournemouth next week that Mr Fox, their health spokesman, now talks openly about plans to break up the NHS.

Just as in the 1940s, when Labour defeated the Conservatives and created the NHS, this public service - a free health service free at the point of use, based on need not ability to pay - is again the great dividing line, the great issue of principle between ourselves and the Tories.

And so having asked people to pay more taxes to fund better health care in the public sector, it is and will, in the years to come, be our duty, in every constituency and workplace, to expose and oppose the waste divisiveness and inequity of the Tory party turning our NHS hospitals into privatised companies with new charges vouchers and thus two tier health care.

This is a fundamental issue for our society in this generation

GORDON BROWN’S SPEECH

Continued

.And because none of us can ever know in advance whether you or someone in your family will need that expensive care, the best policy is not a private insurance policy that by definition relies on ifs buts and small print and only covers some of the people some of the time.

The best policy is an insurance policy that covers all of the people all of the time: and that is the unique vision of the British NHS free at the point of need offering such a high standard of care that it can become for British people the best insurance policy in the world.

The NHS is a great British ideal. And in the budget we as a government agreed reforms to renew the NHS as a great British institution, with new incentives, five year budgets, better staff conditions, action to turn around failure, rewards for high performers through foundation hospitals fully

part of the NHS: local freedoms empowering public servants - men and women who believe in the ethic of public service - to make a difference for patients all across Britain.

Because we recognise that just as public services fail the public where there is underinvestment, under capacity and bad workplace conditions, so too we can fail the public if service is poor, local innovation is stifled, if user is posed against producer and the ethic of public service is undermined.