So we must have the confidence and leadership not just to renew our public services, but to renew the idea of Britain as more than the sum of private ambitions or a collection of isolated individuals, but a community of citizens who each owe obligations one to another.

So let us as a party look ahead to building a progressive consensus for full employment, education and enterprise open to all, ending child and pensioner poverty, the best public services.

And just as many of us will look back, as I do, and recall that so many of the opportunities we have enjoyed - the best schooling, the best of health care when ill, for many of us the chance of university - owe their origins not just to the achievements but to the scale of the ambitions of the 1945 government, whose determination not just to change policies but to change life

chances, transformed our shared sense of what it meant to be a citizen of Britain.

And just as so many of that great generation look back and say with pride - I was there when the welfare state was created, I was there on the first day of the NHS, so too let us act now with boldness and resolve so that when the dust has settled, the history books are written, the debates, the arguments, the personalities are long forgotten, when people ask of us, what did we do - how did we use the potential of government - to advance economic prosperity and the good society.

We can look back with pride and say each to the other:

I was there when, together, we reached full employment

I was there when, together, we rebuilt our health service

I was there when, together, we abolished child poverty and opened the doors of education to all

I was there when, together, we ensured every pensioner dignity in retirement.

And then each of us will be able to say:

This is our country

We built it together

A great British society

By our values and our vision we made it better.

Yes - great political parties exist for great public purposes.

Now let us fulfil our mandate and our mission.

End

GORDON BROWN’S SPEECH

Continued

.And we will make it the central issue in every election until the Tories once again are forced to admit they are wrong, that health care is a basic human right not a privilege to be paid for.

And what we say and do about the NHS is not just about the future of our public services, but about the character of our country. It is an affirmation that duty, obligation, service, and not just markets and self-interest, are at the very heart of our idea of society - at the heart of what it means to be a citizen of Britain.

I have seen the irreplaceable skills of doctors and nurses.

I have seen the staff of the NHS who show not just skill and expertise but love care and friendship.

I know home helps and carers, who can transform despair into hope.

I know teachers with the extraordinary power to make a lasting imprint on a young child’s life.

All of us know such people by name.

For them public service is a calling not just a career, far more about service than about self interest. If we ever lose that ethic of public service, then we lose a part of what is unique about Britain that could never be replaced