On 5th May 1979, I started my duty as a newly-qualified Staff Nurse on a male medical ward. I had requested a late start, because I had been campaigning for Labour the night before in the 1979 General Election.

Margaret Thatcher entered Downing Street that day. On the small, portable TV on my ward, our patients watched her waving outside that iconic front door, ready to start her first shift as Prime Minister. As I introduced myself to each one, I could see this scene played out in the background.

It was the beginning of 18 years of feeling helpless in the face of so much change happening all around me. Of seeing my long-held values and principles cast aside.

I moved to work in the community as a District Nursing Sister in the 1980s. Recession was taking its toll on many communities, and I saw the raw, human face of inequality staring me in the face on a daily basis. Inequalities in health, housing and employment. Elderly people in severe pain, struggling with the cold winter. No minimum wage, with poverty and destitution evident in so many working households.

I struggled with feelings of helplessness as my patients told me that they could not afford to put the heating on in the depths of winter. Daily, I visited people waiting years for hip replacements, finding that they were in so much pain that they couldn’t even move around the one room that they were able to live in.

One of my most haunting memories from this period is from a very cold morning, when I discovered that one of my patients had died in the night. This lovely woman was so cold that hypothermia had brought her to a tragic end.

No dignity; no electric fire to bring her warmth; terrified of the electricity bill. In those days, we had experience severe weather for three consecutive days before people like her became eligible for financial help. 

A lot of you will remember Tory Health Ministers lecturing elderly people that wearing a woolly hat and silk garments would help to keep them warm in bed. My patient was just one example of many who could not be saved by such flippant and heartless advice.

Frustrated by not being able to bring about the change we needed as a nurse, I stood for the General Election for Labour in 1987 and 1992, and then won my seat during the landslide Labour Victory of 1997.

A District Nurse in Parliament!

I was so privileged to be part of a Labour Government that soon set out bringing warmth to people’s homes, taking pain away from so many, returning dignity to people up and down the country, and putting the patient first again.

No longer feeling entirely helpless, I was appointed as a junior Health Minister. Quite a turnaround for this lowly District Nurse!

And one of the greatest privileges of all was working with Andy Burnham, who I immediately recognised as having the NHS in his bones.

A principled man with real courage, he clearly knew what mattered, and knew that we must be bold. At last, we were talking about proper care, and bringing the whole individual – in both health and social care services – under a standard quality system.

We may not have got everything right, but we left our NHS with public satisfaction at a record high and waiting lists at a record low.

Under the Tories, the NHS is going backwards. Waiting lists are at a seven year high; A&E is in crisis and it is getting harder and harder to see a GP. Older people cannot be discharged from hospital because local councils can’t afford to meet demands for social care. And funding for our mental health services has been cut year in year, putting some of the most vulnerable people at risk.

Andy is offering a fantastic and transformative vision for our health and care services. Bringing social care into the NHS will prevent millions from losing everything they’ve worked for to pay for the costs of care. Andy has been determined to end this travesty since seeing his beloved Grandmother left penniless by her care charges.

We cannot go back to the early 80s and consume ourselves with factional in-fighting. We must pick a Leader who can unite the Party, fight for our NHS and bring us a Labour Government in 2020. Our NHS depends on it. And only Andy can achieve it.