The three speeches/headings immediately before

1. 1 earlier: Andy Burnham

   I consider it one of the finest achievements of this Government that we have taken 600,000 children out of poverty. That is what this party and this Government set out to do. Many of those children live in my constituency and the constituencies of hon. Members sitting on the Labour Benches today. Although it is one of our finest achievements, we will go further.

2. 2 earlier: Bob Russell

   Does the Secretary of State regard as a triumph for new Labour the fact that 12 years on 4 million children are living in poverty?

3. 3 earlier: Andy Burnham

   We have heard many important contributions this afternoon and I shall respond to them in a moment. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) spoke very movingly about his constituent in Afghanistan. Speaking for the Government, I wish to share our condolences with him and his constituent's family. The hon. Gentleman talked of moral and political support being important and the best thing we could provide. I share that view wholeheartedly.

   At the beginning of my contribution, I wish to set out the broad context for today's debate. Some 10 years ago, our crumbling hospitals and schools were a national embarrassment and were failing patients and parents, but today, after a decade of investment and reform, they are substantially rebuilt and provide a good service to the public; no longer are they the poor relation in Europe and the world; they instead achieve accolades on the world stage. The respected US-based The Commonwealth Fund has tracked the progress in our NHS and, two weeks ago, it said that England had one of the best-if not the best-primary health care systems in the world. That is not only a huge tribute to all the staff who work in primary care in our constituencies and a particular tribute to the work of general practitioners-perhaps we do not praise them enough-but it is an endorsement of the Government's reform programme.

   The UK and England were ranked first of the 11 countries surveyed, which included Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the US, on the following criteria: low waiting times for specialist care; the use of multidisciplinary teams; the use of financial incentives to reward patient experience; the quality of clinical care; the management of chronic diseases; the use of data on patient experience; the reviewing of doctors' clinical performance; and the benchmarking of clinical performance. We were given that outstanding record of achievement in Washington.

   The evidence for that transformation in primary health care can be found in my constituency; we had a world of too few GPs working out of terraced houses, but we now have modern premises with more GPs providing a wide range of services to the public. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families would agree when I say that primary education has undergone a similar transformation to that of primary health care services. Our schools are now a joy to visit and are unrecognisable from the shabby and depressing buildings of 15 years ago. The primary heads in Leigh tell me that they have resources that they could once have only dreamed of. Through investment and reform, our public services have gone from poor to good-now the challenge is to make them even better.