I am constantly reminded, both as your MP and in my personal life, of just how precious and vital our NHS services are to local people and the country at large and just how great the pressures on the service continue to be.

That’s why since 2010 the NHS has been protected from the spending cuts that were necessary in other areas to get Britain’s books back in balance and spending has grown in real terms.

The service has also been reformed to remove bureaucracy so that more money can be spent to recruit additional frontline staff. More than 19,000 managerial posts have been removed, saving the NHS £5.5 billion in this Parliament alone and £1.5 billion every year after that, and this has allowed the NHS to employ 8,000 more doctors and 5,600 more nurses compared to 2010.

The result is that while the NHS has never been busier, we have been able to carry out nearly a million more operations a year, perform millions more diagnostic tests, and refer 51 per cent more patients for cancer treatment.

Despite this progress, sadly there are those who want to play political football with the NHS and, as someome who wants to ensure that our precious NHS budget is used to buy the best care for people, I can’t understand the latest made-up kerfuffle over so-called NHS “privatisation”.

The government has no intention of allowing health services to be privatised but there have always been private providers in the system.

Under the 13 years of the last Labour government, private sector provision of services grew at twice the rate than we have seen so far under this government, and many contracts with the private sector were signed that guaranteed levels of income to independent sector treatment centres, like the one I recently visited in Devizes, regardless of the amount of work they carried out.

This has now been stopped and services are bought from where they offer best patient care and value for money. We still need some local changes, like better primary care and minor injuries services.

Every month I meet the local Comisssioning Group for Wiltshire to review plans and progress but, ultimately, the best way to have a strong NHS is to have a strong economy so we can afford better public services.

That is why it is more important than ever to stick to our long-term economic plan that is finally delivering economic stability and growth.