I SPENT the last week in the USA on a family holiday and was struck, once again, by the contrast between the wealth of the American economy, and the lack of accessible and affordable healthcare for millions of the country’s citizens.

The trip bought home to me once again just how fortunate we are to have our NHS, however, there is always room for improvement and campaigning for better local healthcare remains one of my top priorities.

I have been pleased to welcome real progress locally like the new initiative in Devizes where Emergency Care Practitioners work alongside local doctors to help with home visits and consultations, helping people especially those who are frail or elderly to get quicker treatment.

We have also seen the welcome reinstatement of beds and services at Savernake hospital, as well as the new Prospect Hospice outpatient centre, while there have been real improvement in clinical practises cutting of waiting times for dementia assessment from more than nine months to a few weeks thanks to local GPs (who now take the lead in setting local healthcare priorities) deciding to do assessments in their surgeries. Local GPs have also come together to deliver real and exciting progress in the work to deliver a new Primary Care Centre for Devizes – a project that I am determined will happen. I wrote last week to the Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt, to apprise him of the need for the centre and the progress we are making and asked him to do everything possible to help us secure this goal.

He is pledging to make more funding available to support primary care, as part of the extra £8 billion committed by the Government to fund the NHS’s own plans for its future and I want to make sure that the Devizes centre is seen as of the highest priority.

But, as with all public services, we can’t just define success in the NHS as providing more money.

All funds have to be well spent for the benefit of patients, which is why the Government has also pledged to end “health tourism” by those just visiting the UK, focused on improving outcomes like cancer survival rates rather than just making sure treatment process boxes are ticked, tightened inspection regimes for hospitals, GPs and care homes and made their performance much more transparent, set out plans to deliver a true seven-day health service and abolished the indignity of same sex wards.

The NHS is the jewel in our public services and we want it to shine even more brightly in the future.