We must not constantly talk about tackling obesity and warning people about the negative consequences of obesity. Instead we must be positive - positive about the fun and benefits to be had from healthy living, trying to get rid of people's excuses for being obese by tackling the issue in a positive way.
We will empower patients as well as health professionals. We will disempower the hierarchy and bureaucracy.
It is more important to engage the public positively with choice and competition to everyone than to be directed into a benefit for a minority.
The NHS should be proactively using substantial resources across government to intervene and try to deliver positive improvements in people's standards of living.
The vast majority of people who speak to me say they have had brilliant care. When they are critical, their concern tends not to be directed at the medical side but the ancillary things that surround it, such as helping patients to eat meals, cleanliness, and making sure that when patients have a problem, they are listened to.
Tackling the environment should not be a licence to lecture people, because they have no excuse not to exercise, or eat their fruit and vegetables. Nannying - at least among adults - is likely to be counterproductive. Providing information is empowering; lecturing people is not. So, no excuses, no nannying.
I became a Conservative in the late 1980s because I could see that the Conservative party had transformed Britain's economy and our standing in the world compared to Labour in the 1980s.
We should not make the mistake of equating the E.U. with Europe. Outside the E.U., we wouldn't cease to be Europeans. But, an exit would definitely risk losing those opportunities for our children while growing no similar opportunities elsewhere.
I am not saying do not give people equal health services but do not pretend that giving more money for diabetes or chronic diseases means you are going to deal with the origins of health inequalities.
Go to any hospital, you'll find wards that are run by senior nurses with matrons. The point is do they have the power, do they have the responsibility inside the hospital?
There's a culture inside the NHS that is highly paternalistic. You know, 'We give them the service and they are grateful.' We have to move to shared decision-making.
I have spent too long with too many people who have lost loved ones to healthcare-associated infections not to be determined to act on this. There is no tolerable level of preventable infections. The only acceptable strategy is a zero-tolerance strategy.
It is in my heart that I believe most strongly that our future is within a reformed E.U. - not least because we now live in a global marketplace.
Tell people that biology and the environment cause obesity and they are offered the one thing we have to avoid: an excuse. As it is, people who see more fat people around them may themselves be more likely to gain weight.
Underperforming hospitals or units should accept that they have to improve the service they offer or that patients, quite properly, will go elsewhere.
We have to treat smoking as a major public health issue. We have to reduce the extent to which young people start smoking, and one of the issues is the extent to which display of cigarettes and brands does draw young people into smoking in the first place.