Since being elected with a mandate for change, the Labour government has taken big strides to fix our broken NHS.

For 14 years under the Conservatives, the NHS faced years of neglect and industrial action – resulting in waiting lists spiralling out of control, hitting record levels and costing both taxpayers and businesses billions. The waiting lists hit an eye-watering eight-million, a figure that included 300,000 people waiting longer than an entire year for treatment. In the last five years alone under the Conservatives, the number of people waiting over two years for a GP appointment increased by one-million.

The NHS was broken but it was not beaten. It can be rebuilt again, as the Labour government did from 1997, when the Conservatives last left it on its knees. But let me be crystal clear on one important point: our NHS does not need the kind of change espoused by Nigel Farage and Reform - to an insurance-based American system, where a hip replacement could cost you £23,440. Farage and Reform have given up on the NHS and are now a clear and present danger to the basic philosophy of the NHS: free at the point of use for all.

On the contrary, this Labour government has provided two million extra appointments since last July, as well as 1500 new GPs to help make seeing a doctor easier. But we also need to cut NHS bureaucracy and duplication. So we have announced the scrapping of NHS England – an organisation whose budget for staff and admin alone has soared to £2-billion, with the quality of treatment and the ease of access only getting worse over the last 14 years. This will mean fewer managers and more resources going to the front line.

Reform’s plans to privatise the NHS would not only make healthcare in this country unattainable for large swathes of the population, it would also be a betrayal of the very soul of the NHS, by no longer being a truly national service that is there for everyone who needs it.

Labour’s changes have not only created additional jobs and delivered better taxpayer value of money, but we have also now seen waiting times come down five months in a row now. We have only just begun to turn round the NHS and have a long way to go.

Although I’m delighted that Treliske will be in the first wave of hospitals to be developed, I know that people locally are still struggling to see GPS, dentists and get hospital appointments. I’m under no illusions about the challenges ahead. Bear with us. We will continue to knuckle down and bring in the changes needed to lift the NHS off its knees.

We have made a start but 14 years of neglect doesn’t get washed away in nine months. As the people of Camborne, Redruth and Hayle go to the polls next week, for those of us that value it so dearly, beware endorsing the privatisation of our brilliant NHS by giving your vote to Reform.