I don't often go on national television and suggest that Tory ministers are intoxicated

with illicit substances, but after the NHS Secretary Steve Barkley suggested the NHS

didn't need any more cash. I actually thought that was a more generous explanation.

I mean, the fact Steve Barkley says he doesn't need more money is the health secretary

high. I'm sorry to be so rude and so blunt about it, but when you have millions of people

on waiting lists, when you have a lack of staff to do key roles and you have an ever-growing

aging population putting greater pressure on the NHS, unless you put more money and resources

in the NHS, and just to be very straightforward about this, people are going to die.

People whose lives would be longer than they were are going to be diminished.

People won't be treated for mental health services. The biggest killer of men under 45 in Britain

is suicide, but if you're in crisis, talk to people in a mental health crisis, talk to people

who've tried to take their lives in this country, they get stuck in a waiting list for

months or shunted halfway across the country. This is a crisis it needs cash.

But if you look, we are on our way to spending 40% of our tax take on the NHS, which is in many

ways as it should be because the NHS is needed so big, but it's unsustainable and I know that

you won't say we need to have more private, not less private, but I can't see any other way of

getting the money into the NHS without bankrupting the whole system. So if we were able to do more

partnerships with the private or some sort of insurance system, like national insurance system,

like they have on the continent, at least then you would be getting extra money for the NHS.

It's not true. For example, the Private Finance Initiative, which New

Labor massively expanded in the 2000s, what that idea was, basically was, well use private

finance to come up with these nice big, surely new hospitals. That seemed like a great idea in

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