Shadow secretary of state for health Chris Smith says he knows just how much the NHS owes its staff, and now he wants to work with nurses to rebuild the service

ONE OF THE things that has struck me in the last two months, since I took up the health portfolio for the Labour Party, has been the realisation of how much the health service owes to its staff. Through all the turmoil of the last ten years - one reorganisation after another, the imposition of the competitive internal market, the gradual deterioration of the service offered to patients - it has been the staff that has kept the NHS going, almost despite the efforts of the government to turn it into something that it never was and never should be.