Why people aren't worried about the NHS anymore

Today's Daily Telegraph leads with the fact that half of women breast cancer sufferers in England survive the disease. 60,000 women, and 40,000 men diagnosed with colorectal cancer every single year now beat the disease and go on to have the same life expectancy as someone who has escaped the disease.

Opinion polls nowadays show that the NHS doesn't rank very highly when people are asked about issues that concern them - and the reason for that is not because the NHS has stopped being close to our national heart. It is because a decade of Labour investment in health has stopped the rot of decaying hospitals, pensioners dying on trolleys in halls, outrageously long waits for treatment and chronic shortages of doctors and nurses; and is now making a real difference on major health threats like cancer.

Of course there's a lot that isn't right in the NHS: the shocking news about neglect in Stafford Hospital is one recent example, and there will always be individuals who get failed by the health service.

But these new cancer figures are really significant - as is the fact that it is the Telegraph; hardly a paper sympathetic to Labour, that has announced them. And as the Telegraph report goes on to say, the real cause for optimism is that there is so much scope for doing even better in years to come, because we still don't have the survival rates of some of our European neighbours.

The NHS is safe in Labour's hands - and the fact that people have stopped worrying about it is a measure of how significant a difference Labour in Government has made to health in England.