As patients and consumers, we are better informed today about our health care than any previous generation.
Patricia Hewitt

A modern health and social care system has to be completely focussed on the needs of its users.
Patricia Hewitt

People are not perfect... very often the relationships that are strongest are those where people have worked through big crises, but they've had to work through them. So the challenge to us is to work through that.
Patricia Hewitt

The 2 million people who work in the NHS and social care are also themselves patients and users. I know they all want to treat patients and users the way they and their families would want to be treated and that is the purpose of our reforms.
Patricia Hewitt

You don't repair that relationship by sitting down and talking about trust or making promises. Actually, what rebuilds it is living it and doing things differently - and I think that is what is going to make the difference.
Patricia Hewitt

And some of what we're doing in Government even now, some of the welfare reform programs that are helping lone mothers come into work are based on things that were very new under the Labour Government in the eighties.
Patricia Hewitt

So there clearly is a sense in which the Labour Party here, certainly at State level is reaching out and connecting with people and reflecting the aspirations and needs of, you know the mass of ordinary Australians.
Patricia Hewitt

I think he was absolutely right not to go to UN last week... First things first - that is, values and people here in their local communities, and remembering all politics is local, and trusting people more.
Patricia Hewitt