Looking forward to visiting our contact center tonight to see how the team are doing taking pledges. I hope to have a go myself.

But before that I am part of a question time style panel at Huntingdon Conservative Association along with the local MP, MEP and district council leader. Should be interesting.

Today I have spent most of today at the East of England LGA assembly of council leaders. I was a speaker along side Cllr Sir Merrick Cockell, Chairman of the LGA.

I was speaking on the subject of “A new model for local government”. I talked about growth and how we achieve it. I also talked about social care and how it might be delivered better. I floated the idea of the Local NHS being subject to local democratic accountability.

I also talked about true joint budgets between local government and the NHS but also true joint working. It can’t be right that hospitals are rewarded financially for activity when the rest of us are trying to stop people ending up as patients in the first place.

Every unplanned hospital admission could be seen as a whole system failure. Of course that is a sweeping statement but we do need to make sure that prevention is rewarded not just reactive activity.