What is your big vision ahead of the Labour Party conference? How will you respond to the pressures on the NHS?

GB: The important thing about the health service is people rightly want a higher standard of service. And if the issues in 1997 were rightly about how the quantity of people on waiting lists had to come down, the issues in the next few years as I’ve learned going round the country, listening to people, hearing the need for change, are about the quality of care. And people want a personal service, they want personal care, needs taken seriously. So they want to be able to put a doctor in a hospital at the times that they want. And they want to meet the doctor and consultant that they choose, and they want to do things with a quality that is far higher than has been before. And that’s why we want to bring about greater opportunities for visits to the GP, that’s why we want to have cleaner and safer hospital wards, and that’s why we have to have more regular offers for screening, so that people can prevent illness as well as deal with their illness. There’s a rights and responsibilities issue here as well, but you know you shouldn’t also miss appointments. Obviously we’re trying to get and make sure that the service is as streamlined as possible.

Your predecessor’s big mantra was ‘education, education, education’. What’s your big idea? You’ve had quite a few crises to deal with since you’ve been in power, but the conference is the time when we should be seeing that big idea and some substance, surely?

GB: I think people will see that the reform agenda is moving forward, but we are a nation of rising aspirations that have got to be met by better opportunities for children and young people. Rising standards of service in public services that are not just available to all, but tailored to people’s needs, personal to each of them. And I think, running through what I’ve listened to and learnt as I’ve gone around the country and heard the need for change, is that people want their rising aspirations met by new opportunities in education, employment and careers and work-life balance and the opportunity to buy their own homes, the opportunity to get higher quality housing. And at the same time, of course, people also want a rising standard of public sector services. And whether it’s policing on the beat or hospital services, that are there when you need them, or whether its education where your child gets personal attention, individual attention, then the reform agenda is about universal public services that are accessible to all, but they’re actually personal to each of us; Individualised learning, personal care taken seriously, people treated with respect in the public services in a way that I think we can do in the years to come.

Given that you were part of the government for so long before, overseeing domestic policy, how do you feel now that you’re in power? Is it your ambition to make a radical break with the past or is it to just carry on with the Blair reforms?

GB: I’ve heard the need for change, and the need for intensifying, in some areas, reform. So we’ve said, for example, that for single parents you ought to prepare, to look for work when your child is seven. I’ve heard the need for change and reform in housing … and at the same time we’re making it easier for people to buy their own homes. I’ve heard the need for reform in trying to make it easier for people to get to university so we’ve increased the number of young people who can get grants and made it easier for people to get the chance to go to college and university. So we’re intensifying the reform, but I think that the theme is that the reform is about a public service that is a personal service, personal to each. That caters for people’s individual needs, where services are tailored to the needs of families. And just as people want the hospital or GP appointment at the time they want, with the person they want, and also with a level of quality and convenience that they want, so too, they want their children educated with the best teachers, they want childcare available when they need it, and they want, obviously, to see the public services more personal, more sort of individualised, more tailored to their needs. It’ll be pretty clear that the reform agenda is not just, um, there, it’s been intensified over the next few months. We’re a party that is not just occupying the centre ground but as you can see from our policies we’re expanding it all the time, I think you can see by the policies we’re reaching out, we’re expanding the centre ground all the time around us.

Does it require more money or is it structural reform?

GB: Well, you’ll get the results of the public spending review in the next few weeks when we publish the results of it. In some cases we’ve got to do better, I mean we’ve already announced that we’re going to be investing more per pupil in our schooling. In some cases we’ve got to get, in fact in all cases we’ve got to get, the best value for money.

I take it that if the CSR is going ahead next month, you can’t have an election?

GB: I made a speech in Glasgow on Thursday, and what I said was that my focus is, and will remain on the work that needs to be done, the return of Parliament, the Queen’s Speech, the economy, the public spending allowance and the publication of the national security strategy, and so, you know, that’s where my work is focused and it’s not really of any great benefit to give a running commentary when I’ve already said what I’ve said.

So no clues on election timing then? People are encouraging you to go to the country in October.

GB: I think that getting on with the job is what I’m doing, focusing on the work in hand.

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