Welcome everyone. Great to see you here.

Choice
For years now, we have heard a great deal about “choice.” In particular about how we are building choice into public services and the NHS. But all too often we hear the words but don’t have the foggiest what it actually means in practice.

Up until now, most people have gone to see their GP, if need be they would have been referred for treatment at the local hospital, and that was it. It’s hard to see where choice could come in to it.

But choice is something we take for granted in so many other aspects of our lives. Our ability to choose one product or service over another drives up quality and increases value for money everywhere.

You will know all too well the effects of this competition. The fact that your customers might not buy your magazine raises your game. It pushes you all to be as good as you can possibly be. To get the best stories, the best photographs, to make your magazine as fun, interesting and entertaining as it can possibly be.

Without wanting to be flippant, the NHS is no different.

Since April, patients, in discussion with their GP, have been able to choose where to have their hospital treatment. They can now choose from hundreds of hospitals in England, including many private hospitals, their treatment paid for by the NHS.

Now, you might want to use the hospital that is closest to you, or one that is closer to your family at the other end of the country. The shortest waiting times or the lowest infection rates may be most important to you.

All of this information, and much more besides, is available from your GP and directly through the NHS Choices website – www.nhs.uk.

Whatever you base your own decision on is up to you. And this choice will soon be made a legal right in the NHS Constitution.

My Choice Matters Survey
We’ve just completed the My Choice Matters consumer survey, commissioned to find out more about how your readers make decisions about their lives.
You’re going to hear some more about the survey in a moment from Bob Ricketts from the Department of Health. It had some striking, if not altogether surprising results.

Whether it’s choices about bills, the mortgage or the family bank – particularly important at the moment – it’s so often women who make the decisions. Where as 21% of men see themselves as a ‘dodger,’ putting off decisions for another time, only 7% of women do. Women act.

This is also the case with healthcare. It’s women who decide when it’s time to see the doctor, and it will be women who will be most engaged at choosing the best hospital for themselves and their family.

Or rather they would be the most engaged, if they actually knew about it. But if you don’t know your rights, how can you be expected to exercise them? That, to be frank, is where you come in.

You are the biggest and the brightest of the consumer media. You reach hundreds of thousands of the very people we need to understand that they have a choice. And that by making that choice they can improve the healthcare that they and their families receive. I really hope that you can help them to make those choices.

In a short while we will hear from two starts of the television universe. Everyone knows Trisha Goddard, our very own Queen of Daytime. Trisha has done so much through her show to help ordinary people, people like those who read your magazines.
And I’m delighted that she is behind NHS Patient Choice, taking a leading role today in spreading the message on choice to people across the country.

Then you will hear from Professor Geoffrey Beattie. Famous for being the Big Brother psychologist, and renown for being Head of the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Manchester.

So thank you for coming today and I’d now like to hand over to Bob.