Dr Marie Louise Coleiro Preca, who has a very good personal knowledge of the performance of the Labour Government prior to 1987, came up with a gem recently, one of those cracks that make you shake your head in awe at the sheer effrontery of the person making it.

According Dr Coleiro Preca, it is only a Labour Government that would be able to guarantee a viable, free and top-class health service.

She said this on the basis of no evidence whatsoever.

In fact, the only evidence the country has as to the extent to which a Labour Government can guarantee a top-class health service leads us to precisely the opposite conclusion. I will, I know, be accused of harping back to the past, but it is on their past that we have to judge them and their past, in the matter of health services, is evidence only of the fact that a top-class health service, which we had, and which we now have again, was destroyed beyond recognition by a Labour Government.

Labour in the Seventies did to the medical profession what they tried to do to the private schools in the Eighties. In reacting to partial and very limited industrial action by the doctors, Mintoff's Government, that guardian of the working classes, ripped apart a health service that was excellent. I have no doubt that they will not do the same if they're in Government in the future, because no-one could be that uncaring for the national good again, but for Labour to make the claim Dr Coleiro Preca made is provocative in the extreme, in the circumstances.

It should be put on record, because it deserves to be, that we have an excellent health service in all respects. People whinge and whine continually about waiting lists and overcrowding and Heaven knows what else, but the fact is that when push comes to shove, our doctors, nurses, support staff and facilities are amongst the best and free to the user, to boot. And they're going to remain free, too, however many axes are ground and misinterpretations flaunted.