Question: Despite Blair's warnings that the NHS faces a tough winter, the service was better prepared than ever before. Will you be congratulating the government for their organisational skills?

Liam Fox: Well, the government so far has managed to avoid a seasonal exacerbation of the problem because there hasn't been a flu crisis. But the problem has now become a structural one rather than a seasonal one. We have a structural problem in that we have persistent bed-blocking because of the government's incompetence in dealing with the care home sector primarily. And this inevitably will sooner or later mean that they will have to reduce their surgery because of bed-blocking; leading to a rise in waiting lists. So it's only a matter of time before the real structural problem starts to result in ever increasing waiting lists.

Question: You've promised to match Labour's spending on health pound for pound. But have you ruled out a commitment to spending more than Labour on health?

Liam Fox: Well we want a greater total spend and that means that we will spend as much as they will on the NHS but we also want to encourage people to spend in the private sector on top of what the NHS is providing. And therefore we intend to abolish the tax on employers who provide health care packages for their employees. And we also intend to abolish the tax of the benefit in kind, again when we can afford to do so, so that we can see a greater increase in total capacity in the same way as you get a public-private partnership in most North European countries. That's what we want to encourage in Britain.

Question: So you want to work closer with the private sector than Alan Milburn has at the moment ?

Liam Fox: Yes. We want to see an expansion of total capacity so that we can take advantage of that wherever it exists at one time. And the way to do that is to make sure you get a greater number of private providers in the market.

Question: Doesn't it leave you vulnerable to Labour claims that you're hiving people away from the NHS into the private sector? Labour will say the NHS would be under threat in your hands ?

Liam Fox: It's a bizarre concept if we're spending as much as they are on the NHS. But we're talking about spending on top of what they're going to spend on the NHS so that is a bonanza for health care. And we've got to remember what's important is the health care that we can actually deliver to patients. And there is a huge gap between outcomes in this country and the outcomes of other North European countries, especially in things like cardiology and oncology. And our job as a government is to improve the outcomes the patients actually have in this country. It shouldn't matter where patients are treated, only when they are treated and the quality of that treatment.

Question: Come the election, where will be the clear blue water on health?

Liam Fox: We believe in depoliticising the delivery of the NHS, we believe in reducing the power of the Secretary of State, we believe in giving decisions back to doctors, not managers, about which patients to treat, we believe in giving power back to the sisters on the wards so that they have both responsibility and authority for the patients, and we believe in expanding the private sector on top of the NHS. And while we would spend the same as Labour, we will spend it differently in different priorities. I would have thought that is a reasonable amount of clear blue water.

Question: The government has introduced a National Clinical Assessment Authority to root out failing and criminal doctors. What effect will the NCAA have in stopping these preventable errors?

Liam Fox: Whether it will make a difference on the ground is debatable, and I think the scepticism shown by the BMA and the Colleges is fully warranted. It's not clear to us how it will operate, what sort of body it will be, what the policing mechanism will be and what the initiation mechanism will be. It seems that ministers have been making it up as they go along. But that's what we would expect from a government that attaches more importance to headlines than substance. So time will tell. It's impossible from the details that we have at the moment to make any detailed judgement.

Question: Do you support proposals on health and safety grounds for an institute of medical safety and an independent medical inspectorate?

Liam Fox: We have for a long time taken the view that there has to be a single regulatory body for quality health care, covering both the state and private sectors. If you're going to increase the interdependence between the two sectors, you need to have a single regulatory body. So whether you call it a Commission for Health Improvement and enhance its role, or call it a separate title doesn't bother me. But we must have a single regulatory body that's responsible for quality and inspection right across both state and private sectors. And we will introduce such a body.

Question: Commentators point to the growth of the compensation culture as potentially having a huge effect on health resources. How concerned are you by the effect that this compensation culture could have on the health service?

Liam Fox: Ultimately in a society where everyone becomes obsessed by money, everybody has to pay. And if you have people suing a publicly funded health care service on a regular basis then eventually everyone will have to pay money to cover this. I think our problem is a wider one. It's a problem that afflicts our society. It's the "money for nothing" and "somebody must be blamed" cultures, both of which are constantly encouraged by the current government.

Question: In what way is this Government encouraging it ?

Liam Fox: I think this government is a government of blame. If something goes wrong, somebody must be responsible - and usually anyone but them. In the Health Service, for example, we've had managers blamed, we've had doctors blamed, we've had GPs blamed for admitting the wrong sort of patients. Always somebody, but seldom the policy maker, is to blame. And I think that this unwelcome trend is further reinforced by people demanding compensation not only for errors which results from negligence but also those which are simple mistakes.

Question: Do you detect this compensation culture has had an effect on the doctors themselves?

Liam Fox: Undoubtedly. It is leading to defensive medicine. And defensive medicine is not only expensive, it's also bad for patients, because unnecessary investigations and tests are carried out on them simply to make sure that the doctor is not going to be liable to face a lawsuit later on. Everybody loses in a something for nothing culture.

Question: So how could you end this risk aversion response?

Liam Fox: I don't think you can when you have a legal culture, which is constantly encouraging people to sue. And when you have the legal profession advertising on TV for people to sue others for accidents, then inevitably you will have a knock-on effect. In time, we'll suffer what happened in the United States, where doctors primarily practise defensive medicine and patients therefore undergo procedures whether or not they need them. The goal is to protect the doctor's reputation, not to improve the patient's health.

Question: Would you like to see an end to these companies advertising to sue over accidents?

Liam Fox: I would like to see an end to the whole culture, but whether or not that's possible in a free society, I'm not sure. Sadly, I doubt if it is.

Question: Everyday, every week, there are new health scares - blood clots when you fly, eating salmon, using clingfilm. Are we as a nation paranoid about health scares?

Liam Fox: I think what we're looking for is a risk-free existence. But there is no such thing. People must accept that there are dangers to being alive. And we are at risk of becoming a totally neurotic society, worried about all sorts of perceived dangers which don't actually exist.

Question: You've described hospitals as clapped out, dirty and run down. What do you propose? Would you rule out spending more money to clean them up?

Liam Fox: Well it's not just what a hospital looks like that matters, it's what a hospital does. I've visited hospitals which looked pretty grubby but which had very low levels of hospital-acquired infection. And it's the uncleanliness that you can't see that's the problem. What we need to do is to make sure that those who are in charge of patients are also in charge of the patients' environment. And that means giving primary responsibility back to ward sisters, so that they're in control not just of the simple patient care but also of the cleaning and catering of the wards, and can give instructions to all those that work within the ward. We have now managed to have a de-linking of responsibility and authority in the nursing profession. As a result ward sisters have responsibility for the patients but not the authority to carry out what's required. That's got to change. And that's got to be the primary concern.

Question: A return to the matron?

Liam Fox: Certainly a return to a matron's values of cleanliness and discipline, and certainly a return to the ward sister being in charge of a ward. When the ward sister says jump, the question is how high?

Question: Some schools are giving the morning after pill out to girls under 16 without the consent of the parents. What do you make of this development?

Liam Fox: I think it's appalling, it's alarming and I think parents will be extremely concerned that this development will send all the wrong signals to young people. I spoke to a girl yesterday who'd obtained the morning after pill over the counter. She wasn't told about any risks of ectopic pregnancy, nor was she told about the need to take contraception for the rest of the cycle. This reinforces the worries that I initially had when this proposal was announced. I think the appropriate place for the morning after pill is in the doctor's surgery. It may well be that it would be a suitable case for a nurse prescribing. But I think that inside the surgery is the appropriate place for it.

Question: So would you ban schools from giving the morning after pill out to under-16 girls?

Liam Fox: Well I would have it done entirely within General Practice any way, and not over the counter, so it would come back to the primary setting.

Question: How do Conservatives persuade teenagers not to have sex in the first place, or is that a lost cause?

Liam Fox: I think you have to warn them of the dangers of lack of personal responsibility both in the short term and the long term. We have to be educating them in the huge risks of sexually transmitted diseases. The unspoken epidemic at the moment is of sexually transmitted diseases of chlamydia, of ghonorrea, and of syphilis. These are things that people need to be told about. We need to get rid of the squeamishness in talking about them because in not talking about them we are exacerbating the risk.

Question: The NHS won't really matter come the election will it. It's all about the economy ?

Liam Fox: Well, any election that didn't involve at any point the health care of the nation would have me eating my hat.