IT'S good news that the junior doctors’ strikes have been cancelled. The deal agreed between the government and the doctors union guarantees better training, safety and working conditions for junior doctors as well as delivering a substantial basic pay rise of more than 10 per cent. Patients would have suffered badly from a strike and I'm glad that calm heads have prevailed.

Nothing is more important than our health. It's why we spend almost 10 per cent of our economy on health and social care and why the NHS budget has increased in every year since I've been an MP.

Worcestershire NHS’s annual budget has risen by £30 million since 2010 - the money is spent by our local GPs as our personal shoppers on local services. Capital investment usually comes separately from the NHS capital budget and has helped with new wards in Tenbury as well as a £17 million community hospital in Malvern.

Money has also been spent improving our main Worcestershire Royal Acute hospital. We are lucky to have an amazing new birthing centre and having visited it to help celebrate its own birthday, I can’t think of a better place in the world to have a baby. The hospital has recently opened up a new breast unit too and a new oncology unit costing £22.5m. The government has also offered £4.9 million to help the accident and emergency unit to expand.

For the last two winters, the government has allocated additional money to help deal with the extra pressures faced by Worcestershire Royal Hospital’s A & E unit as well as promising further funds to increase capacity across the hospital.

The NHS today helps more people with higher quality care than ever before in its history. Each day, compared to 2010, the service is performing 4,400 more operations, seeing 2,500 more people in A&E within 4hrs and providing 1,400 more people with access to mental health services. With a budget increase of £10 billion, we are employing record numbers of doctors and nurses and delivering innovative and transformative treatments which would have been unimaginable only a decade ago.

Treatments, trusts, pathways and configurations continually evolve. If we put patients front and centre, together with rising funding and staff, I know our local NHS will deliver for local residents.