Last week marked the 75th birthday of the NHS, and this was the focus of many discussions at the Local Government Association annual conference which I attended in Bournemouth.

On the first day of the conference, I had lunch with an official from HM Treasury and explained my frustration that they always seem to be able to find money for crises when ambulances are stacked up outside hospitals, but claim there isn’t any funding available for the early interventions and preventative measures which could have avoided the queues in the first place.

I urged the Treasury official to support the Liberal Democrat policy of paying care workers at least £2 per hour above the “National Living Wage” so that Councils can compete with the wages offered by the private sector. I also suggested creating a new funding rule so that for every £1 spent on emergency and acute care, a fixed percentage has to be allocated to “upstream” measures such as school counsellors and drug rehabilitation programmes.

On Wednesday, I met with Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation and Mark Rogers, Chief Executive of the Leadership Centre. I asked why NHS and Council leaders are failing to divert funds towards prevention and early intervention. They told me that even though local leaders want to do the right thing, they are being forced to do the opposite by the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary, who are both obsessed with short-term headlines.

On Friday, back in Truro, I met with the Chief Executive of Cornwall’s “Integrated Care Board” to discuss these issues. It was reassuring to hear that the ambulance crisis has eased for the time being, but the system will soon come under pressure as the holiday season hits its peak. The Chief Exec also revealed that 60% of those turning up at our Emergency Departments should have been treated elsewhere, so there is clearly a problem with the way the wider system is working. When people can’t get an appointment with their GP, can’t access mental health treatment, or can’t use their local Minor Injury Unit because it has been “temporarily closed due to staffing shortages”, then it is inevitable that more people will end up at the Emergency Department.

After meeting all these high-flyers, it was great to get my feet back on the ground at the Liskeard show to discuss these ideas with the most important people of all; the residents and businesses of South East Cornwall. Our Liberal Democrat stand was the busiest I’ve ever seen it, with a remarkable number of lifelong Conservative supporters dropping in to tell us how disgusted they are with the actions of that party’s MPs, and letting me know that they will be voting Liberal Democrat at the next election.