Our conference comes at a pivotal time for the health service. We have both an opportunity and a duty. The duty is to honour the sacrifices made by those who have lost their lives during the pandemic. While the opportunity comes from being able to take all the learning from the past 15 months to build the best health system in the world and to enable the people of this country to live the healthiest lives they can.

We will draw the conference to a close with a debate on the future of the health and care system and what needs to happen next to place it on a more sustainable footing. Our expert panel of leaders from across the system will look at both the challenges and opportunities of delivering the recovery.

Key issues to be discussed include efforts to safely and effectively recover the backlog of care, support for the mental health and wellbeing of our staff, how we learn to live with COVID-19 and continue to deliver services alongside it, and how we address the long-standing health inequalities in our country.