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Owen Smith faced difficult questions about his views on the private sector in the NHS on the UK's flagship morning radio news show.

The Pontypridd MP was being quizzed by Sarah Montague on Radio 4's Today programme about comments he made in 2005 while working as a lobbyist for pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.

Supporters of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn have questioned his challenger's commitment to a publicly-owned NHS because of the comments.

Here's one of the attack posters circulating on social media

Ms Montague quoted a comment Mr Smith made while working for Pfizer in 2005

Then, he had said: "We believe that choice is a good thing and that patients and healthcare professionals should be at the heart of developing the agenda of the NHS."

And she challenged him, saying: "You clearly wanted Pfizer to be replacing parts of the NHS."

Mr Smith rejected this.

He said: "That's clearly not true. It is a gross extrapolation of one comment from a press release on a report commissioned by Pfizer before I worked there at a time the last Labour government was using the word choice to describe getting private providers to offer hip and knee and cataract operations.

"I've never advocated privatisation of the NHS. It has been one of the Labour Party's proudest achievements.

"I grew up swaddled in stories of the Labour party creating the NHS out of South Wales."

Ms Montagu followed up with another quote Mr Smith made in 2005

Then, he said: "We believe that choice is a good thing".

And again, she challenged him: "If you're having choice - the ability to go to a private provider as well as the NHS - many people in your party, many people across the country, might say that is undermining the NHS."

Again Mr Smith rejected her claim.

He said: "That was about when I started working for Pfizer. I didn't commission the report. It was a press release that I was responsible for.

"My position is what it always has been. I believe in a 100% publicly owned NHS free at the point of use."

Ms Montagu interjected... "Where some of the services are provided by the private sector"

And Mr Smith again rebuffed her.

"There are many services in the NHS that are operated by private providers," he said.

"There are a hell of a lot more of them because of the way in which the current Tory government has twisted some of the words of the last Labour government.

"Yes, I think, broadly speaking we made a mistake, the last Labour government, in not appreciating how a Tory government would ride a coach and horses through the language.

"In employing words like choice we allowed them to use it as a Trojan Horse to marketise the NHS."

Listen to the exchange on the Today programme's website.

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Here's what Mr Smith told WalesOnline about the private sector in the NHS in 2006

This comment was made in an interview with WalesOnline's Martin Shipton when Mr Smith was standing in a by-election in Blaenau Gwent in 2006.

He said: "Where they can bring good ideas, where they can bring valuable services that the NHS is not able to deliver, and where they can work alongside but subservient to the NHS and without diminishing in any respect the public service ethos of the NHS, then I think that's fine.

"If their involvement means in any way, shape or form the break up of the NHS, then I'm not a fan of it, but I don't think it does."

He also spoke about the Iraq War, PFI schemes and more.