Sharpe's Opinion

Labour’s False Claim to the NHS

The Labour Party have taken great enjoyment at portraying public support for the NHS as a Labour victory, with one Labour MP even going so far as to say “Labour is the NHS and the NHS is Labour”.

Yesterday, Seth Thevoz on Lib Dem Voice truly shattered that particular myth:

The NHS owes its existence to the climate of wartime British politics, not least the vastly expanded access to basic healthcare which came with conscription, and the subsequent rise in expectations. As Paul Addison outlined over 30 years ago in his landmark The Road to 1945, the wartime coalition of 1940-5 fostered a remarkable degree of consensus. In social policy, this resulted in the seminal 1942 report Social Insurance and Allied Services, chaired by the Liberal economist William Beveridge – better known as the Beveridge Report. In this, Beveridge set out a comprehensive state plan of social care. Section 19 of the report is the first public mention of a “National Health Service.”

The report was enormously influential, and what cannot be stressed enough is that in the subsequent 1945 general election, all three parties endorsed the Beveridge Report.

Revealingly, all three parties had NHS proposals in their 1945 manifestoes. The Conservatives actually had the longest section in their manifesto.

It is perhaps true to say that the NHS was Labour’s greatest achievement. But that doesn’t mean to say that Labour were the only party who could, or would, have achieved it – and it doesn’t necessarily follow that their implementation of national healthcare was the best possible.

But hey, what would I know – I’m not the Twitter Tsar after all…