In 1946-48, Tory MP's following Winston Churchill's 3line whip marched time and again through the lobbies to oppose the establishment of the National Health Service.
The NHS nationalised the patchwork of private, charitable and municipal hospitals which naa provea incapabie or de livering adequate services in the war, and many of which were bankrupt. So popular was the i new service that in its first two years it brought the collapse of the market in private health insurance, which plunged from over 10 million subscribers be fore the war to just 120,000 by rate income tax - Which gave an 1950.
Many Tories still resent the per year and a top industrialist NHS, Thatcher 're- t20 per weck. forms pushed through Parla- Under Heath, Secretary of ment in 1990- against almost unanimous public and profes- up controversial NHS reforms sional opposition - give a framework in which a fourth take effect in April 1974, just two term Tory government could at- months after the Tories had lost tempt to roil back the wheei of the election. The scheme was history, moving towards an in- opposed by many NHS admincreasingly privatised system. strators and led to an increase Until now, the Tory hostility of 17,000 admin staff and cost at to the NHS has taken the form least 69m to implement. of rearguard sniping The incoming Labour govdesigned to erode from the ernment did not reverse the edges rather than attack the fun- Tory measures, but set up a damentals of the service. Royal Commission which Prescription charges eventually condemned them but only after Thatcher had Despite the well-known 1950 taken office in 1979. rows and resignations in the La- Meanwhile with all Labour's bour Party over the imposition policies effectively decided by of charges for NHS dental treat- he bankers and the Internament and spectacles, it was the tional Monetary Fund, Chancellor Denis Healey imposed Tories under Churchill who first heavy cuts in NHS spending in imposed prescription charges, beginning with a shilling (5p) 1976 which triggered a wave of per form in the carly 1950s, ris- hospital closures. The fightback ing rapidly to 10p per item in against these coincided with ris- ing wages militancy among Alter the lories were turfed newly-organised health unions out by Wilson's Labour Party in and contributed to the 'winter of prescription charge was abolished for four years be Pay increase fore reappearing as part of a crisis paci kage in When Thatcher came to office she inherited a relatively generTory shadow Health minister ous 'comparability' pay deal for Sir Bernard Braine floated in nurses which automatically im1967 the idea of imposing charPuca a ois increase iNH ges for NHS treatment spending if immediate cuts could be covered in part... Or were to be avoided. wholly by health insurance. .. But the traditional Tory hoswe might even look at the possi. tility to the NHs was visible bility of levying a hotel charge from the outset when, despite for a hospital stay." denials before the election, presWhen Ted Heath's Tory gov- cription charges rocketed 125% ernment took office, Chancellor within six months, another 55% sir Aninony baroer lost no tome in April 1980, and by December in clobbering the NHS in a mini- 1980 had risen five- fold in budget which doubled pres- Thatcher's first 18 months. cription charges and jacked up Soargway prescription chardental and spectacle charges to ges have risen ever since, help finance a 2.5p cut on basic the current charge of €3.60 a massive 18 times the prefrom this charge, from which 75% of patients are exempt, is derisory compared with the 230 billion NHS budget: but as a flat-rate charge it bites especially hard against the low-paid workers, many of whom are now unableto afford all the tems they are prescribed.
Thatcher's first Health Secretary P'atrick Jenkin showed his contempt for the low-paid hen he immediately suf ressed the embarrassing find ings of the Black Report on inequality and health, which showed that the palliative measures of the NHS had had little effect in stemming the tide of ill-health among poorer working class families.
Reforms
In 1982 the Tories again reorganised the NHS, scrapping some of Sir Keith's reforms, and establishing the rrangement of District and Regional health authorities run = as diways - by noll elected quango bodies of political appointees. To this in 1984 they added a new tier of bureaucracy by establishing 800 new regional and district general managers tory, the landslide against Michael Foot, heralded a new wave of cash cuts, again causing hospital ciosures (the "Lawson cuts'). Meanwhile cock-a-hoop Tories began fantasising on the market-style solunons that coma ockin pur vatising the NHS.
While Tory policies for five of the first six years screwed down NHS spending to below he 2% a year real terms increase needed to keep with new technology and an VULC ageing population, right wing 110 vois hardens:
Election X '92 for supporting unofficial action PHUTO: John Harris