The NHS

The NHS remains one of the British people’s proudest achievements. Together over the decades we have created and nurtured this precious and unique institution, founded on the principle that quality healthcare must be provided free at the point of delivery, based on clinical need, not the ability to pay. In turn, since 1948 the NHS has saved, protected, and improved millions of lives.

After 14 years of the previous Government, the NHS was broken but not beaten. Expensive and unnecessary top-down reforms, long-running industrial disputes, an annual winter crisis, lengthening waiting lists and waiting times, and a de facto two-tier system with working people regularly forced to scrape together the means to go private, brought the NHS to its knees.

The recent government review by Lord Darzi, a cancer surgeon with 30 years’ experience, revealed an NHS in crisis: 100,000 toddlers and babies left waiting for six hours in A&E last year; cancer deaths higher here than other countries; and nearly three million people off work sick.

Now, we have the chance to build an NHS fit for the future. But investment must go hand in hand with reform. This will require three big shifts.

First, from sickness to prevention, so that we can predict, pre-empt and prevent ill health in the first place. We must tackle the biggest killers such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and suicide.

Second, from hospital to community, with new neighbourhood health centres, closer to homes and communities.

And third, from analogue to digital, giving patients proper choice and control over their own healthcare, and finally realising the untapped potential of the NHS app.

Whether you use the NHS or work in it, you see first-hand what is great, but also what is not working. That is why I am pleased that the Government has launched the biggest conversation about the future of the NHS since its founding in 1948 – and I am asking you to have your say. It only takes a few minutes to share your views. Just visit www.change.nhs.uk or open up your NHS app.

We all owe the NHS a debt of gratitude for moments in our lives when it was there for us, when we needed it most. Now we have a chance to repay that debt. We need to do everything we can to get the NHS back on its feet. I hope you will take this chance to have your say and I encourage you to share this information with friends, family, colleagues and neighbours so that together we can be the generation that takes the NHS from its worst crisis in history, picks it up off its knees, and makes it fit for the future.