SOON after the establishment of the NHS in 1948, efforts were made to dilute its provisions and undermine its principles from the introduction of charges for prescriptions, for dental care and for spectacles in 1952 right through to Margaret Thatcher’s internal market, the closer collaboration with the private providers and PFI under the Tony Blair government and the removal of the duty on the secretary of state to secure and provide healthcare for all in the 2012 Health and Social Care Act.

The assault was incessant resulting in significant erosion of NHS provisions and a gradual undermining of the core principle of the NHS as outlined in the 1948 Act which placed a duty on the secretary of state to provide key universal health services throughout England.

This core principle was deliberately subverted and substituted with “free at the point of delivery,” promoted energetically by the Blair and subsequent governments which went unchallenged at the time.