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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
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Wes Streeting

In 1948 a Labour government founded the NHS. My job now is to make it fit for the future

Keir Starmer talks and Wes Streeting stands behind him in a room with seated medical staff
Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting visit University College London hospital, 11 September 2024. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/Reuters

There are moments in our national story when our choices define who we are. In 1948, Clement Attlee’s government made a choice founded on fairness: that everyone in our country deserves to receive the care they need, not the care they can afford.

That the National Health Service was created amid the rubble and ruin of the aftermath of war makes that choice all the more remarkable. It enshrined in law and in the service itself our collective conviction that healthcare is not a privilege to be bought and sold, but a right to be cherished and protected. Now it falls to our generation to make the same choice.

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