NHS (60th Anniversary)

I agree with my right hon. Friend, and I will come on to targets and outcomes a little later. The Conservative party voted against the National Health Service Bill at every stage, so has the NHS really had"““support from all political parties””?" Has this great achievement of a Labour Government been equally cherished by the Conservative party? I think the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire may blush a little at that suggestion. The NHS was certainly not supported at birth—in its infant and teenage years, perhaps. Moving on to the '80s, Baroness Thatcher, who famously went to a private hospital in Windsor rather than use the NHS, said as Prime Minister that the NHS was ““safe in her hands””, rather as the Leader of the Opposition was saying earlier today. However, as Rudolf Klein, historian of the NHS, points out, in 1982 the Government's think-tank, the central policy review staff, produced a paper proposing the replacement of a tax-financed NHS by a system of private insurance. That was presented to Ministers by the Chancellor and promptly leaked to The Economist, so it became a big scandal. History records that we can thank Lord Fowler, who was Secretary of State for Social Services, for killing off that proposal. We should also remember that every single—[Interruption.] Just one second. We are coming up to recent history, which will be much more interesting to the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning). Coming up to recent history, we should remember that every—