As Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai said about the French revolution, it is too early to tell.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) alluded to, there is one ideology that we will not compromise on: our belief that the NHS should be free at the point of use and available to all. And why will we not compromise on this? It is because, contrary to Labour’s creation myth about the NHS, it was a Conservative Health Minister, Sir Henry Willink, who first proposed it in 1944. Here are his words from 1944 announcing the setting up of the NHS:
“Whatever your income, if you want to use the service…there’ll be no charge for treatment. The National Health Service will include”—
[Interruption.] I know this is difficult for Labour Members, but let me tell them what the Conservatives said when we were setting up the NHS:
“The National Health Service will include family doctors”
and will
“cover any medicines you may need, specialist advice, and of course hospital treatment whatever the illness”.
Nye Bevan deserves great credit for delivering that Conservative dream, but let us be clear today that no party has a monopoly on compassion, and no party has a monopoly on our NHS. There are some other myths—