2020health Report Healthcare and the Economy 1

The NHS is a complex machine in which there are many shapes and sizes of components - representing the diversity of suppliers, providers and players - that function together as the NHS. Take any one away and the machine doesn't work - or can't do the work that it is designed to do.

“...there has been such a clamour from sectional interests in the field of national health that we are in danger of forgetting why these proposals are brought forward at all... consideration should now be given... to the requirements of the British people as a whole.”1

Anuerin Bevan, 2nd reading of the NHS Bill, 1946