At the recent Conservative party conference the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, claimed that it was Henry Willink, the Tory minister for health in the wartime coalition, who introduced a white paper on a national health service in 1944, making Willink the founder of the NHS and not Nye Bevan.
My research, thanks to the House of Lords library, tells me that this is complete nonsense and that Mr Hunt is way off the mark. Mr Willink’s proposed bill was by his own admission no more than a consultative document and did not see the light of day.
Indeed, when Nye Bevan’s comprehensive national health service bill was voted into law in 1946, Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan, Rab Butler and other notable Tories voted against it – including Mr Willink himself, who had by then proposed a hostile amendment to the bill.
So Mr Hunt should get his facts straight, and cease misleading his Tory brethren and the wider public.
Tom Pendry
Labour, House of Lords
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