The NHS: in gratitude on its 70th birthday

Today is the 70th birthday of the National Health Service. Services and celebrations are happening across the nation. We are right to honour this great institution and be profoundly thankful for it.

I'm not one of those with a dramatic life-and-death story to tell about the NHS. I've not troubled my GPs overmuch in my lifetime. Most of my ailments have been small beer compared to what many others have had to face: childhood infections and abrasions, adolescent allergies, the odd broken limb, hypertension, mild atrial fibrillation, psoriasis. I've undergone a vasectomy, a prostate op and keyhole surgery for hernias. I have NHS hearing aids. Too much information? I suspect that for a man coming to the end of his seventh decade, it's pretty standard fare.

The Archers, the NHS and I are almost exact contemporaries. After the war, my mother became a nurse at the old Charing Cross Hospital in central London where I was born. Neither she nor my father were people of faith, but they did instil in me from a very early age a kind of hushed reverence for the NHS. (The Archers had to wait a few more years.) Our GP in north London was an elderly German-Jewish exile called Dr Landstein. I recall him quite clearly from the mid-1950s: kindly, compassionate, wise. Nothing was too much trouble for him. He enjoyed home visits and chats with my mother who like him had also survived the Holocaust. It felt like a family bereavement when he retired. I remember his successor too, Dr Giwelb. He was younger, less priestlike, more professionalised, more "modern", but he too was among the gods of my childhood pantheon (where they were flanked by Miss Bull, my primary school headmistress, and Owen Brannigan who lived three doors away on our street). Between them, they shaped my expectations of healthcare for a lifetime. And they have been abundantly fulfilled in adulthood. I'm thinking especially of two marvellous GPs had in Sheffield and Durham. Perhaps they know who they are.

When I was a parish priest, I was also the official chaplain to the town's infirmary, paid by the NHS. I learned a lot about healthcare in those years, not least when I was involved in the in-service training of doctors, nurses, administrators and support staff. I was proud to be a tiny part of that exemplary hospital, proud to have a role in an institution that was so valued in the community. If I ever entertained doubts about the virtue of universal healthcare (I'm not sure that I did), my experience in that place of truth and love quickly dispelled them.

So I understand why Polly Toynbee writes as she does about the NHS as a kind of surrogate religion. It's simply there, like the good old C of E, a benign institution that we're glad exists to bless our nation and provide for it at times of need, even if we rarely have to trouble it ourselves. For my generation and for everyone younger, it has hatched us, patched us up and dispatched us. We've felt safe and cared for. We've never known anything else. We can't quite understand why the whole world doesn't emulate the NHS, why the United States, for instance, has struggled so hard to provide even the rudimentary ObamaCare for the most needy that is now being unravelled by Donald Trump.

But we know for ourselves how politicised health care has become. No government has dared to tamper with the idea of universal healthcare free at the point of use. It would be a certain vote-loser. And yet the sustainability of the NHS is under threat in a way that would have been inconceivable even a quarter of a century ago. Conservative administrations have been reluctant for decades to say openly that excellence in healthcare requires that we all put our hands in our pockets to pay for it through our taxes. Only now is there a belated acknowledgment of this in the Prime Minister's £20 billion funding commitment. It's a welcome start. But it's nowhere near enough if the NHS is to be stabilised. It's now an urgent case of playing catch-up. Years of chronic underfunding must be put right if the founding vision of the NHS is to be honoured in our day. To achieve this, our leaders have to believe in it. Back to the NHS as a quasi-religion that needs vision and faith if it's to serve us well and flourish.

I recently read Adam Kay's book This is Going to Hurt. He was a junior hospital doctor specialising in obstetrics. He loved his work and showed every sign of going on to a promising career as a consultant. But the pressures on him as a healthcare professional became intense - not because of any failure of his, but because of "the system": impossible working hours, lack of resources, an absence of proper rigorous supervision, the ever-increasing likelihood of making a life-threatening mistake. So he resigned his position and is now a writer. His book is candid about his experience. It is by turns very funny and extremely alarming. We've known for years what GPs and junior hospital doctors have to contend with. But when you read something as personal and vivid as this, you begin to worry. You wonder how on earth the NHS can carry on as a viable institution, let alone have a future.

Like so many other things - the environment, arms sales, ethical trade, reform of our financial structures, the benefits system, Brexit, it comes down to the political will. Do we really want a future in which the founding vision of the NHS continues to play a central part in the welfare of our people? If so, are we willing to pay for it? Our politicians must come clean. And while we're on the subject, that applies to social care for the elderly too. We baby-boomers are getting old. Demographic projections show how our demands on the NHS will put it under ever-increasing strain until our generation has died out. Before that, we are going to need social care that is beyond the means of many people to afford. For those who are "just about managing" or not managing at all, the prospect of ageing is bleak and even terrifying. After a lifetime of looking after others, who will look after them?

Today we celebrate the vision and courage of those pioneers of 70 years ago who believed that the nation should look after its people from cradle to grave. That's not about setting up unhealthy dependencies so much as creating structures of mutual giving and receiving so that those who need care have access to it and need not fear that it will be denied them. It's old-fashioned to speak of "the idea of a Christian society". Yet I profoundly believe in this ideal of a public caring institution which is for all people, and from which no-one is excluded. It's a practical expression of the great commandment to love our neighbour as ourselves. On this NHS birthday, and out of gratitude for all that it represents, I believe we must renew our heartfelt political commitment to it so that our children and grandchildren may benefit as we have done.

But a birthday is for celebrating and being thankful. The NHS is not a perfect institution but I want to say, unhesitatingly, that it is a great one So this is a day to be glad and set our hopes high. As the Archbishop of Canterbury tweeted today, "The NHS is an expression of our deepest shared values. Whatever its challenges, it’s about us living out our concern for solidarity and the common good. It reflects God’s concern for every person without exception. Today let's pray, give thanks and recommit our support. The NHS can be proud of its first seven decades." Indeed.  Floreat!