My grandpa helped set up the NHS 70 years ago. He’d be shocked at how it’s abused today by selfish people who take it for granted

THe National Health Service will be 70 years old on Thursday. My grandfather, Clement Attlee, was one of its chief architects and the prime minister who, while in power from 1945 to 1951, ensured its successful launch.

Healthcare for all, free at the point of use. It’s difficult to imagine what that meant to people back then who had been unable to afford dentures or an eye test, let alone hospital treatment.

But if my grandfather were alive today, I shudder to think what he would make of the crises facing the NHS.

Overcrowding is more desperate than ever. At its worst, many hospitals have no available beds and patients are gridlocked on trolleys in the waiting rooms, sometimes waiting days for a place on a proper ward.

Reckless

Doctors and nurses are working themselves to exhaustion yet still they are unable to give all their patients the attention they need.

Meanwhile, A&e departments are clogged with people who should simply have made an appointment to see a GP but couldn’t be bothered — or who stagger into hospital drunk, in need of treatment as a consequence of over-indulging on a night out. My grandfather, an abstemious man, would be saddened by the spectacle. This is not what he envisaged for Britain’s health service.

It was meant to be a helping hand for all, not a casualty station for those who were too self-indulgent and reckless to look after themselves.

But he would not have turned his face away. He was too great for that. I was nine when he died in 1967, and not old enough to realise what he had done for his country: he was simply Grandpa. But over the years I have gradually come to understand, and I feel terribly proud of his legacy.

everyone who met him thought he was a modest, unassuming man, but he had a big personality.

After World War I, he could have lived in middle- class comfort with his family, recovering from his experiences in Mesopotamia (where he was badly wounded by shrapnel) and on the Western Front.

Instead, he chose to live side by side with some of the poorest people in London’s east end. And as mayor of Stepney, he saw how desperately these people needed healthcare. They were dying for want of it, the young as well as the old.

Today, it is difficult to remember how grateful ordinary, hard-working families were to be given free access to medical care. To pay a doctor’s bill, some families went without food.

People were thrilled to have spectacles for the first time. Others were finally able to eat properly, after years of soup and mush when they couldn’t afford to have dentures.

Of course, hospitals are now taken for granted, and the fact they are treated by some as a routine destination after a boozy night out is utterly shameful.

Anyone who lived through World War II would not have such a selfish attitude.

That generation regarded doctors with the utmost respect, and would not make an appointment unless they really needed it: they knew there was always someone who might require it more urgently.

That sense of social responsibility is on the wane. Perhaps familiarity breeds contempt: at any rate, too many people use and abuse the service without a thought for others. The result is chaos. Stories of overcrowding are rife, but the crisis has been building for years.

In 2002, when Tony Blair was the Labour prime minister and heir to my grandfather, my family had an awful taste of it.

My mother Felicity — Clement’s daughter — suffered a minor stroke and was taken to Wycombe Hospital. There were no beds immediately available, and no one to see her. So she was placed on a trolley: not a bed on wheels, but the sort used for trundling blankets and boxes through the corridors.

After a time, she and the family were shunted into a side room. And there we waited, hour after hour, while my dear mother tried stoically to reassure me: ‘Darling, don’t worry, I’m sure there are people who need to be seen more urgently than me.’

After about four hours, I decided to kick up a fuss, and finally a doctor arrived. From that point, my mother had the most marvellous care. The staff were wonderful, she was given everything she needed, and though she was always frail thereafter she made a good recovery and lived for five more years.

Like most of us, I have seen the tremendous care that the NHS can provide. Its problems cannot be blamed on the medical staff: we’re lucky to have them. I think they are absolutely amazing and their dedication is fantastic.

But too often, we demand the wrong things from them.

It is counter-productive to expect all nurses, for instance, to have university degrees, as is increasingly the case.

Hurdles

Many young people who are not academic, or who do not want to get themselves deeply into debt with fees, would make ideal carers. They have love and patience in abundance. We should be utilising these qualities, not setting impossible hurdles.

And of course, if they do then want to gain qualifications by combining studying with working on the wards, then all the better. After all, everybody benefits. Britain’s whole health service seems to be beset by a mess of similarly illogical rules.

The other week, for instance, I turned 60, and was surprised to be told in the chemist’s that I no longer needed to pay for my prescriptions.

That makes no sense. I’m still working — in fact, I won’t qualify for my pension for another seven years. I’m willing and able to keep paying: it would never have occurred to me to stop. The NHS needs every penny, and just because I’ve had a birthday why should I automatically be expected not to pay?

I’m not alone in feeling this. Several of my old schoolfriends, all about my age, have told me it’s faintly insulting, and very impractical.

We no longer qualify for a free bus pass at 60. How difficult would it be to amend the rule on prescription?

Stifled

Too difficult, apparently. And that’s largely because the NHS is stifled by its bureaucracy.

If it’s frustrating for me, then I worry that it’s really dangerous for my grandchildren, now six and eight. Unless the NHS changes course, they face a frightening future in which they will be unable to access the care they need. The announcement by Theresa May that the NHS will receive £20 billion a year in extra funding by the end of 2023 is welcome.

As a Liberal Democrat district councillor, I would also urge the Health Secretary and the Chancellor to look again at my party’s proposals for a 1p increase in income tax rates, with that dividend ringfenced in perpetuity for the NHS. It would be affordable and sustainable.

However, we must also remember and appreciate that pumping ever more money into the health service will never be the whole solution.

As they grow up, my grandchildren do not deserve to inherit an even bigger crisis born of yet more shortterm thinking.

We need, as a nation, to change our attitude, to rediscover that deep gratitude for our free healthcare.

A whole generation of young adults has grown up, confident that nothing will ever be denied them. Their attitude is ‘see it, want it, have it’.

How will they cope when they can’t ‘ have it’? One thing is certain: all of us will wish we had looked after the National Health Service better.