New Labour and the NHS

Abstract

The election of a Labour government under Tony Blair in 1997 brought to an end 18 years of Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher and John Major and appeared to offer the prospect of a return to quieter times for the NHS. In practice, this was not to be as the Blair government developed its own policies for the modernisation of the NHS and in the process published proposals which were just as radical as those contained in Working for Patients. These proposals centred on what ministers described as a ‘third way’ of reform, different from both the internal market of the Thatcher government and the application of centralised planning by previous Labour governments. The aim of this chapter is to analyse this third way and to explore variations in its application to different parts of the United Kingdom at a time when the devolution of power opened up increasing differences of approach between England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.