Liberal Democrats on Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council today backed a motion praising the NHS on its 70 years of providing healthcare.

The motion also called for an independent commission to look at future funding plans for the health service.

Lib Dem Deputy Leader Cllr Mary Ovens said:

“The seeds of the NHS were sown during World War 2 when the coalition government was in power.

“The Liberal economist William Beveridge produced a report in 1942 called “Social Insurance & Allied Services. This became known as the Beveridge Report. The report contained the first ever public mention of a national health service.”

The Liberal Party manifesto in 1945 said:

“People cannot be happy unless they are healthy. The Liberal aim is a social policy which will help to conquer disease by prevention as well as cure, through good housing, improved nutrition, the lifting of strains and worries caused by fear of unemployment, and through intensified medical research.”

Cllr Ovens said:

“These words are as important now as they were then.

“But we need to look to the future. People are living longer, and there are more and better treatments available. All good news, but it means higher costs. We need a grown-up, cross-party debate about how we fund healthcare in the country. We need to work out how we integrate health with social care. And we need to address recruitment and staffing problems with a long term plan, something successive governments have failed to do.”