Panel stitched by:
Friends in Fine Embroidery
Lydia Lawson
June McAleece
Irene Wood
Stitched in:
Dunfermline, Dalgety Bay, Kirkcaldy
Britain’s greatest post-war achievement was the foundation of the National Health Service. This key element of the incoming Labour government’s manifesto was difficult to deliver. Many doctors had been used to charging for their services and were unwilling to cooperate but Aneurin Bevan, the Minister of Health, later said he had ‘stuffed their mouths with gold’. In his book, In Place of Fear, Bevan wrote that ‘no society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of a lack of means’. That remains the guiding principle of the NHS. The National Health Service (Scotland) Act brought the new service into being with the intention of care being free at the point of need. Some prescription charges were brought in and have continued in England but, in Scotland where healthcare is devolved, there are no such charges. With an ageing population living longer, the cost of the NHS in Scotland is rising and stood at £11.35 billion for 2010–2011. But the service is also Scotland’s largest employer. In 2007, the Scottish government announced its opposition to partnerships between the NHS and the private sector and, a year later, it abolished the much-resented car parking charges at all hospitals except those funded by a private finance initiative scheme in Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow. The history of the NHS in Scotland is filled with remarkable statistics. In the year it was founded, around 500,000 Scots who needed them were prescribed spectacles and, partly due to consistent campaigning, the number of smokers in Scotland has declined from 80 per cent in 1954 to 23 per cent in 2011.
Panel stitched by:
Friends in Fine Embroidery
Lydia Lawson
June McAleece
Irene Wood
Stitched in:
Dunfermline, Dalgety Bay, Kirkcaldy