The problem with ‘our NHS’

Labour is demanding that Matt Hancock apologise to NHS workers for a ‘disgraceful attack’ on the NHS. In a letter to the Health Secretary, the party’s deputy leader Angela Rayner says Hancock must distance himself from a claim that ‘there is nothing special about the NHS, neither during this pandemic nor at any other time’. She also writes that ‘if you are committed to the protection of our NHS you must take action immediately to assure the NHS and the British people’ that he doesn’t think ‘we should not be grateful for the NHS or thank the NHS and its staff for their work during this pandemic’.

This sounds serious, like the kind of view any health secretary might want to run a mile from. It’s not one he has personally expressed: it comes from the Institute of Economic Affairs, which has published a report called ‘Viral Myths: Why we risk learning the wrong lessons from the pandemic’.