ABSTRACT
The future of the public services has been called ‘the defining issue of our time’ (The Guardian, 21 March 2002). Indeed Tony Blair described ‘our second term mission’ as ‘the biggest reform programme in public services for half a century’ (Blair, 2001a). Nowhere was this mission more energetically pressed or to prove more contentious than in the NHS. This chapter provides a case study in what was a crucial component in the New Labour strategy for public service ‘modernisation’: a radical overhaul of the National Health Service.
