ABSTRACT
The 1973 cuts in public expenditure seemed an obvious point at which to break the narrative of hospital policy developments. Subsequently, however, there seemed to be no obvious point at which to break this chronology until 1991. Within that eighteen-year period, it can broadly be argued that, once Labour adopted monetarism from 1975, continuities existed in attitudes to economic policy between Labour and the Conservatives, and these had ramifications for the management of the welfare state, albeit with some differences of emphasis. The difficulties of managing the hospital building programme were common to both governments but there were differences in terms of the emphasis placed on voluntary effort and commercial criteria in the capital programme.
