ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the evolution of the influence of the courts and its relationship with the economic input into the decision-making process. It reviews the development of rationing within a legal framework from the health authority, national and primary care perspectives. The chapter demonstrates how the law has required resource decisions to be made within a more explicit framework without necessarily directing how that framework should be constructed. The National Health Service (NHS) Act 1977 is the foundation of the NHS and most relevant to the rationing question. Claims to resources made under the Act are often made in the law of judicial review. Judicial review considers whether a public authority has complied with the duties imposed upon it by parliament. It is always subject to the resources made available by the Treasury and to current government economic policy. Obviously, this creates a very insubstantial basis on which patients can claim rights to NHS resources.
