ABSTRACT
One of the main aims of the architects of the National health services (NHS) was to provide services to everyone in need of care and treatment. Need was to be the sole criterion according to which services were to be provided, and no longer was there to be a financial barrier to obtaining treatment. A major area of inequalities within the NHS concerns social class. Margaret Stacey has summarised the position in the following way: There is evidence, first, of continuing and perhaps increasing class differentials in death rates; second, of more illness in lower than in higher classes. The importance of monitoring has been emphasised by the House of Commons Social Services Committee as well as the Public Accounts Committee. Monitoring and evaluation provide a means by which information about the impact of services can be assessed and fed back into the policy-making process. In fact, feedback occurs all the time in more or less regular forms.
