'Every time a maid kicks over a bucket of slops in a ward, an agonised wail will go through Whitehall, ' health minister Aneurin Bevan told a crowded meeting of the Institute of Almoners. 'For a while there will be a cacophony of complaints. The newspapers will be full of them. I am sure some doctors will make irate speeches. The order paper of the House of Commons will be filled with questions. For a while it will appear that everything is going wrong. But as a matter of fact, everything will be going right, because people will be able to complain. . .
The Health Act. . . will put a megaphone in the mouth of every complainant. . . But this public scrutiny will have a medicinal effect.
Everybody will be on his toes.' He added: 'We shall, of course, find. . . that alterations and adjustments will have to be made. . . We are a nation very largely of visionary empiricists, able to adjust things where necessary, and between us we shall show the world something that does not exist anywhere else at the present time.'
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