Clause 1 - Duty on the Secretary of State to promote comprehensive health service based on social solidarity

Part of National Health Service (Amended Duties and Powers) Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 11:15 am on 10 February 2015.

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Photo of Jacob Rees-Mogg Jacob Rees-Mogg Conservative, North East Somerset 11:15, 10 February 2015

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention and support. I look forward to his speech on this subject, which will be more philosophical than  mine. He gets to the heart of the issue. It is not a concrete concept and cannot be enforced on people by law, but comes about through the nature of things. I mentioned Agincourt, one of our great anniversaries. We also have the anniversary of Waterloo on 18 June. There is a French historian who is trying to maintain that Napoleon won. For the record, he did not. Wellington did, with the help of Blücher, who came a bit late but better later than never. That, once again, created social solidarity. The Iron Duke, Wellington, said all those rude things about his own troops—how they might not frighten the enemy,

“but, by God, they frighten me”— yet when he was there ahead of them, leading, he inspired them with a sense of social solidarity.