Our National Care Service will meet the urgent needs of our generation – just as the NHS did when it was created in 1948

• Wes Streeting is secretary of state for health and social care

Three sentences in Labour’s 1945 manifesto contained a simple but historic promise: “The best health services should be available free for all. Money must no longer be the passport to the best treatment. In the new National Health Service there should be health centres where the people may get the best that modern science can offer, more and better hospitals, and proper conditions for our doctors and nurses.”

In the three years following Labour’s election victory, Nye Bevan fought opposition from the Conservatives, the British Medical Association and from some within his own cabinet to found the NHS. For 76 years, it has provided healthcare free at the point of need, surviving Labour and Conservative governments alike.