We're digging deep for the NHS now – but might not when this crisis is over

The oft-repeated remark that the National Health Service is the nearest thing modern Britain has to religion has never been truer than in this crisis. Having long taken it for granted, the NHS is now, rightly, worshipped. There is an open collective national service of devotion every Thursday at 8pm for its staff, who have been rendered religious figures – some, martyrs. We give huge amounts to appeals to help the NHS fight coronavirus. But we ought to remember that the NHS is not, nor ever can be a charity.

The popular, almost spiritual, urge to back our NHS heroes is obvious. Why not? They help us survive and are all too often the only ones around when that effort fails. Nor do I have any problem – quite the opposite – with any of the surge in cash for NHS charities. The country was enchanted by Captain Tom Moore’s extraordinary sponsored walk for his centenary, which has raised almost £30m. I am also awestruck by Margaret Payne’s home hike up a mountain, on her own staircase, aged 90. I can’t even bring myself to get annoyed about the £12.5m donation to the NHS by Hugh Grosvenor, the Duke of Westminster. Here is the richest person under 30 on the planet, and worth, they say, £10bn. No doubt he could do more, but it’s a nice gesture, and I can’t bring myself to resent it.

Yet I do have to, well, gently point out to everyone that the NHS is not actually a charity. There is an organisation called NHS Charities Together, where much of this fundraising goes, but you can’t technically donate to the NHS, even if you send a cheque to HM Treasury.

NHS Charities Together boasts a membership of about 140 individual charities devoted to the NHS, which together have funded major capital projects, pioneering research and medical equipment at our hospitals and hospices. NHS Charities Together members raised £457m – yet the total NHS budget is more than £160 billion. Obviously, there is no way that philanthropy could match that – nor should it.

Philanthropy is how we used to do things before the NHS was founded back in 1948. In some of our older infirmaries, you’ll still find traces of the old days: plaques on walls commemorating the endowment of a single ward or bed by local worthies. GPs and dentists would sometimes attend to the deprived for a reduced or no fee; friendly societies served as mutual insurance clubs for the lower middle classes; wealthier professionals and luckier workers enjoyed private insurance provided by their employers. Many, though, just went without. It was another world, but some want to return to it, relegating the NHS to a “safety net” for the poor – the end of the universal service that binds us together. This is a more mortal threat than any crude “privatisation” of the NHS. They’ve gone a bit quiet lately, but they’ll not have changed their minds. They’re well represented in parts of the media and on the political right.

It seems inconceivable right now that such a view would prevail – the value of universal healthcare seems so obvious. But just watch. When the pandemic is over, all the normal demands on the NHS will resume. We will need to fund all of that through tax, not just a few quid on JustGiving​. When we’ve finished clapping, will we all put our hands in our pockets to give the heroes a pay rise and make our hospitals and care homes places to be proud of? I rather wonder.