Peter Lamb celebrates improvements in delivery as NHS marks its 78th Birthday

As the National Health Service turns 78, Peter Lamb—Labour MP for Crawley—has paid tribute to the extraordinary dedication of NHS staff and the incredible progress they have made improving healthcare delivery over the last two years.

The NHS, founded on 5 July 1948, remains one of Britain’s proudest achievements, ensuring that every British citizen has free access to healthcare at the point of need and after a decade of declining performance, new investment and reform under Labour is putting the service back on the road to recovery.

Since taking office, Labour has overseen falling NHS waiting lists, with hundreds of thousands fewer patients waiting for treatment than at their peak, while delivering more appointments and expanding the NHS workforce with more doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals.

At local NHS hospitals, patients have already seen progress. By March 2026, 67% of patients at hospitals in our area were being seen within the 18-week target, up from 55% before the election. An improvement of nearly 11% and the highest level achieved in recent years. Improvements in NHS waiting times in West Sussex accounted for almost one-fifth of the total reduction in NHS waiting lists across England.

Peter Lamb, Labour MP for Crawley, said:

“The British public consistently rates the NHS as the thing we are most proud of in out country, and rightly so. As we celebrate 78 years of our NHS, I want to thank everyone involved in delivering out health services at every level. So long as people are prepared to go on fighting for it, the best days of our healthcare system remain ahead of us.”