NHS provision. The government, aware of the sensitivities, has dropped the term polyclinics and calls them 'GP-led health centres' instead. But private companies are to be allowed to compete with groups of GPs for the contracts to run the 150 centres proposed around England. Virgin Health Care is hoping to run 20 of them, beginning with one in Swindon, making the once Soviet idea more Richard Branson than retro-Bolshevik.

All this marks the latest in a tortured Labour relationship with the private sector in the NHS. Its creation is still celebrated as one of the British Left's great triumphs, and there is no doubting what a difference free care made for the poor in particular. However the NHS has always had to compromise with the private sector.

When in the 1970s health minister Barbara Castle tried to abolish 'pay beds' allowing private practice in NHS

hospitals, she had to compromise with consultants' power. "We have to fight like hell to prevent the build-up of a vast empire of private medicine," she had said. But the pay beds dispute ironically led to a huge expansion in private health care provision. And while the service is still provided free at the point of care, it is Labour governments since 1997 that have rapidly increased private sector involvement in NHS work.

So polyclinics provide a fascinating symbol of the historical echoes in today's health care debate, with constantly competing and shifting visions of public and private provision, and an independent medical profession always wary of outsiders deciding how care should actually be run.
The NHS at 60 - National Doctors, presented by Chris Bowlby, begins on BBC Radio 4 on June 26 at 8pm.