THE FIRST baby born on the NHS slammed the government’s handling of the health service.

Speaking to Swindon campaigners, Aneira Thomas said that ministers’ programme of austerity threatened to return the country to the 1930s.

“I feel people will go without healthcare. It will make the difference between life and death,” she told an audience at the Central Community Centre.

She added of the NHS: “We all use it, we all need it. We must preserve and protect it at all costs. It was formed to save lives and it certainly has done.

“It was revolutionary, we led the way. It’s our jewel in the crown and we are the envy of the world. We must keep it like that.”

Now 69, Aneira was born just one minute after the NHS officially came into being. Midwives at the cottage hospital in Glanamman, a Welsh mining village, begged Aneira’s mother to fight her contractions.

It was close to midnight on July 4, 1948. Hospitals and maternity units across the country were desperate to claim the prize of delivering the NHS’s first baby. Aneira Thomas claimed the prize.

She was christened after NHS founder Nye Bevan and has grown up with the public health service. Her aunts were nurses, she worked as a mental health nurse and her daughter is now a paramedic.

There were tears in her eyes as she described her mother’s experience of the pre-NHS system of private healthcare in Wales. Aneira’s grandfather, a miner, broke his leg and was operated on the kitchen table.

“The doctor needed paying,” Aneira said. “There was no money, only the family piano. The house was never the same again.”

Dr Tony O’Sullivan, a retired paediatrician and co-chairman of group Keep Our NHS Public, criticised what he branded underfunding of the NHS by government, saying that extra cash given to health commissioners to meet unprecedented winter demand had done little to help.

Responding to criticism of the government, South Swindon MP Robert Buckland said that funding for the NHS had reached record levels: “For most of its 70 year history, the Conservatives have had responsibility for our NHS and have kept true to the principle of free health care at the point of need. ”