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When I was seven I remember my mum scraping together half a crown for a doctor to visit me while I was ill in bed.

Money was tight but a parent with a sick child had no option.

That’s why the National Health Service is still Labour’s greatest contribution to a civilized Britain.

This socialist concept of treatment based upon need, not your ability to pay was bitterly opposed, especially by Tories and the medical fraternity.

My younger brother Adrian was one of the first to benefit. Born with a cleft palate and harelip, he had 20 years of treatment and surgery.

When I was a waiter on the Cunard liners, I once served a US millionaire and his 13-year-old son. I recognised the way his son’s face was twisted – he had a cleft palate but clearly hadn’t been treated.

I told the man about my brother’s treatment, which gave him a normal lip and palate.

Why hadn’t he done the same? He looked at me with sad eyes and sighed: “Son, I wasn’t always a millionaire.

"When he was born I didn’t have the money to pay for the operation.” He couldn’t afford to pay the US medical insurance.

When it comes to health, the NHS has made us all millionaires.

The treatment I received for a broken back after a car crash and the care I received after catching pneumonia are just two examples of the service meeting a need without worrying about whether I could pay or not.

But according to the Stevens Report, by 2020 the NHS faces a £30billion gap in its funding.

Everyone is concerned about the crisis in our health service caused by an ageing population and greater demand.

It needs dramatic reforms in its finances and to combine care and community services to become a National Health and Care Service – a brilliant idea from Labour’s health spokesman Andy Burnham.

(Image: PA)

The current choice is whether you choose the Tories, scrabbling down the back of the sofa and recycling current health money to spin it as an extra one-off £2billion.

Or Labour’s answer – an extra £2.5billion funded by a mansion tax on homes worth more than £2million.

But if we’re going to fill that £30billion funding black hole, we have to be more radical.

So I went to the House of Lords library to see how last year’s National Insurance money – £106billion – was spent. The benefits system got £85billion, the NHS got £21billion.

But then I discovered something that stunned me – the Government last year held back nearly £30billion.

And what’s George Osborne doing with it? Part of it could be the balance he’s advised to hold on to – but what’s the rest of it for?

(Image: Chris Marchant/Flickr)

National ­Insurance money can only be used for the NHS or benefits. So since he can’t spend it on anything else and chooses not to fund ­hospitals, the Chancellor lets it sit there.

We need a lasting solution to fund a service we all depend on. So let’s fill the black hole and fund a new National Health and Care Service with our own little pot of NHS gold.

Osborne wants to take Britain back to the 1930s with massive cuts and a return to private healthcare. But that £30billion National ­Insurance surplus makes us all NHS billionaires.

It’s our money George, not yours. So let’s damn well use it for our wonderful National Health Service.