Right.
The first point is that there are no military hospitals in the United Kingdom—none, not even for in-service soldiers. In the U.K., primary care is provided by military personnel. Overseas, for example, we have deployed field hospitals in Afghanistan and Iraq. That is more like, I suppose, accident and emergency and sort of dealing with the immediate issues. So if someone were traumatically injured they would be dealt with in theatre, stabilized, and then brought back to the U.K. Where they're treated in the U.K. is a place in Birmingham called Selly Oak Hospital. This is actually an NHS hospital. There is a military unit within it, but it's sort of embedded within it. There is something called the military managed ward where the care would be predominantly provided, but the reason it is there is that Birmingham is one of Europe's leading centres for trauma. Our care is provided by the in-service. Our secondary care is provided by the National Health Service because they have the expertise.
In the past, Britain used to have military hospitals for serving people. We closed all of those because we found our medics were not getting sufficient exposure and expertise to actually be competent to do their jobs. So for the serving population, we have a mixture of care that we provide front-line. But also, then, if someone needs secondary care, whether it is elective surgery or otherwise, that is provided in a range of hospitals where there is something called a Ministry of Defence hospital unit as part of it. The care provided might be by a military doctor or a military nurse, but if the care you need is better provided for by the civilian surgeon, that's what you get.
There isn't that divide between military hospitals and other public hospitals, because there are no military hospitals. That's the in-service component. That is already embedded within and alongside the National Health Service.
In the veterans space, care is provided to all citizens free at the point of delivery. So wherever you live in your community, if you have a health need you will go to your general practitioner, who will then refer you on to specialist care if that's what you need, whether that is community-based or in-patient or on a day basis, like any citizen. Whether one is a veteran or just a citizen who is entitled to those benefits, there is no difference. We don't have veterans affairs hospitals or military hospitals. We have none of that. We have the National Health Service.
In a way, that is the origin of all of this in Britain. When the welfare state was introduced in 1948, when universal health care for all was introduced, at that stage there were a number of what we called Ministry of Pensions hospitals. They were responsible for the health care of those injured, actually from the First World War and indeed the Second World War, those who had left service. In 1953, those remaining hospitals were transferred into the National Health Service, so there has been no separate provision for veterans since 1953. It just doesn't work that way.
That is not to say that someone with an injury or illness caused by service, who needs care.... What they get extra is what I touched on earlier, priority treatment. They might be at the head of the queue. If there are two people with equal clinical needs and one happens to be a veteran and one doesn't, the veteran will go first.
The system is very different from how it works in Canada or Australia or the United States because of that universal health care provision for all citizens. Veterans are part of that community and will get access to the health care through that route.