In 2025/26, Mary's work on the NHS focuses on the evolving role of the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care in light of the abolition of NHS England, and in comparison with the differing oversight arrangements in Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland.

A first peer-reviewed draft is available pending further policy developments - 

see Of "Glaziers and Window Breakers": On Translating 'Promotion of a Comprehensive Health Service' Into Practice

Public / Private Healthcare Interaction...

Mary's recent peer-reviewed sole and co-authored publications have examined:

• NHS Patient Choice Policy in England following the Labour government’s 2025 NHS Ten Year Health Plan, including analysis of publicly-available NHS referral data mapping the private healthcare market for NHS patients across England (Liverpool Law Review) - related datasets available here

• How the concept of “NHS privatisation” is used within UK parliamentary debates, including the Health and Social Care Act 2012 and the Health and Care Act 2022 (Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly)

• How a niche aspect of UK competition law was used to enable closer cooperation between the NHS and private healthcare in responding to COVID-19, and the wider implications of this (Medical Law International)

• How the controversial Lansley reforms were managed by workarounds and attempts at repeal culminating in the Health and Care Act 2022 (Public Law)

• How the wider interaction between the NHS and private healthcare in England underpins patient choice policies (Legal Studies)

Mary’s early academic work focused on competition reforms in healthcare in comparative perspective.

Her first monograph, Competition Policy in Healthcare: Frontiers in Taxation-Funded and Insurance-Based Systems (Intersentia 2019) examined the 2012 Lansley reforms of the English National Health Service (NHS) which enshrined competition, and the 2006 reforms of the Dutch healthcare system which instituted mandatory private health insurance.