The Press WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 21, 1946. Hospital Rating

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24959, 21 August 1946, Page 6

The Press WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 21, 1946. Hospital Rating

An interesting paragraph in the Financial Statement set out the Government’s decision on the question of hospital rates. From the beginning of the next financial year, the hospital levy in all hospital districts will be limited to—but may be below—the amount that would be raised by a half-penny rate on the capital value; but each rating

authority will levy the required amount according to its own rating system. The Hon. A. H. Nordmeyer, therefore, did not know the Government’s mind so well as he professed, when he indicated that a uniform rate would be fixed, or else the Government changed its mind afterwards. Its reasons for pre-

ferring a uniform ceiling to a uniform rate on the one hand and to the Parliamentary Select Committee’s period average, with a uniform celiing, on the other, will no doubt be stated, and contested, during the Budget debate. Before that begins, it is desirable to point out that the Minister of Finance misrepresented the committee. The Government, he said, having considered the committee’s recommendations with respect to hospital rating, “does not “ agree ” that the hospital rate should be abolished. The committee did not recommend that the rate should be abolished; it recommended stabilising the district rate on a period average, with an upper limit, and finally recommended the Government to “ examine the pos- “ sibility ” of lowering this limit by

stages and so, ultimately, extinguishing the rate. The proposal was that the Government should study the question. The rating debate showed that the Government’s nose was in the air; and the member for Grey Lynn, in his clever amendment, enabled the Government to walk off, still ignoring the invitation. It besought the Government to do whatever it thought fit “to “give effect to the desire of the “committee to secure an equitable “readjustment' of the incidence of “hospital rating”—but not to do anything to give effect to the committee’s desire to have a rational and constructive possibility* examined. A week later, Mr Nash used rougher methods. The Government, he implied, had been called on, not to investigate, but to act, and had decided against action. It is to be hoped that the Opposition, though it will find much else to occupy its time in the financial debate, will spare some for this regrettable performance, in which the unanimous recommendation of a select committee, that a specific and important issue be studied, is first carefully

ignored and then as carefully misrepresented. It is a real issue, and of the Government’s own making The Social Security Act has so completely transformed the cost Structure of hospital services that the question whether local rating should carry any part of its burden is a proper one to ask and to be studied,

without prejudice of any kind. From first to last, however, the Government has talked of derating, in this single and special respect, in the language of political fetishism.