FACTS WANTED

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 152, 30 June 1938, Page 8

FACTS WANTED

A social security scheme which contemplates extensive medical benefits cannot be successful unless there is the closest co-operation between the Government, which is responsible for its initiation, and the representatives of the medical profession, -the members of which will be responsible for the practical application of its provisions. At no stage has the British Medical Association hesitated to offer the Government its full assistance in devising plans to promote better health in the Dominion, but there is ground for the complaint made by the president of the B.M.A. (Dr. Jamieson) that the information so far made available has been insufficient to enable the association to give | the Government the benefit of its advice. The complaint is one that ! could be extended to cover the Government's attitude towards the social security plan as a whole. On many points the public are still in the dark, and, judging by the statement of the Prime Minister, they are to remain in the dark until the proposals are placed before Parliament in Bill form. If the debates on the Address in Reply and the Budget run to their normal length, that will not be for some weeks yet, and, with the session limited to three months, there will be little time for an adequate study of the proposals, either by the public or the 8.M.A., before the Bill becomes law.

When the scheme was referred to a special Parliamentary Committee,

the Government was presented with an opportunity of taking interested parties into its full confidence, but the skeleton statement presented to the Committee by Mr. Savage left so much unsaid as to render it of little value. During the sittings of the Committee suggestions were made that the report of the Departmental Committee which first examined the Government's proposals should be made public, but, in spite of a state- | ment by the Minister of Finance that he saw no reason why that part of the report dealing with the medical jside should not be made available ■to the 8.M.A., the suggestions were ignored. The public and the B.M.A. I were thus deprived of valuable information which they were entitled to receive. There may be difficulties in the way of supplying interested parties with advance copies of the Bill, but there is no valid reason why they should not be supplied with details of the Government's proposals. Those proposals must have taken definite form by now, even if the actual legislation has not been drafted. The Government cannot expect to receive whole-hearted cooperation when it fails to supply information on vital points.