Over £52 Millions for British Health Services

Grey River Argus, 19 February 1949, Page 3

Over £52 Millions for British Health Services

LONDON, Feb. 17

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health, Mr E. xslenknisop, presenting the £52,800,000 supplementary Health Estimates to the House or Commons, said that when the original estimate was prepared it was impossible to tell the extent to which me public would use the scheme. The estimates demonstrated the use to which it had Deen put aau me lack or provision winch existea oeiore it was introduced. 'Hie payment or student nurses in hospitals iiau been almost doubled, but this nad led to improved recruitment or £50,000,000 for prescirptions in a nine-months’ period under the old scheme, but under the new scheme £50,000,000 for prescriptions in a been necessary. There was .no evidence of the misuse of prescribing Dy the medical profession. Nearly 2,000,000 pairs of spectacles had been provided up to January 31, 1949.

Mr R. Assheton, protesting at the size of the supplementary estimates, said Mr Aneurin Bevan, Minister of Health, had shown hiniselt as irresponsible in financial matters and heedless 01 the best interests of the patient, as well as the medical profession. He should get out. There was clear evidence of maladministration and extravagance within the health scheme. It was obvious that the estimating was hopelessly incompetent. Mr Herbert Morrison, before the debate, offered to give Mr Churchill every facility to move a vote of censure on the Government over the supplementary estimates. Mr Churchill said he would wait to hear the Government’s defence. Mr Bevan, replying to the debate, said he objected to the Opposition’s utter incompetence in examining the estimates. The launching of the health services had been one of the greatest, pieces of civil administration in the country’s historv. “What shocked me last week was the frivolous irresponsibility and behaviour of the Opposition, especially Mr Churchill, in saying what he did. The Opposition in effect was accusing the whole of the authorities m the country of maladministration.” Mr Bevan said the Opposition was now running away because it had found that what Mr Churchill had said was almost as unpopular among the Conservatives as the Socialists. The Opposition did not call for a division on the estimates.