THE SOCIAL SECURITY FUND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25660, 7 October 1944, Page 6

THE SOCIAL SECURITY FUND

The principle that the elective branch of the Legislature controls the public expenditure—exercises, as it has been said, the power of the purse—is clearly violated by the Government in the transfer of over £1,000,000 from the War Expenses Account to the Social Security Fund. This transfer is entirely different from that which is made from the Consolidated Furid. Parliament has every year since the Social Security Fund was established authorised the transfer to it of a considerable sum —the amount was £4,100,000 last year—from the Consolidated Fund. But it has never authorised any transfer from the War Expenses Account. For this reason it is an illegitimate transfer. It is made by a usurpation, by the Government of the rights of Parliament. Mr Bodkin did not overstate the case when he said on Thursday night that “we have reached, a pretty pass when a Cabinet minute is regarded by the Government as the only authorisation required.” The need for bolstering up the Social Security Fund is recognised. But it should not be met by recourse to unconstitutional methods as are being practised by the Government. The mischief of the Government’s action is heightened by the fact that the War Expenses Account, which it has raided in this instance as in other instances, is in large measure made up of money borrowed for the prosecution of the war, not for domestic purposes. The discussion in the House on the Estimates of the Social Security Department presented other points of interest. The Minister of Health declined to disclose to the House the number of panel doctors who are alleged to be drawing from the fund incomes which, it was suggested, amount to £ 10,000 or more. He implied that if he were to give this information the doctors in receipt of these incomes would be identifiable by the public. It may be agreed that it would be wholly unreasonable to expect that the Minister should put himself in the position of placing these doctors in a pillory. In effect, however, he admitted that there are doctors whose incomes, derived from the fund which he administers, are represented by four figures. But he completely evaded the claim made by more than one Opposition member that it is physically impossible for any panel doctor, devoting every minute of his time on every day of the year, to render the service that would justify payments of these dimensions from the fund. Even the Prime Minister, whose predisposition to irrelevancy led the House to some extent away from the point, was constrained to admit that it “ would be a good thing if the position were looked into."