POLITICAL PATRONAGE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26216, 29 July 1946, Page 6

POLITICAL PATRONAGE

REMOVAL BY HEALTH PLAN SPONSOR’S CLAIM IN HOUSE LONDON, July 26. The national health scheme is taking from the Tories one of their chief sources of social and political patronMe, said Mr Aneurin, Bevan in the >use of Commons during the debate on the third reading of the National Health Service Bill. Mr Bevan said that the Bill emancipated voluntary medical workers from the indignity of having to collect from private charity. This was the real reason for the bitterness of the Opposition. The scheme would offer more scope for voluntary service because the volunteers would be more efficient when emancipated from financial limitations. Mr Bevan declared that eminent spokesmen in the medical profession had become the most reactionary politicians in Britain, but he believed that the profession as a whole would work the scheme wholeheartedly. He added that if the medical profession was to be manned effectively it was necessary to take more doctors from the lower groups than previously. v He emphasised that the Minstry of Health in no part of the new adminis-tration-had the slightest control over a doctor’s professional conduct. “We want to leave controversies behind and to get the medical profession’s and health workers’ co-operation, without which the scheme is bound to fail,” he Said. An Opposition amendment to reject the third reading was defeated by 261 votes to 113.