HC Deb 06 November 1918 vol 110 cc2262-4
Mr. ACLAND

I wish to raise a very simple matter, and that very briefly. Women surgeons and doctors are employed in charge of military hospitals and other establishments. They are employed at the big hospital, that many of us know so well, in Endell Street, and in many places abroad, such as Malta, Salonika, and Egypt. They are given certain Army ranks, but they have been refused the rank itself, and that has caused a difficulty which some of us here want to have put right. The duties of these women doctors and surgeons are partly professional and partly administrative and disciplinary, and in the latter category comes their duty as actually being in command of troops, in command of military personnel, of whom large numbers are continually passing through their hands in hospitals and other places. Now the fact that they have positions of very high authority but have no rank with which to support those positions gives rise to difficulty. These difficulties were found to exist at an earlier stage of the War, when civilian male medical practitioners were engaged in military hospitals, and it was then found absolutely necessary to give the civilian male practitioners Army rank in order that they might do the work they had to do. But the difficulty still remains in regard to the women. The sort of thing that happens at the present is this—

Notice taken that forty Members were not present; House counted, and forty Members not being present—

The House was adjourned, without Question put, at Fourteen minutes after Eleven o'clock, till To-morrow.