§ 44. Mr. MACQUISTENasked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury whether seeing that panel and other 2485 doctors frequently prescribe the use of spirits in cases of influenza and other cognate illnesses, but that their patients are unable to procure the medicine so prescribed owing to the high Excise Duty on such commodities, he will endeavour to secure that the panel doctors be put in a position to supply their patients in all such cases with duty-free spirits for medicinal purposes?
§ The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Arthur Michael Samuel)If my hon. and learned Friend has in mind relief from duty for spirits used as ingredients in making up medicines, the law already provides for a rebate of about four-fifths of the duty as regards recognised medical preparations. If, however, his suggestion is that spirits consumed on the advice of doctors should be exempted from duty, I regret that this would not be practicable. So far as insured persons are concerned, if spirituous preparations need to be prescribed medicinally, the cost falls on the Drug Fund, and not on the doctor or on the insured person. There is, therefore, no question of personal hardship to deter panel doctors from prescribing.
§ Mr. MACQUISTENWill the hon. Gentleman accept particulars of the cases which I can give him of a number of crofters who were lifelong abstainers, and who were ordered to consume spirits medicinally by their doctor, and the result of following that advice was that some of them had to spend more than two years rent and have got seriously involved in debt as a result of illness in their families and will he not consider the great hardship to them, and I ask if it is not time to cease exploiting the poor by taxation when they are laid by with sickness?