HC Deb 22 July 1953 vol 518 cc358-60
33. Miss Herbison

asked the Assistant Postmaster-General to ensure that no medical consultant will have to share his telephone with another subscriber.

Mr. Gammans

Medical consultants are always given exclusive service at their surgeries or consulting rooms, but all doctors are liable to share the telephone lines to their private houses if they do not practise there. This arrangement has applied since January, 1948, to all new and removing residential subscribers.

Miss Herbison

But is the Minister not aware from information which I have already given him that it may lead to serious difficulties if the other subscriber should be using the telephone at the time when the hospital wishes to get into touch with the consultant about some important case? Is he not also aware that it is of the greatest importance that a consultant's discussions with anyone in the hospital should be absolutely private?

Mr. Gammans

If the hon. Lady is referring to the case about which she wrote to me, I must remind her that we take every care to see that when doctors are asked to share lines we try to find them a suitable person with whom to share, and in this particular case the doctor concerned is sharing a line with a lock-up shop which shuts down at half-past five in the evening and does not open until nine in the morning. Therefore the hours in which he is presumably not at the hospital he has virtually an exclusive service.

Mrs. Mann

Would the hon. Gentleman note that this lock-up shop opens at nine o'clock to allow the proprietor to do the books, etc., and would the hon. Gentleman not consider giving a private line to a consultant who is in charge of three of the wards of a 2,000 bed hospital, and who must live within seven minutes of those wards?

Mr. Gammans

What I should very much like to do would be to do away with compulsory sharing altogether, but the fact is that if I extend the categories of private lines it simply means that some people who want to go on the telephone will not do so. If, in the particular case the hon. Lady mentions, she cares to send me evidence about the use of the telephone at night by the lock-up shop, I shall be delighted to look into it.

Mr. Woodburn

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that in Scotland the usual practice is for a practitioner to have no private life at all, that he places himself at the disposal of his patients night and day, and that it is quite inappropriate that people should have to talk to a doctor about their private affairs when somebody may be listening in?

Mr. Gammans

Yes, but as I have explained to the House, if the doctor uses his house as a consulting room, he is given an exclusive service.

Mr. Woodburn

But is the hon. Gentleman aware that even though doctors have consulting rooms they still allow their house to be used in addition for the ordinary purposes of practice?

Mr. Gammans

But as I have explained to the hon. Lady who asked the Question, we have given this doctor a subscriber to share with who is not normally in the shop after half-past five at night.

Miss Herbison

Since the replies given by the Minister are so unsatisfactory, I shall do my best to raise this matter on the Adjournment as soon as possible.

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