§ 11.11 p.m.
The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Commander T. D. Galbraith)I beg to move,
That the Draft National Health Service (Scotland) (Superannuation) Amendment Regulations, 1953, a copy of which was laid before this House on 6th July, be approved.The sole purpose of these Regulations is to amend the provision for pensions for the staff of the Ministry of Pensions who go over to the National Health Service on 1st September, 1953, when the administration of Edenhall Hospital, the only Ministry of Pensions hospital in Scotland, and the limb-fitting and treatment centres of the Ministry of Pensions in Scotland will be entrusted to the regional hospital boards. These Regulations make the necessary provision simply of extending in these cases precisely the same superannuation options and conditions as in the past have been given to other officers when their hospitals were brought into the National Health Service. Otherwise they do not make any change in the Scottish Health superannuation scheme or establish any new precedents.These draft Regulations will allow those officers of the Ministry of Pensions already in superannuation schemes the option either of retaining the benefits and pension of their existing scheme or having the benefits and conditions of the National Health Service superannuation scheme, and for those not in any scheme we make the provision that their temporary service with the Ministry of Pensions will count as qualifying service when they become superannuable in the National Health Service.
The House will agree that it is very much in the interests of the ex-Service patients that the doctors, nurses and other officers of the Ministry of Pensions at present caring for them should continue to do so after 1st September, and I can assure the House that these superannuation proposals will make it quite certain that they are not deterred from that end on superannuation grounds. I would add that the proposals in these draft Regulations have the full support of all the interested staff associations.
§ 11.14 p.m.
§ Mr. John Wheatley (Edinburgh, East)In so far as these machinery Regulations follow the pattern that has already been established in this sphere, I just wish to say that we on this side of the House give them our full support.
§ Question put, and agreed to.