HC Deb 13 April 1970 vol 799 cc1008-10
22. Mrs. Renée Short

asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will undertake an investigation into the relative cost of providing free contraceptive advice and supplies under the National Health Service for a woman patient during her child-bearing years, the cost to all the social services, including child-birth in a maternity hospital, maternity allowance, family allowance and other payments to the mother, and the charge on the education service to school-leaving age of one, two and three children, respectively.

Mr. Crossman

I am considering the extent to which selected local studies might provide information about the costs and benefits of preventing unwanted births; but I have no doubt that maximum expansion of family planning services is desirable.

Mrs. Short

I am obliged to my right hon. Friend for that reply. Will he bear in mind that it costs about £200 for every confinement in hospital and that further enormous sums are spent on caring for unwanted children afterwards? Will he hasten his inquiry so that he may finally, for good and all, scotch the argument put forward by the Neanderthal men on the other side of the House who are continually sniping at family planning through the local authorities and the National Health Service?

Mr. Crossman

My hon. Friend has a greater belief in the power of figures to quell irrationality than I have. I doubt whether any figures would quell the emotional storms on the other side of the House.

Sir G. Nabarro

While declaring my interest at once as vice-president of the Worcester branch of the Family Planning Council, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman to take fully into account, in consultation with the medical profession, the fact that abortion is an excessively expensive operation and that family control and family planning are infinitely preferable and far cheaper to the public purse—which is the objective of all my Questions on this subject?

Mr. Crossman

Yes, Sir. The hon. Member, who perhaps does not listen as attentively to hon. Members on this side of the House as he does to his hon. Friends, may be surprised to hear that on this matter he is in complete agreement with my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Renée Short).

Sir G. Nabarro

Good God!