HEALTH EDUCATION (TELEVISION) (Hansard, 22 December 1971)

§ Mr. Laurie Pavitt (Willesden, West)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require television authorities to provide facilities for the purpose of transmitting programmes relating to health education. In spite of its defects, our National Health Service offers the finest medical care and treatment in the world, but it remains curative. The next stage of development must inevitably be to move towards preventive medicine, and in that process health education and knowledge will play a vital part.

The purpose of my proposed Bill is to use the most effective of all the mass media to enlarge the scope and effectiveness of health education. It seeks to make advances towards the effective prevention of diseases with the consequence of colossal savings of the resources of the Health Service which are so severely strained to meet the present demand. I wish to make it abundantly clear that the Bill is for education and not propaganda, teaching and not preaching, and the spread of knowledge rather than the use solely of exhortation.

There is already a precedent. The B.B.C. gives some time for subjects of public importance to which the Government wish to draw attention. In the United States, no broadcasting station is licensed without a stipulation that at least 10 per cent. of all its advertising time must be given in the public service.

The proposed Bill will provide for a minimum of 15 minutes in total time to be allocated each week by both the B.B.C. and the I.T.A. and that this should be used by the Health Education Council to show features, films or a variety of short material designed to educate the public in health matters. The kind of thing I have in mind is to prevent illness rather than cure it; to improve the ability of people suffering from chronic illness or a disability to cope with their conditions; to promote health and safety at work and in the home. The problems arising from burns, cuts and poisons which mothers face, for example, could be alleviated by further information given by means of my proposed Bill.

1511 The purpose of the Bill also is to cut through the bewilderment of many patients about their entitlement under the National Health Service and how they can take advantage of things like exemption from paying prescription charges; to explain to patients how best to use, and not abuse, the services rendered by their general practitioners and doctors in domiciliary care and hospital services and hospital out-patient departments; to explain new treatments which arise from medical research; to teach the value of immunisation and what it does. I wonder how many people know of the recent breakthrough towards preventing thousands of children from becoming deaf as a result of the discovery of a vaccine which prevents German measles. For the female population, there is the question of fertility, contraception, pregnancy, labour and ante-natal exercises. All those things are of supreme importance to young mothers.

My proposed Bill seeks to ensure that programmes will be shown at appropriate times of the day and that a reasonable amount of time is given at periods when a large audience is probable. It is obviously no good showing films about dental hygiene and the care of teeth at midnight if the aim is to reach an audience of school children.

For the purpose of organising these programmes, the bill seeks to establish a joint committee of the B.B.C. the I.T.A., the Health Education Council and the Department of Health and Social Security. There would be a spin-off of great value to local health authorities and schools in providing teaching material for cassettes. In my view, cassettes will be the big thing in the mass media world in the next few years, and the Bill would enable the local health authorities, schools, colleges and medical schools to get in at the start of that revolution.

The Bill has the support of all parts of the House. I am sorry that the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications has not seen fit to come to the Chamber because obviously, if the Bill were passed, it would become part of his Department's responsibility. My sponsors are all doctors, with the exception of the hon. Member for Roxburgh, 1512 Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. David Steel), because unfortunately the Liberal Party does not have a medically-qualified representative in the House.

The words "good health" will be on the lips of millions of people over the next five or six days. The Bill's purpose is to make that good health a reality.