HC Deb 12 November 1974 vol 881 cc221-3
6. Mr. Biggs-Davison

asked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether she will make a statement showing the extent to which hospitals in the National Health Service benefit from moneys allotted by benefactors to private patients' wings and the endowment of beds.

The Secretary of State for Social Services (Mrs. Barbara Castle)

The information is not available.

Mr. Biggs-Davison

I should have thought that it ought to be available in view of the Government's intention to phase out private patients. Will the right hon. Lady inform us what the effect will be on such benefactions, and what will be done about it?

Mrs. Castle

The information is not available, because, except in the case of the London postgraduate teaching hospitals, where the endowments continue to be administered by the boards of governors, any such endowments held by hospital authorities on 31st March last were transferred to the new health authorities or to special trustees. I do not see the relevance of this Question to the wider issue, on which there is a later Question, because the effect of phasing out private beds on the holding of gifts made in respect of such facilities will depend on the terms of the individual trust from which the gifts were made.

Mr. Cryer

Will my right hon. Friend accept the congratulations of this side of the House on phasing out private pay beds? May we urge her to consider the total abolition of private medicine so that the sole criterion as to whether one receives medical attention is not one's depth of pocket but one's degree of illness?

Mrs. Castle

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his congratulations. What I am proposing to do, of course, is to carry out the terms of our election manifesto. This seems to cause consternation in some quarters of the Opposition, to whom it is an unfamiliar exercise. The manifesto specifically spells out that we are proposing not to abolish private practice but merely to phase out pay beds from the National Health Service hospitals. This is a policy of separation, not abolition.

Mr. David Steel

Although the right hon. Lady has no responsibilities for the health service in Scotland would she assure hon. Members outside Scotland that private beds and private wings in National Health Service hospitals there are a comparative rarity and that the National Health Service in Scotland is none the poorer for that?

Mrs. Castle

I am well aware of that and I heartily endorse what the hon. Gentleman has said.

Sir G. Howe

Does not the right hon. Lady realise the extent of the widespread concern in the country about the fact that the Labour Party conference three years ago passed, without opposition, a resolution calling substantially for the abolition of private medicine? Will she say whether she accepts the view put to her by her hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer), or can she assure the country that that is no part of Labour policy for the future?

Mrs. Castle

There would be no need for me to confirm something that I had just said to my hon. Friend if the right hon. and learned Gentleman had been listening. What commits the Government is what was in our manifesto. I repeat that our manifesto policy is separation, not abolition.