HC Deb 08 July 1975 vol 895 cc308-11
5. Mr. Teddy Taylor

asked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether she will make a further statement on her plans to abolish pay beds.

Mrs. Castle

As soon as consultations with those directly affected by the Government's detailed proposals are complete.

Mr. Taylor

Does not the Minister agree that it is rather short-sighted to press ahead with these plans when it appears that spending on the hospital services will be severely curtailed over the next few years? Would it not be wiser to shelve these plans in the meantime, and will the right hon. Lady explain what possible advantage can accrue to the general public from the policy which she is advancing?

Mrs. Castle

I do not accept that there is a conflict here between our policy of phasing pay beds out of the National Health Service and the economic needs of the service. The Conservatives seem consistently to overlook the fact that this policy would make about 3,000 more beds available for the use of NHS patients.

Mr. Cronin

Is my right hon. Friend aware that the vast majority of the public would regard the abolition of pay beds as desirable and as something that should be done as rapidly as possible? However, pay beds formed part of the original terms of service negotiated by the late Aneurin Bevan with the medical profession. Will she therefore treat this as a matter for careful negotiation of compensation for those who will be adversely affected?

Mrs. Castle

I accept that this is a matter for careful negotiation, and that is something we have always been willing to do. Our proposals were put in the document of the Owen joint working party many months ago. It was not our fault that the discussions in the working party were brought to an end. We did not end them. I am only too willing to have the consultations which have been asked for, and in those consultations it will be open to those involved to raise any question they wish.

Mr. Norman Fowler

Is the Secretary of State saying that at a time when the Government are insisting upon public expenditure cuts affecting the health service and the social services she will continue with a policy which can serve only to increase public expenditure by millions of pounds? How does she reconcile her policy with the policy of the Chancellor of the Exchequer?

Mrs. Castle

Very easily, because the Government's policy is that it would be impossible and unfair to call upon sections of the population in this country, often the least well paid, to make sacrifices in pay claims at a time when we are having to promote an unequal society. That is something which the Conservatives cannot understand. They believe in wage restraint plus privilege, and we do not.

The policy for which we stand and which, we believe, unites the country is designed to end queue jumping by those who can afford to pay. I deeply regret that at its recent conference the profession apparently rejected even the idea we constructively put to it many months ago that it should agree with us and work out with us a policy for common waiting lists so that health service patients would have the same right of medical priority as private patients.

Mr. Flannery

Does my right hon. Friend agree that virtually every question from the Conservative benches is motivated by keeping wealth and privilege for those with the biggest purses? The answers which my right hon. Friend has given so far are backed not merely by our right hon. and hon. Friends but by the bulk of the British people, who want her to go even further than she has gone in defending the mass of the people.

Mrs. Castle

I agree. There are sections of opinion which would like to go further than our policy seeks to go in merely phasing pay beds out of the National Health Service. Some people would like to see the abolition of private practice altogether, but that is not our policy. Our policy is not abolition but separation. We desire to restore to the National Health Service its basic intention, namely, to give access to its facilities purely on grounds of medical priorities.

Mrs. Knight

Does not the Secretary of State understand that it is not a bit of use having more and more beds if there is no money to enable them to be occupied by people in need? She should by now have made some assessment of how she is to replace the money which private patients have hitherto put into the service, not only in fees but in wills and gifts. Frequently we hear of plans for much-needed improvements being scrapped because of the shortage of money. How does the right hon. Lady align these two points with the fact that she is turning away a great deal of money when there is such a clear need for things to be done?

Mrs. Castle

Obviously, to the extent that we can save on capital expenditure for health service patients there are more resources available for revenue and current expenditure. Until my recent circular there were, in National Health Service hospitals authorised for the use of private patients, some 4,500 beds, many of which have an occupancy rate of about 50 per cent. It is clearly to the advantage of the NHS—an advantage gained very cheaply—if those beds are made available purely on the basis of medical priority.