Homelessness (Hansard, 23 February 1994)

§ 9. Mr. Watson
To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what resources he will make available to ensure that homeless people in Scotland are able to receive the full range of health care available under the NHS.

§ Mr. Stewart
Health boards are resourced to purchase health care services for their resident population including those who are homeless.

§ Mr. Watson
Despite that response, the Minister must be aware that homeless people in Scotland, as in other parts of Britain, face major and often insurmountable obstacles in getting access to the national health service, largely because of the unwillingness of general practitioners, who are the main source of referral for most NHS services, to accept them on to their registers. Does he accept the view of Dr. Harry Burns, the director of public health in Glasgow, who said that providing better health care for homeless people must be a priority for 1994? Statistics for London show that tuberculosis is already beginning to raise its ugly head again among homeless people, including those in hostels. Will he tell us, and homeless people in Scotland, clearly what he is prepared to do to ensure that homeless does not continue to mean healthless?

§ Mr. Stewart
The hon. Gentleman makes a serious point. I know Dr. Harry Burns and have the highest regard for him. In May 1992, the Chief Medical Officer asked health boards to carry out a health care needs assessment of their homeless and residential population. Last October, the CMO asked health boards to develop their services for the homeless and boards have already been instructed to undertake a whole range of specific actions to help in that area.

§ Mr. Bill Walker
While my hon. Friend and his colleagues are discussing resources and health care facilities, do they bear carefully in mind the necessity, when a cottage hospital such as Meigle has been resourced from its birth with an adequate endowment that would keep it going for ever, of taking that fact carefully into account when considering the information presented before such a hospital is closed?

§ Mr. Stewart
The whole House will know of my hon. Friend's campaign on Meigle hospital. As always, he has been a most meticulous and determined constituency Member of Parliament. As the House also knows, the Secretary of State himself replied to the Adjournment debate that my hon. Friend initiated on Meigle hospital and I know that my right hon. Friend, as he said at the time, listened most carefully to what my hon. Friend said.

§ Mrs. Fyfe
First, may I put on record the Labour party's continuing support for cottage hospitals?
On the original question, the Minister must know that bad housing creates bad health and the health of those who do not even have a roof over their heads is even more at risk. Does he agree that it is a scandal that in 1992–93 more than 45,000 households—almost 1,000 every week—applied to local authorities as homeless and that many of the people concerned will not be registered with a doctor? Will the Minister therefore reject for Scotland the proposal from the Department of the Environment to tell local authorities that they need not house those in the greatest need—the people who are literally on the streets—but may provide short-term accommodation only? Will he promise today that the impact on the health of the homeless will lead him and the health and housing Ministers in the Scottish Office to reject out of hand any proposals to weaken homelessness legislation?

§ Mr. Stewart
As the hon. Lady will know, my hon. Friend the Minister with responsibility for housing has allocated an extra £27 million for programmes specifically designed to deal with the problem of homelessness. With regard to the hon. Lady's general point about legislation, I can say that we envisage a consultation paper on possible reforms of homelessness provision, including legislation. That paper will be issued in the spring.