Lords Sitting of 6 May 1952

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers
Several Lords—Took the Oath.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
2.35 p.m.
EARL FORTESCUE: My Lords, I have to inform the House that my noble friend Lord Salisbury will interrupt the debate on the National Health Service Bill at some convenient time about four o'clock, in order to make the promised statement on the duties of the Co-ordinating Ministers.

WINCHESTER CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
EDINBURGH MERCHANT COM- PANY ENDOWMENTS (AMEND- MENT) ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a; to be printed, and (pursuant to the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1936) deemed to have been read 2a and reported from the Committee.
MOTHERWELL AND WISHAW BURGH ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a; to be printed, and (pursuant to the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1936) deemed to have been read 2a and reported from the Committee.

SCHOOL OF FASHION DESIGN
LORD BLACKFORD: My Lords, I beg to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what was the cost of the School of
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Fashion Design in the last Financial Year, and how many students, male and female, were in training during that year.]
LORD LLOYD: My Lords, the total gross expenditure on the School of Fashion Design was £9,482 of which £2,700 was non-recurrent. There were twenty-six students, four male and twenty-two female, who paid an annual fee of £60 each.

EXPORT DUTIES ON RAW COTTON
2.37 p.m.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, I beg to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government which are the countries which still impose export duties on raw cotton.]
LORD LLOYD: My Lords, with the permission of the noble Lord, I propose to circulate the answer, which is rather long, in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
LORD HAWKE: I take it, from the nature of the noble Lord's reply, that the list of countries still indulging in these pernicious practices is very long. I would ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are taking every opportunity of urging upon these countries the fact that, at a time when there is considerable consumer resistance to the price of cotton goods, these practices are no longer suitable.
LORD LLOYD: I think the Government have the matter under active attention at all times.
Following is the statement referred to by Lord Lloyd:
Column 2 of the table below gives the rates of taxes imposed on exports of raw cotton by the countries (listed in column 1) which impose such taxes. The rates of tax are shown either ad valorem or, in the case of specific rates, in United States cents per lb. of raw cotton, which is the unit normally used internationally.
Country and Rate of Tax
Belgian Congo—18 per cent. ad valorem.
Brazil—8 per cent. ad valorem on exports from South Brazil, plus 1.32 cents per lb.
Egypt—11.83 cents per lb.
French Equatorial Africa—24 per cent. ad valorem.
Haiti—2 cents per lb. during 1951–52 season.
India—10.65 cents per lb.
Kenya and Uganda—Sliding scale from nil when price does not exceed 7d. per lb. to 1.4 cents per lb. at 13d. per lb. Thereafter duty is increased by 0.28 cents per lb. for every increase of 1d. per lb. or part thereof.
Leeward Island—From ½d. to 1½d. per lb.
Mexico—4.77 cents per lb.
Nigeria—10 per cent. ad valorem plus one-tenth of 1 per cent. for every £ or part of a £ by which value exceeds £325 per ton.
Pakistan—7.70 cents per lb. for Desi cotton, 13.85 cents per lb. for other varieties.
Paraguay—11 per cent. of declared value per invoice.
Peru—Tax is calculated on a comparison between an estimated cost of production and spot quotations. (At present, 6.81 cents per lb.)
St. Vincent—6 per cent. ad valorem.
Sudan—Varies between 10.07 and 14.37 cents per lb., according to type.
Tanganyika—Varies between 11.20 and 5.60 cents per lb. according to grade.
The above table is as nearly complete as currently available data will allow.

HOUSE OF LORDS REFORM
2.39 p.m.
VISCOUNT SAMUEL: My Lords, I beg to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
In view of the statement in Mr. Churchill's Manifesto at the last General Election, that a Conservative Government would "call an all-Party conference to consider proposals for the reform of the House of Lords," to ask Her Majesty's Government when it is proposed to take steps to that end.]
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS (THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY): My Lords, Her Majesty's Government intend to call such a conference as soon as they have taken the necessary measures to deal with the more urgent tasks with which the present economic situation of the country confronts them.
VISCOUNT SAMUEL: I thank the noble Marquess for his reply.
EARL JOWITT: My Lords, may I ask the noble Marquess, in dealing with this
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matter, to bear in mind this consideration? From an article in The Times to-day I quote these words:
"the powers of the House of Lords … could not be restored, if that is the Government's intention, until the composition of the House has been … remodelled."
May I assure the noble Marquess that there are some of us who will be quite unwilling to embark upon any consideration of the reformation of the composition of the House of Lords if that is to be a mere prelude or "curtain raiser" to the conferring of increased powers upon this House?
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I think the noble and learned Earl opposite would be very unwise to begin banging doors at this stage. The important thing is that, if possible, there should be inter-Party agreement, on whatever basis, on this all-important question. When the time comes, we shall hope for the full co-operation of noble Lords opposite.

NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE BILL
2.42 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (LORD WOOLTON): My Lords, the National Health Service Bill now before your Lordships enables charges to be made for certain services provided under the National Health Service. No one likes instituting charges where none existed before, but the Government recognise, as did the previous Government when instituting charges for dentures and spectacles under the National Health Service Act of 1951, that the cost of the Service must be kept within reasonable bounds. On this account, the Government propose to introduce new charges for certain medical and dental treatment. The charges proposed are modest in themselves and should not involve any hardship, as provision will be made to relieve from the charge those in receipt of National Assistance or war pensions.
Your Lordships may remember that Section 16 of the National Health Service (Amendment) Act, 1949, empowers the Government to institute, by regulation, a charge for drugs supplied on each prescription form. The Government propose to use these powers, but since they do not

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apply to medicaments issued to hospital out-patients it is clearly necessary, if an anomaly is to be avoided, to supplement these powers by enabling the Government to apply the same charges to hospital out-patients. This Clause 1 of the Bill will do. The charges proposed to be made on medicines, dressings and appliances prescribed or supplied by general practitioners are one shilling for each prescription, notwithstanding that the form of prescription may contain more than one item. For example, if a patient were ordered on one form of prescription an ointment and a bandage, and some lint, that would amount to three items but would still cost only 1s. On each occasion on which a doctor who dispenses his own medicine supplies it to a patient, again the charge would be 1s. Higher charges are proposed for elastic hosiery for which the charge will be 5s. or 10s., according to the size of article supplied. It is proposed to make similar charges for elastic hosiery supplied to hospital out-patients.
The estimated saving on all this in a full year is £12,500,000. The charges will be payable by everyone who presents a prescription form to a chemist, or, in a rural area, where the medicine is supplied by a doctor who does his own dispensing. The charges have been fixed at a level which should not normally involve any hardship, but people in receipt of National Assistance will be able to claim the repayment of the 1s. from the office where they draw their assistance, which is usually the Post Office, when next presenting their Order Book, if they produce a special receipt form which the chemist or doctor will be asked to give them on request. War pensioners will similarly be able to reclaim a charge incurred by reason of their accepted war disability. The shilling charge will also be made through outpatients' departments in hospitals when drugs or medicines are supplied for patients to take away with them. When prescriptions are dispensed to out-patients at a hospital, no charge will be made to patients who produce a National Assistance Order Book showing that they are receiving assistance (or are dependants of a person receiving assistance), or Ministry of Pensions out-patients' attendance cards, or who sign a declaration that the drug or medicine is for an "accepted" war disability. Patients
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under treatment for venereal diseases at hospital clinics will also be exempt from charge for drugs or medicine supplied as part of their treatment.
So far as appliances are concerned, the proposal is to make a fixed flat rate charge of not more than half the cost of certain appliances supplied through the hospital service to out-patients other than children.
Since it is not in the Bill but will be done by regulations, I thought it advisable to give your Lordships some definition of these appliances. The appliances for which there will be charges are as follows: surgical boots and shoes, £3 per pair; surgical abdominal supports, £1; elastic hosiery: anklets, knee-caps or leggings, 5s. each, other types 10s. each; wigs of any type, supplied in duplicate, £5 per pair, the single wig on renewal, £2 10s. No charges will be made for repairs to appliances except for the soling and heeling of surgical boots and shoes, where approximately the full cost of the work will be charged. Nor will any charge be made for appliances supplied to or repairs done for children, persons (or their dependants) in receipt of assistance grants under the National Assistance Act, or for war pensioners in respect of an accepted disability. The only kind of appliance on the above list which is also obtainable on prescription by a general practitioner outside the hospital is elastic hosiery, and it is proposed that this should carry the charges shown above, and not come within the shilling prescription. The estimated yield of this is about £250,000 in a full year.
Clause 2 of the Bill provides for the extension of charges to forms of dental treatment other than the provision of dentures, which is already covered by the Act of 1951. Great care has been taken in trying to work out the form which these charges should take. The method on which the Government have decided is a simple one. It is that, with certain important exceptions, the patient should pay the cost of his treatment up to a maximum of £1, and that the rest of his treatment should be free. In contrast to the possible alternative which has been widely advocated, of giving the patient the first £1 worth of treatment free, the method proposed will encourage patients when they do visit the dentist to undergo complete treatment which will make them dentally fit, rather than to make a visit

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only when they need emergency treatment. An important element of this scheme of dental charges is that the Bill provides, in Clause 2 (4), for exceptions of those classes which are most in need of treatment, and they are defined as children and young persons up to twenty-one, expectant mothers, and mothers who have had a child within the last twelve months. These mothers, children and young persons will continue to be entitled to free treatment, both from general dental practitioners and under the local authority priority services.
To prevent abuse, the Bill proposes penalties for fraudulent claims by persons who do not in fact belong to the priority classes. It is also proposed not to make any charge for the clinical examination and report on a person's teeth. Nor will charges be made for the repair of appliances, except such as may be prescribed, and in practice few, if any, appliances may be so prescribed. Similarly, no charges will be made for the arrest of bleeding; for a domiciliary visit—that is, a visit by the practitioner to the patient—due to the latter's condition, and the supply or replacement of appliances which are already subject to a charge under the Act of 1951. The charge will apply to treatment by a general dental practitioner in his own surgery or at a health centre. Like the charges under the 1951 Act, it will be paid direct by the patient to the dentist.
The Government have considered very carefully the effect of this Bill upon the dental profession in their endeavours to meet the demands for treatment. A vast amount of dentistry has been carried out—often with great pressure on the dentists—which has undoubtedly contributed to the health of the population, but in the meantime, as your Lordships are very well aware, the school dental service has lost much of its staff. The inducements to dentists to practise under the general dental services and the school dental service respectively have been out of balance. Charges to be imposed under this Bill will, it is hoped, help to put this balance right. If the pressure on general practice slackens as a result of the charges, then there will be a greater inducement to some of the dentists who like to treat school-children to participate, either whole-time or on a sessional basis, in the priority services, and so to ensure
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that, under a properly manned school dental service, children receive regular inspection of their teeth and are given treatment whenever they need it. The avoidance of hardship has again been very much in the minds of the Government. The principle on which the clause is based is that, apart from the two priority classes of children and young persons under twenty-one, and expectant and nursing mothers (for both of whom there are special clinical reasons, as they are specially liable to dental caries) all other persons should be expected to pay the charges, and that they should receive help, if necessary, from the National Assistance Board. The expected saving from the charges for dental treatment will be in the neighbourhood of £6,000,000 per annum.
The new charges for dental treatment will not apply in hospitals, where treatment required will continue to be given without charge. The charges for dentures under the 1951 Act do, however, apply to hospital out-patients, as to patients treated under the general dental services, and they will continue to apply, with the modification, provided for in Clause 4 of the Bill, that the Minister or Secretary of State may, after consultation with the university concerned, agree to the charges being remitted at a dental teaching hospital, where that is necessary in the interests of dental studies.
The other matter to which I should draw your Lordships' special attention is dealt with in Clause 5, subsections (2) and (3), which will empower local authorities, subject to the Minister's approval, to make such charges for the use of day nurseries as the authorities consider reasonable, having regard to the means of the persons concerned. It is proposed to approve the making of charges within a maximum of the full cost of the service provided, the amount of the charges being adjusted to the means of those who use the service. There are at present in Great Britain some 45,000 places in day nurseries provided by local health authorities, at a total cost of £5,300,000. The charges recovered for food provided amount to some £900,000 a year. It is, therefore, quite an expensive service, and it is not unreasonable to make some charge for it.
The mother who is compelled to go out to work, usually because she is the sole wage-earner, or who is unable to look

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after her children owing, perhaps, to sickness, might well be unable to pay much in the way of charges—or in some cases might not be able to pay anything at all—but there are many cases where the mother, whose husband is working, wishes to work herself in order to supplement the family income or, it may be, in response to appeals that have been made for women to return to industry. Very often, in these cases, the mother earns good wages, and there is no reason why she should not make some contribution towards the cost of maintaining these very expensive services. And, in fact, she is often quite willing to do so. No firm estimate of savings is possible, as the amount of the charges will be largely at the discretion of the local authorities themselves. The yield might be of the order of £1,000,000 in a full year, of which half would accrue to the Exchequer.
The Bill makes one or two detailed amendments to the Act of 1951 which I ought to mention. First, the charges under that Act apply to dentures, but not to dental bridges. The present Bill, in Clause 5, corrects that omission. Secondly, the Bill, as already mentioned, enables the Minister of Health, or the Secretary of State for Scotland, in the interests of dental teaching to remit the 1951 charges in the case of dentures provided at a dental teaching hospital. Thirdly, under the 1951 Act, the power to charge for the supply of dentures would expire on April 1, 1954, unless continued from year to year by Special Resolution. It is not, in fact, possible to say how long the economic circumstances of the country may make charges necessary, and a more flexible form of variation with no fixed time limit is desirable. The Bill therefore gives power to lessen or abolish any dental charge by Order in Council. This will be done as experience or financial circumstances may suggest. This power applies both to the dental charges imposed under the present Bill and to those imposed by the Act of 1951.
My Lords, I hope that that brief summary has done something to make clear the salient points of the Bill. The reason for the introduction of the charges, as your Lordships are well aware, is, primarily, to curb the ever-mounting cost of the Health Service and to keep it within reasonable bounds.
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From 1947 to 1951, the number of prescriptions given under the National Health Service in England and Wales rose from 70,000,000 to 229,000,000, and the average cost of a prescription from 1s. 8d. to 3s. 11d. In Great Britain, the estimated cost of the dental service, excluding hospital dentistry and the special priority services run by the local authorities, is about £27,000,000 a year; and the day nurseries, as I have said, cost about £4,500,000. I do not think it is unreasonable to ask those who can afford it to make some contribution towards the cost of some of these services, with a view to keeping the total cost within some near approach to the ceiling which successive Chancellors of the Exchequer have prescribed. The greatest danger to the Health Service is that it should be too expensive for us to maintain. This Bill will not only help to reduce, in some measure, the estimated expense but may well act as a curb to the extravagant demands on the Service. Perhaps, as a nation, we are in some danger of taking too much medicine. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Woolton.)
3.0 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, as I listened to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Woolton, I began to lose hope that he was going to give your Lordships an explanation of the reasons why this Bill has taken shape. Towards the end of his speech, the noble Lord had done no more than indicate to your Lordships that the expenses of the Health Service have been mounting up, that it is desirable that something in the nature of a ceiling should be fixed, and that the people who take advantage of the Health Service should make some kind of contribution to it. I do not know whether your Lordships will be satisfied with the introduction of an important Bill of this character in those terms. I have been in this Chamber for five years and I have not listened to the introduction of a Bill when so little has been said about the reasons prompting it and making its introduction necessary. Perhaps I may be forgiven, therefore, if I take the place of the noble Lord for a few minutes and give the reasons for the introduction of this Bill, as indicated by speeches of colleagues of the noble Lord in another place. When

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I do that, it will be found that their interpretation of the reasons which have prompted this Bill are of an entirely different character.
Before I come to that, perhaps I ought to don something in the nature of a white sheet and explain the position of the Labour Party, in view of our past commitments in matters of this kind, and inform your Lordships' House of the most recent decision which the Party have taken in the matter. In 1950, in a year when there was a surplus in the balance of payments between ourselves and other countries of the world, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Stafford Cripps, drew a ceiling for himself because of the Budget position of that year. He indicated that, because of the financial position of the country, a ceiling would be drawn for the Health Service and that if there had to be increased expenditure in some part of the Health Service, there would have to be transfers within the Service, determined by priorities. That, as I say, was in a year when the country had a surplus in the balance of payments between this country and other countries. In 1951, after the retirement of Sir Stafford Cripps, my right honourable friend Mr. Hugh Gaitskell, the Minister of Health of the day, faced with rearmament in all its rigour and with increasing expenses in all directions, decided that he could not find more than £7,000,000 extra for the Health Service, although the claims of the health authorities throughout the country amounted to £23,000,000 extra.
Therefore, the Government of the day decided that for a temporary period—and I want your Lordships to note the words "temporary period"—there should be a charge on dentures and one on spectacles. It will be noticed that this increase was proposed to Parliament to meet the cost of rearmament and the growing expenditure of the period. But my right honourable friend the Minister of Health said this in the course of his speech in moving the Second Reading of the National Health Service Act of 1951 (OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, Vol. 487. Col. 239):
"When we considered where to levy charges, we had four criteria in mind. The first was to provide the income required for the maintenance of the essential parts of the Service. The second was to levy the charge as little as possible on any person who was seriously ill. The third was to avoid a high
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cost of collection. The last was to have regard to the possible deterrence of abuse."
I hope to say something about each of the three latter points before the conclusion of my remarks.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, before the noble Lord goes on, can he tell us, for the benefit of noble Lords who will be speaking later, what the total figure of the ceiling was fixed at?
LORD SHEPHERD: It was, roughly, £400,000,000. When the 1951 Act was being considered in another place, the Minister of Health indicated that the Bill was of a temporary character and would normally continue for the period of rearmament. During its passage, however, a demand was made that some limit should be included in the Bill itself. The limit was inserted in the Bill, which was to come to an end in 1954. When we come to examine the Bill now before the House, we find that no limit of time is provided at all, although my colleagues in another place did their utmost to persuade the Government to include it. But one thing will be found in this Bill—that is, that the time limit placed in the Government's Act of 1951 is to be deleted. So that the charges under this Bill and under Labour's own Act will have no time limit so far as the Statutes are concerned. We think that the Government have not played fairly with us in this matter, if they desire our co-operation in times of difficulty. And we have now reached the conclusion that when we return to office, which we hope to do at no distant date, when time and opportunity present themselves we shall clear these Acts out of the road and begin once more to rebuild the Health Service of this country on a co-operative basis and without charging people in the way that is proposed in this measure.
What is the purpose of the Bill? I will now give the views of the Minister of Health, who is Leader of another place. Then I will give the views of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, taken from his statement in January last on the financial and economic situation in the country. This is what Captain Crookshank said on the Second Reading of the Bill: (OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons; Vol. 498, Col. 860.)
"The fact remains that unless we restore our present precarious situation, unless we can restore confidence in sterling and stop the

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drain on our reserves it is not the National Health Service which will be destroyed but the very foundations of our economy which will be shaken.
"That is the danger we have to face and much that all of us together have created and enjoyed would disappear in the twilight of national bankruptcy. Those are the grim facts which, fundamentally, are the justification for the financial parts of the Bill."—
I should like to emphasise that last sentence. The Minister went on:
"The other portion, which tries to turn the emphasis into a slightly better direction than it has been in the last few years, is the more constructive portion of the Bill. …"
I commend those words to your Lordships. Therefore, your Lordships will see that Captain Crookshank, the Leader of the House of Commons and the Minister of Health, is less concerned about the ceiling on the Health Services, for the sake of the Health Services, than he is about the state of bankruptcy in which he appears to think the country is falling.
I now come to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The speech that he made in another place on January 29 was especially for the purpose of giving the views of the Government on the situation in which this country found itself. It was there that Mr. Butler indicated the steps he was going to take to rescue the nation from its position; and it was during that speech that almost every item in this Bill was mentioned specifically. Therefore, we have to assume that all that Mr. Butler said about the state of the country covered this Bill also. This is what he said (OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, Vol. 495, Col. 41):
"If we allowed our economic strength to deteriorate and to decay, not only would our lives be impoverished, but the whole aspect of the problems confronting the free world as a whole would be irremediably worsened … it is the harsh truth that our economic position in the world has been deteriorating for about half a century. … Our resources have been depleted by two world wars into which we unhesitatingly threw all our resources. The result of this is that in addition to the other burdens which are upon us, we have become the largest debtor country in the world, whereas for generations we had been the largest creditor."
I suggest to your Lordships that, when we come to consider whether this Bill is necessary or not, we have to ask ourselves whether what it proposes has any relevance to the situation described by the two right honourable gentlemen in the other place. Is it really the fact that this
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nation cannot be rescued from bankruptcy unless we charge something to the sick, the lame and the poor?
Let me add one further thing. What is it that is causing so much concern, and that has led to the descriptions of the situation to which I have just referred? It is something that we call the balance of payments. Some people know a great deal about it; most people know nothing. But in the Budget speech it was made crystal clear to those who could read. I have already indicated that in 1950 there was a surplus, and that surplus was in the neighbourhood of £300,000,000. In the following year a change took place, with the result, as again described by Mr. Butler, that in the third quarter of the year our gold reserves were being depleted at the rate of 46,000,000 dollars per week; in the fourth quarter of the year the depletion of our gold reserves had gone up to 58,000,000 dollars per week; and in January and February of this year—these were the last figures the Chancellor of the Exchequer could use on the date on which he made this speech—the weekly loss in the gold reserves amounted to 63,000,000 dollars per week. That is the situation which this Bill, with its charges for prescriptions, belts and elastic stockings, is going to meet. I venture to suggest that if it is an attempt to cure the sorry conditions I have described it is just like using a pill to cure an earthquake. It is not really worth the time of Parliament to bring in measures of this kind for the purposes we have here.
If your Lordships listened to Lord Woolton's detailed description of this measure, you will remember that he calculated that this Bill would save the Exchequer about £9,000,000, made up of £250,000 on surgical belts, on abdominal supports, elastic hosiery and wigs, £75,000 on dental charges, £500,000 on nurseries, and the rest on prescriptions given to the out-patients of hospitals.
LORD WOOLTON: The noble Lord cannot be correct there. I gave precise figures, which were £12,500,000 on prescriptions, and £6,500,000 later. The total comes to just under £20,000,000.
LORD SHEPHERD: The noble Lord and I are talking about two different things. I am talking about this Bill.
LORD WOOLTON: I was, also.
LORD SHEPHERD: No, the noble Lord is talking about another Bill in addition. This Bill provides only for a prescription charge on that part of the public which goes to hospitals. The £12,500,000 to which the noble Lord refers would relate to the many millions of people who come under the National Health Service Act, 1949. So that I am approximately accurate—I will put it no higher than that—and I desire to be, because I want to prove that this Bill is one which we should not entertain. Assuming that the total is £9,000,000, how is that to be applied in order to save the nation from bankruptcy? Almost on the first page of the Economic Survey which has just been published by the Government I find a table which seems very useful for my purpose. In 1948 the cost of imported foodstuffs was £826,000,000, whereas in 1951 the total had reached £1,249,000,000. What part of the £9,000,000 which is to be saved by this Bill is going to relieve us of any of those imports? Is any part of that £9,000,000 going to affect that importation at all? Now I come to the next point. In 1948, raw material imports approximated £606,000,000, whereas last year the imports went up to £1,500,000,000. Again may I ask: supposing the whole £9,000,000 to be saved under this Bill represented commodities which had to be imported, how far would that relieve this country from its approach to bankruptcy? But the whole £9,000,000 is not available for that purpose. If you take out the margins of profit; if you take out the wages that are paid; if you take out the cost of factories and the like, the amount of imports—even if it all came from abroad—to be saved by this Bill would be extremely small.
My last word on the finances has reference to the Budget itself. It may be argued that the saving of £9,000,000 will have nothing whatever to do with the approach of the country to bankruptcy through excessive imports, but that it would be a relief to the Exchequer; it would enable the Chancellor of the Exchequer to have a real balance at the end of the year. Before we part with that thought, I think we should look at the Budget itself in order to get a proper comparison. Mr. Butler, in winding up his speech on the Budget debate said this (OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons; Vol. 497, Col. 1307):
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"I hope to obtain … £10,000,000 from the Post Office, and £66,000,000 extra from petrol. I hope also to save a net amount of about £80,000,000, as the combined result of reducing the food subsidies but improving social benefits."—
that is to say, a total of £156,000,000. But he then ended with the remark that he had granted no less than £180,000,000 in tax reliefs. If you take his savings away from the sacrifices that he has made, your Lordships will find that the income tax payer is left with £24,000,000 extra to spend in any way he likes. I suggest that if the Government really wish to do the right thing by the poor and suffering in this country, instead of putting on new taxes which are involved in this Bill they should have given less away in the form of tax reliefs, so that the broader backs of the well-to-do might bear the major part of the expenditure which is involved.
However, there is a point about this Bill which explains a fear which exists that if money is spent by a Government upon health, that money is economically wasted. I wish to show your Lordships that money spent on health may be a good economic investment. I quite agree that on health, as upon all human activities, there may be wastage which must be made good. I say that the wise expenditure of money upon health has an economic value all its own, and I want to give one or two instances which will support the claim I have just made. In the Monthly Digest of Statistics just published, the following figures for the month of November are available. In that month the number of days of incapacity through sickness amounted to 103 per 100 persons. If one applies that percentage to the working population of our country of 23,000,000 people, one reaches the conclusion that in the month of November 24,000,000 days were lost because of sickness and incapacity. I venture to suggest to your Lordships that we can spend a good deal of money with very great profit to the State if we so improve the health conditions of our country that that great loss of time and labour will be reduced.
The Times of December 10 last had a two-column article from its Geneva correspondent reviewing the monograph of Dr. Winslow, an American physician. The correspondent was reviewing this monograph and giving the readers of The Times important facts about the value of health and the economic gain which

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comes from it. In that article it is said that a death at fifteen years of age is an economic loss. The boy has not lived to repay either the State or his family for the cost of his upkeep. If, however, the boy lives to the age of forty, then not only has the cost of his upbringing been covered; not only has he been able to look after himself in the intervening years, but there has been an economic return to society. After forty years of age there is an economic return to society. But if a man lives to be sixty-five years of age—that is, twenty-five years longer—then the economic gain at the end of that further twenty-five years is twice as great as it was when the man turned forty. So there would be everything to gain from any expenditure of money which would lead to that great extension of life.
I want to give only one other set of figures in that respect, and they are quite recent figures concerning children who are born into this world of ours and who die before they are twelve months old—a loss to the community, a loss to their parents and a loss to the economic life of our land. I will not go back to the figures of half a century ago, because they were appalling. I will quote the figures merely since the end of the war. In 1945, the death rate of children under one year was 46 per 1,000; in 1946 it was 42; in 1947, 41; in 1948, 33, and in 1949, 32. When the noble Lord is thinking about child clinics; when he is thinking about the foods now given to women expecting a child, and when he is thinking about the money we are expending on looking after children after birth, will he please remember that that money has not been wasted? The children are alive, and one day will add to the economic strength of our land.
Now I wish to deal with only one other matter, and that concerns the subject of deterrents. We can go greatly wrong unless we are careful in handling this very difficult subject. I want, first, to deal with the deterrent effect in regard to teeth which arose out of the Labour Government's Act; and I am going to take as my authority, not some unknown correspondent, but a respected Member of Parliament, a member of the Conservative Party, who, I understand, has just finished a pamphlet to be sold by the headquarters of his Party. Mr. Macleod has reached the conclusion that the
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deterrent effect in regard to teeth has been far greater than we expected. He says that the damage has been so severe that the dentists have lost 30 per cent. of their income. He then goes on to say that the business of dentists has declined by 50 per cent. since the inauguration of this charge; and he expresses the hope that if this Government remain in office the powers under this Bill will be used for a reduction of that deterrent arrangement that the Labour Government placed on the dentists. Well, my Lords, if this Government remain in office, we shall wish that they will do that, because we think the effect on the dentists has been too severe.
Mr. Macleod seems to justify the deterrent effect in this case because of the switch that he thinks follows from it. Owing to the active service of dentists under the Health Service Act, apparently, the schools have lost the dentists who used to look after their children's teeth. Mr. Macleod thinks it would be a good thing if we saw to it that the men who have been deprived of their livelihood since the inauguration of the charge find their way into the schools to look after the teeth of the children. We certainly want more dentists looking after the teeth of the children, but we should make sure that when we select people for that work it is not merely on the ground that they have fallen out of work, but because they have special aptitude for looking after the teeth of the children. On the Report stage of the Bill in another place, the Minister agreed to an Amendment to preclude from the prescription charges of this Bill men and women suffering from venereal diseases. I myself would not object to an Amendment of that kind. But when the same Minister refuses to put outside these charges persons suffering from tuberculosis, I frankly do not understand the position. When we come to deterrents and to discriminating between one section of the community and another, we find ourselves making these cruel mistakes, which not only affect the population but which, by extra administration, pile up the cost of the Service.
In conclusion, I wish to remind your Lordships of what I said at the beginning. Although we commenced putting these charges upon certain parts of the Health Service, we have learned our lesson and we can take advantage of that

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lesson. If noble Lords opposite do not themselves get rid of these charges, then we shall take an early opportunity, when we come into office once more, of making sure that a saner condition of affairs is brought about.
3.34 p.m.
LORD MATHERS: My Lords, in rising to address you for the first time I am conscious of rather mixed feelings. I am not a stranger to this Chamber, and I am not a stranger to many of those whom I see around me, because, during the period of the war, I sat in this Chamber, and because during eighteen-and-a-half years' membership in another place I came into contact with many who now, like myself, have the privilege of sitting on these Benches. I come here gladly, welcoming the opportunity of still retaining some connection with this great Palace of Westminster and all the associations which it has, and of coming into an atmosphere of debate to which, I must say, I react very favourably.
I rise to-day to deplore the fact that this Bill has been brought in to make permanent a break of principle and to make unfair discrimination between individuals. I am happy to follow my noble friend Lord Shepherd, who has already made reference to the unfair discrimination between individuals. Health should not be subject to the capacity of the individual to pay. At least, an attempt to remedy conditions of illness and disability should not be subject to the individual's capacity to pay. I ask, How did we arrive at the position which we reached when we established the National Health Service, a Service which I consider will be impaired, to some extent at least, by this Bill? Did it not derive from a growing consciousness of our duty to our neighbour? We remember Him who taught us to recognise our neighbour. Was it not His inspiration that led the Church of His founding, many years ago, to follow His example in caring for the sick and thus earning His commendatory:
"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these … ye have done it unto Me."
Centuries have passed since these words were spoken. Many years ago, following the Church along these lines, the community took a hand. Great voluntary
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efforts were made; the great voluntary hospitals came into being and, in their time, were very successful. But the impact of two world wars threatened the very foundations of the voluntary system; and it is one of the glories of our country that in the aftermath of war we became the first great nation to put into operation a system whereby we guaranteed to every sufferer, so far as human skill could provide it, the means of health and a full life.
Let us not go back on that ideal, as this Bill causes me to fear we are doing. I give way to no one in seeking to avoid or, if it exists, to remove wasteful expenditure; and I have no doubt that action is necessary to exercise the utmost care in our present difficult financial position. But that this Bill is the right way to secure the best results I question very much. I have had many contacts with the peoples of other lands. I have had associations with international organisations, and they have brought me into touch, both in this country and in other countries, with people from other lands. The feeling that I have found in my contacts with these people has been one of unbounded admiration for this country for its conduct during the menace of war and an equal admiration, not unmixed with a tinge of envy, for the manner in which we tackled the tremendous problems war left in its train.
One of the great things that this country has brought into operation is this great National Health Service. This Bill is pleaded for on the ground of national economy; but, as was indicated by the noble Lord who moved the Second Reading, the economy is comparatively small. I ask: why apply that economy to health? Are there not other sources where saving can be effected to an even greater extent? Are we not as a nation bowing down before false gods? Could we not, with great advantage, save vast sums on the cost of the tribute that, for example, we pay to the god Bacchus, responsible for great danger to life and limb upon our roads and in other spheres? With reference to road accidents, over 2,000 motorists were convicted in 1951 of driving while under the influence of drink. There are pedestrians also who fall into the same category and risk life and limb on the roads. Will anyone deny that the high incidence of venereal disease is made

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greater because of dangers incurred under the influence of drink?
Noble Lords will see that I am trying to link these remarks of mine to questions of health. If I were to go outside the realm that I have covered already, I should bring in another wasteful expenditure upon which we, as a nation, would do well to economise. It would hardly come into the category that I am establishing. I refer to the god of chance. Every year £650,000,000 is put into the gambling industry. I am not on such firm ground in indicating another god, or rather goddess, by name "My Lady Nicotine," but research is being made into the effect of the enslavement of so many of our population by this seductive deceiver. I use the word "enslavement" advisedly, because it is quite obvious that many people are unable to cast off the chains of that enslaver. And you cannot "get away with it" by using the humorous statement made by Mark Twain when he said that it was all nonsense to say that people cannot stop smoking. He said he had stopped smoking hundreds of times.
The effect of smoking upon health has been proved to me by friends who have renounced the practice of burning incense before the altar of this goddess. Several have told me how they have put on weight as the result of giving up smoking. That condition can be cured, if they wish to cure it, by other means than returning to the slimming process they had renounced. Research is still going on, but one conclusion of a firm character has, I understand, already been reached. It is that women smokers grow old prematurely. When we talk of economy and learn from the latest Treasury Statement on Income and Expenditure (Cmd. 8486) that the estimate of personal outlay on drink and tobacco for 1951 is £1,589,000,000—I cannot give the separate figures as they are not shown separately in the latest Statement; perhaps they are lumped together in this way because they are both narcotic poisons and are taken in that way—I feel I am justified in saying that there are other economies that should be tackled before we run the risk of impairing the national health by what are demonstrably small economies and may well prove to be false economies in the long run.
I do not wish to disguise the fact that the National Health Service costs a
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great deal and that there is every reason for seeing, in the public interest, that the money devoted to it is wisely spent. There are still many millions that we shall have to spend upon hospitals and other services before we bring all the wonderful resources of medical science promptly to the aid of thousands of suffering people. Much of the disease and disabilities from which they suffer may be more properly a subject for prevention through education in the right ways of living. But to enter upon that great subject would take me far beyond this small, sad Bill. As I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Woolton, I was reminded of a story of a Scottish farmer who set about the task of shearing a pig. The pig made the usual noises that we hear from pigs when they are being manhandled, and the old farmer was led to say that he found what was happening was a case of "Muckle cry but little' oo." This Bill is a case of "Muckle cry but little' oo," a great deal being said but, in the end, not resulting in very much. I do not think this Bill is a credit to the Government responsible for it.
3.48 p.m.
LORD WEBB-JOHNSON: My Lords, I am sure you would all wish me, in the first place, to say how glad we are that the noble Lord, Lord Mathers, has broken the ice and made his maiden speech. It is perfectly clear from what he has said that he can make valuable contributions to our debates over an enormous range of subjects. We may look forward to his interventions on tobacco, on alcohol—
A NOBLE LORD: And on pigs.
LORD WEBB-JOHNSON: —on research, and on the shearing of pigs—which was a "new one on me." He enlivened his speech by indulging in more than one language. I enjoyed his speech enormously, and I hope that we shall hear him on many occasions. Of course, I differ entirely with practically everything he said, as I did with most of the things that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, said. I think it is idle to pretend that the social services and the health services are not linked with the country's financial position. It is rather unfair to reproach the Government for approaching this subject with the financial aspect in view. In point of fact, the financial side must be their deepest concern at the present time,

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and to calculate every possible saving as being not worth while will, in the end, lead to no saving. Of course, the smaller savings must be taken into consideration.
I know that noble Lords on both sides of the House will be shocked, as they have been in the past, when I confess candidly that I welcome the Bill, not only as a contribution to economy but also because I believe that it will have a salutary effect. I believe that moderate charges will lead to a more reasonable use of the Service. I believe that it will lead to a healthier approach. It will stop extravagant demands. It will diminish waste and greed. There is always a danger of waste and greed when something is offered for nothing. I believe this, that when the pressure is relieved on the doctors and dentists to a certain extent, when we cut down the quantity of the demand, we shall see an improvement in the quality of the Service. As your Lordships may have gathered from my interventions on previous occasions, I would go even further than the Government. I have never been able to understand why in-patients of hospitals should be exempt from charges. Taken by and large, on the average the in-patients of hospitals to-day are better able to pay than any other people who make claims on the National Health Service. I think it would be quite simple to arrange for relief for those who might find the charges difficult. I will not raise again the question of a "hotel charge," except to seize the opportunity to inform the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, that I was completely unconvinced by his intervention on a previous occasion, when I said that the Labour Party had accepted the principle of hotel charges for stays in hospital when they cut off a part of a man's sickness benefit while he was in hospital.
LORD SHEPHERD: The noble Lord on a previous occasion did not say that. The noble Lord will remember that I dissociated myself entirely from his reading of the matter; and I still do so. What the Government did in respect of that does not commit them to the subject of hotel charges, with which we associate tips, bad beds and all the rest of it.
LORD WEBB-JOHNSON: Of course, I was merely informing the noble Lord that his intervention on exactly the same
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lines on another occasion proved completely unconvincing to me.
I will not detain your Lordships much further, but I would take the opportunity of saying that, without any charges, the taxpayers' money will be spent on all and sundry, and to labour the question of the poor and suffering is to present a quite false picture. Every member of the population is entitled to claim a share in the National Health Service now without payment, and I think it is just nonsense when, either in this House or in another place, the imposition of charges is labelled as likely to lead to a complete disintegration of the social services. I was very sad and sorry to hear the noble Lord. Lord Shepherd, foretell what might happen in the future if there were a change of Government. I was sorry that he should have revealed that he has such fixed ideas. I trust that in the intervening period, when he may have opportunities for considerable thought (who can say how long it may be?), he may decide that this is still an open question. As one of considerable experience in the practice of medicine and surgery I would say that, quite apart from any question of economy, this introduction of charges is likely to lead to an improvement in the health services.
3.54 p.m.
LORD MILNER OF LEEDS: My Lords, I desire to preface my short remarks on the Bill by bringing to your Lordships' attention two facts. I do so as a new member, and with great diffidence. The first one concerns the short time which your Lordships' House has had in which to consider this Bill. Apparently it was introduced into your Lordships' House on Friday last, in order that the Second Reading might take place to-day. But on the Report stage in another place as recently as Thursday last, quite a number of important Amendments were made in the Bill, and I respectfully submit that it is unreasonable that your Lordships should not have been given more time to consider the Bill in its amended form. I venture to hope that your Lordships may agree with me that in future a longer opportunity ought to be given to consider such an important Bill.
The second point which I wish to make is that I gather, from the debates in

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another place, that the Government have already anticipated your Lordships' approval of this Bill. Apparently, they have sent out instructions to hospitals requiring them to obtain from patients signed acknowledgments of the fact that those patients understand they will have to pay the charges set out in the Bill. It appears that a large number of patients, some of whom ordered their appliances many months ago, are now being asked to sign an acknowledgment of the fact that in future there will be payments to make in respect of those appliances. I can understand that it is necessary for any Government Department to make its own internal administrative arrangements, in view of the possibility or probability of a Bill becoming law, but surely it is presuming too much on the acquiescence of your Lordships' House to assume that necessarily your Lordships will accept this Bill, word for word as it has been put forward by the Government, without the alteration of a single charge or a single clause. My Lords, I mention these matters with diffidence, but they appear to me to indicate on the part of the Government some lack of courtesy and consideration for this House, if not, indeed, a constitutional anomaly.
Now I come to the Bill itself. I would remind your Lordships of something of its background. In 1946 those who are now the Government of this country voted against both the Second and Third Readings of the thin National Health Service Bill. I think it is also pertinent to note that this is another instance of a promise deliberately broken, because during the last Election the Chancellor of the Exchequer said in quite definite terms
"We shall maintain the Health Services, contrary to any stories you may have heard."
Yet within six months of that emphatic assurance we have the present Bill, striking a blow at the very basis of a Service which the Chancellor undertook to maintain. In my submission, that is a complete breach of faith with the electors of this country. And for what reason? From the remarks of the Lord President, your Lordships may have been under the impression that the Bill has been brought in solely to save money. A sum of £20,000,000 has been mentioned. But the Minister in another place disowned that
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reason completely. On the Second Reading of the Bill he said (OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons; Vol. 498, Col. 845):
"We are not concerned to-day with the purely financial attempt at retrenchment at all costs. Far from it. When the Government were seeing whether any savings could be made in the Health Service the considerations they had constantly in mind were: are there any obvious abuses to be rectified? Can we sooner or better reach what is the ultimate objective of us all, improving the public health, by pruning or rearranging some of the present services or, indeed, by getting the emphasis altered in the right direction? By this Bill we can make some such Improvements while, at the same time, restraining the expenditure."
I submit to your Lordships that although the reason given there is that there are obvious abuses to be rectified, we have not heard one word to-day—nor was anything said in another place, or any evidence given—to that effect. Certainly there is nothing in the Bill which improves public health, which rearranges some of the present services or gets the emphasis altered in the right direction. The only conclusion we can come to, therefore, is that there are no substantial grounds whatever for the imposition of these charges for necessities upon our sick, our maimed and our more unfortunate fellow-citizens.
I do not propose to deal with the Bill in detail, but I should like to submit three or four points for your Lordships' consideration—points which I hope we may have the opportunity of discussing in Committee. In my view, they are incontrovertible points. The first is that the Is. charge on prescriptions, if it be practicable—which is doubtful—will lead to hardship, to adequate treatment being deferred because of the cost, to many suffering from diabetes or tuberculosis or epilepsy not receiving the medicines which would relieve their sufferings and, in the case of tuberculosis, tend to avoid the spread of disease. I also believe that the administrative cost, the inconvenience and the misery, which these impositions will entail must far outweigh any small savings which may result. In any event, it is surely a pitiable state of affairs when savings are to be made at the expense of the sick and the maimed. In the second place, the dentistry charges will not only cause hardship but, quite obviously, will also result in treatment being delayed. The noble Lord, Lord Woolton, said that one advantage of the charge of a sovereign

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would be that patients would endeavour to have a complete overhaul—or words to that effect. I should have thought it was much more important to ensure that there was early treatment. The fact that there is a charge of £1 as a minimum means that anyone requiring dental treatment will surely delay going to the dentist until he has some quite serious condition so as to get the utmost value for the £1 charge. This surely cannot be good for the individual or for the nation.
The third point to which I would refer is the question of making these charges permanent. My noble friend Lord Shepherd has made clear what was the object of the Labour Party's policy some two years ago. The charge then proposed was, in fact, a temporary expedient to cover exceptional circumstances. Now, largely increased charges imposed by this present Bill are to be made permanent. Surely, it cannot be the wish of this House that these, in one way, very pettifogging, but to many people very substantial and unfair, charges should exist for all time. They make a breach in the National Health Service of which some of us, at any rate, have been proud; and it is a breach which, I submit, must be closed at the first opportunity. For these reasons I hope that the House will give the Bill very serious consideration indeed when the Committee stage is reached.

CO-ORDINATING MINISTERS
4.5 p.m.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I do not wish to interrupt the very interesting debate in which the House is now engaged, but I did give an undertaking to the noble Earl, Lord Jowitt, the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, and others the other day, that, when it was possible, I would make a fuller statement on the position of co-ordinating Ministers than it was possible for me to do on the last occasion when the subject was raised in this House. My right honourable friend, the Prime Minister, has, I understand, just made a statement in another place, and I thought that the House would wish me to give a similar statement here. This is the statement.
"Every Departmental Minister is responsible to Parliament for the policy
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and administration of his Department. This is a fundamental principle in our system of Parliamentary democracy. But it is an equally respectable and necessary principle that Ministers as a body are collectively responsible for Government policy as a whole. This means that a Minister's personal responsibility for his Departmental policy must be exercised in harmony with the views of his Ministerial colleagues.
"The work of the so-called 'co-ordinating Ministers' is an aspect of collective responsibility. In former days all reconciliation of Departmental policies was done in the Cabinet, of which all Departmental Ministers were members, or by the Prime Minister himself. But for many years past Prime Ministers have from time to time entrusted to a senior colleague the duty of keeping a general oversight, on the Cabinet's behalf, over subjects of special importance not falling wholly within the jurisdiction of a single Departmental Minister. These tasks have usually been assigned to holders of the old offices involving no heavy Departmental duties, notably the offices of Lord President and Lord Privy Seal. An early example of this was the arrangement by which in 1929 Mr. Ramsay MacDonald assigned to Mr. J. H. Thomas, as Lord Privy Seal, a special responsibility for co-ordinating measures for dealing with unemployment.
"With the growing complexity of. Government business, and the increasing extent to which policies have to be administered jointly by two or more Departments, Prime Ministers have found it increasingly convenient to ask senior Ministers to act in a co-ordinating rôle. And in recent times this arrangement has been more regularly adopted because, under modern conditions which have called into existence so many new Departments of State, the Cabinet no longer normally includes all Ministers in charge of Departments. This has led to the development of the system of standing Cabinet Committees, which assist the Cabinet in discharging its collective business and include Departmental Ministers who are not themselves members of the Cabinet. The Chairmanship of these standing Committees has normally been assumed by

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senior Ministers without Departmental duties; and it is mainly in their capacity as Chairmen of these Committees that these Ministers have exercised their co-ordinating functions, subject to Cabinet review. This is a natural evolution in the processes of conducting the collective business of government, and there is nothing new about it. During the war the Lord President of the Council, in particular, discharged extensive co-ordinating responsibilities on this basis; and it is well-known that similar arrangements were in force during the period of office of the late Government.
"The responsibilities assigned under the present Government to Lord Wool-ton and Lord Leathers carry this development a stage further in one respect, and in one respect only—namely, that the specific area of coordination assigned to each of them was publicly announced on his appointment. Indeed, so far as concerns my noble friend Lord Leathers, it was made explicit in his title. Coal, gas, electricity, oil and transport represent a homogeneous group of subjects which call for co-ordination. Moreover, it includes the basic services which have passed under public ownership under Socialist schemes of nationalisation; and there is clear scope for co-ordination of the Government's relations with the public Corporations administering those services. Lord Leathers' coordinating functions do not differ, in the constitutional sense, from those of my noble friend, Lord Woolton.
"The co-ordinating Ministers have no statutory powers. They have, in particular, no power to give orders or directions to a Departmental Minister. A Departmental Minister who is invited by a co-ordinating Minister to adjust a Departmental policy to accord with the wider interests of the Government as a whole always has access to the Cabinet; and, if he then finds that he cannot win the support of his Ministerial colleagues, he should accept their decision. No Departmental Minister, of course, can be expected to remain in a Government and carry out policies with which he disagrees.
"Thus, the existence and activities of these co-ordinating Ministers do not impair or diminish the responsibility to
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Parliament of the Departmental Ministers whose policies they co-ordinate. Those Ministers are fully accountable to Parliament for any act of policy or administration within their departmental jurisdiction. It does not follow that the co-ordinating Ministers are 'non-responsible.' Having no statutory powers as co-ordinating Ministers, they perform in that capacity no formal acts. But they share in the collective responsibility of the Government as a whole, and, as Ministers of the Crown, they are accountable to Parliament.
"In conclusion, I should perhaps make it clear that the Minister of Defence is not in the same sense a co-ordinating Minister. His appointment was authorised by a Statute (the Ministry of Defence Act, 1946), which defines his powers and duties in general terms. Broadly speaking, his responsibility is to apportion between the, three Services the resources, in men, materials and money, which are made available for them all. And, on this apportionment and on all the questions which arise from it, he is directly accountable to Parliament, in the same way as any Departmental Minister is responsible for matters within his jurisdiction. But it is the Service Ministers, and not the Minister of Defence, who are responsible to Parliament for the use which each of them makes of his share of those resources and for the administration of the Service under his charge."
4.13 p.m.
EARL JOWITT: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Marquess for making this Statement and endeavouring to clear up some of the confusion which existed, not only in the minds of your Lordships but, as I thought, in the minds of the noble Lords, the co-ordinating Ministers, themselves. If I understood Lord Woolton's statement aright, the noble Lord put himself in the same category as all the other co-ordinating Ministers, and this statement makes it plain that the Minister of Defence, at any rate, is in a different position.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, strictly he is not a co-ordinating Minister.
EARL JOWITT: He is co-ordinating. He is charged by Statute to co-ordinate;

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that is the difference. With regard to the other two, the noble Lord, Lord Leathers and Lord Woolton, this Statement makes it plain that their functions are the same. But the view which the noble Lord, Lord Woolton, has expressed to the House differs entirely from the view which the noble Lord, Lord Leathers, expressed in the newspapers, and I must say that there is still confusion in the minds of those noble Lords, if there is not confusion in everybody's mind, about what their duties are. There is also the question of the noble Lord, Lord Cherwell, and atomic energy. Whose is the concern of atomic energy? I understand that the Ministry of Supply are responsible, but I am told that the noble Lord, Lord Cherwell, is also responsible for looking after atomic energy. This is a very important matter, because if two people are charged with the same duties, no one can know on whom the duties lie and we are sure to get confusion. And I am not sure that the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, does not come into this matter too.
What I should like to say to the noble Marquess is that we shall certainly consider the Statement and if necessary we may ask for an opportunity of elucidating it further. I think the whole problem is very difficult, and I am certain that the country and the Ministers themselves ought to understand where their responsibility begins and ends. I will look at the Statement and discuss it through the usual channels, if I may, should we desire any further opportunity of elucidating it.
VISCOUNT SAMUEL: My Lords, may I be allowed to add a few words to what has been said? This matter is of grave importance because it relates to the structure of the Cabinet, which has more than once engaged your Lordships' attention. I sincerely trust that the front Opposition Bench will give a further opportunity to the House in order to elucidate this matter further and in a way which is not possible merely by question and answer during the course of a debate on an entirely different subject.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: My Lords, if I may be permitted, I think there is no harm in asking for one or two elucidations before passing to the general debate.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY:My Lords, before the noble Viscount proceeds I should like to reply to something which was said by the noble and learned Earl, Lord Jowitt. It is only with regard to what he said about the Minister of Defence. He seemed to think that the Minister of Defence was merely a co-ordinating Minister between the Service Departments. That is not so. What in effect has happened, as I understand it, is that the Minister of Defence has taken over certain broad functions which in the old days were carried out by the Prime Minister, as Chairman of the Committee of Imperial Defence. That is a long time ago. But I think that is broadly what his position is.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: My Lords, I should like to ask the noble Marquess whether he can say that, since the appointment of these co-ordinating Ministers, and especially the specific appointment of the noble Lord, Lord Leathers, the responsibility of the departmental Ministers is as complete as it was before, whether orders are given or not, and whether access to the Cabinet can be secured or not? Is it not true to say that the status and responsibility of the departmental Ministers concerned have been considerably diminished by the appointment of what are popularly called "overlords." The noble Marquess produces the argument that they are, in reality, merely a Cabinet Committee of one. That is really the gist of the noble Marquess' argument. We have always had Cabinet Committees and now we have the most convenient form of Cabinet Committee—a Committee of one. It is now put forward that they have no responsibility—although they are undoubtedly discharging heavy and responsible duties—save the collective responsibility of Cabinet rank. In addition to that, some of these Ministers, for no doubt good reasons, are permanent absentees from proceedings in this House. Would not the noble Marquess agree that the structure of the Government is being considerably transformed?
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I would not agree with the noble Viscount about a Committee of one. The noble Viscount and the noble and learned Earl know very well that the whole basis of Cabinet government for a

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great many years now is that under the main Cabinet there have been a number of Cabinet Committees. These Committees are usually composed of the Ministers principally concerned with one aspect or another of public policy, with a Senior Minister, Let me take an example of what I have in mind. There might be an Economic Committee under the Chairmanship of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, of which the President of the Board of Trade would be a member. But that would not give the Chancellor of the Exchequer the right to give orders to the President of the Board of Trade. It is very difficult to define these things exactly, but the co-ordinating Ministers have exactly that type of function. The difficulty is that it has been announced to the public that they will concern themselves in particular with certain aspects of public policy and it may be said that the public have formed the opinion that they have more power than they actually have. But the fact is that the position of the departmental Minister is exactly the same as it used to be. I am not speaking of the Minister of Defence, whom I put in a different category. I think that is so.
The noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, asked if this did not diminish the stature of other Ministers. It is perfectly true that if we have a co-ordinating Minister and he also appears before the public eye and is known to be a senior Minister, he may take a certain amount of attention from the departmental Ministers; but if noble Lords will study the answer I have given, they will see that the fact that he is there does not diminish the individual responsibility of Ministers. The Ministers of Transport and of Fuel and Power, under the noble Lord, Lord Leathers, have to agree as before to anything the Cabinet decide. They have also the same duty of initiation, but they have someone to help them to initiate. When a decision is ultimately taken, they have to agree with it themselves, and if they do not agree, the proper course is for them to resign.
EARL JOWITT: My Lords, I should like to follow up that point. It is most important. We must realise that there is all the difference between publicly announcing that some individual has been put in charge of a certain sphere of work and the setting up of a Cabinet Corn-
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mittee. The personnel of a Cabinet Committee was always wrapped in impenetrable secrecy. Therefore, nothing was done in the public eye which interfered with the responsibility of departmental Ministers. But when it is announced to the world at large that a certain noble Lord is responsible for the co-ordination of policy, then the public know that. And is it really a fact that if something goes completely wrong in that co-ordination, no one in another place could move to reduce the salary of the co-ordinator? Why not? Certainly no one could have moved to reduce the salary of an amorphous, unknown Cabinet Committee, but I do not for a moment agree that if anything went wrong with the co-ordination of fuel and power it would not be open to somebody in the other place to move to reduce the salary of the noble Lord Who co-ordinates. If that is so, it shows that the noble Lord, by being announced and put forward in this way, has assumed a share of responsibility to Parliament. I feel that we are embarking on an altogether new and difficult procedure—perhaps it is desirable; I do not know—which needs to be more thought out than it has been up to now.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, arising out of what my noble and learned friend has just said, may I ask the noble Marquess whether he and his colleagues will consider one matter of nomenclature before the subject is discussed again? If the tenuous link between the noble Lord, Lord Leathers, is no more than his share in the collective responsibility of the Cabinet, would it not be more appropriate, and less likely to give rise to Motions asking for a reduction in the salary of the co-ordinating Minister, if he were styled "Minister without Portfolio" or "Minister of State" rather than Secretary of State for the Co-ordination of Transport, Fuel and Power?
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: My Lords, perhaps I might give a historical example of where it may lead. The noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, spoke about the President of the Board of Trade. A member of the Board of Trade is the most reverend Primate, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Is it to be said that he still maintains full departmental responsibility for his share in the control of the national affairs?
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, nobody in their senses, except the noble Viscount, could possibly say that the most reverend Primate, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was a responsible member of the Government. With regard to what was said by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, I must say that I think noble Lords are making a mountain out of a molehill. There is not a single noble Lord on the Front Bench opposite who does not know that all this has been going on, and the responsibility has been apportioned exactly as it is now, for years.
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: No, no.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: Certainly it has. No doubt, it has been thought more desirable to keep it secret. It may be said to have been more convenient for the individual Ministers concerned. But the complexity of public life is increasing. If you take the case of agriculture and food which is controlled by my noble friend Lord Woolton, everybody knows that these two subjects, the food we produce and the food we have to buy, are closely allied. It is surely to the advantage of the British public to know that there is a senior member of the Government who is keeping an eye on those subjects. The same applies to fuel and power and transport. Even if my right honourable friend the Prime Minister had not made this announcement, exactly the same thing would have occurred. No doubt one Minister would have been called the Lord Privy Seal, or Minister without Portfolio; but it would have been the same position as it is now. I really feel that noble Lords are making a mountain out of a molehill.
LORD PAKENHAM: My Lords, I should like to ask a question to clear up this issue of whether the practice that was existing before is being continued—and I speak as one who was for some years a Departmental Minister outside the Cabinet. Can we have an assurance that these Departmental Ministers who are being co-ordinated are invited automatically to the Cabinet when their departmental affairs are discussed? That is not contained in the statement.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, in fact they always do come (and they put in Papers) to the Cabinet on matters concerning their own Department.

NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE BILL
4.25 p.m.
Debate on Second Reading resumed.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, one might almost say that "a slight thunderstorm interrupted play." When I came to your Lordships' House to-day I was not expecting to speak on this Bill, because I anticipated that there would be a long and formidable list of speakers. But, taking advantage of the shortness of the list, I hastily thrust myself forward. Sometimes, to listen to noble Lords opposite, one would imagine that they had a monopoly of care for the health of the people; just as sometimes from the cross-Benches we hear views about more particular elements of health. On this side we are never given any credit at all for wishing to see the people well. I can assure noble Lords that we do, and that nothing pleases us better than the sight of a healthy and happy nation. I personally have always been in favour of a National Health Service—not necessarily completely free—because I realised that it would do away with that positive nightmare of the middle classes, the crippling doctor's bill. As any of your Lordships who has been brought up in circumstances of that sort knows, the idea that an operation or serious illness may lead to heavy bills has been the nightmare of the professional and middle classes for many years. The poorer people in this country have for many years had a free health service, but the middle classes have never had one, except under such arrangements as insurance schemes, and the like. The present scheme gives them that protection.
There are difficulties which naturally arise in connection with a National Health Service. First of all, we must admit that the idea is entirely alien to most of the rest of the world. Foreigners just do not understand a free Service, and when we instituted one they had serious doubts, both about our solvency and about our sanity. There were various elements in the Service which naturally gave rise to those doubts. The fact that we were treating foreigners free was, to them, stark lunacy, and made them think that we had taken leave of our senses. The fact that we were providing free wigs—not a big item—was one which

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loomed out of all proportion to its monetary cost on the minds of the outside world. Then again, there were stories that went round that foreign coloured seamen were getting free sets of teeth in every port and selling them in the bazaars on their return. These stories may have been entirely untrue, but they went all the way round the world and they undermined the confidence in the future of Britain.
The second difficult, which is inevitable in a Service of this kind is the march of science. The doctors will not stand still: every day they are thinking out some new and wonderful cure for some fresh disease. The result is that a Service of this kind is bound, in the very nature of things, if it is entirely free and there are no practical limits on its expenditure, to cost more and more. I believe that a member of your Lordships' House and a leader of the medical profession is reported to have said in public the other day that the cost might well double in fifteen years. I myself, speaking in a different part of the country on the same night, used practically the same words. We may well take it that an enormous and inevitable increase in expenditure is bound to come about. To take the case of cortisone, if all the sufferers from rheumatoid arthritis are to be treated free with cortisone the bill might go up by millions of pounds in a year from that one new remedy alone.
The other difficulty is the human desire to get money's worth. The population of our country never realised that the stamps which they stuck on their insurance card every week represented only to a very small extent money for the Health Service. Some years ago I put down a Question in your Lordships' House, because I thought that the Service was being abused, and I wanted to give publicity to the fact that only a few pence out of each stamp went towards this Service. His Majesty's Government (as it was in those days) gave me an answer to the effect that the fact I sought to publicity was very well known already, and that fresh publicity was quite unnecessary. Of course, I do not agree with that answer. There is no doubt about it that the people of this country—particularly the more ignorant of them—think that the very heavy weekly expenditure which they make on their stamp largely goes towards financing
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this Health Service. Of course, they want to get their money's worth out of it. When they see 4s. 9d., 5s. or whatever it is a week going out, they want to see something coming back, and there is no doubt that that has driven them to ask for things which otherwise they would not have required.
Another difficulty, not endemic to a National Health Service at all, is the increasing drug consciousness of our people as a whole. If your Lordships refer to an article in the weekly magazine Everybody's this week, you will see that the medical profession are getting seriously alarmed at the fact that enormous numbers of our population seem to think that they cannot be kept in health unless they are constantly imbibing either sleeping draughts, tonics or sedatives. The fact that there has been this demand for these drugs has led to the doctors' surgeries being overcrowded and to doctors becoming certificate-issuing machines, instead of being able to diagnose, and so on. I submit that there is only one possible thing to do when you are faced with an ever-expanding public service, and that is to set a limit on the total amount of the national income you are prepared to see devoted to that purpose. You then say: "If you people want more, in order to provide it for yourselves you must forgo some spending power that you would otherwise exercise."
A broad decision on these lines was inevitable, and it has been taken. It was taken by the last Government and it has been reaffirmed by this Government. Of course, within that broad decision there is considerable room for argument. It is extremely difficult to say how you are going to keep anything at your, specific limit. You can say: "We will make some charges on everything," or you can say, "We will charge on certain things which we regard as less, important," and so on, and so forth. Here, on the whole, I think the greatest things remain free—when I say "here," I am talking about both this Bill and the existing Act, with its regulations, which provide for the prescription charges. Here, if people think themselves ill, or have trouble with their teeth, they can go to the doctor or the dentist to find out what is wrong with them; and they do not pay. That is a great principle. It is when the treatment starts that some charges become

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payable. Of course, one cannot have everything in this world. If the Almighty visits one with some plague, it is only reasonable human nature to think that one may have to give up something else to be able to cure that plague.
It would be very interesting to know what the Opposition would do in these circumstances. I believe that they support a ceiling. How would they keep the charges within that ceiling? They strongly disapprove of the methods we intend to use, but it would be interesting to hear exactly how they would do it. I was hoping that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, would give us that information, but he did not seem to do so. I understood him to say that if noble Lords opposite came into power, they would immediately insert a time limit, so that any charges would automatically come to an end after a certain time. I do not know whether I misunderstood him, but I gathered that he was promising an entirely free Service very shortly after return to power—I hope that I am not putting words into his mouth. It would be interesting to know how he suggests that would be done. I think the words he used, roughly, were that they would provide a Health Service without charging in the way of this Bill. Does he mean that there would be a Health Service without any charges or that the charges would be a different sort of charges?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, if I may intervene, at the invitation of the noble Lord, I should like to put the matter in this way. We look upon illness generally as coming under the responsibility of the community. It is not the Almighty who sends all these illnesses to us. It may be, as my noble friend has suggested, bad drains. There may be many other reasons which cause these illnesses. If the community is very largely responsible for ill-health, the community must be responsible for the cure. As we are all subject to ill-health we all pay, and because we all pay, we take what we pay for.
LORD MATHERS: Before the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, resumes, may I ask him whether he would be prepared to apply to his own family, if they were met with a large measure of disease, the principles he has been urging?
LORD HAWKE: That is precisely the principles which do apply. If one has a doctor's bill, one cannot have another bill of the same sort. From the reply of the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, I take it that when they return to power, the Service is going to be free regardless of its cost.
LORD SHEPHERD: No. What I said was that the charges in this Bill would be done away with.
LORD HAWKE: In other words, there will be no ceiling. I have invited the noble Lord to say whether there is some other method by which he would apply the ceiling. He does not reply, but tells me that these charges would be "done away with." I can only conclude that he is going to provide an entirely free Service, regardless of its cost. Of course, one does not know the circumstances of three or four years ahead, which is the earliest the noble Lord can hope to get back into power, but statements of that kind to-day will not inspire confidence abroad in the future of sterling and so on, which this Bill is tending to help. The noble Lord also led me to believe that he did not think it worth while spending Parliamentary time on checking small expenditure.
LORD SHEPHERD: No. I said that it was not worth spending Parliamentary time on a Bill which could do so little in connection with the purpose for which it was introduced—namely, the saving of this nation from bankruptcy.
LORD HAWKE: Exactly the same thing. In other words, it is not worth while spending Parliamentary time on small savings and, therefore, expenditure is sacrosanct. What I cannot understand about Lord Shepherd's argument—and I think Lord Mathers intended the same thing in his interruption a minute or two ago—is that they assume there can be no health unless the State provides it. That seems to me a most cynical view. After all, if there are any charges under the Health Service, anybody who is unable to pay can go to the National Assistance Board and get the wherewithal to pay. If such people cannot get anything out of the National Assistance Board one can only assume that they have some means to pay. Therefore, they come into the category of those millions and millions who are spending the hundreds

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of millions about which the noble Lord, Lord Mathers, was talking, on drink, tobacco, betting and so on, or the very many of the humblest means who are proudly hoisting the television aerials in the air, but who, apparently, in the view of noble Lords opposite, are too stupid to pay anything for their health, even if they want it. That, I submit, is a most cynical view. The noble Lord, as all of us know, carried on for many years the profession of an election agent. It has been his business to know the minds of the people. As Chief Election Agent of his Party he must have been in contact with millions of the people; and if that is what he believes—that millions of our countrymen think to-day, that health is worth having only if they can get it entirely free—then I suggest that that is a most cynical view to take.
I was very pleased to hear the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Mathers. It is a great pleasure to congratulate any Scotsman on a maiden speech in this House for he always brings to it that bit of pawky humour for which the northern—and perhaps I may say the more important—half of our Island is so well renowned. But I assure the noble Lord that neither this Bill nor our actions are intended as discrimination. As I have just said, it is perfectly possible for all people in the country to obtain the treatment they desire under this National Health Service by going to the National Assistance Board, if they are without means, and by forgoing some of their other expenditure if they have means; so that, in effect, there is no discrimination. We are telling the people in effect, "If you are ill you are increasing your claim on the national resources by a very large amount, because the treatment is very Costly; and in return, unless you are destitute we are asking you to decrease your claim on the national resources Slightly in other directions by an amount far less than what you are getting in the shape of your treatment and so on."
This is a small Bill, but I believe that it is a Bill of very considerable importance, because it tells the world that the British Government are prepared to limit the free bounty which they hand out to the electors to an amount which they believe the national income can afford. And the fact that a democratic Government are prepared to stand up to their own electors and deny them the free
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benefits which are so beloved by democratic electors all over the world is, I believe, something of a landmark in democracy.
4.43 p.m.
VISCOUNT BUCKMASTER: My Lords, I had not intended to intervene in this discussion, and it is only by your Lordships' courtesy that I venture to do so now for a moment. I should like to pay a tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Mathers, on his maiden speech. We all hope to hear him again. May I personally express the hope that when I do hear him again I shall be able to find myself a little more in agreement with him than I do this afternoon? I hope the noble Lord will not feel that we on this side have any desire whatever to deny to the indigent and needy the full benefit of the Health Service. Noble Lords opposite will appreciate that to introduce a Bill of this kind is not calculated to enhance the Government's popularity. It requires a good deal of courage to introduce such a Bill, and it would not have been done had not the necessity been urgent. I will not repeat the remarks which I ventured to make on a Motion in my name on the Health Service some weeks ago; but I think it right to point out that the Service had reached a cost of £400,000,000 when the predecessor of the present Chancellor of the Exchequer had to endeavour to impose a ceiling, and that since then the £44,000,000 allocated to the doctors has been added to the £400,000,000. One noble Lord said that it was unfortunate that we had not started the health centres. They would have involved the expenditure of a further £370,000,000. I ask noble Lords opposite, what is the ceiling to be? The predecessor of the present Chancellor of the Exchequer declared that there should be one. I would also ask noble Lords how they would propose to impose any such ceiling.
To turn to the charges themselves, my criticism would be one which I believe is present in the minds of the Government and others, and that is the extreme difficulty of collecting the charges on a bottle of medicine from doctors who dispense the medicine themselves. It would he very difficult. No doubt some arrangement may be arrived at, but when one considers that every man, woman and child in this country, on paper at any rate, has four bottles of medicine a year, it seems to me that the moment for some

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control and self-restraint has been reached. There is a further point. These charges are not designed merely to achieve economy—which is not, in itself, a very large economy. They are designed to prevent further waste, to keep down the ever-rising cost of the Service. I believe, from conversations I have had with those who might be expected to feel the force of these charges, that it will have this effect. Many working men with whom I have spoken feel that some charge should be made. Any noble Lords who like to venture to the local chemist's shop will see some most glaring examples of waste in the Health Service going on day after day under their very eyes. I believe that this Bill will in no way damage the Service. If it did I would not support it. I believe it will tend to improve the Service, a Service which is essential to the nation.
4.48 p.m.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: My Lords, when I looked at the list of speakers to-day I noticed that there was not one single unofficial member of the Conservative Party who was prepared to defend the Bill. The Leader of the Liberal Party spoke about Lords Reform but not of exercising the primary duty of using the powers we still have in this House. The noble Lord, Lord Hawke, attacked the Bill with regard to—
LORD HAWKE: I defended the Bill.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: I beg pardon. The noble Lord was defending the Bill. His reason was such as might be suited to a village meeting. He said that foreigners thought it was crazy that we should give these free Health Services. We have done many things which the foreigner may have thought foolish but we have survived them. He spoke of a coloured seaman, perhaps a Lascar, who might have toothache—and who, incidentally, might be a member of the British Commonwealth—and seemed to think it was a mistake that such a man should get free dental treatment.
LORD HAWKE: I suggest that before the noble Lord goes any further he had better read in the OFFICIAL REPORT tomorrow what I said. That will save my remaking his speech for him now.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: I will certainly do so. Having made these points, he said that the march of science was making treatment much more expensive. If the march of science is going to raise the standard of health of the people, surely we ought to rejoice and save something, perhaps from the "atom," which may be devoted to eliminating human pain and saving human life. He said that people wanted their money's worth and therefore we ought to make them pay. But has he ever thought that the sort of person who can pay is not necessarily the sort of person who is really ill? The man who has won money on the football pools can afford a bottle of medicine, but the poor woman—and this is a real example; I had many instances of this when I was a Member of the House of Commons—the mother of a family, is the last person to spend money on medicine for herself, because that is the thing she thinks she can economise on. She sends her children to the doctor but she will not go to the doctor herself.
LORD HAWKE: Some of the medical profession consider that the bottle of medicine is no use whatever.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: That is an attack on the medical profession. I should have thought that such discrimination penalises the poorest.
LORD HAWKE: It does not.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: It does penalise the poorest. People with money can pay for medicine. Surely there is a much better system of economy than the one that is proposed? But what is really surprising about the Conservative attitude is this. We hear of the need for maximum productivity. We want more people to work harder. The question of national productivity is closely connected with health; and yet noble Lords opposite do everything they can to belittle it and deny the glorious principle which was proclaimed by the last Labour Government, by which I think its reputation will live—namely, that health, like fresh air or pure water, is something which, so far as the State can do, it should provide, because such things not only make for human happiness but also are good for our health and strength.
LORD HAWKE: It should, up to a certain ceiling.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: Up to a certain ceiling. It depends whether the ceiling is going to be over the whole national field or not. Of course, you cannot spend more than you get in the long run. What you can do is to discriminate between the useful things and the unuseful things, and of the things that are primarily and vitally useful, I should have thought that the Health Service was the best. One really has to re-read Oliver Twist to understand that the attitude of the Conservative Party in these matters is practically unchanged in the course of the last hundred years.
4.52 p.m.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, we have had a characteristically breezy intervention from the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate. I do not intend to follow him, except to make one or two references to certain observations which he made, partly because what he said seems to me so far from the realm of reality that it is hardly worth mentioning. The real reason why I have risen—I did not intend to speak when I came into this House—is because of one or two remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, in his opening speech, and one remark that has been made by the noble Lord, Lord Milner of Leeds, in the speech he has just delivered to us. The noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, as he always does, made a closely reasoned and moderately-worded speech, of which no one could complain. But he did say in the course of it one or two things to which I feel some reply ought to be given from this side of the House.
First of all, he said that no reasons had been given for the introduction of this Bill. If there was any shortcoming in that respect, I must say I thought he supplemented pretty well what might have been said from the Government Benches. I thought he made some very strong arguments for the introduction of this Bill. He began by saying, honestly and fairly, that he wished to stand in a white sheet and explain the position of the Party to which he belonged. He said, as I understood him, that in 1950, as a result of the balance of payments position which existed at that time and which was not nearly so acute—as he himself said—as the situation that developed later on, Sir Stafford Cripps, who was then
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Chancellor of the Exchequer, fixed a ceiling of £400,000,000.
LORD SHEPHERD: May I correct the noble Marquess on a point? In the year 1950 we had a favourable balance of payments between ourselves and other countries. The deficit came in 1951.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY:
That, in my view, makes the noble Lord's argument even odder, because the need to restore confidence was obviously not so great at that time as it is now. Then he went on to say that in 1951, when Sir Stafford Cripps had been replaced, after his unhappy illness, by Mr. Gaitskell, the new Chancellor felt he could afford only—I do not want to misrepresent the noble Lord—£7,000,000 extra, although the demands for increases were very much greater. Therefore, he introduced, as a purely temporary charge, a charge on dentures. He went on to say that the whole point of this measure was that it was temporary. I understood, too, that, in his view at any rate, whether the position improved or continued to deteriorate after that period was over, the charge would be removed, whatever the situation of the country was. That was the only conclusion one could draw from the remarks made by the noble Lord.
LORD SHEPHERD: The point was that we had put into the Bill a date beyond which the Act should not go. My point was that this Government, in introducing their Bill, are omitting a date.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I am just coming to that point. Then, turning to the present Bill, he said in shocked terms—and I understand he is still shocked—that there was no limit of time in the present Bill; that the charges would continue, and that nobody would know when they would come off. With all deference to the noble Lord, I still think our position, our attitude, our policy—whatever you like to call it—is more realistic and more honest than that of the Government which the noble Lord supported at that time. After all, how were they to know that the situation would improve by a given date? As a matter of fact, it steadily deteriorated, and deteriorated more and more. Why were they to suppose then that on a given date they could remove these

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charges that they had put on? With all deference to the noble Lord, that does not seem to be a reasonable case to put before the House.
If I may say so, in our view on this side of the House we were equally shocked at the noble Lord's words, because it appears to us that the situation of the country is still extremely precarious; yet he and his Party are already beginning what we can only regard as a discreditable process of bribing the electorate with a view to the next Election. I do sincerely think that. I am not making a mere Party point. We all know what the national position is. It is improving, but it is still very bad. But already the Party opposite are beginning (I hope the noble Lord will let me say what I want to say without interrupting) to pledge themselves—they did it last week—that, whatever the situation is, they will remove these charges if the electorate will only put them back into power. The only conclusion that we can come to is that the noble Lord and his Party, now that they are out of power, feel that they can fairly let themselves go, and they are lending themselves to promises which I do not think are justifiable, in our present economic situation—promises which I am quite certain they will bitterly regret at a later date if they ever come back to power.
LORD SHEPHERD: The noble Marquess will at once admit that we are not the only Party that makes promises. I hope he has reached the conclusion that we may be the only Party that never breaks a promise.
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Oh!
LORD SHEPHERD: May I say this: that during my speech I gave an instance of what we have done for the country, better than screwing £9,000,000 of money out of the people.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: The noble Lord really must let me answer. I sat quite silent throughout his speech and it is difficult to construct a consecutive argument if I am constantly being asked to sit down. To return to what I was saying, he undoubtedly did tell the House that his Party had pledged themselves to remove these charges if they came back to power, and he made no qualification about the economic or the financial situation of the country when
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that happened. It is not only the noble Lord himself; I know that there are others who have done it. He is not the original offender. But I cannot imagine anything more blatantly irresponsible at the present time. The noble Lord quoted the Leader of the House of Commons, and he said, with great astonishment, that my right honourable friend appeared to be less concerned with the condition of the Health Service than with the prospect of national bankruptcy. Well, who would not be? If we had national bankruptcy we should not only not be able to maintain the present Health Service; we should have a catastrophic fall in the whole of our standard of life; the greater includes the less.
My Lords, the noble Lord returned to the words of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who had said that there had been a steady deterioration in the situation over the last fifty years, and that though at one time we were the largest creditor in the world, now we are the largest debtor. It is perfectly true that our national situation has been steadily deteriorating for fifty years. The two wars, plus a period of not frightfully thrifty house-keeping, has steadily made the situation worse than it was in those days. But that is not an argument for spending more money; that is an argument for exercising a certain decent measure of thrift. After all, why have our gold reserves been falling? I speak with great diffidence on this subject. I see the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, who is a trained economist, preparing to jump in in support of his Party, as he is quite entitled to do. But why have our gold reserves been falling? Why have foreigners to a great extent been withdrawing their money from this country? It is because they no longer have the confidence in us that they formerly had.
The noble Lord will say that that does not apply merely to us; it applies, too, to the other members of the sterling bloc. But we are its most important member. You have only to read foreign newspapers to see that the confidence of foreigners in Britain has been very largely impaired. The noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, said: "Why should we care what foreigners think? They have often thought us crazy before, and we have turned out to be right." But to-day we are depending on them for our very existence. Our existence depends on whether

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these foreigners will allow their money to stay here, will send more money here, and will close the dollar gap. It depends upon them whether we have a decent standard of living here at all. They have seen the Labour Party year by year spending more and more. They have seen them borrowing on a vast scale from the United States and Canada, and they have seen money being poured out. They have concluded that this is not the type of country in which they want to keep their money.
My Lords, the fact that we have balanced our internal budget, as the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, is always telling us, does not make any difference to this position. What they see is a country which is living, or has been living, at a standard which it cannot afford; and, as a result, they have become more and more sceptical about our future. Eventually, last autumn, a point was reached when our reserves began to lessen; the drain on them became greater and greater, and at such an increasing speed that even the late Government could not ignore it. Then what did they do? Instead of standing their ground, facing up to the situation and asking the people to cooperate, they went to the country—at that vital moment
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: Even at the risk of incurring reproof from the noble Marquess, I must point out that it was Mr. Churchill who did nothing but plead for an Election.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY:
Probably Mr. Churchill felt that that was the only hope for the country, and I have no doubt he was quite right. But the fact remains that the Labour Party ran away in a desperate attempt to escape the consequences of their improvident policy of the last six years.
That was the situation which faced the new Government when it came in. The country was moving nearer and nearer to the precipice. The noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, will not be able to deny that. All through the months of last year, the drain was increasing. But now there are signs of a turn. I do not put it higher than that. I am not going to try to overstate our case. As your Lordships know very well—the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, did not mention these figures—the monthly deficit which was 229,000,000
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dollars in January fell to 70,000,000 dollars in March; and there are signs of a further improvement. We may be wrong; we may be right. Noble Lords may not believe what we say. But we believe that that is the result of the policy that we have adopted. We have had to do a lot of unpopular things; we have had to do a lot of unpleasant things; we have had to do a lot of very drastic things—things which the people of this country do not like. I am quite certain that there are a number of people who voted for us at the last Election who would not vote for us to-day. They would not do so because they think that, as the result of our measures, they are worse off than they were. But in fact that is the only way in which this nation can be brought back to solvency; and, taken as a long-term policy, we believe that what we have done is in the interests of the country. That is why we have gone in for it, and I think it shows a fair measure of courage.
My Lords, at this moment, when the turn is beginning, what does the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, say? He says: "If you only let the Labour Party back, there will be an end of any economy. There will be no more charges for the Health Service; there will be unlimited spending." What sort of effect is that going to have on the foreigner who is just beginning to regain confidence in this country? I do not think any noble Lord could have said anything more unfortunate from the national point of view at the present moment. If the noble Lord and his friends are shocked by this Bill, we on this side of the House are equally shocked by the levity of the announcement he has made. He said that the sum which would be saved by this Bill was "a drop in the bucket." That was the very phrase he used. But it is by innumerable drops that the bucket is ultimately tilled; and, psychologically, in a matter of this kind—a matter of confidence—each economy which the Government are able to make and which the country will accept is worth far more on the credit side than the intrinsic amount which is involved. The only result of what the noble Lord has said will, I am afraid, be to retard the recovery of sterling.
Now I should like to say a word about a quite different point that was raised

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by the noble Lord, Lord Milner. He complained of the time given by the Government for the consideration of this Bill. I do not think that there is any valid ground for that complaint. This is not a long Bill. It is not like one of the great nationalisation Bills, with clause upon clause. In all, there are only nine clauses, of which six are what I may call operative. It is a Bill very easy to assimilate, very easy to consider, and it has been before another place for some weeks. One might assume that noble Lords, like other people, have paid full attention to what has happened in another place, with the assistance of Hansard. Therefore, if they have Amendments to put down, no doubt they have already been turning them over in their minds. We have the Second Reading today; then there will be a week's pause, followed by the Committee stage.
LORD MILNER OF LEEDS: I am afraid that the noble Marquess has misunderstood me. My complaint was about the short time available between Friday last and to-day, with the week-end intervening, especially having regard to the fact that a considerable number of substantial Amendments were passed in another place on Thursday last. I thought it unreasonable, with the week-end intervening, that the Second Reading should be at such an early date.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: The last thing we want to do is to hustle noble Lords; but as I will explain later, there are reasons for the course we have adopted. In any case, there will be a week before any Amendments are put down in this House, and we hope that the period we have allowed for the Committee stage will be adequate. If it is not, no doubt the Committee stage will go on. We are not supplied in this House with all sorts of facilities, such as are available to all Parties in another place. Therefore, if there are more Amendments, no doubt they will be put down and debated. When the noble Lord has been here a little longer, I think that he will see that it is our experience that the Committee stages of Bills take rather less time here than they do in another place. Finally, of course, there will be the Report stage and the Third Reading.
I said that I would give the reason why we were in rather a hurry. The
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reason is, of course, that there is a very large amount of revenue involved. If the purpose of a Bill—the regrettable purpose, for we all regret it—is to make certain economies, it is not much use delaying those economies beyond a certain period. If you have made up your minds that you have got to do an unpleasant thing it is better to do it and have done with it. It is for that reason, quite simply and frankly, that we want to get the Bill through as soon as practicable. I can assure the noble Lord—and I am sure that others will tell him the same thing—that in this House, on both sides, we do our utmost to cooperate with each other. Never is it our object in any way to restrict the proper facilities and rights of debate. I think that is really all that I have to say to your Lordships. I am sorry to have intervened at such length in this debate; I did not intend to do so when I came to the House this afternoon. But certain things were said which I thought called for a reply on my part, and therefore I have made this contribution to your Lordships' discussions.
5.12 p.m.
LORD PAKENHAM: My Lords. I also had not intended to take part in this debate to-day. I am not quite clear whether the noble Earl. Lord Onslow, intends to reply later. He intimates that he does—good. I hope that your Lordships will all derive as much pleasure from my intervention as we have derived from the intervention of the noble Marquess. If I may say so without impertinence, he is a Leader very much after the hearts of those of us who sit on this side of the House, because he is ready to take off his coat and descend into battle without in any way standing on his dignity. He will forgive me, I am sure, if I speak rather bluntly, because he accused us of discreditable bribery of the electorate, and that merits a few mild observations in return. I have never heard from anyone in this House a more exhilarating outpouring of genial hysteria than that which we have just heard from the noble Marquess. He was challenged by my noble friend Lord Shepherd to produce some good reasons for the Bill. I do not think that, when we study Hansard, we shall feel that he has complied with that request—I presume that the onus of doing so has been handed on to the noble Earl, Lord Onslow.

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The noble Marquess brought forward one pseudo-economic argument, so far as could follow him—and one only. He often assures us that he is no economist. As a matter of fact he seems to understand economic processes better than most of us. Perhaps on this occasion, when he did not make that disclaimer, if he had done so it might have been more justified than it usually is. He indulged in a very familiar form of economic emphasis. He based his whole argument on the necessity far securing the confidence of the world. He did not argue that these charges would do any actual good in themselves, but he appeared to believe that the world at large would be reassured; and he used an extraordinary sentence which I venture to think perhaps he would not have employed if he had spoken with more premeditation—I dare-say that I shall use words to-day which I should not use if I had given more time to thinking over what I proposed to say. The noble Marquess said that we were dependent on foreigners for our existence; that the question was whether foreigners would allow their money to stay here or would send more money here. Does the noble Marquess really take the view that everything depends to-day on the movements of capital? We know that there are occasional leaks; people do not always pay as rapidly as they might do, and there are one or two other marginal factors of that kind. But surely the noble Marquess does not claim that the economic position of this country is affected in a major degree by movements of foreign capital. If so, the system of restraining capital movements must have deteriorated greatly in the last few months. It seemed to me that he advanced it as a primary factor, when, in theory, movement should not be taking place at all. That was his only economic argument, and I am bound to say that it seems to me very flimsy.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: May I intervene just to ask the noble Lord this? Does the noble Lord believe that the credit of this country—of any country—is of any importance in regard to the balance of payments position?
LORD PAKENHAM: I certainly agree that the credit of a country is of importance, but I refuse to agree that we have to impair the health of our own people in order to reassure foreign speculators.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: The argument I used—the noble Lord may not accept it—was that the late Government, against the protests of both the other Parties, continued to spend at a rate which was above what we believed the country at that moment could afford. It may be a queer coincidence, but in fact our international position, our balance of payments position, steadily deteriorated during that period, whereas now that firm action is being taken the balance of payments position is steadily improving. The noble Lord may think that that is just odd.
LORD PAKENHAM: I hope that our position is improving. It certainly did not steadily deteriorate during our six years of rule; otherwise it would have been very bad indeed. As the noble Marquess knows, substantial measures have been taken, many of which we should have had to take ourselves. I refer to import cuts.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: But you did not take them—that is the point. We have taken them.
LORD PAKENHAM: The noble Marquess knows that if we had been returned to power we should have had to take them. Mr. Gaitskell made it plain when lie spoke at the Mansion House that unpleasant measures were, on the way. The noble Marquess cannot have much doubt in his own mind about that.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: if the noble Lord really says that the Labour Government, had they been returned, would have taken measures which we have taken, why on earth is he complaining of our action?
LORD PAKENHAM: The noble Marguess is interrupting me at a fairly rapid rate. I make no objection to that. But the House will recall that in regard to interjections he rather tended to cry, "Hold! enough!" when the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, was putting some questions. But I do not complain. As I was saying, these substantial import cuts were essential, but not this playing about with the health of the sick, No one on this side, or, I think, anywhere, supposes that that has improved our position in the world. Does the noble Marquess think that these foreign speculators or merchants have been fortified in their confidence in us because of the few millions which may be saved in this way?
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY:
Does the noble Lord want an answer to that? I do not want to interrupt him unnecessarily, for he has been extremely kind to me. What I think is this. Foreigners want to know whether we in this country are determined that while our income is as it is at present, there is a degree of expenditure above which we shall not go. When we give them evidence of that, it increases their confidence in us.
LORD PAKENHAM: I simply cannot agree that we ought to make irrational cuts to please or encourage foreigners. Rational cuts—yes. Those have been made and they would have been made by us. But irrational cuts will do no good and, on the contrary, will, in fact, do a great deal of harm. The noble Marquess did not provide any economic argument at all except this rather pathetic wooing of the foreigners. He did not explain why this step to make people pay for these appliances, and for getting their teeth stopped, would have any beneficial results. We say it will have no beneficial results at all.
The noble Marquess said that we had been living too well. I should like to draw his attention specially to this. He is very quick in argument on his best days and this may be one of those days. The noble Marquess said that we were living too well. Here is an essential point. When we discussed these matters during the general economic debate in February, I argued then, even in advance of Mr. Butler's Budget, that in no way should we benefit the balance of payments position by making rather squalid cuts of this kind. The case then was not as strong as it is now, because at that time most of us thought that Mr. Butler's Budget would impose some reduction on the consumption of the country. The Budget came along and Mr. Butler argued—I am not going to question whether he is right or wrong—that no reduction in general consumption was necessary. That was a substantially new factor introduced in Mr. Butler's Budget, and therefore the case against cuts is much stronger since the Budget than it was before. I hope that the noble Earl who is going to address himself to some of these questions, and who is obtaining assistance from the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, will try to reply to that point. I put this question to the noble Earl, who can secure the assistance of the noble
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Viscount and then reply. If there is to be no cut in the general consumption of the country, why should a special penalty be imposed on the sick? I put it as plainly as that to the noble Earl, and perhaps he will tell us why, since the Budget, there is any justification on economic grounds for these regrettable impositions.
I do not want to say much more, except to reply to one charge of the noble Marquess. It is a broad political charge, but we are a political assembly, and to some extent, within the usual limits of your Lordships' House, it is a "free for all" this afternoon. The noble Marquess accused us of running away. Where did we run away to? We faced the electorate in the General Election. Mr. Churchill was bellowing away because we continued to be so coy and refused to trust ourselves to public judgment, and then, because we did so, we are now accused of running away. We did not try to run away. I do not want to introduce personalities, but talking about running, I, for one, spent my time during the Election running up and down the country, and Mr. Attlee broke all records for activity during the Election. Was he trying to be defeated? That is carrying the accusation too far. I am bound to say that probably never in history has there been an Election in which a Government made so much progress. The polls moved our way the whole time. Were we trying to be defeated, but the public insisted in supporting us all the time? Again, that would defeat credulity.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: My Lords, that is a charge which has frequently been made, but never by the noble Marquess or by myself. Nobody doubts that the noble Lord ran about the country during the Election, but the charge of running away is this. All the Labour Government had to do was to come to Parliament in September for one day and by a single executive action put on the cuts, which would have probably been fixed at £150,000,000, in October. Then they could have gone to the country. That is what we call running away.
LORD PAKENHAM: That is not what the noble Marquess called running away. I challenge the noble Viscount to dispute my statement. He said something quite different just now.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, what I meant, though the noble Lord may not accept it, was that the late Government ought to have faced up to the steadily deteriorating position, but they did not do that. There was nothing to prevent them—because they had a majority—from going on during that period and taking the measures they thought necessary to restore the credit of the country. They went to the country instead. That policy lost valuable time, and it was a mistake, because the position was far worse when we took over than it might have been.
LORD PAKENHAM: If the noble Marquess said it was a mistake at the time, he must be the only Conservative who thought at the time that it was a mistake for the Government to face the electors. I argued the other point with the noble Viscount and I expect we shall argue it again. The noble Marquess said there was something cowardly in calling a General Election last year. We resent that suggestion. We had to go to the country because we had to introduce important new and unpleasant measures. The Party opposite would have been the first to complain that the electorate had been ignored, if we had introduced these measures without a mandate. We very nearly obtained a mandate and I am certain we shall obtain one the next time. The next time I hope it will not have to be a mandate for measures of the kind we are discussing this afternoon, because, when all is said and done, this measure, though small in tent, is sordid and unworthy. I hope that when he replies the noble Earl will produce some economic arguments for a Bill which seems to us petty, mean and altogether lamentable. We have not had any economic arguments this afternoon and in their absence we can only conclude that they do not exist.
5.26 p.m.
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: My Lords, when I came to the House I thought we were to discuss the National Health Service Bill, but it seems that we have diverged along every possible channel. Before I make my few remarks, I should like to add a few words of congratulation to the noble Lord, Lord Mathers, on his maiden speech. Like other noble Lords, I hope that we may often hear him and have his wise counsel. It is almost customary that he who winds up
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a debate in your Lordships' House should open his speech with the words, "This has been a very interesting discussion." I think I can say that to-day with more than usual polite formality, because something of great interest has come to light during the course of the discussion—the attitude of the medical profession to this Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Webb-Johnson, has spoken from the Cross-Benches. I do not think that any one would accuse the noble Lord of any Party instinct, nor do I think any noble Lord would dare suggest that members of the medical profession who are also members of your Lordships' House would not put their profession first and Party politics second, whatever their politics might be. The noble Lord welcomed the Bill and this welcome from an eminent member of the medical profession shows that people like him consider that the Bill will do no harm to the health of the country as a whole. It would seem that medical opinion is that the Bill will not interfere in anything so far attained in the promotion of the health of the country.
The Bill has been almost violently attacked by noble Lords opposite. But they did not have among their speakers their medical colleagues. There is an old adage which I do not think is out of place here: that "Silence gibes consent." I think we might possibly use that adage to-day in regard to the attitude of noble Lords of the medical profession who sit on the other side of the House.
LORD PAKENHAM: My Lords, I have no mandate to speak for my noble friends, but, to the best of my knowledge, I think the noble Earl would be making a very great mistake in forming any such conclusion.
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: I think it fair to say that their absence indicates that, as the Party opposite are so violently against the Bill, if their medical colleagues had been strongly of the same view they would have taken steps to advertise their opposition, particularly from the medical point of view. The medical profession, like many other great professions, is loyal to the profession first, and to politics next. I am quite certain that, if they had felt as strongly as some noble Lords feel, they would have indicated whether or not they were in agreement with what the noble Lord, Lord Webb-Johnson, has said to your Lordships this afternoon.

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I have been asked by the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, about the reason for these charges, and this has been the gist of all the arguments of noble Lords opposite. I am not an economist, but I shall do my best to reply to the noble Lord. Your Lordships will remember that in the recent economic debate, we enjoyed a phenomenal passage of arms between the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, and the noble and learned Earl, Lord Jowitt. I think I am right in saying—the noble Lord will correct me if I am wrong—that the gravamen of their argument was that it was wrong for the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, to say that they did not know how serious our financial situation was at the time of the General Election, and that they had said so as frankly as the noble Viscount himself was saying. If that is so, is it not right to try to economise by every possible means within our power in order to rectify the position?
LORD PAKENHAM: My Lords, I do not want to re-open an earlier discussion now that, as I like to think, most amicable relations have been resumed, but I should like to say quite briefly that I cannot accept the noble Earl's account of the particular point at issue. However, I do not want to deter him from further development of his argument.
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: I am glad that all is happy now. But assuming that the situation is as serious as was agreed at that time, or shortly afterwards, I maintain that it was the duty of the Government by all possible means to economise in order to meet the situation. It was the Labour Government who found it necessary to impose a ceiling on the health services. As has already been said by the noble Lord, Lord Woolton, and the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, the service of the medical profession, like any other live service, does not stand still. Every day new treatments and new medicines are coming in which are much more expensive; and, if you are to retain a ceiling, you must continue to economise somewhere to meet them. That, in fact, is what Sir Stafford Cripps said when it was introduced. We are trying to economise with this Bill and with the Bill brought in by the Socialists when they were in power. They did not bring it into force, and I believe that Mr. Aneurin Bevan said that the only reason
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why he agreed to it was that it could not be implemented—which seems an odd way to legislate. However, we seem to have been slightly cleverer than Mr. Aneurin Bevan, and we have found a means of implementing it.
Through the steps now proposed we estimate that we shall save about £20,000,000. I do not think in these days that you can "sneeze" at £20,000,000. For far too long we have been saying: "What do these few odd millions of pounds here and there matter? "We have been saying that until the pot is nearly dry. If noble Lords care to add up a few of these odd millions, they will see that they come to a colossal sum. The time has come when we have got to collect these few odd millions. That gives, in a nutshell, the reason for this Bill. If your Lordships look at the Bill, I think you will find that it will not cause great hardship; and Clause 7 (2) gives power to the Assistance Board to help anybody who cannot pay. As I said earlier, I am not an economist, but I do not believe that it is wrong for a man to pay for what he can afford when his country is in a jam. I have taken a great deal of trouble in studying this Bill over the week-end, and I may say that even if I were not a member of the Government, or a member of any Party, inside or out of Parliament, I should be prepared to support the Bill.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

ALDERSHOT EXTENSION BILL [H.L.]
Report from the Select Committee, that it is not expedient to proceed further with the Bill: read, and ordered to lie on the Table.
MANCHESTER SHIP CANAL BILL [H.L.]
The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES in formed the House that the opposition to the Bill was withdrawn: the Order made on March 25 last discharged, and Bill committed.

GOVERNESSES' BENEVOLENT INSTITUTION BILL [H.L.]
Reported, with Amendments.
House adjourned at twenty-four minutes before six o'clock.