HL Deb 14 December 1960 vol 227 cc466-8

2.43 p.m.

LORD STONHAM

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

[The Question was as follows:

To ask Her Majesty's Government if they will abolish the obligation which rests on hospitals to collect an emergency treatment fee of 12s. 6d. in respect of persons who require treatment as the result of a road traffic accident.]

LORD NEWTON

My Lords, hospital authorities are entitled to these fees and they therefore have a duty to claim them. Any changes in the obligation imposed on vehicle users by the Road Traffic Act to pay these fees on a claim being made would require legislation, and this is a matter which my right honourable friend the Minister of Health will bear in mind at the appropriate time.

LORD STONHAM

My Lords, whilst I welcome the information that this matter is being borne in mind, may I ask whether the noble Lord is aware that the cost to hospitals of collecting this fee is very considerably more than 12s. 6d; that it involves a great deal of work for the police and that the motorist, who has to pay it, thinks it grossly unfair, because often he is not responsible for the accident. This imposition is unfair; it costs more than we receive, and it would be in the interests of the Treasury to abolish it.

LORD NEWTON

My Lords, perhaps I should be summarising the views of the noble Lord if I were to say that he regards this fee as anomalous in a great many ways. If that is so it has been anomalous for a long time, because this provision for payment of a fee dates from 1934. There was an opportunity to abolish it, as the noble Lord would like, during the passage of the National Health Service Act in 1946, but it was not abolished; and in fact the provision was actually continued in the Tenth Schedule to that Act. I am not promising that, when the appropriate time comes, my right honourable friend will do what the noble Lord wants; on the other hand, I am not shutting the door on that.

BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER

My Lords, will the noble Lord be good enough to tell us how long an anomaly has to endure before the time comes to remove it?

LORD NEWTON

My Lords, that appears to be a point of very general application.

LORD STONHAM

My Lords, will the noble Lord have regard to the even more concrete point, that it often costs hospitals, in time, at least £5 or £10 to try to collect the 12s. 6d.; and very often they cannot recover it at all. It is a sheer waste of the nation's money.

LORD NEWTON

My Lords, I think I can undertake that that is one of the points my right honourable friend will bear in mind at the right moment.

LORD STONHAM

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

[The Question was as follows:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in view of the great amount of work falling on hospital staffs from the present system of collecting from insurance companies treatment charges in respect of persons injured in road accidents, they will negotiate an agreement with the companies whereby they pay to Her Majesty's Treasury a lump sum based on premium income, which would be the estimated equivalent of the present sums they pay for the treatment of injured persons in hospital.]

LORD NEWTON

My Lords, as the Road Traffic Act, 1960, specifies who should make, and who should receive, these payments it would be necessary to amend the Act to make legal any other method of collection. But my right honourable friend the Minister of Health will bear in mind, at the appropriate time, the noble Lord's suggestion.

LORD STONHAM

My Lords, I am most grateful for that reply. I hope that "the appropriate time" will be very soon. When it is being considered, will the noble Lord have regard to the fact that the average recovered in any one year from all these charges is about one-third of a million pounds—it was £350,000 last year—and that, in view of the great cost to hospitals, and the tremendous time it takes to agree these claims with the insurance companies, we should be making a great bargain if we got a quarter of £1 million from them?

LORD NEWTON

My Lords, I am sure my right honourable friend will bear that point in mind also.