§ Mr. DEVLINasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether his attention has been called to a meeting of Dublin medical practitioners held under the presidency of the President of the Royal College of Surgeons at which resolutions were adopted to the effect that every doctor practising in Dublin should be requested to sign a pledge not to accept service with any insurance or benefit society or any medical appointment unless the local medical committee were satisfied that the payment was an adequate remuneration, and that every city doctor who is a medical officer to any benefit society of whatever kind be required to make a demand on his society for such rate of remuneration as the local medical committee shall consider proper, and, if such be not granted, he must resign his office and no practitioner shall be allowed to take it, and that a black list be formed on which the names of practitioners who refuse to sign the pledge shall be placed, such list being published in the medical colleges, and it to be understood that everyone who appeals thereon shall be boycotted by means known to the medical profession; whether, seeing that this resolution is an infringement of the law as advocating intimidation, he will order a prosecution where it can be shown that, in consequence of pressure brought to bear on medical practitioners by the local medical committee appointed at the meeting referred to, such doctors who had undertaken work for friendly societies or insurance committees resigned their appointments; whether he will consult the Irish Law Officer as to whether licensing corporations in Ireland have power to remove from their registers the names of medical practitioners who refuse to recognise the authority assumed by the Dublin 1938W medical committee; and, if not, will he take steps to protect medical practitioners who are prepared to work for friendly societies or to undertake the administration of the National Insurance Act in Ireland?
§ Mr. BIRRELLThe resolutions actually passed at the meeting referred to are not quite accurately set out in the question. I am advised that the resolutions and pledge are not in themselves illegal, and that the licensing corporations in Dublin are not in any way controlled by either the resolutions or the pledge. The Government are not aware that any doctor has been removed from any register for refusing to recognise the views of the Dublin medical committee. If there should be anything which amounts to an infringement of the law the question of what action should be taken will be considered.