§ Mr. REMERasked the Home Secretary whether his attention has been called to the increasing death rate in lunatic asylums as per Report of the Board of Control, 15th January, 1919,and to the opinion expressed that it is mainly due to the reduced rations; if the Board of Control advised the Ministry of Food to insist upon reduced rationing in asylum boards despite protests from visiting committees in Lancashire and Cheshire, who claimed the right to arrange their own schemes of rationing the insane?
§ Mr. SHORTTI have seen the Report referred to. It was issued to asylum authorities at the request of my predecessor. In it the Board of Control expressed the opinion that the unavoidable reduction in quantity and deterioration in quality of the food supplied to patients were the main, but by no means the sole, factors in the recent increase of sickness and death rate in institutions for 655W the insane. The Board did not advise the Food Controller to insist on reduced rationing in asylums, though they agreed with him that in the serious condition in which the country was then placed by the submarine campaign it was not possible, or indeed right, that the inmates of asylums should be exempted from the restrictions with which members of the general public were faced. The Board always recognised that the visiting committees had discretionary powers as to the fixing of asylum dietary scales, and never went beyond expressing a strong hope that the requirements of the Food Controller should be observed.