§ Sir E. Graham-Littleasked the Lord President of the Council what is the cost to the Exchequer of the production of the Medical Register and the average annual sale of the volume; and whether he will take steps to improve the preparation of the Medical Register, for the printing and publication of which the General Medical Council is responsible, as its record of addresses and medical qualifications of doctors is less accurate than the Medical Directory, which is produced by private enterprise?
§ Sir J. AndersonThe production of the Medical Register involves no charge on public funds, its cost being defrayed from the resources of the General Medical Council. The average annual sale in the three years immediately before the war was 785 copies and in the years 1940–42, 475 copies. As regards the second part of the Question, my hon. Friend will appreciate that the Register is not primarily intended to serve the purposes of a directory, but, as was stated in the preamble to the Medical Act, 1858, which provided for the keeping of the Register, to enable persons requiring medical aid to distinguish qualified from unqualified practitioners. I am advised that owing to pressure on their reduced staff and to the difficulty under war conditions of ascertaining whether the registered addresses of many practitioners in the Register remain correct, the Council have found it impracticable to maintain their normal procedure of periodically verifying addresses by written inquiry. I have no doubt, however, that this procedure will be resumed as soon as normal conditions are restored. Section 3o of the Medical Act, 1858, enables but does not oblige practitioners to have inserted in the Register certain qualifications additional to those by virtue of which they arc first registered. Legislation would be required to make the Register a complete record of additional qualifications of such standing as to deserve recognition in it.