Tories arguments against the National Health Service Bill, 1946

This is from a speech given by Tory MP, Sir William Wavell Wakefield (St Marylebone) during the 2nd Reading of the National Health Service Bill on May 2nd 1946. The same approach as we see today - be afraid, be very afraid (of progressive proposals)


"The first reason is that the privately owned surgeries of today are to disappear and health centres will take their place. The intimacy of the private surgery will go and people will not be able to go round the corner to see their practitioner. They will have to go to the health centre where there will be group practice and many doctors. That will mean that patients will have longer distances to travel. In these health centres there will he formalities, the keeping of records and the loss of any personal, intimate relationship, and this, I think, will result in a worsening of personal service. The doctors will be there in group practice, and the Government cannot convince me that under a State service doctors will be willing to go out in the middle of the night. They will come to these health services from nine to five and then go home. There will be a duty doctor with duty typists and secretaries. When people ring up and notice is given of urgent cases, I do not believe that the same personal service will be given under this State service as is available now, when practitioners are responsible directly to their patients and not paid by the State, as envisaged in this scheme. That is my view and that is the view of many people with whom I have discussed this Bill. Furthermore, because there is no good will— Because there is no goodwill to maintain, I feel that there is going to be a much more impersonal and less personal service. There is any amount of evidence available on that point. Doctors and dentists during the period of the war went into the Services and had an opportunity of seeing the State service and the private and personal service. One and all say that there is not the same personal regard for patients in a State service that there is in a personal service. There is no use hon. Members shaking their heads. I have got plenty of evidence on it, but I have not the time to give it now. When we come to the Committee stage I hope an opportunity will be given me to prove what I am saying now. As a result of this Bill there will be less quality in the entrants in the medical service. There will be a removal of enterprise, a removal of the taking of risks and responsibility and the carrying out of what a doctor believes to be right in the interests of his patients.   ...    It is because I believe that there will be this fundamental alteration in the relationship between doctor and patient that I submit that doing away with the voluntary principle in our great hospitals, with the exception of the teaching hospitals, will be a retrograde step. I believe there will be an undoubted loss in the spirit of service and voluntary help which has been so vital a characteristic of the life of our nation for hundreds of years past. I deeply fear that this Bill, instead of being a great Bill which could immeasurably improve the health of our people, will not lead to the better service and better health which the Minister and everyone wants for the great majority of our people."