 THE POSTMASTER GENERAL CONGRADULATED HIMSELF UPON HAVING REFUTED THE ACCUSATION OF POLITICAL BIAS BECAUSE HE WAS BEING ATTACKED FROM BOTH SIDES. HE WAS TAKING IT TOO EASILY, BECAUSE AS I UNDERSTAND IT, THE CRITICISM THAT COMES FROM THE FRONT OPPOSITION BENCH IS IN REGARD TO TALKS IN WHICH A WHOLE POLITICAL PARTY IS REPRESENTED, BUT THE COMPLAINT FROM THE RIGHT HONORBLE GENTLEMAN'S OWN SUPPORTERS IS MORE IN REGARD TO OTHER TALKS. House of the kind referred to by the Honorable Member for the Scottish Universities, Mr. Buchan. He was apparently quite ready to accept that in these there should be a left bias. I do not agree with my Honorable Friend. While with him I have no wish whatever to see controversy avoided in British Broadcasting Corporation talks, I think there is undeniable evidence that in regard to some of those talks or series of talks, both sides are not being presented. In some cases the side which has not been represented is something much more than the minority point of view referred to by the right Honorable Member for Epping, Mr. Churchill. An instance in point has been brought forward by Mr. J. O. P. Land, who in a recent book of his has some very strong criticisms on the British Broadcasting Corporation, saying that all British Broadcasting Corporation talks on China gave one point of view, upholding the Nanking government, and making no reference to the terrible atrocities which Communist armies have committed in China. For some months past, or even for a year or two, I have been of opinion that the treatment of conditions in Russia is very one-sided. It is now three or four years since the professors of Russian in our various universities approached the British Broadcasting Corporation on this subject, saying that the talks that were given were too political in their nature, and asking that some of them should give a more real idea of conditions in Russia. In the summer of 1931 there was a series of talks in which those who criticized the regime in Russia were allowed some hearing, though more hearing was given to those who praised it. In view of the criticism of the professors of Russian, it is very strange that the reviewing of this series of talks was given to an assistant of one of these professors who had given one of these talks. The assistant was an admitted Communist, and in very bad taste was very discurteous about his chief. It was a very unwise selection both in itself and as it proved, especially in view of the warning which had been given by the professors of Russian, that the British Broadcasting Corporation were not being sufficiently careful. And as recently as last autumn Mrs. Sidney Webb gave a broadcast talk on Russia, which was very uncontroversial and restrained in tone, but had one or two very important omissions which made it very incomplete. It purported to be a picture of Soviet democracy and much emphasis was laid on the wide franchise in Russia. Nothing was said about the facts that after the revolution all election by ballot had been wiped out after having existed for years and that there was no free election as lists of candidates were sent down. The mere mention of those facts if they had been brought out would have shown how inappropriate was the word democracy. She also spoke of the federal government of Russia being supreme in all national affairs, but omitted to mention that the Communist Party controlled the Soviet government. I submit that if the matter were to be fairly presented, the broadcast should have been followed by another, which would have rectified some of these omissions and thereby have enabled a more complete picture to be presented. In another more recent series of talks by Professor Toinby on Russia, he states that the anti-God campaign is being given up, but admits that he had not been in Russia since 1930 and he seems to have failed to realize how much this campaign has progressed since then. The official organ of the movement on January 7th specifically foreshadowed redoubled activity in the anti-God campaign during the second five-year plan. Therefore I say these talks by Professor Toinby are extremely misleading on a point of interest to people in this country and to whoever values religion. And this series of talks should be followed by others, which could correct any inaccurate impression that might have been made. Seems to me that in this matter the British Broadcasting Corporation seemed afraid of Russia. Let us recognize that what is taking place there is one of the most controversial subjects that can be touched upon and do not let us be afraid to have it treated from both sides. We look to the Broadcasting Corporation to give us, above all things, facts. We are never afraid to give our people facts and let not the corporation be afraid to give them facts. Only in that way can they avoid misleading many thousands of people. We have to remember that when speeches are made at political meetings there are interruptions and questions at the end. But anything that comes over the wireless is lapped up in a receptive spirit and it may be very difficult for people to have the knowledge with which to discuss the question's broadcast. I agree with my honorable friend, the member, for the Scottish universities in the fear that our people should have the broadcast mind. That is the mind which freely receives and takes in what it hears without question. The exercise of mental franchise is one of the dearest of life's treasures. And unless people hear every point of view we cannot be sure that it will be retained by our people. End of speech. Recording by Rhonda Federman. Speech by Stanley Baldwin. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to volunteer please go to LibriVox.org. Reading by Andy Minter. Speech given to the House of Commons on 10th of December 1936 by the Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. The Prime Minister, Mr. Baldwin, at the bar, acquainted the house that he had a message from his Majesty the King to this house, signed by his Majesty's own hand, and he presented the same to the house and it was read out by Mr. Speaker as followeth. All the members of the house being uncovered. Fort Belvedere, Sonningdale, Berkshire. After long and anxious consideration I have determined to renounce the throne to which I succeeded on the death of my father and I am now communicating this, my final and irrevocable decision. Realising as I do the gravity of this step I can only hope that I shall have the understanding of my peoples in the decision I have taken and the reasons which have led me to take it. I will not enter now into my private feelings, but I would beg that it should be remembered that the burden which constantly rests upon the shoulders of a sovereign is so heavy that it can only be borne in circumstances different from those in which I now find myself. I conceive that I am not overlooking the duty that rests on me to place in the forefront the public interest, when I declare that I am conscious that I can no longer discharge this heavy task with efficiency or with satisfaction to myself. I have accordingly, this morning, executed an instrument of abdication in the terms following. I, Edward VIII of Great Britain, Ireland and the British dominions beyond the seas, King, Emperor of India, do hereby declare my irrevocable determination to renounce the throne for myself and for my descendants, and my desire that effect should be given to this instrument of abdication immediately. In tokenware of, I have hereunto set my hand this tenth day of December, 1936, in the presence of the witnesses whose signatures are subscribed, signed Edward R. I. My execution of this instrument has been witnessed by my three brothers, their Royal Highnesses the Duke of York, the Duke of Gloucester and the Duke of Kent. I deeply appreciate the spirit which has actuated the appeals which have been made to me to take a different decision, and I have, before reaching my final determination, most fully pondered over them, but my mind is made up. Moreover, further delay cannot but be most injurious to the peoples whom I have tried to serve as Prince of Wales and as King, and whose future happiness and prosperity are the constant wish of my heart. I take my leave of them in the confident hope that the course which I have thought it right to follow is that which is best for the stability of the throne and empire and the happiness of my people. I am deeply sensible of the consideration which they have always extended to me, both before and after my accession to the throne, and which I know they will extend in full measure to my successor. I am most anxious that there should be no delay of any kind in giving effect to the instrument which I have executed, and that all necessary steps should be taken immediately to secure that my lawful successor, my brother, His Royal Highness the Duke of York, should ascend to the throne. Edward R.I. The Prime Minister I beg to move that His Majesty's most gracious message be now considered. No more grave message has ever been received by Parliament, and no more difficult I may almost say repugnant task has ever been imposed upon a Prime Minister. I would ask the House which I know will not be without sympathy for me in my position to-day, to remember that in this last week I have had but little time in which to compose a speech for delivery to-day. So I must tell what I have to tell truthfully, sincerely, and plainly, with no attempt to dress up or to adorn. I shall have little or nothing to say in the way of comment or criticism, or of praise or of blame. I think my best course to-day, and the one that the House would desire, is to tell them so far as I can what has passed between His Majesty and myself, and what led up to the present situation. I should like to say at the start that His Majesty, as Prince of Wales, has honoured me for many years with the friendship which I value, and I know that he would agree with me in saying to you that it was not only a friendship, but, between man and man, a friendship of affection. I would like to tell the House that when we said goodbye on Tuesday night at Fort Belvedere, we both knew and felt, and said to each other, that that friendship, so far from being impaired by the discussions of this last week, bound us more closely together than ever, and would last for life. Now, sir, the House will want to know how it was that I had my first interview with His Majesty. I may say that His Majesty has been most generous in allowing me to tell the House the pertinent parts of the discussions which took place between us. As the House is aware, I had been ordered in August and September a complete rest, which, owing to the kindness of my staff and the consideration of all my colleagues, I had been able to enjoy to the full. And when October came, although I had been ordered to take a rest in that month, I felt that I could not, in fairness to my work, take a further holiday, and I came, as it were, on half time before the middle of October, and for the first time since the beginning of August, was in a position to look into things. There were two things that disquieted me at that moment. There was, coming to my office, a vast volume of correspondence, mainly at that time from British subjects and American citizens of British origin in the United States of America, from some of the dominions, and from this country, all expressing perturbation and uneasiness at what was then appearing in the American press. I was aware also that there was, in the near future, a divorce case coming on, as a result of which I realised that possibly a difficult situation might arise later, and I felt that it was essential that someone should see his majesty and warn him of the difficult situation that might arise later if occasion were given for a continuation of this kind of gossip and of criticism, and of the danger that might come if that gossip and that criticism spread from the other side of the Atlantic to this country. I felt that in the circumstances there was only one man who could speak to him and talk the matter over with him, and that man was the Prime Minister. I felt doubly bound to do it by my duty, as I conceived it to the country, and my duty to him not only as a counsellor, but as a friend. I consulted, I am ashamed to say, and they have forgiven me, none of my colleagues. I happened to be staying in the neighbourhood of Fort Belvedere about the middle of October, and I ascertained that his Majesty was leaving his house on Sunday the 18th of October to entertain a small shooting-party at Sandringham, and that he was leaving on the Sunday afternoon. I telephoned from my friend's house on the Sunday morning, and found that he had left earlier than was expected. In those circumstances I communicated with him through his secretary, and stated that I desired to see him. This is the first and only occasion on which I was the one who asked for an interview. That I desired to see him, that the matter was urgent. I told him what it was. I explained my willingness to come to Sandringham on Tuesday the 20th, but I said that I thought it wiser, if his Majesty thought fit, to see me at Fort Belvedere, for I was anxious that no one at that time should know of my visit, and that at any rate our first talk should be in complete privacy. The reply came from his Majesty that he would motor back on Monday the 19th of October to Fort Belvedere, and he would see me on the Tuesday morning. And on the Tuesday morning I saw him. Sir, I may say, before I proceed to the details of the conversation, that an advisor to the Crown can be of no possible service to his master, unless he tells him at all times the truth as he sees it, whether that truth be welcome or not. And let me say here, as I may say several times before I finish, that during those talks, when I look back, there is nothing I have not told his Majesty of which I felt he ought to be aware. Nothing. His Majesty's attitude all through has been, let me put it this way, never has he shown any sign of offence, of being hurt at anything I have said to him. The whole of our discussions have been carried out, as I have said, with an increase, if possible, of that mutual respect and regard in which we stood. I told his Majesty that I had two great anxieties. One, the effect of a continuance of the kind of criticism that at that time was proceeding in the American press, the effect that it would have in the Dominions, and particularly in Canada, where it was widespread, the effect it would have in this country. That was the first anxiety. And then I reminded him of what I had often told him and his brothers in years past. The British monarchy is a unique institution. The crown in this country, through the centuries, has been deprived of many of its prerogatives. But today, while that is true, it stands for far more than it ever has done in its history. The importance of its integrity is, beyond all question, far greater than it has ever been, being as it is not only the last link of empire that is left, but the guarantee in this country so long as it exists in that integrity against many evils that have affected and afflicted other countries. There is no man in this country, to whatever party he may belong, who would not subscribe to that. But while this feeling largely depends on the respect that has grown up in the last three generations for the monarchy, it might not take so long, in the face of the kind of criticisms to which it was being exposed, to lose that power far more rapidly than it was built up. And once lost, I doubt if anything could restore it. That was the basis of my talk on that aspect, and I expressed my anxiety and desire that such criticism should not have cause to go on. I said that in my view no popularity in the long run would weigh against the effect of such criticism. I told His Majesty that I, for one, had looked forward to his reign as being a great reign in the new age. He has so many of the qualities necessary, and that I hoped we should be able to see our hopes realized. I told him that I had come—naturally I was his Prime Minister—but I wanted to talk it over with him as a friend, to see if I could help him in this matter. Perhaps I am saying what I should not say here. I have not asked him whether I might say this, but I will say it, because I do not think he would mind, and I think it illustrates the basis on which our talks proceeded. He said to me, not once, but many times during those many hours we have had together, and especially towards the end, you and I must settle this matter together. I will not have any one interfering. I then pointed out the danger of the divorce proceedings, that if a verdict was given in that case that left the matter in suspense for some time, that period of suspense might be dangerous, because then everyone would be talking, and when once the press began, as it must begin sometime in this country, a most difficult situation would arise for me—for him—and there might well be a danger which both he and I had seen all through this. I shall come to that later. And it was one of the reasons why he wanted to take this action quickly. That is, that there might, besides taken, and factions grow up in this country in a matter where no faction ought ever to exist. It was on that aspect of the question that we talked for an hour, and I went away glad that the ice had been broken, because I knew that it had to be broken. For some little time we had no further meetings. I begged His Majesty to consider all that I had said. I said that I pressed him for no kind of answer, but would he consider everything I had said. The next time I saw him was on Monday the 16th of November. That was at Buckingham Palace. By that date the decree Nicae had been pronounced in the divorce case. His Majesty had sent for me on that occasion. I had meant to see him later in the week, but he had sent for me first. I felt it my duty to begin the conversation, and I spoke to him for a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes on the question of marriage. Again we must remember that the Cabinet had not been in this at all. I had reported to about four of my senior colleagues the conversation at Fort Belvedere. I saw the King on Monday the 16th of November, and I began by giving him my view of a possible marriage. I told him that I did not think that a particular marriage was one which would receive the approbation of the country. That marriage would have involved the Lady becoming Queen. I did tell His Majesty once that I might be a remnant of the Old Victorians, but that my worst enemy would not say of me, that I did not know what the reaction of the English people would be to any particular cause of action, and I told him that so far as they went I was certain that that would be impracticable. I cannot go further into the details, but that was the substance. I pointed out to him that the position of the King's wife was different from the position of the wife of any other citizen in the country. It was part of the price which the King has to pay. His wife becomes Queen, the Queen becomes Queen of the country, and therefore in the choice of a Queen the voice of the people must be heard. It is the truth expressed in those lines that may come to your mind. His will is not his own, for he himself is subject to his birth. He may not, as unvalued persons do, carve for himself, for on his choice depends the safety and the health of the whole state. Then His Majesty said to me, I have his permission to state this, that he wanted to tell me something that he had long wanted to tell me. He said, I am going to marry Mrs. Simpson, and I am prepared to go. I said, Sir, that is most grievous news, and it is impossible for me to make any comment on it to-day. He told the Queen that night, he told the Duke of York and the Duke of Gloucester the next day, and the Duke of Kent, who was out of London either on the Wednesday or the Thursday, and for the rest of the week so far as I know he was considering that point. He sent for me again on Wednesday the 25th of November. In the meantime a suggestion had been made to me that a possible compromise might be arranged to avoid those two possibilities that had been seen, first in the distance, and then approaching nearer and nearer. The compromise was that the King should marry, that Parliament should pass an Act, enabling the Lady to be the King's wife without the position of Queen. And when I saw His Majesty on the 25th of November he asked me whether that proposition had been put to me, and I said yes. He asked me what I thought of it. I told him that I had not considered it. I said I can give you no considered opinion. If he asked me my first reaction informally, my first reaction was that Parliament would never pass such a bill. But I said that if he desired it I would examine it formally. He said he did so desire. Then I said it will mean my putting that formally before the whole Cabinet, and communicating with the Prime Ministers of all the Dominions, and was that his wish? He told me that it was. I said that I would do it. On the 2nd of December the King asked me to go and see him. Again I had intended asking for an audience later that week, because such inquiries as I thought proper to make I had not completed. The inquiries had gone far enough to show that neither in the Dominions nor here would there be any prospect of such legislation being accepted. His Majesty asked me if I could answer his question. I gave him the reply that I was afraid it was impracticable for those reasons. I do want the House to realise this. His Majesty said that he was not surprised at that answer. He took my answer with no question, and he never recurred to it again. I want the House to realise, because if you can put yourself in his Majesty's place, and you know what his Majesty's feelings are, and you know how glad you had this been possible, that he behaved there as a great gentleman. He said no more about it. The matter was closed. I never heard another word about it from him. That decision was, of course, a formal decision, and that was the only formal decision of any kind taken by the Cabinet until I come to the history of yesterday. When we had finished that conversation I pointed out that the possible alternatives had been narrowed, and that it really had brought him into the position that he would be placed in a grievous situation between two conflicting loyalties in his own heart, either complete abandonment of the project on which his heart was set, and remaining as King, or doing as he intimated to me that he was prepared to do, in the talk which I have reported, going, and later on contracting, that marriage, if it were possible. During the last days, from that day until now, that has been the struggle in which his Majesty has been engaged. We had many talks, and always on the various aspects of this limited problem. The House must remember, it is difficult to realise, that his Majesty is not a boy, although he looks so young. We have all thought of him as our Prince. But he is a mature man, with wide and great experience of life and the world, and he always had before him three, no, four things, which in these conversations, at all hours, he repeated again and again, that if he went, he would go with dignity. He would not allow a situation to arise in which he could not do that. He wanted to go with as little disturbance of his ministers and his people as possible. He wished to go in circumstances that would make the succession of his brother as little difficult for his brother as possible. And I may say that any idea to him of what might be called a King's Party was abhorrent. He stayed down at Fort Belvedere because he said that he was not coming to London while these things were in dispute because of the cheering crowds. I honour and respect him for the way in which he behaved at that time. I have something here which I think will touch the House. It is a penciled note, sent to me by his Majesty this morning, and I have his authority for reading it. It is just scribbled in pencil. Duke of York, he and the King have always been on the best of terms as brothers, and the King is confident that the Duke deserves and will receive the support of the whole Empire. I would say a word or two on the King's position. The King cannot speak for himself. The King has told us that he cannot carry, and does not see his way to carry, these almost intolerable burns of kingship without a woman at his side. And we know that. This crisis, if I may use the word, has arisen now rather than later from that very frankness of his Majesty's character, which is one of his many attractions. It would have been perfectly possible for his Majesty not to have told me this at the date when he did, and not to have told me for some months to come, but he realized the damage that might be done in the interval by gossip, rumours, and talk, and he made that declaration to me when he did on purpose to avoid what he felt might be dangerous, not only here but throughout the Empire to the moral force of the Crown, which we are all determined to sustain. He told me his intentions, and he has never wavered from them. I want the House to understand that. He felt it his duty to take into his anxious consideration all the representations that his advisors might give him, and not until he had fully considered them did he make public his decision. There has been no kind of conflict in this matter. My efforts during these last days have been directed, as have the efforts of those most closely around him, in trying to help him to make the choice which he has not made. And we have failed. The King has made his decision to take this moment to send this gracious message because of his confident hope, but by that he will preserve the unity of this country and of the whole Empire, and avoid those factious differences which might so easily have arisen. It is impossible, unfortunately, to avoid talking to some extent today about oneself. These last days have been days of great strain, but it was a great comfort to me, and I hope it will be to the House, when I was assured before I left him on Tuesday night, by that intimate circle that was with him at the fort that evening, that I had left nothing undone that I could have done to move him from the decision at which he had arrived, and which he has communicated to us. While there is not a soul among us who will not regret this from the bottom of his heart, there is not a soul here today that wants to judge. We are not judges. He has announced his decision. He has told us what he wants us to do, and I think we must close our ranks and do it. At a later stage this evening I shall ask Leave to bring in the necessary bill, so that it may be read the first time, printed and made available to members. It will be available in the vote office as soon as the House has ordered the bill to be printed. The House will meet tomorrow at the usual time, eleven o'clock, when we shall take the second reading, and the remaining stages of the bill. It is very important that it should be passed into law tomorrow, and I shall put on the order paper tomorrow a motion to take private members' time and to suspend the four o'clock rule. I have only two other things to say. The House will forgive me for saying now something which I should have said a few minutes ago. I have told them of the circumstances under which I am speaking, and they have been very generous and sympathetic. Yesterday morning, when the Cabinet received the King's final and definite answer officially, they passed a minute, and in accordance with it I sent a message to his Majesty, which he has been good enough to permit me to read to the House with his reply. Mr Baldwin, with his humble duty to the King. This morning Mr Baldwin reported to the Cabinet his interview with your Majesty yesterday, and informed his colleagues that your Majesty then communicated to him informally your firm and definite intention to renounce the throne. The Cabinet received this statement of your Majesty's intention with profound regret, and wished Mr Baldwin to convey to your Majesty immediately the unanimous feeling of your Majesty's servants. Ministers are reluctant to believe that your Majesty's resolve is irrevocable, and still venture to hope that before your Majesty pronounces any formal decision your Majesty may be pleased to reconsider an intention which must so deeply distress and so vitally affect all your Majesty's subjects. Mr Baldwin is at once communicating with the Dominion Prime Ministers for the purpose of letting them know that your Majesty has now made to him the informal intimation of your Majesty's intention. His Majesty's reply was received last night. The King has received the Prime Minister's letter of the 9th of December 1936 informing him of the views of the Cabinet. His Majesty has given the matter his further consideration, which regrets that he is unable to alter his decision. My last words on that subject are that I am convinced that where I have failed no one could have succeeded. His mind was made up, and those who know his Majesty best will know what that means. This house today is a theatre which is being watched by the whole world. Let us conduct ourselves with that dignity which his Majesty is showing in this hour of his trial. Whatever our regret at the contents of the message, let us fulfil his wish, do what he asks, and do it with speed. Let no word be spoken to-day, that the utterer of that word may regret in days to come. Let no word be spoken that causes pain to any soul. And let us not forget to-day the revered and beloved figure of Queen Mary. Not all this time has meant to her, and think of her when we have to speak, if speak we must, during this debate. We have, after all, as well becomes the guardian of democracy in this little island, to see that we do our work to maintain the integrity of that democracy, and of the monarchy, which as I said at the beginning of my speech, is now the sole link of our whole empire and the guardian of our freedom. Let us look forward, and remember our country, and the trust reposed by our country in this, the House of Commons, and let us rally behind the new King. Stand behind him, and help him, and let us hope that whatever the country may have suffered by what we are passing through, it may soon be repaired, and that we may take what steps we can in trying to make this country a better country for all the people in it. End of speech. Speech by Clement Attlee before the House of Commons, 15th of March 1946. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Patricia Che. Speech by Clement Attlee before the House of Commons. 15th of March, 1946. I would like to thank the right-on gentleman, the member for Severan Warden, for his very helpful, wise, and constructive speech. He has, as we all know, given great service on Indian affairs for many years, and he comes of a family that has given many most distinguished public servants to India. I think that the tone in which he addressed the House is just what is needed today at this critical stage in the relationship between these two countries at a time, as has been said, of very high tension. I find from my friends in this House who have been out to India and returned from letters received from Indians and from Englishmen in India of all points of view, complete agreement on the fact that India is today in a state of great tension, and that this is indeed a critical moment. I am quite sure that everyone in this House realizes the difficulties of the task which my right-on friends have undertaken in conjunction with the vice-chair, and that no one will desire to say anything, whatever that will make their task more difficult. The right-on gentleman said that the mission should go out in a positive mood. I entirely agree in that, indeed, is the mood in which my right-on friends are undertaking this mission. It is a time emphatically for very definite and clear action. I do not intend to make a long speech today, and I do not think it would be wise to do so. In particular, I think it would be most unhelpful to review the past. It is so easy to go back over the past and, in accordance with one's predilections, apportion the blame for past failure in the long drawn-out discussions that have been on this extraordinarily difficult problem. The problem of the development of India into a completely self-governing nation. Over such a long period of the past, it is so easy to say that, at this stage or at that stage, opportunities were missed by the faults of one side or the other. I think also, as my right-on friend said, it would be a great mistake to stake out the claims of rival communities. We may be quite sure that will be done anyway. I have had a fairly close connection with this problem now for nearly 20 years, and I would say there have been faults on all sides. But at this time, we should be looking to the future rather than hucking back to the past. This alone, I would say to all members that it is no good applying the formulae of the past to the present position. The temperature of 1946 is not the temperature of 1920 or of 1930 or even of 1942. The slogans of an earlier day are discarded. Indeed, sometimes words that seemed at that time to Indians to express the height of their aspirations are now set on one side. In other words, other ideas are substituted. Nothing increases more the pace of the movement of public opinion than a great war. Everyone who had anything to do with this question in the early days between the wars knows what an effect the war of 1914 to 1918 had on Indian aspirations and Indian ideals. A tide which runs slowly in peace becomes in wartime vastly accelerated, and especially directly after a war because that tide is to some extent banked up during the war. I am quite certain that at the present time the tide of nationalism is running very fast in India and indeed all over Asia. One always has to remember that India is affected by what happens elsewhere in Asia. I remember so well when I was on the Simon commission, how it was spawned in upon us what an effect the challenge that had been thrown out by Japan at that time had had on the Asiatic people. The tide of nationalism that at one time seemed to be canonized among a comparatively small proportion of the people of India, mainly a few of the educator classes, has tended to spread wider and wider. I remember so well indeed I think we put it in the Simon commission report that although there were great differences in the expression of nationalist sentiment between what are called the extremists and the moderates, and although in many circumstances there might be such a stress on communal claims as might seem almost to exclude the conception of nationalism, yet we found that Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or Maratha, the politician or civil servant among all of them that conception of nationalism had been growing stronger and stronger. Today I think that national idea has spread right through and not least perhaps among some of those soldiers who have given such wonderful service in war. I should like today therefore not to stress too much the differences between Indians. Let us all realize that whatever the difficulties, whatever the divisions may be, there is this underlying demand among all the Indian peoples. The right on gentleman did not suggest that the government should publish any exact terms of reference of the mission. We have set out the general purpose and it is our intention that they should be given as free a hand as possible. There will be matters undoubtedly on which it will be necessary to refer back for a cabinet decision, but in the rather fluid position at the present time when we decide to get the utmost cooperation and goodwill between all the leaders of Indian opinion, it would be unwise to try to tie down those who are going up too rigidly. Indeed, the obvious reason for sending up cabinet ministers is that we send up persons of responsibility who are able to take decisions. Of course, there must be an area in which there may have to be a reference back. The right on gentleman stressed the great part India played during the war. It is worthwhile recording that twice in 25 years India has played a great part in the defeat of tyranny. Is it any wonder that today she claims as a nation of 400 million people that has twice sent her sons to die for freedom, that she should herself have freedom to decide her own destiny? My colleagues are going to India with the intention of using their utmost endeavors to help her to attain that freedom as speedily and fully as possible. What form of government is to replace the present regime is for India to decide. But our desire is to help her to set up forthwith the machinery for making that decision. There we are met sometimes with the initial difficulty of getting that machinery set up. We are resolved that machinery shall be set up and we seek the utmost cooperation of all Indian leaders to do so. The right on gentleman quoted the statement that had been made with regard to India's future. India herself must choose what will be her future constitution, what will be her position in the world. I hope that the Indian people may elect to remain within the British Commonwealth. I'm certain that she will find great advantages in doing so. In these days, that demand for complete isolated nationhood apart from the rest of the world is really outdated. Unity may come through the United Nations or through the Commonwealth, but no great nation can stand alone without sharing in what is happening in the world. I believe she does so elect. It must be by her own fit free will. The British Commonwealth and Empire is not bound together by chains of external compulsion. It is a free association of free peoples. If on the other hand, she elects for independence, in our view she has the right to do so. It will be for us to help to make the transition as smooth and easy as possible. We should be conscious that the British have done the great work in India. We have united India and given her that sense of nationality which she so very largely lacked over the previous centuries. She has learned from us principles of democracy and justice. When Indians attack our rule, they base their attack not on Indian principles, but on the basis of standards derived from Britain. I was very struck the other day in the United States at a dinner where I met a number of distinguished Americans, including a very distinguished Indian, where the talk was turning on the way in which principles worked out here have been applied on the continent of America. It was pointed out that America had a great heritage from Britain. My Indian friend said to me, you know, the Americans sometimes forget there is another great nation that has also inherited these principles and traditions, and that is India. We feel that we have a duty, a right and a privilege, because we also bring to the world and work those very principles that you evolved in Britain. I am well aware, when I speak of India, that I speak of a country containing the countries of races, religions, and languages, and I know well all the difficulties thereby created. But those difficulties can only be overcome by Indians. We are very mindful of the rights of minorities, and minorities should be able to live free from fear. On the other hand, we cannot allow a minority to place a veto on the advance of the majority. We cannot dictate how these difficulties may be overcome. Our first duty is to get the machinery off decision set up. That is the main purpose of my own friends and the vice-roy. We also want to see set up an interim government. One of the purposes of the bill which has been discussed today is to give the vice-roy a greater freedom in order that in the period that shall elapse while this constitution is being worked out, we may have a government commanding the greatest possible support in India. I would not like to fatter the vice-roy's discretion in any way with regard to the allocation of portfolios. There are a number of points my right-on friend mentioned with which I should like to deal. There is the problem of the Indian states. In many Indian states, great advances have been made in democratic institutions, and the most interesting experiment is now going forward in Travancore under the guidance of the distinguished statesman, Sir C.P. Ramaswari Ayer. Of course, the feelings in British India in regard to nationalism and the unity of India cannot be confined by the boundaries that separate these states from the provinces. I hope that the statesmen of British India and of princely India will be able to work out a solution of the problem of bringing together in one great polity these disparate constituent parts. There again, we must see that the Indian states find their due place. There can be no positive foothold on advance, and I do not believe for a moment that the Indian princes would desire to be a bar to the forward march of India. But as in the case of any other problems, this is a matter that Indians will settle themselves. I am very well aware, as we all are, of the minority problems in India, and I think that Indian leaders are more and more realizing the need for settling them if India is to have a smooth passage in future years. I believe that due provision will be made for that in the constitution and my right on friends in their conversations will certainly not neglect the point. We must, however, recognize that we cannot make Indians responsible for governing themselves and, at the same time, retain over here responsibility for the treatment of minorities and the power to intervene on their behalf. We are mindful, too, I can assure the right-on gentlemen of the position of the services, the men who have done great service to India and the position of their families. I think India should be sensible of the responsibility she has towards those who have served her and I think that a government which takes over, so to speak, the access of a government will also have to take over the liabilities. There again, that is a point to be dealt with later on. It does not concern the immediate purpose of setting up what I have called the instrument of decision. I entirely agree with what the right-on gentlemen said with regard to the treaty. That treaty is primarily for India. We are not going to hang out for anything for our own advantage which would be a disadvantage to India. In conclusion, may I stress again the crucial nature of the task before us? This problem is of vital importance not only to India and the British Commonwealth and empire, but to the world. There is this emanation set in the midst of Asia, an Asia which has been ravaged by war. Here we have the one great country that has been seeking to apply the principles of democracy. I have always hoped myself that politically India might be the light of Asia. It is a most unfortunate circumstance that, just at the time when we have to deal with these great political issues, there should be grave economic difficulties and in particular, very grave anxiety over India's food supply. The House knows that his Majesty's government are deeply concerned in this problem and my right-on friend, the Minister of Food is at the present time in the United States with an Indian delegation. We shall do our utmost to help her. At the present moment, I do not think I should say anything on the social and economic difficulties to wish the right-on gentleman referred to accept this. I believe that those economic and social difficulties can only be solved by the Indians themselves because they are so closely bound up with the whole Indian way of life and outlook. Whatever we can do to assist, we shall do. My right-on friends are going up to India resolved to succeed and I'm sure everyone will wish them Godspeed. Speech by Anayaran Bevan. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Philippa. Speech given to the House of Commons on the 30th of April 1946 by Anayaran Bevan. I beg to move that the bill be now read a second time. In the last two years there has been such a clamour from sectional interests in the field of national health that we are in danger of forgetting why these proposals are brought forward at all. It is therefore very welcome to me and I am quite certain to honourable members in all parts of the House that consideration should now be given not to this or that sectional interest but to the requirements of the British people as a whole. The scheme which anyone must draw up dealing with national health must necessarily be conditioned and limited by the evils it is intended to remove. Many of those who have drawn up paper plans for the health services appear to have followed the dictates of abstract principles and not the concrete requirements of the actual situation as it exists. They drew up all sorts of tidy schemes on paper which would be quite inoperable in practice. The first reason why a health scheme of this sort is necessary at all is because it has been the firm conclusion of all parties that money ought not to be permitted to stand in the way of obtaining an efficient health service. Although it is true that the national health insurance system provides a general practitioner service and caters for something like 21 million of the population, the rest of the population have to pay whenever they desire the services of a doctor. It is cardinal to a proper health organization that a person ought not to be financially deterred from seeking medical assistance at the earliest possible stage. It is one of the evils of having to buy medical advice that in addition to the natural anxiety that may arise because people do not like to hear unpleasant things about themselves and therefore tend to postpone consultation as long as possible, there is the financial anxiety caused by having to pay doctor's bills. Therefore, the first evil that we must deal with is that which exists as a consequence of the fact that the whole thing is the wrong way round. A person ought to be able to receive medical and hospital help without being involved in financial anxiety. In the second place, the national health insurance scheme does not provide for the self-employed nor, of course, for the families of dependents. It depends on insurance qualification and no matter how ill you are, if you cease to be insured, you cease to have free doctoring. Furthermore, it gives no backing to the doctor in the form of specialist services. The doctor has to provide himself. He has to use his own discretion and his own personal connections in order to obtain hospital treatment for his patients and in order to get them specialists. And in very many cases, of course, in an overwhelming number of cases, the services of a specialist are not available to poor people. Not only is this the case, but our hospital organization has grown up with no plan, with no system. It is unevenly distributed over the country and indeed it is one of the tragedies of the situation that very often the best hospital facilities are available where they are least needed. In the older industrial districts of Great Britain, hospital facilities are inadequate. Many of the hospitals are too small, very much too small. About 70% have less than 100 beds and over 30% have less than 30. No one can possibly pretend that hospitals so small can provide general hospital treatment. There is a tendency in some quarters to defend the very small hospital on the ground of its localism and intimacy and for other rather imponderable reasons of that sort. But everybody knows today that if a hospital is to be efficient, it must provide a number of specialized services. Although I am not myself, a devotee of bigness for bigness sick, I would rather be kept alive in the efficient if cold altruism of a large hospital than expire in a gush of warm sympathy in a small one. In addition to these defects, the health of the people of Britain is not properly looked after in one or two other respects. The condition of the teeth of the people of Britain is a national reproach. As a consequence of dental treatment having to be bought, it has not been demanded on a scale to stimulate the creation of sufficient dentists and in consequence there is a woeful shortage of dentists at the present time. Furthermore, about 25% of the people of Great Britain can obtain their spectacles and get their eyes tested and seen to by means of the assistance given by the approved societies. But the general mass of the people have not such facilities. Another of the evils from which this country suffers is the fact that sufficient attention has not been given to deafness and hardly any attention has been given so far to the provision of cheap hearing aids and their proper maintenance. I hope to be able to make very shortly a welcome announcement on this question. One added disability from which our health system suffers is the isolation of mental health from the rest of the health services. Although the present bill does not rewrite the lunacy acts, we shall have to come to that later on. Nevertheless, it does for the first time bring mental health into the general system of health services. It ought to be possible and this should be one of the objectives of any civilised health service for a person who feels mental distress or who fears that he is liable to become unbalanced in any way to go to a general hospital to get advice and assistance so that the condition may not develop into a more serious stage. All these disabilities our health system suffers from at the present time and one of the first merits of this bill is that it provides a universal health service without any insurance qualifications of any sort. It is available to the whole population and not only is it available to the whole population freely but it is intended through the health service to generalise the best health advice and treatment. It is intended that there shall be no limitation on the kind of assistance given, the general practitioner service, the specialist, the hospitals, eye treatment, spectacles, dental treatment, hearing facilities. All these are to be made available free. There will be some limitations for a while because we are short of many things. We have not enough dentists and it will therefore be necessary for us in the meantime to give priority treatment to certain classes, expectant and nursing mothers, children, school children in particular and later on we hope adolescents. Finally we trust that we shall be able to build up a dental service for the whole population. We are short of nurses and we are short of course of hospital accommodation and so it will be some time before the bill can fructify fully in effective universal service. Nevertheless it is the object of the bill and of the scheme to provide this as soon as possible and to provide it universally. Specialists will be available not only at institutions but for domiciliary visits when needed. Honourable members in all parts of the house know from their own experience that very many people have suffered unnecessarily because the family has not had the financial resources to call in skilled people. The specialist services therefore will not only be available at the hospitals but will be at the back of the general practitioner should he need them. The practical difficulties of carrying out all these principles and services are very great. When I approached this problem I made up my mind that I was not going to permit any sectional or vested interests to stand in the way of providing this very valuable service for the British people. There are of course three main instruments through which it is intended that the health bill should be worked. There are the hospitals, there are the general practitioners and there are the health centres. The hospitals are in many ways the vertebrae of the health system and I first examined what to do with the hospitals. The voluntary hospitals of Great Britain have done invaluable work. When hospitals could not be provided by any other means they came along. The voluntary hospital system of this country has a long history of devotion and sacrifice behind it and it would be a most frivolously minded man who would denigrate in any way the immense services the voluntary hospitals have rendered to this country. But they have been established often by the caprice of private charity. They bear no relation to each other. Two hospitals close together often try to provide the same specialist services unnecessarily while other areas have not that kind of specialist service at all. They are, as I said earlier, badly distributed throughout the country. It is unfortunate that often endowments are left to finance hospitals in those parts of the country where the well-to-do live while in very many other of our industrial and rural districts there is inadequate hospital accommodation. These voluntary hospitals are very many of them far too small and therefore to leave them as independent units is quite impracticable. Furthermore, I want to be quite frank with the house. I believe it is repugnant to a civilised community for hospitals to have to rely upon private charity. I believe we ought to have left hospital flag days behind. I have always felt a shudder of repulsion when I've seen nurses and sisters who ought to be at their work and students who ought to be at their work going about the streets collecting money for the hospitals. I do not believe there is an honourable member of this house who approves that system. It is repugnant and we must leave it behind entirely. But the implications of doing this are very considerable. I've been forming some estimates of what might happen to voluntary hospital finance when the all-in insurance contributions fall to be paid by the people of Great Britain when the bill is passed and becomes an act and they are entitled to free hospital services. The estimates I have go to show that between 80% and 90% of the revenues of the voluntary hospitals in these circumstances will be provided by public funds, by national or rate funds. And of course, as the honourable member reminds me, in very many parts of the country it is a travesty to call them voluntary hospitals. In the mining districts, in the textile districts, in the districts where there are heavy industries, it is the industrial population who pay the weekly contributions for the maintenance of the hospitals. When I was a minor, I used to find that situation when I was on the hospital committee. We had an annual meeting and a cordial vote of thanks was moved and passed with great enthusiasm to the managing director of the Colliery Company for his generosity towards the hospital. And when I looked at the balance sheet, I saw that 97.5% of the revenues were provided by the miners' own contributions. But nobody passed a vote of thanks to the miners. I can assure the honourable and gallant member that I was no more silent then than I am now. But of course it is a misuse of language to call these voluntary hospitals. They are not maintained by legally enforced contributions, but mainly the workers pay for them because they know they will need the hospitals and they're afraid of what they would have to pay if they did not provide them. So it is, I say, an impossible situation for the state to find something like 90% of the revenues of these hospitals and still to call them voluntary. So I decided, for this and other reasons, that the voluntary hospitals must be taken over. I knew very well when I decided this that it would give rise to very considerable resentment in many quarters, but quite frankly, I am not concerned about the voluntary hospitals' authorities. I am concerned with the people whom the hospitals are supposed to serve. Every investigation which has been made into this problem has established that the proper hospital unit has to comprise about 1,000 beds, not in the same building, but nevertheless the general and specialist hospital services can be provided only in a group of that size. This means that a number of hospitals have to be pooled, linked together, in order to provide a unit of that sort. This cannot be done effectively if each hospital is a separate autonomous body. It is proposed that each of these groups should have a large general hospital providing general hospital facilities and services, and that there should be a group round it of small feeder hospitals. Many of the cottage hospitals strive to give services that they are not able to give. It very often happens that a cottage hospital harbours ambitions to the hurt of the patients because they strive to reach a status that they never can reach. In these circumstances, the welfare of the patients is sacrificed to the vaulting ambitions of those in charge of the hospital. If, therefore, these voluntary hospitals are to be grouped in this way, it is necessary that they should submit themselves to proper organisation, and that submission in our experience is impracticable if the hospitals, all of them, remain under separate management. Now, this decision to take over the voluntary hospitals meant that I then had to decide to whom to give them. Who was to be the receiver? So I turned to an examination of the local government hospital system. Many of the local authorities in Great Britain have never been able to exercise their hospital powers. They are too poor, they are too small. Furthermore, the local authorities of Great Britain inherited their hospitals from the poor law, and some of them are monstrous buildings across between a workhouse and a barracks or a prison. The local authorities are helpless in these matters. They have not been able to afford much money. Some local authorities are first class. Some of the best hospitals in this country are local government hospitals. But when I considered what to do with the voluntary hospitals when they'd been taken over and who was to receive them, I had to reject the local government unit because the local authority area is no more an effective gathering ground for the patients of the hospitals than the voluntary hospitals themselves. My honourable friend said that some of them are too small and some of them are too large. London is an example of being too small and too large at the same time. It is quite impossible, therefore, to hand over the voluntary hospitals to the local authorities. Furthermore, and this is an argument of the utmost importance, if it be our contract with the British people, if it be our intention that we should universalise the best, that we shall promise every citizen in this country the same standard of service, how can that be articulated through a rate-borne institution which means that the poor authority will not be able to carry out the same thing at all? It means that once more we shall be faced with all kinds of anomalies, just in those areas where hospital facilities are most needed and in those very conditions where the mass of the poor people will be unable to find the finance to supply the hospitals. Therefore, for reasons which must be obvious because the local authorities are too small, because their financial capacities are unevenly distributed, I decided that local authorities could not be effective hospital administration units. There are, of course, a large number of hospitals in addition to the general hospitals which the local authorities possess. Tuberculosis sanatorium, isolation hospitals, infirmaries of various kinds, rehabilitation and all kinds of other hospitals are all necessary in a general hospital service. So I decided that the only thing to do was to create an entirely new hospital service, to take over the voluntary hospitals and to take over the local government hospitals and to organise them as a single hospital service. If we are to carry out our obligation and to provide the people of Great Britain no matter where they may be with the same level of service, then the nation itself will have to carry the expenditure and cannot put it upon the shoulders of any other authority. A number of investigations have been made into this subject from time to time and the conclusion has always been reached that the effective hospital unit should be associated with the medical school. If you group the hospitals in about 16 to 20 regions around the medical schools, you would then have within those regions the wide range of disease and disability which would provide the basis for your specialised hospital service. Furthermore, by grouping hospitals around the medical schools, we should be providing what is very badly wanted and that is a means by which the general practitioners are kept in more intimate association with new medical thought and training. One of the disabilities, one of the shortcomings of our existing medical service is the intellectual isolation of the general practitioners in many parts of the country. The general practitioner quite often practices in loneliness and does not come into sufficiently intimate association with his fellow craftsmen and has not the stimulus of that association and in consequence of that, the general practitioners have not got access to the new medical knowledge in a proper fashion. By this association of the general practitioner with the medical schools through the regional hospital organisation, it will be possible to refresh and replenish the fund of knowledge at the disposal of the general practitioner. This has always been advised as the best solution of the difficulty. It has this great advantage to which I call the close attention of honourable members. It means that the bodies carrying out the hospital services of the country are at the same time the planners of the hospital service. One of the defects of the other scheme is that the planning authority and executive authority are different. The result is that you get paper planning or bad execution. By making the regional board and regional organisation responsible both for the planning and the administration of the plans, we get a better result and we get from time to time adaptation of the plans by the persons accumulating the experience in the course of their administration. The other solutions to this problem which I've looked at all mean that you have an advisory body of planners in the background who are not able themselves to accumulate the experience necessary to make good planners. The regional hospital organisation is the authority with which the specialised services are to be associated because, as I've explained, this specialised service can be made available for an area of that size and cannot be made available over a small area. When we come to an examination of this in committee I dare say there will be different points of view about the constitution of the regional boards. It is not intended that the regional board should be conferences of persons representing different interests and different organisations. If we do that, the regional boards will not be able to achieve reasonable and efficient homogeneity. It is intended that they should be drawn from members of the profession, from the health authorities in the area, from the medical schools and from those who have long experience in voluntary hospital administration. While leaving ourselves open to take the best sort of individuals on these hospital boards which we can find, we hope before very long to build up a higher tradition of hospital administration in the boards themselves. Any system which made the boards conferences, any proposal which made the members delegates would at once throw the hospital administration into chaos. Although I am perfectly prepared and shall be happy to co-operate with honourable members in all parts of the house in discussing how the board should be constituted, I hope I shall not be pressed to make these regional boards merely representative of different interests and different areas. The general hospital administration therefore centres in that way. When we come to the general practitioners, we are of course in an entirely different field. The proposal which I have made is that the general practitioner shall not be in direct contract with the Ministry of Health but in contract with new bodies. There exists in the medical profession a great resistance to coming under the authority of local government. A great resistance with which I to some extent sympathise. There is a feeling in the medical profession that the general practitioner would be liable to come too much under the medical officer of health who is the administrative doctor. This proposal does not put the doctor under the local authority. It puts the doctor in contract with an entirely new body. The local executive council co-terminates with the local health area county or county borough. On that executive council the dentists, doctors and chemists will have half the representation. In fact, the whole scheme provides a greater degree of professional representation from the medical profession than any other scheme I have seen. I have been criticised in some quarters for doing that. I will give the answer now. I have never believed that the demands of a democracy are necessarily satisfied merely by the opportunity of putting a cross against someone's name every four or five years. I believe that democracy exists in the active participation in administration and policy. Therefore, I believe that it is a wise thing to give the doctors full participation in the administration of their own profession. They must, of course, necessarily be subordinated to lay control. We do not want the opposite danger of syndicalism. Therefore, the communal interests must always be safeguarded in this administration. The doctors will be in contract with an executive body of this sort. One of the advantages of that proposal is that the doctors do not become, as some of them have so wildly stated, civil servants. Indeed, one of the advantages of the scheme is that it does not create an additional civil servant. It imposes no constitutional disability upon any person whatsoever. Indeed, by taking the hospitals from the local authorities and putting them under the regional boards, large numbers of people will be enfranchised who are now disenfranchised from participation in local government. So far from this being a huge bureaucracy with all the doctors' little civil servants, the slaves of the Minister of Health, as I've seen it described, instead of that, the doctors are under contract with bodies which are not under the local authorities and which are, at the same time, ever open to their own influence and control. One of the chief problems that I was up against in considering this scheme was the distribution of the general practitioner service throughout the country. The distribution at the moment is most uneven. In South Shields before the war, there were 4,100 persons per doctor. In Bath, 1,590. In Dartford, nearly 3,000 and in Bromley, 1,620. In Swindon, 3,100 and in Hastings, under 1,200. That distribution of general practitioners throughout the country is most hurtful to the health of our people. It is entirely unfair and therefore if the health services are to be carried out, there must be brought about a redistribution of the general practitioners throughout the country. Indeed, I could amplify those figures a good deal but I do not want to weary the house as I have a great deal to say. It was therefore decided that there must be a redistribution. One of the first consequences of that decision was the abolition of the sale and purchase of practices. If we are to get the doctors where we need them, we cannot possibly allow a new doctor to go in because he has bought somebody's practice. Proper distribution kills by itself the sale and purchase of practices. I know that there is some opposition to this and I will deal with that opposition. I have always regarded the sale and purchase of medical practices as an evil in itself. It is tantamount to the sale and purchase of patients. Indeed, every argument advanced about the value of the practice is itself an argument against freedom of choice because the assumption underlying the high value of a practice is that the patient passes from the old doctor to the new. If they did not pass, there would be no value in it. I would like therefore to point out to the medical profession that every time they argue for high compensation for the loss of the value of their practices, it is an argument against the free choice which they claim. However, the decision to bring about the proper distribution of general practitioners throughout the country meant that the value of the practices was destroyed. We had therefore to consider compensation. I have never admitted the legal claim but I admitted once that very real hardship would be inflicted upon doctors if there were no compensation. Many of these doctors look forward to the value of their practices for their retirement. Many of them have had to borrow money to buy practices and therefore it would I think be inhuman and certainly most unjust if no compensation were paid for the value of the practices destroyed. The sum of 66 million pounds is very large. In fact, I think that everyone will admit that the doctors are being treated very generously. However, it is not all loss because if we had in providing superannuation given credit for back service, as we should have had to do, it would have cost 35 million. Furthermore, the compensation will fall to be paid to the dependence when the doctor dies or when he retires and so it is spread over a considerable number of years. This global sum has been arrived at by the actuaries and over the figure I am afraid we have not had very much control because the actuaries have agreed it. But the profession itself will be asked to advise as to its distribution among the claimants because we are interested in the global sum and the profession of course is interested in the equitable distribution of the fund to the claimants. The doctors claim that the proposals of the bill amount to direction. Not all the doctors say this, but some of them do. There is no direction involved at all. When the measure starts to operate, the doctors in a particular area will be able to enter the public service in that area. A doctor newly coming along would apply to the local executive council for permission to practice in a particular area. His application would then be re-referred to the medical practices committee. The medical practices committee, which is mainly a professional body, would have before it the question of whether there were sufficient general practitioners in that area. If there were enough, the committee would refuse to permit the appointment. No one can really argue that that is direction. Because no profession should be allowed to enter the public service in a place where it is not needed. By that method of negative control over a number of years, we hope to bring about over the country a positive redistribution of the general practitioner service. It will not affect the existing situation because doctors will be able to practice under the new service in the areas to which they belong. But a new doctor, as he comes on, will have to find his practice in a place inadequately served. I cannot at the moment explain to the house what are going to be the rates of remuneration of doctors. The Spence committee report is not fully available. I hope it will be out next week. I had hoped that it would be ready for this debate because this is an extremely important part of the subject, but I have not been able to get the full report. And therefore it is not possible to deal with remuneration. However, it is possible to deal with some of the principles underlying the remuneration of general practitioners. Some of my honourable friends on this side of the house are in favour of a full salaried service. I am not. I do not believe that the medical profession is ripe for it. And I cannot dispense with the principle that the payment of a doctor must in some degree be a reward for zeal, and there must be some degree of punishment for lack of it. Therefore it is proposed that capitation should remain the main source from which a doctor will obtain his remuneration. But it is proposed that there shall be a basic salary and that for a number of very cogent reasons. One is that a young doctor entering practice for the first time needs to be kept alive while he is building up his lists. The present system by which a young man gets a load of debt around his neck in order to practice is an altogether evil one. The basic salary will take care of that. Furthermore, the basic salary has the additional advantage of being something to which I can attach an increased amount to get doctors to go into unattractive areas. It may also, and here our position is not quite so definite, be the means of attaching additional remuneration for special courses and special requirements. The basic salary, however, must not be too large, otherwise it is a disguised form of capitation. Therefore the main source at the moment through which a general practitioner will obtain his remuneration will be capitation. I have also made, and I quite frankly admitted to the house, a further concession which I know will be repugnant in some quarters. The doctor, the general practitioner and the specialist will be able to obtain fees but not from anyone who is on any of their own lists. Nor will a doctor be able to obtain fees from persons on the lists of his partner, nor from those he has worked with in group practice. But I think it is impracticable to prevent him having any fees at all. To do so would be to create a black market. There ought to be nothing to prevent anyone having advice from another doctor other than his own. Honourable members know what happens in this field sometimes. An individual hears that a particular doctor in some place is good at this, that or the other thing and wants to go long for a consultation and pays a fee for it. If the other doctor is better than his own, all he will need to do is transfer to him and he gets him free. It would be unreasonable to keep the patient paying fees to a doctor whose services can be got free. So the amount of fee payment on the part of the general population will be quite small. Indeed, I confess at once if the amount of fee paying is great, the system will break down because the whole purpose of this scheme is to provide free treatment with no fee paying at all. The same principle applies to the hospitals. If an individual wishes to consult, there is no reason why he should be stopped. As I have said, the fact that a person can transfer from one doctor to another ought to keep fee paying within reasonable proportions. The same principle applies to the hospitals. Specialists in hospitals will be allowed to have fee paying patients. I know this is criticised and I sympathise with some of the reasons for the criticism. But we are driven inevitably to this fact that unless we permit some fee paying patients in the public hospitals, there will be a rash of nursing homes all over the country. If people wish to pay for additional amenities or something to which they attach value like privacy in a single ward, we ought to aim at providing such facilities for everyone who wants them. But while we have inadequate hospital facilities and while rebuilding is postponed, it inevitably happens that some people will want to buy something more than the general health services providing. If we do not permit fees in hospitals, we will lose many specialists from the public hospitals for they will go to nursing homes. I believe that nursing homes ought to be discouraged. They cannot provide general hospital facilities and we want to keep our specialists attached to our hospitals and not send them into nursing homes. Behind this, there is a principle of some importance. If the state owned a theatre, it would not charge the same prices for the different seats. It is not entirely analogous, but it is an illustration. For example, in the dental service, the same principle will prevail. The state will provide a certain standard of dentistry free, but if a person wants to have his teeth filled with gold, the state will not provide that. The third instrument to which the health services are to be articulated is the health centre, to which we attach very great importance indeed. It has been described in some places as an experimental idea, but we want it to be more than that. Because to the extent that general practitioners can operate through health centres in their own practice, to that extent will be raised the general standard of the medical profession as a whole. Furthermore, the general practitioner cannot afford the apparatus necessary for a proper diagnosis in his own surgery. This will be available at the health centre. The health centre may well be the maternity and child welfare clinic of the local authority also. The provision of the health centre is therefore imposed as a duty on the local authority. There has been criticism that this creates a trichotomy in the services. It is not a trichotomy at all. If you have complete unification, it would bring you back to paper planning. You cannot get all services through the regional authority because there are many immediate and personal services which the local authority can carry out better than anybody else. So it is proposed to leave those personal services to the local authority and some will be carried out at the health centre. The centres will vary. There will be larger centres at which there will be dental clinics, maternity and child welfare services and general practitioners consultative facilities. And there will also be smaller centres, surgeries where practitioners can see their patients. The health centres will be managed entirely by the health authorities. The health centre itself will be provided by the local health authority and facilities will be made available there to the general practitioner. The small ones are necessary because some centres may be a considerable distance from people's homes. So it will be necessary to have simpler ones nearer their homes fixed in a constellation with the larger ones. The representatives on the local executives will be able to coordinate what is happening at the health centres. As I say, we regard these health centres as extremely valuable and their creation will be encouraged in every possible way. Doctors will be encouraged to practise there where they will have great facilities. It will of course be some time before these centres can be established everywhere because of the absence of these facilities. There you have the three main instruments through which it is proposed that the health services of the future should be articulated. There has been some criticism. Some have said that the preventive services should be under the same authority as the curative services. I wonder whether members who advance that criticism really envisage the situation which will arise. What are the preventive services? Housing, water, sewerage, river pollution prevention, food inspection, are all these to be under a regional board? If so, a regional board of that sort would want the Albert Hall in which to meet. This again is paper planning. It is unification for unification's sake. There must be a frontier at which the local joins the national health service. You can fix it here or there, but it must be fixed somewhere. It is said that there is some contradiction in the health scheme because some services are left to the local authority and the rest to the national scheme. Well, day is joined tonight by twilight, but nobody has suggested that it is a contradiction in nature. The argument that this is a contradiction in health services is purely pedantic and has no relation to the facts. It is also suggested that because maternity and child welfare services come under the local authority and gynecological services come under the regional board, that will make for confusion. Why should it? Continuity between one and the other is maintained by the user. The hospital is there to be used. If there are difficulties in connection with birth, the gynecologist at the hospital centre can look after them. All that happens is that the midwife will be in charge. The mother will be examined properly as she ought to be examined. Then if difficulties are anticipated, she can have her child in hospital where she can be properly looked after by the gynecologist. When she recovers and is a perfectly normal person, she can go to the maternity and child welfare centre for postnatal treatment. There is no confusion there. The confusion is in the minds of those who are criticising the proposal on the grounds that there is a trichotomy in the services between the local authority, the regional board and the health centre. I apologise for detaining the house so long, but there are other matters to which I must make some reference. The two amendments on the older paper rather astonish me. The honourable member for Denby informs me in his amendment that I have not sufficiently consulted the medical profession. I intend to read the amendment to show how extravagant the honourable member has been. He says that he and his friends are unable to agree to a measure containing such far-reaching proposals involving the entire population without any consultations having taken place between the Minister and the organisations and bodies representing those who will be responsible for carrying out its provisions. I have had prepared a list of conferences I have attended. I have met the medical profession, the dental profession, the pharmacists, nurses and midwives, voluntary hospitals, local authorities, eye services, medical aid services, herbalists, insurance committees and various other organisations. I have had 20 conferences. The consultations have been very wide. In addition, my officials have had 13 conferences so that altogether there have been 33 conferences with the different branches of the profession about the proposals. Can anybody argue that that is not adequate consultation? Of course the real criticism is that I have not conducted negotiations. I am astonished that such a charge should lie in the mouth of any member of the House. If there is one thing that will spell the death of the House of Commons, it is for a Minister to negotiate bills before they are presented to the House. I had no negotiations because once you negotiate with outside bodies, two things happen. They are made aware of the nature of the proposals before the House of Commons itself. And furthermore, the Minister puts himself into an impossible position because if he has agreed things with somebody outside, he is bound to resist amendments from members in the House. Otherwise he does not play fair with them. I protested against this myself when I was a private member. I protested bitterly and I am not prepared, strange though it may seem, to do something as a Minister which as a private member I thought was wrong. So there has not been negotiation and there will not be negotiation in this matter. The House of Commons is supreme and the House of Commons must assert its supremacy and not allow itself to be dictated to by anybody, no matter how powerful and how strong he may be. These consultations have taken place over a very wide field and as a matter of fact, have produced quite a considerable amount of agreement. The opposition to the bill is not as strong as it was thought it would be. On the contrary, there is very considerable support for this measure among the doctors themselves. I myself have been rather aggrieved by some of the statements which have been made. They have misrepresented the proposals to a very large extent, but as these proposals become known to the medical profession, they will appreciate them because nothing should please a good doctor more than to realise that in future, neither he nor his patient will have any financial anxiety arising out of illness. The leaders of the opposition have on the order paper an amendment which expresses indignation at the extent to which we are interfering with charitable foundations. The amendment states that the bill gravely menaces all charitable foundations by diverting to purposes other than those intended by the donors, the trust funds of the voluntary hospitals. I must say that when I read that amendment, I was amused. I have been looking up some precedents. I would like to say in passing that a great many of these endowments and foundations have been diversions from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The main contributor was the Chancellor of the Exchequer. But I seem to remember that in 1941 honourable members opposite were very much vexed by what might happen to the public schools, and they came to the house and asked for the permission of the house to lay sacrilegious hands upon educational endowments centuries old. I remember protesting against it at the time, not, however, on the grounds of sacrilege. These endowments had been left to the public schools, many of them for the maintenance of the buildings. But honourable members opposite, being concerned lest the war might affect their favourite schools, came to the house and allowed the diversion of money from that purpose to the payment of the salaries of the teachers and the masters. There have been other interferences with endowments. Wales has been one of the criminals. Disestablishment interfered with an enormous number of endowments. Scotland also is involved. Scotland has been behaving in a most sacrilegious manner. A whole lot of endowments have been waived by Scottish acts. I could read out a large number of them, but I shall not do so. Do honourable members opposite suggest that the intelligent planning of the modern world must be prevented by the endowments of the dead? Are we to consider the dead more than the living? Are the patients of our hospitals to be sacrificed to a consideration of that sort? We are not, in fact, diverting these endowments from charitable purposes. It would have been perfectly proper for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to have taken over these funds, because they were willed for hospital purposes, and he could use them for hospital purposes. But we are doing no such thing. The teaching hospitals will be left with all their liquid endowments and more power. We are not interfering with the teaching hospitals endowments. Academic medical education will be more free in the future than it has been in the past. Furthermore, something like 32 million pounds belonging to the voluntary hospitals as a whole is not going to be taken from them. On the contrary, we are going to use it, and a very valuable thing it will be, we are going to use it as a shock absorber between the Treasury, the Central Government, and the Hospital Administration. They will be given it as free money, which they can spend over and above the funds provided by the State. I welcome the opportunity of doing that, because I appreciate as much as Honourable Members in any part of the House, the absolute necessity for having an elastic, resilient service, subject to local influence as well as to central influence, and that can be accomplished by leaving this money in their hands. I shall be prepared to consider when the bill comes to be examined in more detail, whether any other relaxations are possible. But certainly by leaving this money in the hands of the Regional Board, by allowing the Regional Board an annual budget and giving them freedom of movement inside that budget, by giving power to the Regional Board to distribute this money to the local management committees of the hospitals by various devices of that sort, the hospitals will be responsible to local pressure and subject to local influence as well as to central direction. I think that on those grounds the proposals can be defended. They cover a very wide field indeed, to a great deal of which I have not been able to make reference, but I should have thought it ought to have been a pride to Honourable Members in all parts of the House that Great Britain is able to embark upon an ambitious scheme of this proportion. When it is carried out, it will place this country in the forefront of all countries of the world in medical services. I myself, if I may say a personal word, take a very great pride and great pleasure in being able to introduce a bill of this comprehensiveness and value. I believe it will lift the shadow from millions of homes. It will keep very many people alive who might otherwise be dead. It will relieve suffering. It will produce higher standards for the medical profession. It will be a great contribution towards the well-being of the common people of Great Britain. For that reason, and for the other reasons I have mentioned, I hope Honourable Members will give the bill a second reading. End of speech. LibriVox.org Recording by Nicholas Houghton Speech given to the House of Commons on 28th March 1950 by Alec Douglas Hume It falls to my lot to congratulate very sincerely the Honourable Member for Hammersmith North. He need not have been different about making his maiden speech, and we hope we shall hear him on many other occasions. If I may say so to him, he has indeed himself particularly to me because he put out of this House a former member who used often to cross swords with me in foreign affairs debates in a previous Parliament. The reason why we asked for this debate at this time was that we had a very strong impression that the Government in this most important field of national policy were marking time. And nothing that has been said from the other side of the House today has removed that impression. If I may quote two sentences used by the two right honourable gentlemen most responsible for foreign affairs, I would quote the Foreign Secretary who after my right honourable friend the Leader of the Opposition made his speech in Edinburgh in relation to the Russian deadlock, said, roughly speaking, I have done my best. I would also quote the Prime Minister who in the debate on defence in this House only a week or so ago in reference to implementing the findings of the Colombo Conference and the Atlantic Treaty said that in these matters one cannot force the pace. However much the Foreign Secretary may have achieved and he as much to his credit we shall not gain security in this country by resting on the right honourable gentleman's laurels nor can we possibly afford in this country at this present time to mark time in our foreign policy. We on these benches have a deep conviction that it is Great Britain's role in world affairs to take the lead and unless we force the pace at this time many another country which finds itself within the Russian orbit will lose its freedom. The first plea and here I join with the honourable member for Hammersmith North the first plea I would make to honourable gentlemen on the other side of the House is this that they should take positive action and that they should begin by taking positive action in respect of what is called the Cold War. We have heard a good deal in the speeches today about the Cold War. Of course the Cold War is relentless and menacing. Russia has perfected a technique in this matter of using the Communist Party first to pro and then to soften the weak spots in any national resistance and always behind the Communist spearhead are the armed forces of the Soviet Union ready to mobilise. That is perfectly true. Although the situation is grim I believe that as the honourable member for Aberdeenshire East said in his speech this is a situation which we have to face and which may last for a very long time. There are factors in it which are not without encouragement and may even be to our advantage. Communism, as it has spread over Europe has created an opposite force and that opposite force is based on the most potent and powerful of all things and that is moral and religious conviction. We should be trying to turn that to our advantage. It is now revealed beyond doubt in many countries that may have had doubts after the war that Russian policy is no more than a ruthless exercise in power politics and the recognition of this fact should give us the opportunity to bring into alliance many countries who before this situation was revealed were looking at each other with eyes of suspicion. Another fact which I would bring to the Minister's notice and which I think has escaped attention generally is this that in no case has Russia either moved her own troops or ordered one of her satellites to move their troops where she has had a clear warning from the United States of America or from ourselves. In no case has that happened. I make this suggestion when we looked at Europe three or four years ago it was quite possible to believe that communism would overrun France, Germany and Italy but there has been a spontaneous natural reaction and the tide of communism has been pushed back in France, Germany and Italy and even in Eastern Europe at the present time there are certain rocks beginning to appear in this communist sea. I believe that the intelligent use of political warfare if we like to call it such certainly a political propaganda intelligently directed can at this very moment save two countries and bring them out of the Russian orbit. I'm not going to name the countries but I think that if intelligent political propaganda were directed into them they could be saved and are right for saving now. I know that we do direct a certain amount of political propaganda into Eastern Europe but I do not believe that it is coordinated and that it is nearly as efficient and effective as it could be. There is a very large and effective broadcasting station in Turkey. I ask the minister of state to think of this. Will he from Norway through Western Europe to Turkey see if he can organise a coordinated propaganda offensive into the satellite countries on Russia's borders. I could not help thinking when I saw the obvious concern and terror with which Russia views any knowledge of the Western world being brought into satellite countries and behind the iron curtain that that is a measure of her fear. We ought to be all the more insistent to push a knowledge of the Western world into those countries and to help those people the churches and others who are fighting a valiant battle behind the iron curtain for freedom. It seems to me that for a comparatively small output in money and energy we might achieve a great success which would have very significant repercussions on the military planning which we must do should a war develop and start in that area. I now turn in the short time remaining to me to the consideration of an overall security system. I think it is not unfair to say that Russian knows absolutely what she is doing in her own foreign policy. She has an overall foreign policy, she has regional foreign policies and she can switch from one to the other region whichever serves her best at the time. I believe it is not unfair to say that at the present time after five years of foreign policy conducted by the right honourable gentleman His Majesty's government have no overall constructive foreign policy and are weak in every region which we ought to be in a position to defend. I look round at these regions India, the Middle East and Western Europe and in none of them are we strong enough either to impress our enemies or to gain the confidence of our friends. An honourable member who has just made his maiden speech said we must be bold and strong but the gaps that I see do not enable us to be so. There are yawning gaps in the Far East, the Middle East and in Europe in the diplomatic and the political fields. I want to direct the attention of the Minister of State to the problem. Let us take the Far Eastern region. The Foreign Secretary and the party opposite cannot escape responsibility in this matter because it was they who created a vacuum of power in India. I'm not criticising them for leaving India but I am criticising them for scuttling out in a hurry. All the way through history a vacuum of power has been it always will be so a temptation to an aggressor which cannot be resisted. We left India before India was able to defend herself and before India and Pakistan had had a chance to settle their dispute over Kashmir. I ask the Minister of State if the Foreign Secretary is so to speak knocking the heads of India and Pakistan together. Is he continuously keeping at India and Pakistan to settle this difficulty? Let him realise that unless that difficulty between India and Pakistan is settled there is no basis at all for the continental defence of India. Let me turn for a moment to the Middle East and to Turkey. It is well known that Turkey has for many years now been sustaining a full armament program and that that is putting a very severe strain on Turkish economy. Is the right honourable gentleman satisfied that Turkey is in a position to meet any challenge that may come from Russia in that part of the world? The socialist government lends money fairly freely about the world and I would far rather lend money to Turkey than to Burma because I am convinced that it would show a far higher dividend in security. The Turks would fight. There is another problem which His Majesty's government seemed to me to be neglecting in the Middle East, the coordinated defence of those great regions inhabited by the Arabs. When this question is raised I am told oh but His Majesty's government think that Turkey ought to be organised these regions into a great defence system. The Turks will fight but they have not the traditions or the diplomatic authority to organise those regions. Great Britain and Great Britain alone can do it and I ask the right honourable gentleman to see to it now that conversations are started so that effective opposition can be organised in that area to any advance that Russia may take in that direction. Lastly, I come to Europe. I shall not deal with the question of how far Germany should be re-armed but I express the hope that if Germany is re-armed in any measure it should be done with the absolute agreement of the French and the Americans. I want to draw the attention of the government to one aspect of European defence to which far too little attention has been given. The Scandinavian Republic and their contribution to the Atlantic Pact. We may put our frontier in future on the eastern frontier of Germany or we may contemplate the possibility that Russia will advance across Europe. In the first case if we have our frontier on the eastern frontier of Germany Scandinavia is an essential flank guard. In the other case if we contemplate the possibility of Russia advancing across Germany then the Scandinavian peninsula again is in a strategic position which might prevent the Russians ever undertaking that venture. I understand that Norway under the Atlantic Pact has made certain reservations that she is a member of the Atlantic Pact and subscribes to it but will not allow the Americans or ourselves to have bases in Norway. Could the Minister of State and the Foreign Secretary say to the Norwegians who ought to be able to appreciate it by now that it is no use taking these half measures. In modern warfare unless one has a very advanced state of preparation one is condemned before one starts. Every argument seems to me to point to the necessity for the Foreign Secretary reopening with the Norwegian government the question of Norway allowing both air and naval bases to ourselves and to the United States of America. Lately Mr. Aitzen has made a most helpful series of speeches and has talked of the necessity for total diplomacy. I agree with him that nothing short of total diplomacy is possible in the present situation if we are to survive. And I point once more to those great gaps at the diplomatic and political level and say to the Minister of State that until these gaps are filled our military preparations will not make any sense at all. I ask him to ask the Foreign Secretary both in respect of India and of Turkey and of the Scandinavian Peninsula in particular Norway to start talks with a view to completing an overall intelligible system of defence. Our prime objective in all these regions must be to make ourselves so strong that we are feared by the enemy and gain the confidence and respect of our friends. And we must aim in every region to make them into a coherent whole so that in the event of war we can build up the grand alliance on which always the safety of this country has depended. End of speech. Recording by Nicholas Houghton.