Westminster Commentary

'Ruts hot weather is affecting my nerves. Figure to yourself : there I was the other day, sitting with a Member in the tea-room, idly sipping a cup of something that 1 presume was piped direct from the Thames two yards away. Through the open door we could see the sun on the terrace (the strawberries and cream do not begin until after Whitsun), the pigeons strutting self-importantly about like so many Junior Government Whips, the funnel of a passing ship or two. We could hear the gentle slap of the waves against the stonework, the murmur of voices from out- side, the chimes of Big Ben. It was an incredibly peaceful English scene, and sorted well with the scene I had just left—the Chamber. There, some half-dozen Members a side had been dragging themselves to their feet from time to time to deploy all the cut-and-thrust of debate on such grave constitutional questions as the determina- tion of Messrs. Harold Wilson, Patrick Gordon Walker, Douglas Jay and Hector Hughes to carry an amendment to the Finance Bill (Page 12, Clause 12, line 33) to leave out the word 'and,' and the equal determination of the Government that the Opposition should not harm a hair of an and's head.

We spoke, my friend and 1, of the only subject anybody at Westminster discusses these days at all : the rigid catalepsy that from Left to Right holds almost undisputed sway within the precincts of the Palace of Westminster. Zombie-like, they go back and forth about their duties, even past praying for death or Mr. Macmillan to release them from a travail that the Flying Dutchman and the Wandering Jew, not to mention Sisyphus, would never have dreamed of exchanging for their own. The other day there were forty-seven Tories away from a Division unpaired; nobody paid the slightest attention. (A mere few months ago there woulct have been a row of such pro- portions that they would not have needed to take away the statue of Sir William Harcourt that the one of Mr. Balfour is to replace; it would have fallen off its pedestal without anybody lift- ing a finger.) There is no subject in sight, or indeed conceivable, that could cause anybody to get excited or even interested; Mr. Profumo's statement about arms for Iraq passed with no more than a perfunctory gibe or two from the Opposition, though this time last year they

would have torn the place down around Mr. Profumo's sleek cars. Once it was the custom

for Members not wishing to attend morning Committees to dream up elaborate excuses; now they have taken to telling the Whips bluntly that they have no intention Of turning up, and their names are meekly struck off the lists. If some enterprising lead-swinger should summon up the energy, during the Whitsun recess, to circularise all his fellow-Members with a suggestion that they should none of them come back at all when it was over, the chances are that they would accept the suggestion with joy and unanimity, and that when they put it into effect nobody would notice.

Well, there we were, talking of such matters with many a drowsy pause, when suddenly a bell began to ring; it rang with a loud and ugly clangour, harsh and alarming. I regret to say that I lost my head; assuming that the,Palace of West- minster was on fire, I leaped to my feet and, seizing the milk jug, was about to hurl its con- tents over the Parliamentary 'Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (who was sitting at the next table) when I was gently restrained, The bell, I was told, was the Division Bell. Collapsing, all a-quiver, into my scat, I digested this news as my companion went off to register his vote. When he came back, I was careful not to ask him on what he had been voting (1 know better than that), but he genially volunteered the information that neither he, nor anyone he had met on the way, had any idea. When the figures ticked up on the wall a moment later, I was astonished to see that no fewer than 384 Members had been present, not counting the Tellers, to vote upon an amendment that had been forced to a Division by the Opposition (though the two Conservative sponsors had wished to withdraw it), the , effect of which, I later learned, would have been to change the pro- vision for duty payable on club liquor licences so that instead of 'five pounds' it would read 'five pounds or duty of threepence for every pound's worth of purchases of intoxicating liquor which- ever is the less.'

- As Mr. Belloc once asked, what is the use of going on like this? How can the time of even 384 grown men and women be justifiably occupied in this way, with the temperature 80 degrees in the shade and the rhododendrons out at Kew? Why do they not go now into recess and not come back until the prorogation? There is an amendment to the Finance Bill which seeks to exempt parking- meters from income-tax; there is another to omit the word 'otherwise' from a passage which ad- mittedly makes no sense as it stands but which will not be affected in the slightest by the omission of the word 'otherwise' or for that matter t °- thirds of the other words it contains. These amend- ments will be discussed; they may be voted on: for all I know there may be 484 or even 584 members willing to troop through the lobbies when the bell (oh, my heart ! it is thumping still!) goes. What, as 1 say, is the use?

I do not know; I simply do not know. And what is more to the point, 1 do not propose to stay and find out. I am going away, and I am not coming back until the Finance Bill has been dealt with, parking-meters, otherwise and all. I am going. if you must know, to Elba, where I shall amuse myself by sending picture-postcards of Napoleon to Mr. Butler with offensive messages on the hack signed `Talleyrand.'

But before I go, there is the Barber of Oldham to be considered. Very late on Tuesday night Mr. Leslie Hale sang us a powerful aria about this case. The details are long and complicated, and reflect no credit whatever on anybody concerned. with the exceptions of Mr. Barber and Mr. Hale. Mr. Barber, Mr. Hale told us, is a distinguished gyne- cologist, who has worked as a consultant in Oldham since before the war. Mr. Barber, in an action for wrongful dismissal against the Man- chester Hospitals Board, was awarded £7.000 damages. The circumstances of his dismissal +vere and are murky in the extreme; they began with his being offered (nearly two years after the Man- chester Regional Board became his employers when the Health Service came into operation) an appointment for a number of 'sessions' that would have meant a salary substantially less than he had been getting when he was employed by the hos- pital as such. After being peremptorily told to accept or reject the offer forthwith, Mr. Barber appealed to the Minister of Health (then Mr. Bevan). Mr. Bevan, to check the facts, had to apply to Dr. Marshall, Administrative Secretary of the Board (who did not, even at that stage, appear to be the most impartial quarter to obtain informa- tion from); Dr. Marshall replied that, among other things, Mr. Barber was being offered more 'ses- sions' than before, which was quite untrue. (Mr. Justice Barry, in his judgment on Mr. Barber's successful case, described this statement as 'inex- plicable.') The Board then wrote and asked Mr. Barber for a refund of £750 which they said they had paid him, but to which they claimed he was not entitled. He agreed to pay. Then they asked him for a further £185, saying they had found he was getting board and lodging from the hospital (which they must have long known). He paid.

But that is nothing. All this while, without Mr.

Barber being interviewed or informed by them, the Oldham Police had been making inquiries about him. Allegations were made, and these were passed

on to the Board, without Mr. Barber being in- formed of their nature. The Board appointed a

Disciplinary Committee to sit in judgment on Mr. Barber, and when they appointed a panel to

examine the allegations Mr. Barber was at last informed, and told that the hearing would be less than a fortnight away, that he could only appear on the second day of it, and that he could be accompanied by not more than one selected medi- cal companion. The character of the allegations against him may be gauged from the fact that the only one mentioned in detail accused him of not disclosing on a death certificate that he had per- formed an operation. He pointed to the death certificate in question, on which he had written 'Caesarean section.' The panel apologised, saying that no doubt the police had not understood what the words meant. Additional allegations of clinical incompetence were not mentioned, and when he sought to raise them, that he might vindicate him- self, he was told that the panel was not concerned with them at all.

The panel's report 'acquitted' Mr. Barber, dis- missing some charges as frivolous and others as malicious, but the information was withheld from him. It seems that the Disciplinary Committee it- self, which had appointed the panel, did not even get a copy of its report. Nevertheless, they decided to place another gynaecologist above Mr. Barber. As Mr. Justice Barry said, 'in effect he was con- demned and sentenced unheard.' (Indeed, a letter was written to Mr. Barber which actually sug- gested that the panel had found against him.) A contract was offered to Mr. Barber, and he was told that if he did not sign he would be dismissed. The Disciplinary Committee was told (again by the ubiquitous Dr. Marshall) that Mr. Barber had been 'secretive and resentful and unco-operative.' Mr. Barber was dismissed. He was refused the right of appeal against the dismissal on the grounds that he had no contract! (It was under this absence of contract that he had repaid £935.) Mr. Barber sued, and won.

After the case, the Minister told the Board that they had 'a moral obligation' to re-employ Mr. Barber. He was told that he could not be appointed unless there was a vacancy. Two vacancies occurred. In the first, Mr. Barber's name was not `short-listed'; by an ingenious form of words de- vised by the Board, this ruled Mr. Barber out. (The moral obligation was only to weigh if he were put forward by the Advisory Committee as of equal merit with other applicants.) In the second, he was short-listed. But then the Committee were told, some of them for the first time, about the !moral obligation' and it was pointed out that if his name were to be 'short-listed' he would inevitably have to be appointed because of it, which would be unfair to the other applicants. Mr. Barber's name was then deleted!

Mr. Hale, that do-it-yourself Ombudsman, pur- sued it doggedly in and out of Parliament. One of the most extraordinary episodes took place, oddly enough, in the House of Lords, when somebody calling himself the Earl of Onslow, who is the High Steward of Guildford, among other things, gave a reply to a question on the subject by Lord Winterton. In this reply, as Mr. Hale pointed out, there was not a single word of truth; it included four separate major false statements (that Mr.

Barber's hospital was a voluntary one, that he had a large private practice, that the £7,000 damages had been tax-free, and that he had won his case by the production of a mysterious lost letter). Now I think we can exclude the possibility that the Earl of Onslow was deceiving their Lordships; 1 don't suppose for a moment that he had ever heard of the case when he got up to read the answer with which he had been supplied, and indeed I don't suppose he knows where Oldham is, or what the National Health Service is, or how you spell `gynaecologist.' But if this incident indicates, as it seems to, that the permanent officials at the Minis- try of Health are getting like those at the Home Office, something ought to be done about it.

The Minister of Health's final reply to Mr. Hale was guarded, but does appear to mean that the eleven-year series of injustices perpetrated upon Mr. Barber is at last to end. I hope so. If Parlia- ment does not exist to stop the Manchester Hos- pitals Board behaving as it has behaved, I do not know what Parliament does exist for. Certainly it does not exist in order to exempt (or refrain from exempting) parking-meters from income-tax. Or perhaps it does? If it does, so much the worse for Mr. Barber, and you, and me, and all of us. And Parliament.

TAPER