15 JUNE 1944, Page 2

Proposals by Doctors

Letters in The Times this week on a National Health Service, from Sir Alfred Webb-Johnson on Tuesday and Lord Dawson of Penn on Wednesday, contain some reasonable criticism to which the Minister of Health should, and no doubt will, give serious considera- tion—as well as some not so reasonable. Temperate discussion is likely to do as much to improve the Health Service plan as it has done the Education Bill, and the White Paper has been issued for the express purpose of eliciting instructed comments on its pro- visions. Sir Alfred Webb-Johnson urges that the new advisory committee at the centre shall include some members chosen by the medical profession and not consist solely of nominees of the Minister ; that should be quite feasible. His protest against the proposal to refuse public patients to a doctor desiring to practise in a " fully-doctored " area is less reasonable; there is as good ground for checking an excess of medical competition in this way when other districts need doctors, as there is for refusing to admit new indus- tries to fully industrialised areas as the Barlow Committee proposes. Among Lord Dawson's proposals the suggestion that for purposes of health service organisation should be divided into much fewer and larger areas than the White Paper contemplates has Much to commend it—quite enough, at any rate, to entitle it to respectful consideration—but if Lord Dawson wants his " regional council . . .

composed of representatives of local authorities, voluntary hospitals, doctors and ancillary services " to have the power to take decisions involving the expenditure of public money he raises a real difficulty, for that power can vest only in directly elected representatives of the ratepayers or taxpayers. All proposals for revision of the White Paper plan, moreover, must take account of the fact that a National Health Service is only part of a larger Social Service Scheme, with one uniform contribution and uniform benefits. That leaves no room for restriction of the Health Service to persons under a certain income-limit, or for the introduction of the scheme by degrees. Further emphasis of the Government's decisions on such fundamental points by the Minister of Health on some appropriate occasion would be useful.