The Health Service Charges
On Monday Mr. Bevan explained a resignation which was understbod to be based in the first instance on his objection to the imposition on Health Service patients of a charge represent- ing half the cost of spectacles and dentures. On Tuesday the House of Commons gave a Bill providing for this charge a Second Reading without a division. There is, in fact, every ground for imposing now a charge which ought to have been imposed from the first. Expenditure on the Health Service has gone up and up. The original estimate of the cost of the service in Great Britain and Ireland for 1949-50 was £259,727,600 ; it had to be revised to £358,457,000. The estimate for 1950-51 was £392,935,000. The Chancellor now insists, and none too soon, that this year's estimates shall be kept to £400,000,000 —that in itself being an increase of £7,000,000 over last year— and that if additional expenditure is needed in one field it must be provided by economies in another. The expenditure is most urgently needed on hospitals, where the cost of everything— sheets and blankets, drugs, dressings, food—has risen, and on urgently .needed provision for tuberculosis treatment. It has been concluded that the fairest way to make accounts balance at £400 millions is to impose this half-charge on dentures and spectacles. The shilling on prescriptions would have been an alternative, but after Mr. Aneurin Bevan had in December, 1949, advocated the imposition of that charge, and then explained last Monday that he only did that because he knew it was impracti- cable—a manoeuvre which a Labour member described as lead- ing the House up the garden path—that particular expedient was not in favour. The £400 million ceiling on National Health Service costs can only be criticised on the ground that it is too high in the present state of the country's finances.
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