ANOTHER VOICE
The NHS makes me wonder whether I'll ever be a proper Tory
MATTHEW PARRIS
Wby don't you go private?' My sec- retary had a point. She and I had found two plastic chairs together in the rather shabby Accident & Emergency waiting-room at St Thomas's hospital in London. I had just been told that the wait would be three or four hours, so Eileen, who is 67, had carted our in-tray and her shorthand notebook over the Thames from where I work at Westminster.
She also brought my laptop computer so that I could make a start on an article with which I was late, but when I plugged into the nearest wall-socket an apologetic nurse told me it was forbidden to plug private appliances into government mains. This is the NHS,' she said. There was a television on the wall and a Coke machine, if you wanted something to do.
Useless to argue, to tender payment for the few pence-worth of electricity used. She had her orders and was perfectly polite. All the staff sounded capable, human and help- ful, but they were working under pressure.
But so was I, and that was Eileen's point. This was supposed to be a working day. I had returned that morning from a weekend with my parents in Spain. During the flight from Barcelona I had realised that the acci- dent which befell me the previous after- noon, as my sister tried to teach me to ski, was more serious than had seemed. The internal wrench when I flew headlong into a snowy bank had been a rib cracking. Returning to Britain. it did make sense for me to see a doctor straight away.
So why did I not go private? This waiting- room with scalded waiters and punched drunks made no sense. To spend an after- noon at St Thomas's robbed me (and my Times readers) of the parliamentary sketch for that day. No doubt my readers would bear up bravely, but for me the loss was real: the fun of doing it, and the fee too. I am freelance. A Commons sketch would have more than paid for a private consulta- tion. I asked the nurse whether I could return in three hours when I would be clos- er to the head of the queue. The answer was no. Once registered one had to stay, and if anyone left they would be struck from the list and have to start again.
So there we all were, a slowly altering crew — at any one time about 50 souls of all ages, some bandaged, some cheerful, some mad, some bad, some in great pain, some with heads bowed, all waiting for half a day. Eileen was right: it would have been better to buy my way out of this. And not only for my own sake, To pay for my own treatment would shorten the queue for those who could not afford to. Why should the comparatively rich grab a share of scarce NHS resources? Would we think someone the more virtuous for keeping a council flat when he could afford a house, thus denying it to someone whose need was greater?
Yet ever since I was in politics myself, the idea of going private for medical treatment has seemed wrong, and still does. Why? Please accept that I could not possibly justi- fy this in moral logic. I am a Conservative. I believe in the market, in private choice. I am not sorry that some people should become richer than others, or be able to afford better styles of life. These inequali- ties are necessary for a free society and economy to function. I had had absolutely no compunction, that weekend, about being able to afford to fly to the Pyrenees though many of my countrymen cannot. A single man, it troubles me not at all that I occupy a whole house in Derbyshire and a big flat in London, or that I can afford to eat out most nights; all these are luxuries denied the vast majority of fellow citizens.
Nor is it only a question of luxuries. The 'safety-net' principle — that necessities should be available to all, but luxuries afforded only to those who have the money — is a fine principle for those who know how to make the distinction, but I cannot claim to hold to it. God — and good health — willing, I hope to have a splendid time in retirement, wining and dining friends and travelling where I choose. I know very well that millions of fellow pensioners will by contrast lead cramped, constricted lives, perhaps in ghastly nursing homes. Money laid aside now may buy me out of that fate, and I will willingly and with a clear con- science salt away what I can, and live better than others when the time comes. This does 'There appewx to be not-very-intelligent life on Earth.' not trouble me. I am positively looking for- ward to it.
It's just this business about health, Only about education am I similarly troubled. These two, and only these two, seem somehow different from every other public service, yet I honestly cannot say why. If I had children, and the state schools in our catchment area seemed inadequate, I would do as the Prime Minister has done: one way or another, and with a cheque book if necessary, I would get them some- thing better, but my conscience would never be easy about it, though I would try vainly to justify the transgression by saying it was not for myself but for others that I had acted.
With my own health that excuse is not available — though I would certainly pay for private treatment for my parents. Is it, then, just meanness towards oneself? Does a small voice whisper that, in fact, the NHS is perfectly adequate and since one has paid for it one might as well get some return on one's taxes? Yes, that voice is there, but on Monday it should have told me to pay for an immediate private consultation rather than lose a day's work and pay; but no, when Eileen scolded, 'Why don't you go private?' I felt embarrassed that the injured ambulanceman beside me had heard.
And so I stayed. After more than four hours, when it was too late to write about the Commons, a doctor did see me, con- firmed that the rib was broken, said no, there was no point in an X-ray, the rib will heal itself in a few weeks — and, here, take these pain-killers. It took four minutes. I briefly contemplated complaining that this could have been better organised, and didn't they realise I was a busy man? But then I thought, 'What if the scalded waiters hear me?', and felt ashamed, which was also stupid because, if a good argument does exist for forcing the educated classes to use state provision, it is that we will indeed make a fuss, and insist on improvement. So I had failed even to throw my weight around: the one service I could render.
I retired to bed with a broken rib, an aching chest, a small hole in my bank bal- ance, and no iota of good done for the scalded waiters. I shall never be a proper Tory.
Matthew Parris is parliamentary sketchwriter and a columnist of the Times.
Previous page
