Sodalities
THE DEPARTURE of Lord Windlesham from the Home Office to the Northern Ireland Department creates a rather serious hiatus in social services provision by the Government. It will be remembered that, whn the Conservative Party's oppositiondated report on the voluntary social services had finally been through the mill of Lord dellicoe's inter-departmental committee, a series of policy proposals emerged, which were announced by the Prime Minister himself. Apart from more money for the voluntary social services a new appointment was made: Windlesham was to co-ordinate departmental efforts and become, in effect, the minister in charge of the voluntary services. If the Prime Minister has not yet made up his mind what to do, I have several considerations to put before him. First, David Windlesham's advantage was not merely his ability but his position in the House of Lords, which enabled him to give time to voluntary service among his other concerns. It might, therefore, be tempting to put another Lord in his place. This would, however, overlook the abilities of the new Commons Minister of State at the Home Office, Mark Carlisle, a man of immense ability, and in the same mould as Windlesham: Carlisle must look like the best bet for the job. Second, and on the other hand, it never looked like a very good idea to have a Home Office minister in charge of co-ordination. Why not a DHSS minister? It has always been a difficulty that Michael Alison and Paul Dean have had their responsibilities so clearly and radically separated between health and social security and that Lord Aberdare, the Minister of State in the Lords has been essentially concerned with health matters. It might make sense to have another generalist at the department.
GORDON CAMPBELL, the Secretary of State for Scotland, has made a statement about the progress of the hospital building programme in Scotland. In essence, this depends on the major construction programme announced in April 1970, supplemented by extensions announced last June. Some of the larger schemes require a planning period of four or five years and, since this was not fully realised early enough, the programme has had to be extended in time. Even so, some of the most important work will not begin until towards the end of this decade. In other words, the process by which hospital construction programmes become so elongated in terms of time and resources that it is virtually impossible to interrupt them or re-think the programme is being intensified. Yet there is no evidence that anybody has given serious thought to the general place of the hospital in medical care since Enoch Powell laid down — wrongly in my view — the basis of the present process several years ago. It really becomes very important now to state and restate, assert and reassert, that the general hospital is not, either in ordinary or in medical logic, the centre-piece of medical care that it has been accepted, by politicians, as being.
Custos
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