Nothing has surprised me more in the last fortnight than
the failure of the publication of the National Health Service Bill to produce any sign of the public controversy that was confidently threatened while the Bill was still pending. I should have assumed that The Times office would have been submerged under a flood of letters from interested readers holding one view or the other, but unless there has been suppression on an abnormal scale, it is clear that nothing of the sort has happened. The Lancet has given a qualified blessing to the Bill ; the British Medical Journal has criticised it in surprisingly mild language ; various non-medical papers have published a few letters for and against. Dr. Charles Hill, the secretary of the B.M.A., is crusading up and down the country among the doctors, but, I gather, by no means carrying them all with him. Altogether it looks as though there is a reasonable hope that what ought to happen—viz., sober discussion by respon- sible persons anxious to amend the Bill rather than destroy it—has, in fact, a fair chance of happening. It is a great pity that the Conservative Party, by putting down a motion for the rejection of the measure, seems determined to make a party issue of it. Con- servatives will have a good many quotations from the Coalition•White Paper on the subject to explain away.
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