Lord Horder on Medicine and "The State"
1948-06 1948 1940s 3 pages : illustrations LORD HORDER on MEDICINE AND "THE STATE" Lord Horder's speech at our Members' Luncheon on 20th May was very widely quoted in the Press. These words will live: I predict that the domination of Medicine by the State will p...
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| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
| Language: | English English |
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London : The Society for Individual Freedom
June 1948
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/1779F183-9314-45A6-A257-730BCDAECD85 http://hdl.handle.net/10796/23577E0B-AD84-4C36-A751-84115B0479AB |
| Summary: | 1948-06
1948
1940s
3 pages : illustrations
LORD HORDER on MEDICINE AND "THE STATE" Lord Horder's speech at our Members' Luncheon on 20th May was very widely quoted in the Press. These words will live: I predict that the domination of Medicine by the State will prove a greater disaster to the citizen than was its domination by the Church in the middle ages — greater, because at least the Church was cultured, and itself fostered some medical lore of an empirical sort, whereas now we have this sudden impact of a crude and amateur group, whose activities are wholly political and doctrinaire, upon the art and science of medicine, with its centuries of slow development and with its close dependence for progress upon personal initiative and selective institutions. Up till a few weeks ago we had the ball at our feet (and I can tell you from my own observation, that the Minister's anxiety was very great after the first plebiscite) then someone passed the ball to the other side — who, I cannot say. We have not won this fight, but we have not lost it. I propose to persist in fighting. This is not a Party matter. It was the Minister's conscience that stung him into saying we were engaged in a "squalid political conspiracy." I myself sit on the cross benches. If a Tory Government attempted to dominate medicine I should oppose it just as vehemently in the public interest. No, the issue is not political. It is, as someone has said, religious rather than political, for Christianity respects the individual, totalitarianism respects the State. I can understand the sentiment which inspired a French philosopher to say, "I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it." What is the present position? I fear it is that few people will "resist the temptation of safety at the price of freedom"; most are "willing to sacrifice their liberty for security." I am inclined to repeat Benjamin Franklin's phrase that "those who can give up essential liberty to purchase a tittle temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." We have been outwitted (I hope only for a time) by a political manoeuvre. We have been given some assurances — only verbal so far — that we shall not lose our liberty all at once. But that is exactly what a great thinker warned us about: "It is seldom," said David Hume, "that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." I am tired of pointing out that so long as the Minister of Health possesses such tremendous powers he can turn the screw both on the economic and on the administrative side of the machine that he is constructing, until the doctors' freedom and the freedom of Medicine to progress are entirely lost. On this matter nothing has been yielded so far. The extent of the Minister's powers made even the Socialist Lord Chancellor gasp: "I concede at once," said Lord Jowitt during the House of Lords debate on the second reading, "that the Minister of Health under this Bill does have very great powers. He is in the position of a Commander-in-Chief planning a campaign ... it is inevitable that he should ... see that the administration is as he desires it." Later in his speech Lord Jowitt said, "one cannot imagine a system under which the Commander-in-Chief has not the absolute right to give such instructions as he thinks the situation demands." As a legal friend of mine puts it, "This, the absolute power of the Minister, runs like a thread throughout the whole Act. The actual provision in the Act (Section 75) is that regulations made under the Act shall be laid before Parliament immediately after they are made, and if either House of Parliament, within 40 days, resolves that the regulations be annulled, the regulations shall cease to have effect, but without prejudice to anything previously done thereunder or to the making of new regulations." This provision. though a theoretical safeguard, is in practice of little avail. I emphasised in the House of Lords debate the danger of "this tremendous centralisation of power in the Minister" as the greatest obstacle to a proper understanding between the Medical Profession and the Minister. The Minister takes over all hospitals and their funds. In addition, of the 41 members of the Central Council 35 are appointed by the Minister: the Minister will appoint the Regional Hospital Boards; the Hospital Management Committees will be appointed by the Chairman of the Regional Hospital Boards; the Board of Governors of a Teaching Hospital and the members of the Board of Governors will be appointed by the Minister and, as if that did not give him sufficient power, there is the further provision that the Minister may make regulations relating to the appointment, tenure of office, etc., of these various Councils, Boards and Committees — which means that he can alter the provisions practically as he pleases — and he is empowered to authorise payment to the members of any Boards and Committees not only for loss of remunerative time and travelling expenses but also for subsistence expenses. With such a strangle-hold still in the Minister's hands I cannot agree that we have, as some are now saying, won a great victory. I am reminded of the verse we learnt as children: And everybody praised the Duke, Who this great fight did win, "But what good came of it at last?" Quoth little Peterkin. " What? that I cannot tell," said he, "But 'twas a famous victory." Is there in the minds of those of my colleagues who think the position secure, or secure enough to sign on the dotted line, the idea that the Government has changed its intention to nationalise medicine? Has Mr. Bevan really decided never "to pluck the fruit" which he told the House of Commons was "not yet ripe?" The Socialist Party's ultimate aim remains as it was defined in its official brochure: "It is necessary that the Medical Profession should be organised as a national full-time salaried service." When the Minister of Defence and the then Chancellor of the Exchequer made it clear that the Cabinet stood behind the Minister of Health in his effort to dragoon the doctors, they were followed by Sir Stafford Cripps, whose support took a more sinister form. With the doctors in mind he said: "It is essential that we should get general agreement among our people to act on sound economic lines; the alternative is likely to be some form of totalitarian Government. This deplorable development. so contrary to our national Page Two
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