Mr John Baird: Why not?
Mr John Baird: If dentists are to be encouraged to take these post-graduate courses, they should not be forced to lose money by doing so.
Mr John Baird: I wish to refer to one or two of the recommendations in the Report. Recommendation No. 1 refers to the problems of attracting general dental practitioners in the areas where there is a shortage. The Minister must know that when we were discussing the Health Service there was a plan to put doctors on basic salaries as well as capitation fees. May the question be looked at again from the point...
Mr John Baird: That information would be useful. A lot of work might be involved in obtaining it, but it could be got because the relevant forms ask the date of birth of each child. I am not suggesting that it is a perfect scheme, and that all children's teeth are treated in this way. Suffice it to say that about 40 per cent, of my patients are school children and that this average is fairly common among...
Mr John Baird: In which case, why is there no evidence in the Committee's Report about an interview with members of the professional staff?
Mr John Baird: I will not persist with this point and I accept the hon. Member's word. I raised this matter only because I was approached by a considerable number, more than three or four, members of the professional staff, who informed me that they wanted to go to London to give evidence.
Mr John Baird: I did not communicate with the hon. Member, but I did with one of the members of the Committee. I thought that I was doing my part in doing that. However, since the hon. Member has made it clear that he went to the rooms of some members of the professional staff and discussed matters with them, I withdraw my remarks on this aspect. Whatever the Report says about the Dental Estimates Board I...
Mr John Baird: I do not know whether I understood my hon. Friend correctly, but was he suggesting that medical auxiliaries should have overtime? I believe, as all good trade unionists should, that we have to push up the basic wage and do without overtime.
Mr John Baird: I have listened to most of this debate. Hon. Members on both sides have made some very valuable points—points about local problems and points of administration, but apart from my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock (Miss Lee), I do not think that anyone has dealt with the fundamentals of the scheme as we have it today and as we introduced it in 1948. I have been in the House of Commons...
Mr John Baird: The hon. Gentleman is quite right in saying that the Select Committee has made that recommendation, but I made it ten years ago. I have been making it ever since, and I shall go on making it until it is adopted. There is the question of salaries. We hear a Tot about Tory planning working. In June last year, the Ministry cut dental incomes by between 15 per cent. and 20 per cent. gross. The...
Mr John Baird: All I can say is that between twenty and thirty dental members are employed on salary at the Board and, to the best of my knowledge, not one of them has been interviewed. I asked certain members of the Select Committee that some of these people should be allowed to give evidence, even in London, but I do not think that anyone was invited. Administrative members of the staff may have been...
Mr John Baird: Can the right hon. Gentleman give figures for private and amenity beds?
Mr John Baird: asked the Minister of Health if he is satisfied that the number of hospital beds for maternity cases in Wolverhampton is adequate; and if he will make a statement on the steps he is taking to improve the situation.
Mr John Baird: Do I take it that these are all maternity beds?
Mr John Baird: asked the Minister of Health if a limb fitting centre will be included in the reconstructed New Cross Hospital, Wolverhampton.
Mr John Baird: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that if this centre is closed the poor people who use it—mostly cripples—will have to travel a journey of one hour each way to the otherwise nearest centre? Will he consult his right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) who must understand this problem, and see that representations are made to the effect that the present...
Mr John Baird: I wish tonight to raise a matter which looked, at first, as if it were a purely local one, but which might be the thin edge of the wedge as far as all councils with Labour majorities are concerned. It is the refusal of the Minister to grant a dispensation to council house tenants and aldermen in my area of Wolverhampton to vote on a housing question. This has arisen because of a legal...
Mr John Baird: Who, then, sent the letter to the Town Clerk of Wolverhampton refusing the dispensation?
Mr John Baird: Is it not a fact that in one of the wards to which I referred, a ward of about 15,000 people, all the councillors are council tenants?
Mr John Baird: asked the Minister of Health what are the salaries now being paid to physiotherapists in the National Health Service.
