Dr Edith Summerskill: In view of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's very disappointing reply, will he recall my suggestion when he made his first announcement that facilities in the clinics should be made available to workers during lunch hours. Having regard to the fact that each person wants three injections, unless these facilities are made available it is difficult for people to go to their doctors at...
Dr Edith Summerskill: Can the hon. Lady tell us more about these long waiting lists? This has been going on for years. Is it due to the shortage of specialists in certain fields? What are these fields? If that is so, is it proposed to increase the establishment?
Dr Edith Summerskill: I have never asked the Minister or his Parliamentary Secretary to visit an institution before, but I ask one of them to visit the maternity department of the North Middlesex Hospital, which consists of two prefabricated huts that were placed there during the First World War. I ask the Minister to go there. Despite the fact that there is a lavish out-patient department, which was opened by...
Dr Edith Summerskill: I beg to move, in page 11, line 17, after "apply", to insert: when the order is made for a cause or complaint mentioned in paragraphs (h) or (i) of subsection (1) of section one of this Act. or I recall the learned Solicitor-General saying in Committee that his mind would remain open. So far as I can see, it has remained open since the Committee stage but has now been obstinately closed. I...
Dr Edith Summerskill: The right hon. Gentleman did not hear what I said. The Amendment has nothing to do with the court dividing the man's wages to provide a housekeeping allowance. It is quite clear. It would provide that, the order having been made and the man and wife having come together again, the order as it stands should be allowed to remain in operation so that the marriage may be stabilised. This would...
Dr Edith Summerskill: I think that my hon. Friend suggested that I was exaggerating. Before he concludes, I should like to tell him that I was guilty not of exaggerating but of under-statement. In 1958, 24,000 applications were made in separation and maintenance cases.
Dr Edith Summerskill: This is an important matter. Did I understand the Minister to say that a regional hospital board can make a decision in favour of these visits but that a doctor can refuse only in a specific case? Can a doctor refuse to have a spiritual healer attending any of his cases on the ground of principle?
Dr Edith Summerskill: If I cannot appeal to the Minister on the moral issue, may I put another consideration to him? I am glad that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is here and I hope that he will be sympathetic on this issue. The Financial Secretary, in another rôle, asked married women to go back to teach in schools. The need for women teachers is very great, as is the need for women doctors in clinics. From...
Dr Edith Summerskill: I wish to say only a very few words in support of what my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Exchange (Mr. W. Griffiths) has said. I am quite sure that the House is grateful to him for raising this matter. We are all jealous of the reputation of the National Health Service, and only in this way can we ventilate these problems. I want to raise two points. Rumblings of discontent from...
Dr Edith Summerskill: I support what has been said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Ness Edwards). There is surely an anomalous position here. During the war the late Mr. Ernest Bevin equated certain men in industry with men in the Armed Forces by saying that if they were prepared to do certain jobs they would be exempt from military service. My right hon. Friend has mentioned the miners....
Dr Edith Summerskill: In view of the fact that the most eminent authorities attribute the increase in leukaemia to fallout, would the right hon. and learned Gentleman consider, in order that we should have full statistics, making leukaemia a disease compulsorily to be registered by doctors?
Dr Edith Summerskill: May I ask whether the right hon. and learned Gentleman's scientific advisers reject the view held by scientists in America that certain lipsticks have carcinogenic properties?
Dr Edith Summerskill: I must press the Minister—
Dr Edith Summerskill: asked the Minister of Health whether he is aware that domiciliary midwives are on call 123 hours a week for a weekly salary of £12; and whether he will take immediate action to improve these conditions
Dr Edith Summerskill: Surely the right hon. and learned Gentleman does not dissent from the appalling figures which I have given? Surely he should make representations to the Whitley Council? Is he aware that a refuse collector is paid £10 6s. per week for a 44-hour week, and that from next Monday his working week will be reduced to 42 hours? I do not grudge the refuse collector that pay, but, in the light of...
Dr Edith Summerskill: In considering this matter, will the Minister remember that it is more economical for a general practitioner to use the domiciliary consultative service and pay a fee of something like four guineas or five guineas than to send patients into hospital where the charge for maintenance would be about twenty guineas a week?
Dr Edith Summerskill: In the event of a consultant not attending a clinic, is a deduction made in his remuneration?
Dr Edith Summerskill: I have listened very carefully to what the Minister has said and I think that he has proved to the House that he has done his very best to persuade speech therapists to come into the Bill. I asked him whether at the eleventh hour he would try again, as on the first occasion he had laryngitis and perhaps could not bring sufficient pressure to bear upon them. I must confess that if I had not...
Dr Edith Summerskill: I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for meeting apprehensions expressed by Members on both sides lest the fee to be charged would be too great a strain on the members of the supplementary professions. He has met the wishes of everybody who spoke on that matter. The members of these professions should not feel that what they are being asked to contribute is in any sense a strain on...
Dr Edith Summerskill: Again, the right hon. and learned Gentleman has devised a form of words which will meet the requests made to him from both sides in Committee. At first sight, it must seem curious to anyone who has not considered the matter that any member of a supplementary profession should be put on a register without any training, but under these peculiar circumstances we decided that there were people...
