Not many. The government front bench looked sicker and sicker as the speech went on…. His jokes were in bad taste. I felt slightly sick. In the aftermath, Bevan made another misjudged appearance in front of the PLP to justify his actions. And this of course was greeted with derision. In that way he still has time on his side. What is he going to do with it? You are commenting using your WordPress.
You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Blog at WordPress. We have to adjust our paper figures to physical realities, and that is what the Exchequer has not done.
May I be permitted, in passing, now that I enjoy comparative freedom, to give a word of advice to my colleagues in the Government?
Take economic planning away from the Treasury. They know nothing about it. The great difficulty with the Treasury is that they think they move men about when they move pieces of paper about.
It has been perfectly obvious on several occasions that there are too many economists advising the Treasury, and now we have the added misfortune of having an economist in the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself. I therefore seriously suggest to the Government that they should set up a production department and put the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the position where he ought to be now under modern planning, that is, with the function of making an annual statement of accounts.
Then we should have some realism in the Budget. We should not be pushing out figures when the facts are going in the opposite direction. I want to come for a short while, because I do not wish to try the patience of the House, to the narrower issue.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer astonished me when he said that his Budget was coming to the rescue of the fixed income groups. Well, it has come to the rescue of the fixed income groups over 70 years of age, but not below. The fixed income groups in our modem social services are the victims of this kind of finance. Everybody possessing property gets richer. Property is appreciating all the time, and it is well known that there are large numbers of British citizens living normally out of the appreciated values of their own property.
The fiscal measures of the Chancellor of the Exchequer do not touch them at all. I listened to the Chancellor of the Exchequer with very great admiration. It was one of the cleverest Budget speeches I had ever heard in my life. There was a passage towards the end in which he said that he was now coming to a complicated and technical matter and that if Members wished to they could go to sleep.
They did. Of course I know that in the same Budget speech the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that he had already taken account of it as savings. Of course he had, so that the rearmament of Great Britain is financed out of the contributions that the workers have paid into the Fund in order to protect themselves. Certainly, that is the meaning of it.
It is no good my hon. Friends refusing to face these matters. He said so, and he is right. Do not deny that he is right. I am saying he is right. Do not quarrel with me when I agree with him. The conclusion is as follows. At a time when there are still large untapped sources of wealth in Great Britain, a Socialist Chancellor of the Exchequer uses the Insurance Fund, contributed for the purpose of maintaining the social services, as his source of revenue, and I say that is not Socialist finance.
Go to that source for revenue when no other source remains, but no one can say that there are no other sources of revenue in Great Britain except the Insurance Fund. I now come to the National Health Service side of the matter.
Let me say to my hon. Friends on these benches: you have been saying in the last fortnight or three weeks that I have been quarrelling about a triviality — spectacles and dentures. You may call it a triviality. I remember the triviality that started an avalanche in I remember it very well, and perhaps my hon.
Friends would not mind me recounting it. There was a trade union group meeting upstairs. I was a member of ft and went along. But I had more credulity in those days than I have got now. So I went along, and the first subject was an attack on the seasonal workers. That was the first order. I opposed it bitterly, and when I came out of the room my good old friend George Lansbury attacked me for attacking the order.
Once you start this there is no logical stopping point. Or are you next year going to take your stand on the upper denture? The lower half apparently does not matter, but the top half is sacrosanct. Is that right? If my hon. Friends are asked questions at meetings about what they will do next year, what will they say?
The Chancellor of the Exchequer is putting a financial ceiling on the Health Service. With rising prices the Health Service is squeezed between that artificial figure and rising prices. What is to be squeezed out next year? When that has been squeezed out and the same principle holds good, what do you squeeze out the year after?
Hospital charges? Where do you stop? I have been accused of having agreed to a charge on prescriptions. That shows the danger of compromise. Because if it is pleaded against me that I agreed to the modification of the Health Service, then what will be pleaded against my right hon.
Friends next year, and indeed what answer will they have if the vandals opposite come in? What answer? The Health Service will be like Lavinia — all the limbs cut off and eventually her tongue cut out, too. I should like to ask my Right hon. I said, "George, you do not realise, this is the beginning of the end. Once you start this there is no logical stopping point. Or are you next year going to take your stand on the upper denture?
The lower half apparently does not matter, but the top half is sacrosanct. Is that right? If my hon. Friends are asked questions at meetings about what they will do next year, what will they say? The Chancellor of the Exchequer is putting a financial ceiling on the Health Service. With rising prices the Health Service is squeezed between that artificial figure and rising prices.
What is to be squeezed out next year? Is it the upper half? When that has been squeezed out and the same principle holds good, what do you squeeze out the year after? Hospital charges?
Where do you stop? I have been accused of 42 having agreed to a charge on prescriptions. That shows the danger of compromise. Because if it is pleaded against me that I agreed to the modification of the Health Service, then what will be pleaded against my right hon. Friends next year, and indeed what answer will they have if the vandals opposite come in? What answer? The Health Service will be like Lavinia—all the limbs cut off and eventually her tongue cut out, too.
I should like to ask my right hon. Friends, where are they going? I am where I always was. Those who live their lives in mountainous and rugged countries are always afraid of avalanches, and they know that avalanches start with the movement of a very small stone.
First, the stone starts on a ridge between two valleys—one valley desolate and the other valley populous. The pebble starts, but nobody bothers about the pebble until it gains way, and soon the whole valley is overwhelmed. That is how the avalanche starts, that is the logic of the present situation, and that is the logic my right hon.
Friends cannot escape. Why, therefore, has it been done in this way? After all, the National Health Service was something of which we were all very proud, and even the Opposition were beginning to be proud of it.
It only had to last a few more years to become a part of our traditions, and then the traditionalists would have claimed the credit for all of it.
Why should we throw it away? In the Chancellor's Speech there was not one word of commendation for the Health Service—not one word. What is responsible for that? Why has the cut been made? That is the arithmetic of Bedlam. Has the A. What is the cause of it? Why has it been done? I have also been accused—and I think I am entitled to answer it—that I had already agreed to a certain charge.
I 43 speak to my right hon. Friends very frankly here. It seems to me sometimes that it is so difficult to make them see what lies ahead that you have to take them along by the hand and show them.
The prescription charge I knew would never be made, because it was impracticable. I will tell my hon. Friends something else, too. There was another policy—there was a proposed reduction of 25, on the housing programme, was there not?
It was never made. I say, therefore, to my right hon. Friends, there is no justification for taking this line at all. There is no justification in the arithmetic, there is less justification in the economics, and I beg my right hon. Friends to change their minds about it. I say this, in conclusion. There is only one hope for mankind—and that is democratic Socialism. There is only one party in Great Britain which can do it—and that is the Labour Party. But I ask them carefully to consider how far they are polluting the stream.
We have gone a long way—a very long way—against great difficulties. Do not let us change direction now.
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