WELFARE STATE

Parliament

The Tory social conscience

Tom Stuttaford MP

The present malaise from which the House of Commons is suffering is easy to define. A mass of legislation, and in particular the prodigious Eurolump, has sorely tested Parliament's powers of digestion. So far they have not been found wanting, although there is a mounting feeling amongst members of both parties that life is not all that it should be. Symptoms of weariness, frustration, short temper and paranoia have in recent weeks become apparent to the most amateur psychiatrist.

The Conservative Party, responding to the customary call for loyalty, has supported the Government and the Whips in the lobbies day after day, as well as night after night, manfully recording majorities for legislation for which all but the most ardent pro-European has long since lost enthusiasm or anti-Marketear his implacable hostility. Symptomatic of Parliament's mood was the bipartisan ribaldry which greeted the untimely announcement of celebrations to greet the fact of British entry on January 1, 1973. So might a victim of the Spanish Inquisition have greeted Torquemada's announcement that his release was at hand.

The Whips' Office, adept at spotting enough blue in the sky to make a sailorsuit, can only go on forecasting sunny weather to come, mistaking the excitement or a close-run division as enthusiasm for an amendmcrit on which the vote :las just been taken. In fact a good 80 per cent of those who have just voted have only the haziest notion of the implications of the amendment while fewer than 10 per cent even entered the Chamber. The future of the Congregational and Presbyterian Churches attracted a greater following at one in the morning than the European Communities Bill at a civilised hour earlier in the same evening. The enthusiasm of a close-run division is of course really the natural elation of backing a winner. There is no more attachment to, or interest in, the horse itself than that of a punter in the Members' Enclosure in the nag carrying his last fiver in the 3.30 at Ascot.

As anxieties have increasingly centred on prices and incomes, the pound sterling, the industrial and labour scene, and as Cie Tory dream of a property-owning democracy has instead conjured the nightmare of a property-profiteering plutocracy, there has been an anxious panning for gold among the detritus. And the party managers have discovered a nugget.

That previously overlooked, even despised, orphan of the Conservative Party conscience, the social services record, is being invited to come in from the cold. There is a feeling that, orphan or not, there may be some rich influential relations lurking in the background. And, who knows, a well-publicised example of chairty beginning at home may help to counter malicious gossip.

Now that the jubilant cries of 'Tory Radicalism ' are muted, we can see just what Sir Keith Joseph and his remarkably able team have in fact accomplished. And theirs is an .achievement that must not be belittled, discredited or cheapened by allowing itself to be used as if the primary motivation were party political gain. For there is no doubt that in reality it was genuinely inspired by the desire to help the under-privileged, the aged and the sick, those sections of society least able to help themselves.

Many aspects of our care for those in need have been shamefully neglected in the past. And even today, before Sir Keith's reforms have had time to take full effect, many of our elderly patients are living under conditions too similar to those of the old, and mercifully defunct, municipal infirmaries.

The establishment, medical and lay, true to form, has done its best to keep from the general public knowledge of the actual conditions that exist in some of these places. It has ensured that the discreet, the compliant and the meek, even if they do not always inherit the earth, shall at least inherit the next vacancy on the Hospital Management Committee or Regional Hospital Board. Criticism is considered as indecorous and unseemly as barracking in church, while a reputation for outspoken frankness would exclude from such bodies just as surely as criticism of the judiciary would guarantee a blackball at the Garrick.

But this Government, as well as giving unparalleled sums of money for rebuilding in this sector, has also fearlessly published a number of generally derogatory reports on certain of these institutions, has accepted their conclusions, and is doing its best to rectify the deficiencies. This must be acknowledged. The bucket of whitewash has turned to powder through disuse.

Now that Sir Keith Joseph is being looked at as the physician who can heal

the Conservative Party before the next election, he is well placed to use his medical omnipotence to extract from his patient the additional funds that are needed to carry out reforms in those areas still requiring attention. There are a few obvious fields which as yet have received little help and attention. We in the medical profession and in Parliament wait with interest ,to see if he is going to seize,. +1' opportunity to correct them.

We know what they are; he knows w they are; and he knows that we know what they are.

Will he have the determination to launch a truly available family planning service? Will he reorganise the after-care services for patients once they have left the temporary security of the hospital ward? Will he help to ensure that the terminal patients die in dignity and cleanliness. rather than in solitary squalor? Will he see that our deaf are no longer excommunicated from society by their handicap and seek to ensure that they are treated with understanding rather than with barely concealed irritation? Above all, will he seek to foster the realisation that twentieth century medicine must start to turn towards preventative, as well as curative, techniques and procedures?

If he does only some of these things, and whatever the other failings, or, shortcomings of this Government, he and it will go down in history as great medical innovators. And the unseasonably ill winds of a summer of discontent could yet blow those most in need a little good.