Report / Royal Commission on the National Health Service.

  • Great Britain. Royal Commission on the National Health Service
Date:
[1979]
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Report / Royal Commission on the National Health Service. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    certainly sound reasons for discontent amongst health service workers, but they are not necessarily the same reasons in all cases. 4.22 One factor which should not be overlooked is what the Rt. Hon. Enoch Powell MP (Minister of Health from 1960 to 1963) has called ‘“‘a vested interest in denigration”. Writing before reorganisation he put his point this way: “One of the most striking features of the National Health Service is the continual, deafening chorus of complaint which rises day and night from every part of it, a chorus only interrupted when someone suggests that a different system altogether might be preferable, which would involve the money coming from some less (literally) palpable source. The universal Exchequer financing of the service endows everyone providing as well as using it with a vested interest in denigrating it, so that it presents what must be the unique spectacle of an undertaking that is run down by everyone engaged in it.””’ It is not true that criticism of the service is unjustified, but it is certainly true, in our view, that some of the problems of the NHS and those who work in it are exaggerated. This is true of morale also. The Mid Glamorgan AHA pointed out: “What is apparent is that if the leaders of the service and the media continue to state that such a situation [i.e. low morale] exists staff will generally come to believe it.” A “sickness service” 4.23 A common criticism is that the NHS is a “sickness” rather than a “health” service. Critics point to what they see as an imbalance between what is spent on preventing ill health, health promotion and long-term care and what is spent on the treatment of disease. Some people assume that if large sums were spent on prevention it would make curing unnecessary in most cases, and, as well as saving money, would keep us all much healthier. We think this too simple a view, and we go into the subject and the question of priorities in the next two chapters. Remedies The NHS should get more money 4.24 Easily the most popular remedy for the failings of the NHS, especially and understandably with those working in it, was that much more money should be made available. The Labour Party in their evidence to us said: ‘Powell, J Enoch, 4 New Look at Medicine and Politics, First Edition, London, Pitman Medical, 1966, page 16.
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