Eleventh report from the Select Committee on Estimates : together with the minutes of evidence taken before sub-committee E and appendices, session 1950-1951: regional hospital boards and hospital management committees.
- Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Select Committee on Estimates
- Date:
- [1951]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Eleventh report from the Select Committee on Estimates : together with the minutes of evidence taken before sub-committee E and appendices, session 1950-1951: regional hospital boards and hospital management committees. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![25 January, 1951.] [Continued. Chairman. 183. Forgive me for interrupting you, but is this refusal based on financial grounds or on very different grounds that this is capital expenditure which has got to be dealt with in quite a different wiy? —It is on the ground that the Ministry will not agree to the expenditure of iarge sums except for a small number of large projects for which they can find the money. 184. Even though you had the monev or the money was there, it may be the refusal would still be there because it in- volved using capital resources?—Yes. 185. If that is the cbjection then the point you are making is not a valid one? — I am sorry, but I do not get your point. Do you mean the oojection might be that it 1s not building capital aad not meant to do that? 186. That is putting it in a general way? —That is not the reason because we can go ahead with the first instalment if we can find the money for it at the present time.* 187. It may be nevertheless that the Government veto is based on the general control of capital resources?—That is not the way I understand it. I do understand there is no money available for this project. They feel it is a good project but they have not the money to give us for it. That we understand. It is perfectly reasonable. We know the stringency, but I think this is just the kind of thing in which a voluntary con- tribution could be used. In fact it has been discussed whether some part of the free money of the hospital should not be used for this particular purpose. I think that kind of thing, which is in ~ sense the responsibility of the Ministry, might easily be financed through, or largely or partly, a local appeal to the public for funds for such a purpose. Mr. Thomas Reid. 188. This Government objection is not that your proposed training scheme clashes with theirs?—-No, Sir, it is solely a question of getting a central school for the nurses ; the training is all settled. Jt just happens to occur to me as an example, but I am quite sure, if we took time over it, we could think of many ways in which such monies could be expended usefully with an ulti- mate saving in what must otherwise fall on Government expenditure. Mr. J. Enoch Powell. 189. I take it your idea is that monies * Note by witness: 1 have since been informed that objection to the scheme has also been based on the general control of capital expenditure. and under the control of the hospital or hospital group which collected them?— (Dr. Rowland Hill.) That is so. (Professor Cloake.) Yes. 190. If free monies are small in extent then the disparity between one hospital or hospital group and another resulting from that can be tolerated, but if the amount so obtained amounted, according to Dr. Hill’s estimate, to £40,000,000 or over per year, then the disparity is very great between one hospital and another. Would that not necessitate the spreading out of the money? I observe the use of the word “integration”, which I cannot under- stand except in connection with some spreading of the funds so obtained. If that were so would it not largely defeat your object of securing a degree of financial autonomy?—I would have said it would stimulate local, if you like the word, rivalry. I do not mean rivalry in any objectionable sense. It would stimulate people to work for their own hospital and to get things of this kind. I do net believe it would have a bad effect. It might mean at the moment that one hospital had some advantage, and another hospital at another time, in regard to the collection of monies. I am not responsible for the figures which Dr. Hill has quoted; I really have no knowledge, but to this extent I agree, and I would like to quote this as evidence that such monies can be collected. The Students’ Carnival in Birmingham, where I come from, before the war was held once a year for the support of the hospitals, and the students collected—I would not like to commit myself to figures because I am not good at them—many thousands of pounds each year. That money went to endow beds in the hospitals. Since the war the money has been collected in the same way—but it no longer goes for this purpose ; it goes to various other respect- able things like the support of convalescent homes and helping to establish homes for the aged, things of that kind. They are charitable and beneficial activities missed almost entirely, but not quite, by the Hospital Service. I think larger sums are collected now than before the war, and you might expect that with the decreased value of money. There are many ways in which you can get local intcrest in the collection of money for charitable purposes, even though behind the charitable organisa- tion lies the Government responsibility. [ still think it would be quite possible to collect considerable sums. I am not pre- pared to say how much because really all estimates are fundamentally guesses. The whole set-up is new, and aobody knows how far to-day the public would be pre- pared to subscribe. Mr. Thomas Reid. 191. I understood Doctor Hill’s idea was that, whatever these voluntary subscriptions](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b32182478_0056.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
