An opportunity missed at Brighton

Abstract

Strange are the ways of Cabinet ministers. Mr Jenkin was faced with the chance to reply to the Conservative Party conference debate on health and social security, albeit to a motion lauding the valuable contribution made by the voluntary organisations towards the care of the sick, the disadvantaged, and the elderly. Against all advice the Social Services Secretary chose to speak about the voluntary services and nothing else. It seemed a rather odd decision considering that he has just put on the Statute Book an Act which allows a major reorganisation of the National Health Service. He could have spoken about what he liked, since Conservative conference motions are merely an expression of opinion?not, as at the Labour Conference, an instruction as to what must be Party policy. It was an opportunity missed. At last year's conference Mr Jenkin was upstaged by his deputy, Dr Gerard Vaughan, the Health Minister, who scored a quite notable success with his speech. This year Dr Vaughan was not among the ministers chosen to reply to a debate?well, there was no debate on the NHS to reply to. A platform was, however, readily available. Dr Vaughan is one of the founders of the Conservative Medical Society and it invited him along one lunchtime to talk about the NHS. He attacked Labour's record as one of drift and indecision and claimed that he had inherited an appallingly chaotic situation. nettle, however, had been grasped. It was his proud boast, and one we will hear repeatedly, that far from cutting NHS resources, this year the Government will be spending ?200m more in real terms than Labour in their last year. He also announced that the latest figures from the DHSS showed that there had been a marked fall in hospital waiting lists. By March 1980, he said, the numbers had been reduced by 92 000. That must be good news for the NHS. I believe we are now well on the road to putting the NHS back on its feet, he added. The policy of small hospitals is going very well indeed. Now we must turn to directing resources towards prevention and the community One area in which he is planning action is on the general practitioner services. We do not make the best use of our GP skills, he said. I am asking the Royal College of General Practitioners to come to me now with advice about the kind of GP service they would like to see, about ways of extending the range of initiatives so that GPs can have the freedom to exercise their skills. He criticised the way some doctors interpret clinical freedom and said it was one of the great dilemmas in the NHS. Is it right to give total clinical freedom to override other circum stances so that a doctor on a particular whim can spend huge sums of money when his colleagues do not agree with him ? he asked. Then he answered the question. He was all for clinical