Goodies in the new health Bill

Abstract

The government's second attempt to introduce a Health and Social Security Bill got off to a bad start. The copies were not back from the printers at the appointed time, and that caused a fuss in the Commons with Mr Frank Dobson, Labour's shadow health spokes? man. The Bill, the provisions to implement the decisions on opticians' services apart, is pretty much the same as the one that Mrs Gwyneth Dunwoody successfully sabotaged as part of the price of letting the government complete some of its legislation before the general election. She had strenuously opposed the proposals to give family practitioner committees independent status as health authorities, a victory that did not please doctors at the time. Mr Kenneth Clarke, Minister of State for Health, insists that his bit of the Bill contains no surprises. He hopes to get the second reading before Christmas and royal assent by the summer. But it does look as if the committee stage is going to be protracted. Like all Department of Health and Social Security Bills it is a double barrelled effort, and the social security section, for which Dr Rhodes Boy son is responsible, is said to be fairly controversial and to include the real changes. The health section is not controversial in the sense that it contains new proposals. But Mr Dobson?a Gwyneth Dunwoody in trousers, according to one commentator? will want to make his name as it will be the first committee in which he will be speaking from the opposition front bench. Nor can Labour, having so strongly resisted the previous plans for indepen? dent status, suddenly decide that the rerun version should receive less opposition. The failure to get the Bill launched last Friday was something of an embarrassment to ministers. They got the formal first reading? it is one of the odder Commons rules that this can be done without anybody being able to see the actual Bill. Not even the ministers last Friday had a proper printed copy. But for the public launch they had to wait until the beginning of this week. Mr Dobson made the most of it, and set the whips scurrying around deciding what was to be done. It may not sound much to outsiders, but it is one of those little Commons contretemps that boost opposition spirits and leave ministers blushing slightly. Another factor that will make the committee stage that much harder will be the opposition by the opticians to the proposals announced by Mr Norman Fowler, Social Services Secretary, last month. These will permit freer advertising aimed at ensuring that the public is provided with more information about the prices of glasses and the ending of the opticians' monopoly to sell glasses, a change that will also affect ophthalmic medical practitioners. Mr Fowler told the Commons that the conditions that he was laying down would ensure that no risks were taken with people's sight and that all sales would have to be made against a recent prescription. It was a skilfully drafted statement, concealing what amounts virtually to the end of National Health Service spectacles. That is something that the Labour party will claim amounts to a lessening of the service. If Mr Fowler is right and the frames available privately are sold at reasonable prices then that attack will be weakened. But it is anybody's guess what is going to happen. So it does look as if there will be a reasonably interesting time ahead in legislative terms, instead of it all being about political banana skins outside the Commons.