Venereal Disease (Compulsory Treatment)

Part of Emergency Powers (Defence) – in the House of Commons at on 15 December 1942.

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Photo of Mr Arthur Molson Mr Arthur Molson , High Peak

It is true that one is reluctant to find legislation compelled to make use of the public informer and yet in this case it appears to me to be in principle justifiable. Here the public informer is only required to give information in order that a medical examination may be carried out, and that surely is not going much further than the ordinary obligation upon every subject to disclose to the police that a crime has been committed. I am most uneasy at the way in which this obligation—or right—to give information is limited. A policeman who knows that some individual in a village is spreading disease all round is not entitled, under the Regulation, to give the information, and no action can be taken until two separate individuals have actually caught disease from the source of the infection. Why it should be necessary to wait until this amount of harm has been done, and why anyone who knows of the source of danger should not be obliged, in a similar manner, to give the information I cannot understand. It is only when someone presumably has had sexual intercourse with this person and has contracted the disease, that he is allowed to give the information. It seems wholly unreasonable and quite illogical. I am also uneasy about the effect of the clearance certificate. This seems to be a half-hearted introduction of the Continental idea of giving a clean certificate to prostitutes. In this case there is no guarantee at all that after the certificate has been given, within the course of the next day or two, perhaps, that person will not again contract the disease.

I urge upon the Minister to be more courageous than he has shown himself so far, and to go very much further. I suggest that the Minister should apply to the civilian population the law already applied to the Armed Forces of the Crown, under which it is an offence for a man, knowing that he has contracted venereal disease, not to obtain treatment for it. I suggest that it should in any case be made an offence for anyone knowingly to communicate the disease to anyone else. I believe it should be quite possible to work a system of compulsory notification. I am deeply grateful to you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, for having allowed me to intervene for a few moments. I feel bound to register my vote in favour of this Prayer and against the Regulation. If I had not been able to explain my reasons for doing so and if it had appeared to the public mind that I was associating with those who are not prepared to use compulsion in order to weed out this great scourge, I should have been obliged to abstain from voting altogether.