Orders of the Day — Nutrition

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 15 December 1949.

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The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food (Dr. Edith Summer-skill):

The hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Scottish Universities (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot) warned the House that whereas many speakers had tried to address themselves to this question of nutrition in an objective manner he might find it difficult, because he was of a controversial nature, to rise above party polemics. There is no doubt that once again he has failed to be as objective as he would like to be on this last-but-one important Debate in this House before Christmas. He devoted a great deal of his time to looking up the handbook published by the Labour Party, quoting from it and trying to catch out my hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge (Mrs. Mann). He should recognise, of course. that these methods can be adopted by both sides.

I am afraid I have to remind the right hon. and gallant Gentleman of something he said which, in my opinion, completely torpedoes the argument which he has just put forward about the tuberculosis mortality rate in Scotland which, he implies, must be related to the nutritional policy pursued by this Government. If he does not relate the high tuberculosis mortality rate in Scotland to the nutritional policy of this Government, then surely he should not have devoted most of the time in which he has spoken to that subject. This summer I took away for my holiday reading a copy of the "British Medical Journal" in which I found a very interesting and important article which, I understand, was recorded from the right hon. and gallant Gentleman's Presidential Address to the Royal Institute of Public Health and Hygiene. The address was given on Thursday, 26th May. The "British Medical Journal" has headed it: Tuberculosis: Certain unexplained mortality figures. I remember reading this very well, because I was by the seaside and I could just lie and digest these figures. I was most impressed. I found that this was an objective approach to a very important subject. My opinion of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman—we must have been many miles apart at that time—went up considerably.

This afternoon we have heard the same right hon. and gallant Gentleman come here and, in order to prove his argument to this House, and recognising as he does that he is for the most part talking to the lay public—there are perhaps only one or two people here who have read this article in the "British Medical Journal"—he advanced an argument trying to prove that the high tuberculosis rate in Scotland can be attributed to the nutritional policy of the Labour Government.

These are the conclusions of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman on the high rate of tuberculosis in Scotland when he is speaking to a meeting of professional men who understand the question very well. Although I am left with only 20 minutes for my speech, I must say that it is in the interests of the whole country that I should read the conclusions of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman's article because, I am most concerned with what those poor patients sitting in Scotland will think when they read his speech. I am also concerned since perhaps the reputation of my Department may be at stake. After this long speech, the conclusions of the right hon. Gentleman are these: Wild speculations may be made; they are as likely to be right, or at any rate to form as reasonable a point of departure, as any other at the moment. One speculation is that there may have been an introduction of a more active strain of infection into Scotland in the considerable Polish migration that took place in the early days of the war. It may not be so; but, at any rate, there certainly was a mass movement to our country of a population which in its own country is highly susceptible to tuberculosis and has a high tuberculosis rate—a population which afterwards was intermingled very intensively with the Scottish people. That may be an entirely erroneous line of inquiry. But when you are faced with an unexplained set of facts you must consider all the likely and all the unlikely explanations. It is possible that the unlikely explanations are quite as right as the likely explanations. Here, then, is a fascinating problem of public health to which no solution has yet been found. I commend it as an example of how today it is still possible to find unexplained problems, and of how it may be possible, by the use of intelligence and by industry, for any investigator to find an explanation of facts which so far have baffled everyone.