Clause 24. — (Additional Provision for Refunds of, and Other Provisions as to, Selective Employment Tax.)

Part of Orders of the Day — FINANCE (No. 2) BILL – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 8 June 1967.

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Photo of Mr John Page Mr John Page , Harrow West 12:00, 8 June 1967

The case put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Somerset, North (Mr. Dean), that special consideration must be given for the social services is so devastating that I think that that is why there are only three back-benchers opposite. Hon. Members opposite would be too ashamed to vote against the Amendment had they heard the rest of the debate.

I feel passionately about the Amendment because this is Mental Health Year, and in the past weeks and months attention has been drawn to the problems of mental health. Like other hon. Members I have been seeing conditions at first hand.

This is a tax on geriatric beds for mentally handicapped people. Anybody who read the article in the Sunday Times last Sunday and who has a member of his family in a State mental hospital must be worried. Those articles are not a general example of conditions in mental hospitals in this country, but conditions are desperate in them. There is a desperate shortage of beds and dedicated male and female nurses to look after these patients, who cannot help themselves.

I see that at last we have somebody here at the Bar of the House from the Ministry of Health. One would think that a Government would say, "Thank God" that there are private individuals who will dedicate their lives to trying to help. The homes run by many couples in partnership are called profit-making but, how many people setting out to make a big profit for themselves would start by opening a small home with geriatric beds? I know that the hon. Member for Penistone (Mr. Mendelson) agrees on this.

This is a social service, and these people are finding the new burden of Selective Employment Tax, ruthlessly, unnecessarily and callously imposed upon them by a bureaucratic Treasury, almost more than they can bear. It comes at a time when their souls and bodies are exhausted by the efforts they are having to make to look after their patients, and they feel that perhaps they had better give up altogether.

I beg the Chief Secretary to say that he will think again on this. We must ask him to do that, because with just a small change in the law people who are dedicating their lives to the service of the community in the most difficult circumstances would feel that there is some recognition from the general public, who really like to forget what they are doing.