Published: Thursday, 3rd July, 2008 11:15
Martin Salter's Westminster Diary
By Martin Salter, MP for Reading West
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Reading West MP Martin Salter
ON Saturday I was in Broad Street, on a Labour Party stall promoting the forthcoming 60th Anniversary of the NHS.
The creation of the National Health Service was, in my view, Labour’s greatest achievement and it is entirely right and proper that today’s Labour Party representatives are involved in commemorating the achievements of our predecessors.
There is a special Reading link to the establishment of the NHS.
Reading’s first Labour MP was Dr Somerville Hastings (1923-4 and 1929-31) who was also the founding President of the Socialist Health Association in 1930.
It was their recommendations for a free national medical service that was “preventative and curative” with “no economic barrier between doctor and patient” that became the basis for the 1942 Beveridge Report.
The post-war Labour government of Clement Attlee was then elected on a pledge to implement Beveridge in full and 1948 saw the establishment of the NHS by Labour health secretary Aneurin Bevan.
The NHS was a matter of great controversy and its creation was ferociously opposed by both the doctors and the Conservative Party in Parliament.
The doctors were worried about their salaries and Nye Bevan famously vowed to face down their opposition by “stuffing their mouths with gold.”
Sixty years on and the NHS is now the envy of the world but doctors’ wages and the organisation of local health centres and GP opening hours remains a matter of controversy!
-I AM continuing to press the Chancellor on the issue of the introduction of new bands of Vehicle Excise Duty, or car tax, to incentivise people into purchasing less polluting vehicles.
I thoroughly agree with the aims of this policy but object to the proposed timetable for its implementation.
The new bands are due to come into force in 2010 which is simply not long enough for people on low incomes to change their vehicles to lower emission models.
Choice is a wonderful thing but always more of an option for the rich. Many of the people I represent are not in a position to buy a replacement car every three years and a far longer lead-in time is required.
Hopefully this matter will be addressed in the autumn in the Pre-Budget Report but an announcement this month by Alistair Darling would be most welcome.
- LAST week I tabled a House of Commons Early Day Motion to highlight the appalling conduct of Wokingham councillors in closing Ryeish Green School on the pretext of falling student numbers whilst at the same time announcing proposals for 5,500 new homes south of Reading which will require the creation of a new secondary school to meet the needs of an expanding population.
I agree with the Ryeish Green Headteacher, Jenny Garner, that the school closure decision was made for political rather than educational reasons; and believe that Ryeish Green is a vibrant and good school with evident potential to expand and prosper and that the only reason for the closure is the desire of Wokingham councillors to exclude Reading children from Wokingham schools.
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