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Mr. Murphy: I will give way to the hon. Gentleman on the Back Bench.
Mr. St. Aubyn: I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) fills the hon. Gentleman with such fear.
How will pensioners in the hon. Gentleman's constituency benefit when any cut in energy costs will be reflected by state benefit adjustments in the following years? Pensioners in his constituency will have to give up their private health insurance and increase the waiting lists, but no account is taken of that in the Government's proposals. Pensioners will suffer. Indirectly, they will lose because of the abolition of the tax relief and they will gain nothing from the reduction in VAT on fuel.
Mr. Murphy:
Unlike the hon. Gentleman, I shall respond to questions. During his speech, he refused point blank to comment directly on questions that were put to him. He spoke of my refusal to allow the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) to intervene. I have spoken three times in the Chamber and I have been interrupted on two or three occasions by that hon. Gentleman. The experience filled me with many things, but fear was not one of them.
The hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. St. Aubyn) spoke about waiting lists. As I understand it, the vast majority of those who are currently on private medical insurance had taken it out before tax relief was introduced. People are scaremongering by saying that, as a consequence of the Government's change, people will move to the national health service. People may be tempted to do that because the NHS will be safe in the Labour Government's hands and they did not believe that it was safe under the Conservatives, but there is no independent evidence to show that people on private medical insurance will seek service in the NHS.
Mr. Murphy:
The hon. Gentleman should allow me to complete my answer to his first question before rising to ask another one.
The hon. Gentleman asked how my constituents feel about subsidies. My constituents, especially pensioners, have a strong sense of what is right and what is wrong. They strongly object to the fact that every one of them paid a subsidy into the coffers of BUPA and many other private medical insurance companies and received little or
nothing in return. Because of underfunding and the mistreatment of our health service, more and more people were encouraged to take out private insurance. There was an unfair subsidy paid by the many for the few.
Mr. St. Aubyn:
As the hon. Gentleman thinks that I did not answer his questions when I spoke earlier, I doubt whether he will understand what I have to say this time. The Government's proposals will indirectly reduce health spending and put the money into other areas. Anyone who is concerned about health spending must realise that Government support will fall and money will be redirected. That will damage the interests of everyone who relies on health provision.
Mr. Murphy:
The hon. Gentleman's conversion to the interests of the national health service is illuminating, if a bit late. The Conservative attitude towards the NHS and the way in which it was not considered safe in their hands are two of the major reasons why we are in Government and why I have the privilege to serve the people of Eastwood. The hon. Gentleman alludes to concern about the treatment of the NHS and its funding. He has not read carefully the contents of Budget and health service pronouncements. The Chancellor in his Budget speech and other Ministers have clearly said that the health service is one of our priorities and that there is new money for it.
We should like to reach a situation in which there is no fertile ground for scaremongering and in which BUPA and others are not able to scare pensioners and others into a private system at the expense of the public system. I have given way twice to the hon. Gentleman and tried to answer his questions. He may not like the answers, but that is because we were elected on different manifestos and it would be hard to reconcile our aspirations.
Initially, BUPA and other private companies expressed some concern about the effects of our proposed changes. Those companies were aware of the changes because they commented on them before the election. If they were aware of the changes, it is strange that Opposition Members suggest that they were a surprise. The Opposition's attitude is directly parallel with their attitude to our welfare-to-work programme, which tries to enhance the opportunities for the many using the finances of the few.
As I said on Second Reading, the Opposition seem keener to protect the profits of the privatised utilities than are the utilities themselves. The direct parallel to that attitude is that Opposition Members seem keener to protect the interests of the private medical insurance companies than are the insurance companies. David Bryant is a senior representative of BUPA. As I have said, BUPA initially engaged in much scaremongering. It talked about the impact of our proposals on the NHS and said that tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people would move out of private medical insurance and into the NHS.
However, BUPA has revisited its analysis in a way that Conservative Members have thus far refused to do. David Bryant has said:
Like other hon. Members, I do not object to the fact that such companies exist and operate in a private market. What I object to is a system whereby a majority of the pensioners of Eastwood had to subsidise the minority to support the profits of BUPA and others. If BUPA's profits are affected as a consequence of our investing in and reorienting towards a public health service, David Bryant and others will, I am sure, understand our reasons for doing so. It is not the existence of these companies or of private medical insurance that I object to: it is the fact that the majority are being asked to subsidise the minority.
Mr. Boswell:
This has been a revealing debate. I have been struck by the consistency of Labour Members in referring, without exception, to their passionate concerns about the public service. There is no doubt that their ability to project that to the electorate has probably put them where they are. However, there are some Conservative Members who share those concerns. Equally, some of us are concerned--even in our own long-term interests--that Labour Members may not have spotted that concern for the public service without an understanding of the means to improve it or to generate resources for it is likely to lead to disillusion, disappointment and electoral disaster in the long term. If they pump up people's expectations and then let them down, that is a sad fraud on the electorate.
Labour Members have suggested that the right hon. Nigel Lawson did not do much analysis in introducing the measures in 1990. Of course, there can be no substitute for experience. We now have seven years, analysis of the tax. We have the annual series. We also have substantive work from the Economists Advisory Group, to which I have referred extensively and which the Government should consider and respond to.
The next point shows the difference in philosophy between the two parties. If the hon. Member for Eastwood (Mr. Murphy) had allowed me to intervene, I would have said that there is a distinction between introducing a benefit that is given by tax relief and helps quite a large group of people, and withdrawing that benefit for some nugatory and speculative advantage for the NHS as a whole.
If the Opposition could show a real benefit to the NHS from these proposals, they might be in business, but I do not believe that they can--and the Chancellor does not believe it either, because he has assigned the money that he is saving from this measure to the reduction of VAT on fuel.
Mr. Murphy:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Boswell:
I will do so once.
Mr. Murphy:
I thank the hon. Gentleman, and this is the only intervention that I plan to make. He has suggested that there is no identifiable benefit to the health service from our plans. Will he comment on the benefits to the health service of the changes that the Conservative Government brought about in 1994?
Mr. Boswell:
What I do know, and we are discussing and debating the current proposals of the Chancellor, 6.45 pm
"There are always ways that increases can be alleviated."
He believes, and BUPA seems to believe, that there are ways in which any difficulty can be alleviated. I do not claim to be a specialist on BUPA's finances, but I found
out from the House of Commons Library that last year BUPA's operating profits went up by 7 per cent and that its reserves rose by 13 per cent. to a total of £638 million.
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