Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100
- 107)
THURSDAY 18 NOVEMBER 2004
RT HON
LORD HATTERSLEY
Q100 Mr Prentice: Are council tenants
behaving irrationally when they vote for a housing stock transfer
in the sure knowledge that those crumbly council houses are going
to get money spent on them to bring them up to standard?
Lord Hattersley: They are acting
rationally in their own self-interest, but there are many things
which happen which we would do in our own self-interests. I suspect
in my own self-interest I would be a private medical patient,
I suspect in the self-interest of some of the people around the
table they would send their children to private schools, but it
is sometimes the duty of the Government not only to point out
that there is a common good, which may be in conflict with individual
self-interest, but also to prevent people from exercising their
own self-interest when it is to the detriment of the community
at large.
Q101 Mr Prentice: Why is it then
in Birmingham, your own city, the council tenants voted against
stock transfer, but in Glasgow they voted for stock transfer,
and in Manchester they voted for stock transfer? What is it about
Birmingham council tenants that saw wider public interest and
not their own self-interest?
Lord Hattersley: Well, I do not
think it was on the merits of the case. I wanted the situation
to continue in which the housing stock remained in the council's
ownership but the Government provided the necessary money to repair
it. I actually believe it is morally—not a word I use very
often—indefensible to say to the council tenants of Birmingham,
"If you choose to remain tenants of the local authority,
your houses will crumble and decay around your head, but if you
are prepared to have them sold off to either a public agency which
is not a local authority or a private agency, we will provide
money to repair it." I do not know why the council tenants
did not vote for the alternative the Government wanted, and you
know as well as I do that votes cannot be attributed to the rational
judgment of people. In part it was to do with who was arguing
for what, in part it was to do with sentiment about the Birmingham
Corporation. Birmingham citizens take local government very seriously.
Q102 Mr Prentice: Is it an example
where choice can be manipulated because the Government is setting
the terms on which that choice is exercised?
Lord Hattersley: I can only tell
you that after 33 years as a Member of Parliament for that city,
I was astonished when a very large majority voted for the council
houses not being repaired, which is what it amounted to. I was
astonished by that. I think it is as much to do with the personalities
on each side of the argument as anything else. As I say, Birmingham
continues to hold a view, going back to Joe Chamberlain, that
there is something special about Birmingham local government whichever
party is in command, and I think that has had a great influence
on people—"We want to be tenants of the council not
somebody else."
Q103 Mr Prentice: I was going to
ask a whole series of questions about the cost of building the
new Utopia but your answers and these Guardian articles
make it absolutely crystal clear that what you are calling for
is a very substantial increase in public expenditure, moving money
from area to area to get that equality, so I will not pursue that.
However, there is one area which I am still interested in, and
that is the boundary between private and public. Over the years
that has become ever more porous, and I just wonder what you think
about private providers providing public services. Do you have
a kind of ideological hang-up about that?
Lord Hattersley: No, I do not.
Q104 Mr Prentice: Because you said
earlier that if you had some kind of heart condition and the only
way it could be seen to quickly was to go into private hospital,
that would not give you any problems, and you said "as an
expedient". But I want to go beyond that, not as an expedient
but as a conscious decision of public policy that private providers
should be there to be chosen by individuals if that is what they
want to do.
Lord Hattersley: You are quite
right to describe that as an item of ideology. Some people might,
I suspect, who do not hold that view quite as strongly as you
are now making out. But were you to hold it that strongly, some
people would regard it as a statement of prejudice. If there is
advantage in it, and I see a short-term advantage if there is
a shortage of resources, then obviously there is short-term advantage
in people saying, "I will go to the private hospital down
the road or in the next borough", but I do not see any advantage
in general and I see the disadvantage in the long-term of undermining
faith in public provision and people saying, "We do not need
the public provision any more, the private sector is doing it
perfectly well." I am perfectly happy to judge it on its
merits. Dr Reid—and I have talked about Dr Reid this morning
more often than I have talked about him in the last ten years—says
there is always going to be a private element in the health service,
"We do not make our own beds, we buy them from a private
bed maker." Well, great, I do not want the public ownership
of bed making. I do not know where the boundary of that ends,
and there will be other things we buy in from the private sector.
Q105 Mr Prentice: Let me fire a practical
example at you. There are huge capacity constraints in NHS dentistry.
In my constituency, in my town of 12,000 people, the only NHS
dentist is closing his list and taking private patients only as
from January. The nearest open NHS list must be about 30 miles
away. I have called upon Paul Boateng to make the cost of private
dental insurance in these circumstances tax deductible, when someone
wants to stay with the NHS, their dentist goes private and there
is no alternative NHS provision in the locality. Would you agree
with me?
Lord Hattersley: I would have
to think about it. As I thought about it, I would be saying that
your question and the circumstances you describe make my case
rather than yours. Because what do we have now? A net shortage
of dentists. What ought we to have? A conscious policy increasing
dental education. Why do we not? Very largely simply because I
do not go to my dentist in London, I have a house in Derbyshire
so I go to the dentist in Derbyshire where there is no pressure
on dentists, and other people either go private, as is their option,
or manipulate the system in some way. The people who make the
most fuss are still getting their teeth attended to, and therefore
the great drive for increasing dental training, which we ought
to have, does not happen. Your example is an argument against
choice not in favour of choice.
Q106 Mr Prentice: We cannot go into
the details but we are trying to turn things round. I am talking
about a policy decision in the interim. At some stage in the future
we will have an NHS dentist in the town where I live, and I am
talking about the people who are forced to pay for private dental
insurance because there is no NHS alternative.
Lord Hattersley: I have already
said, and I meant it, I would be absurd to object to the expedient,
as I described it, taking-of-places in private hospitals. Your
example, which I do not know, may be exactly that but if it was
a temporary expedient then it would be foolish to expect people
to go on having toothache rather than take advantage of—
Mr Prentice: I shall tell Paul Boateng
he is being very foolish in turning down my suggestion.
Q107 Chairman: I think in fairness
to our witness and everybody we ought to pull stumps now because
there is a vote and it may be followed by another one and so on.
We have had a good bash. There were a few things we were still
going to do, but I think we have done enough to get value from
the session. I apologise for the fact that a few members of the
Committee had not read all your Guardian articles but we
shall remedy this, I can assure you, very rapidly. Thank you very
much and I am sorry about this rather abbreviated ending.
Lord Hattersley: Thank you very
much for having me. I am not sure I have contributed much but
I have enjoyed it.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
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