14. 
MAJORITY REPORT. 
(3) Provision of medical services if and when called 
in by a registered. midwife who has been engaged to 
attend the confinement. 
(4) Consultant service. 
(5) Institutional treatment. 
The payment of the cash benefit should be distributed over 
several weeks before and after the confinement and not be 
paid over in one lump sum. The Association are of opinion 
that the Medical and Maternity Benefits Services should be 
regarded as a health service and be grouped with other such 
services for administrative purposes ; that is, under the Public 
Health Authority *’ (App. CXXIV, 9 and 10). 
112. The Ministry of Health representative, in answer to 
questions on the subject, gave the following reply : ‘ This is a 
matter that has been discussed several times with the medical 
profession in 1919 and since, and I think that the general feeling 
is that, if the requisite financial arrangements could be made, 
it would be very desirable to end the present system under which 
you have the general practitioner responsible for treatment before 
labour but having no responsibility during labour, the midwife, 
under an entirely independent authority, giving attendance in 
labour and calling in a practitioner to attend in labour, if 
necessary, who would be paid by the local authority ; then you 
have the maternity and ante-natal centre giving assistance in 
the early stages. There is a great deal of overlapping and 
probably a good dedl of waste, and it would be most desirable, 
if it could be arranged, to have a scheme that brought the 
family doctor, the midwife, the specialist, if necessary, and all 
the services that are available at the maternity centre, under 
& common scheme and a common control, so that they each 
played their proper part and were brought into proper relation 
with each other, helping one another instead of acting at a 
distance as they do now.” (Smith Whitaker, Q. 23,896.) 
113. Closing this summary of the evidence on this important 
question, we note that the National Conference of Friendly 
Societies, to whose advocacy of a radically reformed Health 
Service we have elsewhere referred, include all the maternity 
work of the various agencies as part of the material to be in- 
corporated in their proposed unified scheme (App. XXVI, 30-41). 
Ea 
SEPARATION OF MONEY PROVISION AND TREATMENT. 
114. On a review of all the evidence we have heard we have 
come to the conclusion that the present elements of maternity 
benefit should be ultimately dissociated from each other, 
that is to say, any cash payment made on confinement 
should be separated from the medical, nursing and institutional 
services. of all kinds provided in connexion with the condition 
of pregnancy. The former should, we think, continue to be