Parliament

It is all most embarrassing. Anyone with a healthy I scepticism of the infallibility of human beings would f be bound to have serious reservations about November's announcement from Sir Keith Joseph, the Social Services Minister, of the Government's plan to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on improved services for the mentally handicapped and ill in the next four years, over and above present spending. Yet?bearing in mind that I write before the j Government's decision on the closely connected rate support grant is known, and?more important? taking the definition of mental health in its narrowest possible form (ignoring pensioners' troubles, rat-race stress among office workers etc., etc.)?this does at first glance seem to be the one field where almost all I could agree that the Tories have, within the limits of economic realism, got their spending broadly right. Almost every other decision stemming from the Chancellor's October mini-Budget can be?and is? criticised, and not only by the Labour Party either.