Catalogue description Exchange Control Medical Advisory Committee (Young Committee): Records

From the late 1940's, the Treasury received applications from British people wishing to travel abroad, outside the Sterling Area, for a form of medical treatment known as health travel. These applications were made under the Defence (Finance) Regulations and the Exchange Control Act 1947.

Tuberculosis (TB) remained a life threatening disease in the post war years. The clean air of Switzerland was felt by many to aid recovery, and so Switzerland became a popular destination for people suffering from TB and other diseases, but the government became concerned that some people might use the opportunity for such health travel as an excuse for an extended foreign holiday.

The Exchange Control Advisory Committee was set up under Sir Robert Young in 1947 in order to provide a medical guidance that would henceforth underpin health travel arrangements (the Committee was mostly, although not entirely, concerned with those people suffering from TB). It established the following criteria:

• The period of treatment was normally up to three months;
• The patient's UK doctor was required to confirm and to prove that the treatment was essential and that loss of life could follow if the treatment was not carried out;
• Medical evidence was to be submitted to the committee. If a decision was made that treatment abroad was required, then two members of the committee would issue a certificate to the patient's doctor for submission to a bank to apply for foreign exchange for the patient's treatment.
• Doctors treating the patient abroad were required to verify that the treatment was helping the patient's recovery.

The committee was wound up on 31 March 1955. Thereafter health travel applications were dealt with by individual banks according to government policy.

Health travel was abolished in 1966.