The 1s, 2S, 2p, 3s, 3p and 3d states of atomic hydrogen have been included in the Hartree–Fock eigenfunction expansion for the continuum wave functions of the proton and two-electron system to determine the singlet P -wave phase shifts for the elastic scattering of low energy electrons by atomic hydrogen. The corresponding singlet P -wave functions were combined with the seventy-parameter bound-state wave function of Schwartz to calculate the bound–free absorption cross sections of the negative hydrogen ion using the length, velocity and acceleration alternatives for the dipole operator. The three different absorption coefficient results show closer agreement with one another than was obtained by Geltman in 1962 with variationally determined free-wave functions which included terms corresponding to the same six atomic hydrogen states. The best results of Geltman and the present ‘1s−2s−2p−3s−3p−3d’ values obtained with the velocity operator are in very close agreement with one another and agree equally well with the experimental photodetachment results of Smith & Burch and of Branscomb & Smith.