HC Deb 05 March 1926 vol 192 cc1793-878

Order for Second Reading read.

Mr. LEES-SMITH

I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

This Bill is intended to deal with the most terrible of all the social evils of our time, and it deals with the evil by adding what is practically a new piece of machinery to our Constitution. We wish to add this piece of machinery now because experience has shown that as soon as we pass out of our present difficulty, the whole, matter will be forgotten, and no machinery will ever be established at all. The object of the machinery we propose is to make more regular and reduce the fluctuations in trade and industry, so that there may be a substantial reduction in the amount of industrial depression and short time. As one looks back at the regular series of trade booms and trade slumps, the peaks of overtime and depths of unemployment during the last generation, the one fact that becomes clear is that never in the past have we attempted to grapple with unemployment until it was too late. We have waited, and then when the misery had become intolerable, and when a menacing agitation had arisen, Governments have started belated relief schemes and have hastily set on foot work of a special kind, like road-making, which gives a quick return in the amount of labour employed. That is all that has been done in the past. This Bill proposes that that haphazard, ineffective and cruel system shall now come to an end.

I have read the Debate of last year, and I think I am entitled to say that the central argument of this Bill was not dealt with at all by the Minister last year, or by any speaker who objected to it. I therefore propose now to leave the subsidiary portion of the Bill, and to explain what our central argument is, in the hope that at any rate to-day we shall get a reply. The main provisions of the Bill are very simple. We propose to set up a powerful committee, called the Employment and Development Board. That board will contain all the Ministers who are in charge of any Department of State which can influence the amount of employment, either by giving contracts or by the employment of direct labour. The Board will have as its Chairman the Minister of Labour, who will be responsible to this House for seeing that the provisions of the Bill and the intentions of the House have been carried out. The Board will be furnished with a regular income of £10,000,000 a year, and it would, of course, have the services of an expert Secretariat provided by the Ministry of Labour.

The Board would work as follows: It would make a continuous survey, perhaps for 10 years ahead, a long period survey, of all the work which either the Government or municipalities could influence by their command over contracts and direct labour. It would consider the amount of work which would be required for giving employment, such as the contracts for the Army, naval contracts, Air Force contracts, Inland Revenue buildings, Customs and Excise buildings, school buildings, other Government buildings, uniforms and clothing for soldiers, sailors, airmen, police, postmen and other services, and works of development such as electrical extensions, harbours, docks, roads, afforestation, land reclamation, and the opening up of water power resources, railway and other constructional works for the opening up of Crown Colonies and Protectorates. There is obviously a vast deal of employment, the rate of which the Government can directly influence year by year. When trade was brisk, when unemployment was at its minimum—it never disappears under existing conditions—when unemployment had gone as far down as the capitalist system will permit, the Government would hold back as large a proportion of the work that it can influence as is practically possible. It would, so to speak, store it up, and would keep it as a reservoir in order that it might be poured into the market as trade slackened down and as the amount of unemployment created by private industrialism increased. In that way the purpose of the Bill is, so to speak, to average out, to smooth out the ups and downs of employment left by private industry, and to regularise the general volume of trade and work. That is the central idea on which the Bill is based.

I see that there is an Amendment on the Paper in the name of the hon Member for Oldham (Mr. Duff Cooper). In that Amendment the hon. Member has conveniently summarised the main mistakes and misapprehensions to which this Bill has given rise. I, therefore, will deal with what I think is the first misapprehension as to the purpose of the Bill. The hon. Member states in the Amendment that the Bill will add £10,000,000 a year to the total sum of taxation. That is quite a mistake. This Bill will be an excellent business proposition to any Government that takes it up. The purpose of the Bill is this: if you take a series of years, the amount of money spent under the Bill would not necessarily be any addition to the amount that we would spend otherwise. But in brisk years the Board would refrain, as far as possible, from competing with private industrialism, when men are perhaps working overtime, and in slack years it would put its orders in hand, because when industry is depressed capital can be more cheaply obtained and the work could therefore be more economically put off. This is a Bill which, so far from adding to the taxes—so far as the immediate effect of the Bill is concerned—would save money. This is our Economy Bill, but, unlike the Government's proposal, we intend to economise on the interest of capital instead of on the lives of the people.

In order to follow out what I think is the central mistake in the criticism of the Bill, may I take a very careful investigation which happens to have been made by an impartial authority as to what its affects might have been in the past? I notice that the Prime Minister a few days ago quoted with great approval the estimate which had been prepared by a very distinguished authority, Professor A. L. Bowley. I presume the Minister of Labour will not contest the accuracy of that estimate. A volume was published edited by the editor of "The Economist"—certainly not a Labour paper—dealing with unemployment and Professor Bowley took the proposals of this Bill, and in order to see what they would lead to, he selected four years before the War on which he had gathered full particulars, namely 1906, 1907, 1908 and 1909. He found over those four years, on the average, the Government and municipa- lities had spent £30,000,000 a year on the kind of work which would come within the provisions of this Bill. What had happened? In 1906 and 1907 trade had been brisk, and the Government in those years had accelerated its work and competed with private industry for the labour of men, many of whom were already working overtime. In 1908 and 1909 when industrial depression had begun, the Government had held back its work and so added its own quota to the unemployment which private capitalism, in any case inevitably creates.

I give one more instance of an undertaking which is being investigated at this moment. The Government are conducting investigations into the Severn tidal power scheme. That investigation was recommended seven years ago by the Water Power Resources Committee. In the latest answer given by the Government on this matter they state that the engineers report that the results achieved up to the present justify the continuance of the investigations, and the Government consider it worth while to spend between £70,000 and £80,000 on these investigations. So far so good, but the very fact that the report of the Water Power Resources Committee lay for five years upon some dusty shelf, until the Labour Government put it into operation; is proof that even now there is no body whose business it is continually to make provision for the unemployment which, under present conditions, is inevitably bound, sooner or later, to occur. The Minister of Labour and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carmarthen (Sir A. Mond) objected to this Bill last year and asked the House to reject it because they said it would set up a separate fund, and what the Minister of Labour called a magpie Board over which the Treasury would have no control. That is a minor Departmental objection. What control has the Treasury to-day over the money voted by Parliament for the widows' pensions scheme, or unemployment insurance, or health insurance, or old age pensions, or the Road Fund? The Treasury cannot increase or diminish the sum by one shilling. That is why the one main objection which the Minister of Labour used is of a committee character rather than one suitable for a Second Reading Debate.

I come to what I think was his chief argument, and in fact the only other argument which he used against this Bill. This, I see, is an argument which is embodied in the Amendment on the Paper. The argument is that this Bill is unnecessary; that every power which it gives is already possessed by Government Departments, and that there is already in existence a Cabinet Committee which can carry out all the duties laid down in the Bill. But that is just our objection. The powers may be there, but this Cabinet Committee was only set up after unemployment had become acute, and if there had been a trade boom in the following year the Cabinet Committee would not have met again. What is the use of talking in this connection about a Cabinet Committee of an ad hoc ephemeral character? I venture to say if we were discussing preparations for war, no Minister would use the kind of argument that are thought good enough when we are discussing preparations against industrial unemployment. Look at our present situation. At the end of last year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said this country had never been so free from the threat of any immediate war for the last 50 years. There is no immediate danger. Yet what do we find? We find, nevertheless, the Committee of Imperial Defence holding regular periodic meetings, with a staff of officials devoted to its service, given an entire house to itself in Whitehall Gardens, preparing against every contingency, getting ready the Great War book—which now, I believe, is so large that it fills more than half the house—preparing for everything so that if war broke out the Great War book would be taken down, and volume by volume would be unfolded, and every preparation would be completed from the first telegram to the last bootlace.

That is what we do in regard to war. This Bill proposes we should do the same thing in regard to unemployment. Is the Minister of Labour going to say that the Cabinet Committee is making all these preparations? Of course it is not. That is why we say that if we had a Government which made preparations against economic misery, as seriously as they make preparations against military slaughter, they would not for a moment admit any of these minor departmental objections, which are the only arguments brought against the central purpose of the Bill. Last year the Minister of Labour in his speech kept on anxiously asking whether this Bill represented the official policy of the Labour Opposition. Of course it does. It represents the policy which has been accepted by every Labour Member in this House, and it has been endorsed by the annual Labour Conference. And why does it represent that policy? It represents it because the Bill expresses the very heart of the doctrine which is stated in almost every speech delivered from this quarter of the House. Whether we are discussing Socialism, or unemployment, or the nationalisation of any particular industry, the central argument around which it is all gathered is that we wish to substitute public control and ordered purpose for the blind, haphazard, cruel forces of unregulated competitive anarchy. That is the purpose of this Bill, of which I now move the Second Reading.

Mr. SHEPHERD

I beg to second the Motion.

It is not my intention to make a reiteration of facts and figures to which this House has listened for generations—facts and figures which, so far, have had no results whatsoever upon the abolition of unemployment. I am painfully aware that there is, probably, not one chance in a thousand of making any connection between the results of this Debate and the condition of the mass of the people. If I may say so, to me the condition of the Benches opposite points to a very tragic state of affairs. I suppose there are about 5 per cent. of the members of the Government present, though we are here to discuss the greatest tragedy in our national life. It bears out, I think, the impression which has always been conveyed to me outside this House, that there is a lack of reality. I am perfectly certain that any one who is in touch at all with the effects upon the human being of this curse of unemployment, could not treat it in such a way, that when there is a sincere demand being made to deal with this evil in our midst, there should be so much empty space opposite.

May I ask the House to bear with me for one moment when I say that I am not going to deal with facts and figures? They leave me cold. Anything can be made of them or nothing. This is what it means to me. I happen to live in a place which is 12 miles from a railway station, but only a quarter of a mile from the nearest workhouse, and the last time I was at home there came at my door a knock, which I answered. I found standing there a young fellow looking very much ashamed of himself. He said nothing whatsoever, but his eyes fell to his feet. My eyes followed his, and there I saw the toes of each foot peeping out of what should have been boots. He was unemployed, and he had just left the nearest workhouse to my house, and had to go to the next, a distance of 10 miles. To get there he had to cross over a hill on which there is at this moment, and at the moment when I saw him, a foot of snow to be walked through. He looked, as I said, very ashamed of himself, but I think the shame was not his. The shame is the nation's, and much more than the nation's—it is the shame of this House in its apathy when such incidents are of constant repetition. I am aware that this may be termed "sob-stuff," but my wife has that sob-stuff to go through several times a day and seven days a week. My children have the same sob-stuff to go through, and, to my sorrow in one way, it has made my eldest daughter, aged 11, a rebel against society in that such a state of things should be permitted to continue.

It may be urged, of course, that these instances only arise when we have such an abnormal number of unemployed as at present—1,250,000—but unemployment is constant in this system of society. It is up sometimes, and down at others. As an illustration of this, I would like to go back about 16 years to my first experience as a teacher. I was in a city school, and each morning I would call over the roll, and I would find certain boys missing. I would enquire as to why they were missing, and I could never get any satisfactory reply in the class-room. But in going home with other boys who were chums of the boys who were absent, I would then learn that, as a rule, those boys were absent because they had not a shirt to put on, or because they had not any food. Why? The fathers were unemployed.

I would like to point out to this House the tremendous waste in educa- tion, because teachers have to carry on with this job of trying to educate a class of 60 or 65 boys, many of whom are absolutely unfitted to receive it, because of the state of their stomachs. That was in a time when trade was not bad, as it is now. I remember very well my first school, which I entered with very high ideals of what I was going to do. It was a country school consisting of the boys of farm labourers. Wonderful schemes I had, in my enthusiasm really to do things. I hammered away for six months, but I found I was making no impression. I was then, I may add, one of the Toriest of Tories. At the end of six months, I had to investigate what was wrong with my methods, as I was making so little impression. The result was, I found that half my boys were coming to school with empty stomachs, although they were the children of the hardest-worked class of the community, a result of over-employment. Here we have constantly, side by side, underemployment in one industry, and over-employment in another. These are the things that unemployment means to me. I said that I doubted whether there was one chance in a thousand of there being any reflection in the lives of the poor of this Debate this morning; but I am going to stake all on that one chance. I am going to see whether there is sufficient common humanity left in this House to overcome this soulless system which is destroying the mass of our people. I believe there is. A slight expression of it was seen in the discussion on the Superannuation Bill last week. I believe hon. Members opposite saw there was great injustice being done to a considerable section of the community. That, to me, was an expression of the common humanity, which it seems to me is very much more necessary on this occasion.

Personally, my position is in the melting pot. I came with a special mandate to this House. The people in my constituency said to me: "We want you to go to Westminster especially because of this question of unemployment: mend it if you can; but if you cannot mend it, then make every effort to end the system which causes it." I have it on my conscience before deciding upon the method to be taken to see how much this House shows sympathy with this really sincere attempt to deal with the evil in our midst. Though it is a very difficult thing to do, I have tried to keep an open mind on the matter, and the result of this Debate to-day will help me very much indeed in making up my mind.

There is another point which, I think, has not been sufficiently appreciated by hon. Members opposite. It is that in connection with this matter of unemployment the whole system of Parliamentary Government is at stake. There is an increasing number—an alarmingly increasing number to me—of people who say it is impossible to remedy our grievances and to get justice under the present Parliamentary system, and that we need to try different methods. We are all conversant with the theory of force. But that theory has not been advocated from this side of the House. I have strongly opposed it, because I hope and pray that this House may deal with this matter without bringing in force at all. But there are, as I say, increasing thousands who believe it cannot be done without force. In a very large measure the result of this Debate will be a sign to these people as to whether they are right or whether we are right—who have been opposing them, and saying: "leave it to the present House of Commons which can deal with the question if it wishes so to do."

I wish to point out to hon. Members opposite who have still an open mind on this question, and who are not content, and refuse to be content, to be a mere cog in a voting machine, that this disease in our midst is a modern disease. Unemployment, as we know it now, was unknown in mediaeval times. It has arisen under the industrial system. It was given birth to during the Industrial Revolution. The capitalist system of society has entirely failed to deal with it, and confesses through the mouth of the Prime Minister in this House that it has no remedy. That, surely, is sufficient proof to anyone who is not a mere voting machine, that such a disease requires fresh treatment. We do not claim that this Bill will absolutely wipe unemployment off the face of the earth, but we do say there are possibilities in the Bill, if only we will use them, which will reflect our own attitude to the question. We can find, I have no doubt, all sorts of points against it. I have read over some of the criticisms brought forward when this Bill was before the House last year. There are all sorts of criticisms that can be levelled against it. My chief criticism is that this Bill will not do anything at all to do away with the rich unemployed. I am sure hon. Members opposite, who know what work is, will sympathise with us in trying to do away with that! That is my chief complaint against it. It will, however, for the first time in the history of this country attempt to regulate the evil in a scientific and organised manner. Again, we say that this is a disease, a very malignant disease, which has to be treated as medical science treats disease in the human body by attempting to eliminate it from the human system. The Bill will also prepare the way for that time when we shall attempt to organise our national life on a basis, not of self, but of service and love. Only when we do that can we eliminate this evil from our midst. We open this House with prayer, which has for each one its own meaning in his heart, and we look forward to the time when that Kingdom shall come in which everyone will have a chance to attain the happiness which, I am sure, we all wish to see. Because this Bill will help to hasten that day I have great pleasure in seconding the Motion.

Mr. DUFF COOPER

I beg to move, to leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof the words this House, while deploring the fact that unemployment is still prevalent, though in a diminishing degree, nevertheless declines to give a Second Reading to a Bill which relegates to a partly independent body a problem which can be better dealt with by the Government of the day through its usual administrative machinery, and which, by placing a new burden of £10,000,000 a year on the taxpayers of this country, will still further handicap our industrial revival, which can best be secured by the determined limitation of national and local expenditure and the stimulation of trade along normal channels. My first duty is to congratulate the hon. Member who has just sat down upon a maiden speech which must have impressed everybody who heard it with its eloquence and its sincerity. I noticed that the hon. Member did not ask, as is the usual custom, for the indulgence of the House. He was quite right. He needed no indulgence. He spoke with eloquence and with authority, because he was speaking upon a subject with which he has come into close contact. My great hope is that his experience of this House will be such that he will be convinced, and I believe that if, as he says, he has an open mind on the question, he will be convinced, that we are not a hardhearted and not a soulless institution as he at present thinks; but that we do treat this matter as seriously as he thinks it ought to be treated in endeavouring, as earnestly as we can, to find a way out, and that we are as likely to find some solution of this problem by the present methods of Governmental machinery as by any other.

There was one criticism in the speech of the hon. Member as to which I would refer. He asked why there were so few Ministers on the Front Government Bench to-day. When he has had greater experience of this House, he will, no doubt, know that this is not the first time we have debated unemployment. He will know that it is a subject that the House of Commons has debated again and again. He will know that those whose privilege it is to sit on the Front Bench and have the control of Departments, find that those Departments make great demands upon their time, and attention in the morning, and one, therefore, cannot expect every Member of the Government to attend every Debate in this House, especially on a private Members' morning.

We have had many debates upon unemployment, but this differs from most of them in one important respect. As a rule, the Government are on the defensive. As a rule, the Government have to defend the existing situation and to explain their inability to better existing conditions; but that is not the case to-day, and no statement from the other side of how bad conditions are, and no indictment of the Government for not making them better is an argument in support of this Bill. To-day we are discussing a Bill which hon. Members opposite have put forward as a definite remedy, and it is our business to find out whether there is anything in that remedy, irrespective of how bad the situation may be. When one's friend is ill and other medicines have failed, one does not immediately accept the first remedy that any quack offers. If he brings along something which looks very much like poison one prefers to leave one's friend to endeavour to recover by the process of Nature, especially if he already shows some slight sign of recovery, rather than give him a remedy which may make him worse. Let us, therefore, examine the Bill.

The hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Lees-Smith) has told us that its main central idea is to create some permanent machinery to deal with this ever-pressing problem; but the permanent machinery is to consist of a Committee of Cabinet Ministers, who will change with every Government. What is there permanent about that? He expatiated at some length upon the important work this body would do during the fat years, the years of prosperity, the years of which, alas, we have little experience. There is not a word about it in the Bill; not a word about this Committee exercising control over the expenditure of Government Departments during the years of prosperity. Although such control might be very advisable and very desirable, I should have thought it would be much better for each Department to be urged to exercise such control itself, rather than that we should set up a Committee which would interfere with the machinery of, and get into the way of, every other Department in turn. He expatiated at some length upon the mistakes made in 1906 and 1907. We are not here to defend the lack of foresight of which the Liberal Government of those days provided so many examples—the Liberal Government of which the hon. Member himself, at a time when it commanded a large majority in this House, was a warm supporter. We are not going to defend the Liberal Government, but this is a case on which something can be said for them, because the whole difficulty with industrial questions is that one cannot tell when hard times are coming, one cannot foresee a slump, because it depends upon events over which human beings have, to a large extent, no control. Hard times depend upon failures of crops, upon bad seasons, and upon those wars which the hon. Gentleman is so contemptuous about our making any provision for at all. As an example of the kind of thing that throws out the whole industrial system, one can take the late failure of the Russian wheat crop which, we were told, was going to be such a splendid crop, but which, either through ignorance on the part of the authorities of Russia or, what is still more unpardonable, deliberately misleading statements on their part, has entirely thrown out the estimate of the supply of wheat throughout the world.

12.0 N.

What is the great panacea which the Labour party have brought forward after years of cogitation? Ten months ago they produced the same Bill. I should have thought that they, who are always deriding us for lack of invention, for bankruptcy of ideas, for complete sterility as to any remedy, might have found some other Bill to bring forward. They have not even taken the trouble to correct it; the most glaring blunders, to which attention was drawn a year ago, still remain in the Bill. They are blunders for which they apologised, saying they were small matters, and that they could be put right in Committee. Surely, out of respect for the House, they might have taken the trouble to put them right during the last ten months. There is the obvious blunder that we are setting up an enormous Committee to spend money, and that on that Committee every Department in the State is represented except the Department which has control over finance. There is not a single representative of the Treasury upon this spending Committee. They apologised for that last year, but it still remains in the Bill. It is a great confession of bankruptcy on their part. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Seaham (Mr. Webb), whose name appears on the back of the Bill, but who last year forbore to say a word in its defence, in the good old days before the Labour party were in office, used to have many schemes for curing unemployment. He had a whole quiver full, and most of them were schemes which, it was represented, could be put into operation at once. The Labour party have often explained that they were in power for only a short time, and could not give effect to all these ingenious proposals, but now that they are no longer enjoying the responsibilities of office, why should we be denied the pleasure of indulging in a contemplation, at least, of some of the expedients, some of the proposals of the right hon. Gentleman's fertile mind?

What the Bill does is to set up a Committee. Are there to be on this Committee any new brains, any fresh blood, any particular gentleman with extraordinary qualifications and great experience in dealing with unemployment who will be likely to find some new way of dealing with it and suggest some new cure? The members of the Committee are going to be the hon. and right hon. Gentlemen with whom we are all acquainted, and whom some of us admire more than do others, whom we are accustomed to see on the Treasury Bench. I have often been shocked by the expressions used both here and in the Committee Rooms by hon. Member's opposite about my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour. Sometimes they assert that he is a bad Minister, and even go so far as to suggest that he does not try to be a good one. One day it is his head that is at fault, and another day they impugn the soundness of his heart. Only the day before yesterday the hon. Member for Peebles (Mr. Westwood) informed us that in the opinion of the education authorities of Fifeshire the right hon. Gentleman and the whole of his department were neither more nor less than brutes. If that is really the opinion of the party opposite, do they realise that it is to this very individual of low intelligence and narrow sympathies, this man in whom they have no confidence, this brute, to whom they are going to hand over these tremendous powers to transfer authority at present exercised by other people, that it is for his benefit they are going to create a new Government Department in order to put him at the head of it, and finally they are going to endow him with £10,000,000 a year to spend whether he wants it or not. They must be well aware that ever since the right hon. Gentleman has been in office he has been struggling to the best of his ability with this problem, and he has been endeavouring to discover a cure, if any cure exists. Not only has the Minister of Labour but his colleagues also have been exercising their minds whenever they have had an opportunity in order to discover something to deal with the difficulties of this problem, and they have explored ©very avenue that might lead to a possible solution. Of course they have not been working in isolation. They are colleagues—they are friends. They have often met one another and have discussed this question, and I should like to ask why, when they meet together under the guise of a Committee as is proposed under this Bill and sit round a table with exactly the same minds as they possessed before, they are going suddenly to see some new illumination. Why should we expect under these circumstances that some new idea will dawn upon them because of the knowledge that they have £10,000,000 in their pocket and that somehow or other they have got to get rid of it? What are the expedients to which they would have to resort? In the first place there are local expedients, there are the local authorities and public utility companies, and then you come to national expedients. It has long been recognised that local authorities should do all they can in the way of assisting and promoting works for the good of the locality, and of giving employment to those who are out of work. And it is recognised that advice and financial assistance from the State ought to be granted to such authorities. It is only right that a Committee should decide which schemes are deserving of support, which should be encouraged and accelerated, which should receive financial assistance and how much they should receive. But surely hon. Gentlemen opposite are aware that such a Committee does exist at the present time, and has existed for the last 6 years, and under its direction £100,000,000 has been expended in assisting unemployment. That sum alone represents a much larger sum than is proposed under this Bill.

Not only this, but that Committee is a permanent one. It does not consist of Cabinet Ministers, and it does not change with every Government. It takes no notice of the storms which sweep over this assembly and it has already survived three administrations. It consists of its business men with experience in every branch of commerce and administrative affairs, and there has hitherto been no criticism of its work. Are hon. Gentlemen opposite not aware of that fact? If so, surely the least they might have done was to have made some provision for the proposed new Committee to co-operate with the Unemployment Grants Committee. Surely we might have had had some explanation in the speeches which have been delivered in support of this Bill as to what their relations were going to be with this Committee which is already in existence. Are they going to abolish it? Would they abolish a Committee which for six years has been giving every satisfaction, and has collected a whole mass of information and experience which can be handed over, in order that its work should be done by another Committee of Cabinet Ministers and minor Ministers who are already overburdened with the work of their Departments, and who would have less time to give to this work, and would not possess the experience of those who are already performing that work so efficiently?

Is the intention under this Bill, to allow the two Committees to go on working side by side? To have two Committees doing the same work is quite unthinkable. The only alternative would be that the new Committee would have to delegate much of their work to the Committee which is already working, and, of course, they would have to part with some of the £10,000,000 they are asking for to that Committee. What would be the result of this great Measure which has been so eloquently introduced to-day? It would be merely that you wuld have the same Committee as is working now, and it would get its money to work with under this Bill without any Parliamentary control, instead of having the money provided by an Estimate brought before this House, and which would be under the control of this House. What would you gain by such a proposal as that? So far as that part of this work of the imaginary Committee is concerned, you would gain nothing whatever, and you would at once destroy the authority of the House of Commons over a large portion of this expenditure.

It may be urged that this Committee can only deal with the expenditure of local authorities and public utility companies and matters of limited and local importance. As the hon. Member for Keighley observed, he had in mind other forms of expenditure such as great schemes of afforestation and drainage schemes on a national basis all over the country. It is true that in regard to enormous schemes of that kind the present Unemployment Grants Committee is not qualified to deal with them, but would this new Committee be qualified to deal with them? What qualifications, for example, would the President of the Board of Education possess to deal with schemes of afforestation or drainage, and what qualifications would the Secretary of State for the Colonies possess in regard to drainage schemes? Of course, hon. Members may say that those Ministers need not attend when those particular subjects are being considered, and, if that is so, why is it necessary to set up such a Committee at all? [HON. MEMBERS: "Why do anything?"] If the Minister of Labour had a great scheme to deal with, surely he could set up a Committee to consider such a proposal without passing an Act of Parliament.

Of course, I am aware that if you take away the Committee from this Bill you rather spoil it, because then it simply gives the Minister of Labour £10,000,000 a year in the hope that he may be able to find some useful way of spending it. It is useless to set up a Committee to deal with a particular subject before you know what that subject is; it is much better to set up a Committee when you know exactly what you want and know something about your scheme. Equally, it is much better to decide upon what you are going to spend money before you decide upon how much you are going to spend. What is proposed under this Bill is diametrically opposed to one of the cardinal principles of taxation. I am surprised to see that this Bill is backed by so good an economist as the right hon. Member for Central Edinburgh (Mr. W. Graham), but I am not surprised to note the absence in this respect of the name of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Snowden). I wonder if either of those two right hon. Gentlemen are prepared to defend the levying of taxation to raise money which you do not know how you are going to spend, and which, in fact, you do not know whether it is going to be spent at all, because there is a provision in the Bill that any of this money which is not spent may be invested in securities. It is against all principles of sound taxation to raise money by taxation that you are not going to spend and which you are simply going to invest. Such a system is fundamentally unsound, and I should be glad if some hon. Member opposite will try and defend such a proposal.

Hon. Members opposite often talk as though the Government have in their possession a large sum of money which comes from the clouds and which they can spend anyhow. The Government are often accused of meanness and want of generosity in regard to their expenditure, but surely such terms as meanness are out of place when you are dealing with money which does not belong to you. You cannot be generous or mean with what is not your own; you can be extravagant, or you can be economical. Every penny of this £10,000,000 that is going to be devoted annually to this Board is coming out of the pockets of the people of this country. A great proportion of it must come out of industry, and every penny that comes out of industry must lessen the amount of employment which industry can give. You must always remember, when dealing with this unemployment question, that there is the danger ever present that the money you are taking to give to the unemployed and to create work, often unnecessary work, and to put people into jobs, is coming from somewhere else. Some of it must necessarily come from industry, from works now going on, productive and satisfactory work, and some of the jobs you are giving with one hand you are taking away with the other. It is necessary, in dealing with this subject of unemployment, to deal with it so far as is possible from a strictly economic point of view. You must not approach it from an emotional point of view, which is very easy, because the demands which it makes upon the emotions are so overwhelming that the sturdiest economist is apt to be torn off his feet. We have only to realise the situation as it exists to-day to know that, unless we face it with cool heads and hearts as much under control as we can get them, we are likely to do more harm than good in the long run.

It is no very grateful task for one on these Benches to oppose a Bill brought forward by hon. Members opposite upon a subject of this kind. I know how deeply and sincerely they feel upon this matter. We have only to listen to the speech of the hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Shepherd) to realise that fact many of them have come into closer contact with it than we have, and their experience of it has left them feeling so strongly about it. For my own part, I can always forgive any violence of language, any unreasonableness of conduct, into which they may be betrayed in dealing with such a subject, because in all the history of human tragedy there is no more tragic figure than that of the young able-bodied skilled workman, able and anxious to work, with wife and children dependent upon him, only asking for work, and yet unable to get it; and those who have experienced that, or who have witnessed it at close quarters, must have had left on their souls a scar which time can never obliterate. Therefore, I give them full credit and do them full honour for the sincerity with which they feel upon this subject.

I do rather wish sometimes that they would be more inclined to return the compliment and realise that we also feel very sincerely on this matter, that we who have not had their experience do at any rate possess imagination, and that, though it must limp a long way behind their experience, it does go part of the way. For my own part, if I thought that this Bill was going to benefit the unemployed, or the country in any way, I should not be speaking against it, I should not vote against it, and I should not hesitate to vote for it. It is because I am convinced that it is an utterly worthless Bill, and that the Committee which it is proposed to set up would deal with work, part of which is already better done by an existing committee and part of which would be much better done by a committee set up for that particular work. It supplies no need, but merely creates a new piece of machinery. The hon. Member for Darlington spoke about the heartless machine. What does this Bill do? It adds only one more unnecessary wheel to that machine. The finance of the Bill is utterly unsound. It is a Bill unworthy of the great problem with which it attempts to deal, unworthy of the Labour party, and quite unworthy of a Second Reading by this House.

Lieut.-Colonel HENDERSON

I beg to second the Amendment.

I always think it a little difficult to follow the hon. Member for Oldham (Mr. Duff Cooper), because in the speeches which he makes in this House he always covers the ground in a very comprehensive way and leaves one with the impression that everything that should be said on the subject has been said by himself. But I am glad to have the opportunity of seconding this Amendment, the more so because I took part in the Debate last year. The hon. Member for Oldham was quite right when he said that the subject that we have got to consider this afternoon is not the general question of unemployment, but this particular Bill, and, whether this particular Bill is going to be any solution of that problem or not. It is very like a number of other Bills which the party opposite have introduced; it is a mass of detail based on entirely unsound foundations. When we come to consider it, I do not think it is necessary for us to consider questions like the Poor Law Officers Superannuation Act or whether the Board should have a seal of their own, because these are really merely the flower-pots which prevent us seeing the furniture inside the house.

When you come to consider the Bill itself, it is to my mind unsound from two points of view. It is unsound constitutionally, and it is unsound from the financial point of view. It is unsound constitutionally because the whole of this £10,000,000 which is to be supplied to the Board annually is to be charged on the Consolidated Fund, and it will be impossible to challenge the spending of that money directly in this House. That is constitutionally unsound. It is also constitutionally unsound, because the Board, as a Board, will have power to supersede the Ministers who compose that Board in their duties in their own departments. You might find the Minister of Labour, who is to be Chairman of the Board, deciding that it was a good thing that they should spend some money making a road in Lancashire. The Minister of Transport is also to be on the Board. He is responsible for the roads in this country, and he himself might consider it was not desirable to make a road in Lancashire but much better to make one in Yorkshire. Yet he would be overridden as a Minister by the Board and would not be allowed to carry out the policy for which he is responsible, to this House.

In the third place, it is contemplated—I think in Clause 4 of the Bill—that in certain circumstances the Board may com- pel a local authority to spend money in carrying out schemes the cost of which would fall upon the rates. On Tuesday last the Party opposite moved and supported a Motion to the effect that relief schemes in areas where there was great distress should be a national charge, and not a local charge, and on Friday they proceed to bring in a Bill under which schemes of that kind will be a local charge and not a national charge. Perhaps one of their Members will explain which is the policy they really support. If the Bill he unsound constitutionally for those reasons, it is as my hon. Friend has pointed out very much more unsound from a financial point of view, and in one sense it is financially absurd, because it is based on the idea that by excluding the Treasury it will be more easy for the Board to obtain money. You can, of course, avoid the Treasury as much as you like, but sooner or later you have to meet it, and I do not myself see any Chancellor of the Exchequer being told that he has got to provide £10,000,000 a year, either in the form of taxation or in the form of borrowing, for which he is in no way responsible, for which he cannot answer to this House, and on which he will not be consulted when it comes to the possibility of investing the money. I also see the possibility, if that fund is allowed to accumulate, as it may accumulate in times of good trade, of the Chancellor of the Exchequer casting a very envious eye upon it, and that fund becoming much more a bone of contention than our Friend the Road Fund has been in the last few months. £10,000,000 is a great deal of money. It would, in process of time, buy a private sports ground for each individual member of the House and my right hon. Friend the Member for Preston (Mr. T. Shaw) may remember that he once, in one of his lighter moments, remarked, when he was Minister of Labour, that he himself, although he was Minister of Labour, had not the power to spend a penny without going to the Treasury.

Mr. T. SHAW

indicated dissent.

Lieut.-Colonel HENDERSON

I did not mean that he said it in this House.

Mr. SHAW

It is a slight mistake.

Lieut.-Colonel HENDERSON

He says it is a slight mistake; possibly he will correct me.

Mr. SHAW

Yes, I will correct the hon. and gallant Gentleman. What I said was that the Minister of Labour, as a Minister, had no power to initiate any scheme for dealing with unemployment, and could not even paint his own offices without consulting another Government Department.

Lieut.-Colonel HENDERSON

That is very much the same thing; the right hon. Gentleman practically confirms what I said, the other Government Department, presumably, being the Treasury. Under this Bill he will have that freedom which he desires; he will have his £10,000,000 a year, and he will be able to produce schemes of various kinds to his heart's content. But I would remind the House that this £10,000,000 a year, although it is a very considerable sum of money, is a very small sum indeed when it is considered from the point of view of the wage bill of this country or the exports of this country. The average weekly wage bill of this country is, on a conservative estimate, probably not less than £30,000,000 a week, so that this sum of £10,000,000 that would be voted annually is equivalent to the wages paid in this country for about two days. When one looks at it from that point of view, one realises that the whole scheme is based on the unsound idea that it is possible for the State directly to increase the amount of employment in this country by spending money on relief schemes. It is not possible for the State to increase the amount of employment in this country except in one way, and one way only, and that is by inflation; and we all know that inflation is a policy which subsequently has to be paid for. It is a policy which Germany is paying for now, and which France will have to pay for sooner or later, and I was always under the impression that the party opposite were opposed to inflation because it hits the poor man. Money which is available for trade comes from savings, and those savings may be spent either in investment or in consumption, both of which benefit trade; but if it is taken in the form of taxation by the State, if the State says it will spend the money, and considers it can spend it better than we can, then you come to the old question whether private enterprise or nationalisation is the better form of economy. On that question we definitely and entirely disagree.

The hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Lees-Smith) said, I think, that this Bill would economise in interest on capital, and I gather, therefore, that he does contemplate that the Bill to some extent may enable his party, if they are again in office, to carry out certain forms of nationalisation, because there is nothing to prevent them, under their system of investment, from buying up trust securities in railways and similar forms of private enterprise. If that be the case, we can clearly and definitely say that this Bill, in our opinion, will not in the very least degree assist employment, because we are opposed to nationalisation, and I think we can clearly claim that, if this money is to be taken from the pockets of the taxpayers and spent on schemes of this kind, it will be spent less economically than if it were left to be spent by private enterprise. There are two reasons for that. One is that it would be spent, for instance, in the making of a road when it might be spent in the erection of a silk factory, and no one is going to convince me that a road is eventually of more benefit to the district or to the country than the erection of a silk factory, which would give permanent and definite employment to a large number of people. In the second place, a Government can always undertake uneconomic schemes, because they know that, if the schemes fail, as they do frequently, they can come back to the taxpayer for more money, and they then work round and round in a vicious circle, the Government demanding money to relieve unemployment, and then, when those schemes frequently fail, coming back to the taxpayer for more money, and so ensuring that unemployment will continue.

Although, for the reasons which I have given and which my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham has given much more ably than I can, I do not think that this Bill will in any way help employment, I do think that behind this Bill there is an idea which should be pursued, and that is the idea on which the hon. Member who moved the Second Reading dwelt in the first part of his speech—the idea that there should be some continual economic research into the problems of industry. I quite agree with him that there is not enough research of that kind at the present time. The Prime Minister has set up a Civil Research Committee, but I do not quite know what that Committee is doing, and I am not sure that any of us know. I do feel, however, that we cannot progress industrially unless we take steps to have more inquiries into matters of that kind than we have at the present time. For instance, we have in this country no information, or very little information, to show what are the charges for social services in other countries as compared with our own. If we are going to progress as an industrial nation, it is absolutely and vitally necessary that we should know what charges other nations are bearing—what charges fall on industry in other nations as compared with the charges which fall upon industry here.

If we are to face competition, as we have to do, we must know whether, we can go a little further along the road of social progress, spending more money, or whether, by so doing, we are going so to pile up the burdens in this country that we cannot possibly compete with our foreign competitors overseas. We do not know that at present; we have practically no information on that subject at all. We ought to have a Department providing that information. Again, we have very little information on the general question of the mobility of labour, nor have we ever explored properly the question whether it is really the function of industry to produce, or whether it is primarily the function of industry to give employment. The two things are related, but I sometimes wonder whether we do not dwell too much on the question of employment and not enough on the questionof efficiency. If we had a Department working in that direction, we certainly should get a lot of valuable information which, as the hon. Member who moved the Second Reading said, is vitally necessary. I do not, however, think it is necessary, in order to get that information, to have a Bill of this kind. That information can be obtained with the existing machinery of Government, without any Bill, without any statutory alteration of any of the existing Government Departments. Therefore whilst I quite agree with the hon. Member opposite that we want to progress in that direction, I do not agree with him, or with anyone who is support- ing the Bill, that it will help us a single bit towards a solution of that problem, and I can only imagine that hon. Members opposite persist in introducing the Bill every year because it has a very pleasant title and looks very nice in the constituencies. I hope the House will reject the Bill because I am sure it is nothing but a vote-catching measure which will not be of the slightest assistance.

Mr. OLIVER

About 10 months ago it was my privilege to introduce this Bill, and the criticism to-day practically traverses the same ground that it did then. The criticisms of the hon. Member for Oldham (Mr. Duff Cooper) would have been quite proper if in the intervening period he could put his finger on any single factor which had helped in any way to minimise the problem we have met today to discuss. Last year the Minister of Labour described the measure as goose step statesmanship. What has he done since then for the unemployed man, not in terms of window dressing and platform speeches but in jobs actually found and money actually spent in useful employment for the men whom this Bill is designed to help? I think the Minister will not be able to point to a single factor where he or his Government has helped to minimise the urgency of this question. We often read in the Press about the great loss of time which results through strikes and lockouts. The lost time in trade disputes is a mere bagatelle as compared with the time lost through this question. From 1908 to 1923 the lost days per head of the industrial population were roughly 2.11, and the lost days through unemployment come out at about 18.66. The hon. Member who introduced the Bill said that if this was a question of War every effort would be made and all parties would be working in cooperation to deal effectively with the menace. He omitted to say that if unemployment affected all classes alike there would be the co-operation which to-day is noticeable by its absence. That is the point. It touches a million and a quarter of the most unfortunate of our people, and in consequence it is left to the Labour party to continuously bring this question before the attention of the House. During the last ten months the matter has been aggravated by the regulations of the Ministry of Labour in cutting off from benefit many people who during previous years were entitled to draw it, and in consequence day by day this question becomes more acute. We do not object to criticism of this Bill, but criticisms come ill from a party that does little or nothing to deal with the question.

To me it is not Communism that is the danger to the State. It is the fact that 1,250,000 of the most unfortunate of our people tramp day by day looking for work and are unable to find it. On that million, and a quarter perhaps another 2,000,000 people depend, and, in consequence, we get a large mass of people almost in a state of desperate hopelessness. To me that is infinitely more dangerous than any question of Communism that we hear so much about in the House. The only important Measure of recent years which has been introduced to deal with this matter has been the extension of the Unemployment Insurance Act. When unemployment insurance was first introduced the problem had not assumed the great importance it assumes to-day. It has really outgrown the position the Insurance Acts were designed to meet. During the War great strides were made in production. In every industry—engineering, textile, building, railways—there was an unprecedented step forward in production, and, in consequence, we were getting, day by day and week by week, greater powers of production. But, unfortunately, during the past few years the wages of the working classes have been reduced to such an extent that they cannot purchase in increasing amount the things which they require and which would produce employment.

We may be told before the Debate finishes that we depend very largely on our export trade and not so much on our home markets. I am not unmindful of that. I know in the pre-War years 1913 and 1914 the exports per head of the population were round about £9 per head, followed by Germany with about £5 10s. per head of her population. But despite the importance of our overseas markets the greatest market for this country is her home market, and that home market is maintained by the purchasing power of the working classes. When we read the Census of Production in 1907 and see the paucity of consumption in the essential commodities— woollens, textiles, boots and shoes and furniture—when we see how little is used and consumed, it shows that there is a great need for increased purchasing power on the part of the people of this country.

This Bill in itself cannot deal with the great question of unemployment. No one Bill can do that. The problem is too complex to attempt to embody in one Bill, but what this Bill does attempt to do is to grapple with the more abnormal phases of the question, and, furthermore, it establishes and lays down some foundation to deal with this question more or less on scientific lines, such as investigation year by year, and looking ahead not to to-day or to-morrow but further afield. By this method we should be able to grapple with a large measure of this question which to-day is left absolutely neglected till the problem becomes acute. I believe that the country is not waiting for a perfect measure, but for a Government which will introduce a Measure which will be an attempt, if imperfect attempt, to deal with this matter. That, in my judgment, will be the Government which will strike the popular imagination and will be applauded by the people, who realise that, unless this 'thing is tackled thoroughly and scientifically, it will be a question which will ultimately overwhelm us.

Captain LODER

It is significant that, although we have seen this Bill introduced this year and last year and a somewhat similar Bill is 1923, we saw nothing of it while the party opposite was in power in 1924, and I feel that hon. Members opposite cannot be quite certain that the remedies which they propose in this Bill will be quite so effective as they like to say. At the same time, the speeches to which we have listened from the party opposite indicate that there is a motive behind this Bill with which, I think, we can all agree. In so far as the Bill is intended to stimulate the further co-ordination of the whole machinery of Government in order to help to solve this pressing problem of unemployment. I think there will be no quarrel between hon. Members on this side and on that. What we question is not so much that motive behind the Bill as the necessity and the efficacy of the proposals in the Bill. The Title of the Bill suggests a disease, and unemployment, without question, is one of the most serious social diseases from which any country can suffer. We are more or less familiar now with the diagnosis of that disease, and we realise that, serious as the situation is to-day, with over a million unemployed, we must always be ready to face a situation where there will be certainly several hundred thousand unemployed.

Unemployment is due to permanent causes, such as seasonal fluctuations of trade, the movement of industry from one place to another, and the decline of old and the rise of new industries. All such things cause a certain amount of unemployment, and there are other and, as we hope, more temporary and abnormal causes, arising mainly out of the War, such as the general disorganisation of industry due to the War, the depreciation of currency, high taxation, increased cost of living, and all those things, in fact, which have diminished the purchasing power of our former foreign customers and of our own people. All these things which are causes of unemployment have been diagnosed and are well known, and I need not go into them. What we are concerned with at the moment is the treatment of the disease. There are certain cures, perhaps, for unemployment, but they are not such as can be brought into operation in a moment. International peace is a cure for unemployment, because of the stability of the conditions under which the free interchange of commodities can be conducted, and we shall restore trade and reduce unemployment by means of Imperial development, the increase of efficiency in industry, national economy, and reduction of taxation. All these are things which have their effect in curing unemployment. Then there are palliative measures. I should think we are somewhat inclined to regard such measures as relief schemes, export credits, and trade facilities as medicines to be applied to the sick person rather than as a permanent cure. Thirdly, we have a system of social insurance which helps to cope with unemployment, not only Unemployment Insurance itself, which helps to mitigate the effects of unemployment, but other forms of social insurance which help to withdraw the unfit, the sick, and the aged from industry, and in that way open up places for people who might be unemployed otherwise.

This brings me to a side of the problem which is not purely economic. The problem is not only that we want more employment, but that we want better conditions of employment as well. We are not content merely to put the economic machine into order and to let it run at its own sweet will. There are social standards of life which we want to preserve, and that is the crux of the matter. There is a social and there is an economic point of view from which this whole problem can be approached, and too often, I think, the emphasis is laid entirely on the one or on the other. We forget that, although they are different points of view, at the same time they are interdependent, and really the whole difficulty is to get the proper balance between the two. What we have to realise is that without economic prosperity we cannot have the resources with which to endow social welfare, and without social well-being our economic prosperity can only be a transitory thing. In fact, it is bad economics to ignore the social side, and it is socially bad to ignore the economic side. It is really of the essence of politics and of the art of government to get the right balance between the two. Just as modern science realises that it is the general health of the individual, the conditions under which he lives, and his mode of life which matter, so it is the business of the Government to look after the general health of the community, the body politic, and that is where I have to disagree with hon. Members opposite in regard to this Bill, because it seems to me that the creation of a Board such as is proposed in this Bill is to usurp one of the main functions of the Government and of the Cabinet itself.

The proposal is to give a set form to all the activities connected with unemployment. Hon. Members opposite seem to forget that one of the beauties of our system and the whole machinery of Government is its elasticity; the fact that it does not depend upon Statutory rules, but that we have a theory of government by the King in Council, which enables alterations to be made, without legislation, and which enables the machine to be improved, as occasion requires, in the light of experience. A Cabinet Committee on unemployment seems to me to be infinitely preferable to any form of Board, such as is suggested, as far as policy is concerned. As far as research and information goes, I hope the Civil Research Committee which has been established since we discussed this Bill last year will have valuable and tangible results. It would be very interesting if we could hear how that Committee has been going on and what it has been doing.

From the point of view of administration, how is this Bill going to help? The Government can be called the general practitioner for the health of the nation. The Minister of Health is, in a sense, the specialist on unemployment but, surely, it is unwise to place him in a position not exactly of control but of domination over a multitude of other Government Departments. Unemployment is not the only social disease from which we suffer. Another social disease is the disease of ignorance. I do not know whether hon. Members opposite would be prepared to bring in a Bill for an educational board, with the President of the Board of Education as Chairman, and every Government Department represented, in order to deal with the disease of ignorance.

Mr. MARCH

There is a Board of Education already.

1.0 P.M.

Captain LODER

Not a Board such as this Bill suggests. If we are to deal with this and other problems efficiently, Eon. Members must not think that, if we set up a Committee, we have created machinery which can necessarily solve the problem. It may be that even the Ministry of Labour might be improved. I have often wondered whether it would not be a good thing for the Ministry of Labour to administer the Factory Acts. There are other suggestions of that kind which might well be made and investigated. On the larger question of how we are to get co-ordination of the machinery of Government in order to deal with various social diseases, what we want is a much broader inquiry covering a much larger field than anything this Bill deals with. I believe that the whole machinery of Government requires overhauling, but that is not a question upon which I can dilate on the Second Reading of this Bill. If this Bill represents the serious considered contribution which the party opposite have to make to the solution of unemployment, I fear that it will only confirm the belief which we hold on this side of the House that they are incapable of grappling with the realities of the situation.

Mr. D. GRENFELL

What is your solution?

Captain LODER

I do not question the earnestness or sincerity which inspires their ideals. I fully appreciate the intensity of the emotions which may well be aroused amongst those who live their lives in contact with what I willingly admit to be the worst side of our civilisation. What I submit is that it is not by lifting up their eyes unto the hills of legislation that they will find any real help. From a sort of Mount Pisgah they survey the promised land, which seems to them fair but which appears to us to be nothing but a mirage. Were they to descend from those heights I think they would find that the land which they think is flowing with milk and honey would vanish, and all that they would see would be a bleak and arid desert, and the arid desert might well be one of their own creation.

Mr. ROBERT YOUNG

I should like to add my tribute to the excellent maiden speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mr. Shepherd). We have also had an excellent speech from the hon. Member for Oldham (Mr. Duff Cooper), but I am afraid I could not see that in it there was much evidence of sympathy for the class for whom at the moment we are seeking to do something. Since I became a Member of the House of Commons this is probably the hundredth time that we have discussed some phase of the unemployment question. Up to now we seem not to have had any system of continuous policy such as would be brought about by the acceptance of the principles contained in this Bill. If we could solve this problem along nonparty lines it would be an excellent thing for all concerned but, unfortunately, we do not seem to be going any way in that direction. Until this problem is solved, there can be no permanent solution for any of our other great problems. We shall only tinker at them. We may get some comfort for the moment, but ultimately we shall be distressed to find that our solutions have not given us the result we desire.

At no period do our houses deteriorate so much into slums as during a period of intense unemployment. At no time do we find that the money spent upon education in so many directions is wasted as during a period of intense unemplyment, when the children are rendered unfit to receive the benefit that otherwise might accrue to them by education. In relation to matters of public health, much of the benefit of the money that we spend upon public health is destroyed by every recurring period of unemployment; physical strength is reduced, the physique of a large portion of our community is lessened, and they are rendered unfit to discharge the duties that may be imposed upon them when there is a return to prosperous times. We have had attempts to relieve 'the distress caused by unemployment, and I am not going to belittle some of the methods that have been pursued, but as far as this Bill is concerned we are trying to seek a way whereby the future can be safeguarded. Up to this moment we have tried to relieve the distress caused by unemployment; but recently we have taken rather a strange way in relieving that distress. In the last few months the relief granted has been reduced.

We are informed that the number of people in employment is increasing. I sincerely hope it is the case, but we on this side of the House have reason to doubt whether the number of employed persons is increasing to any considerable extent, because we find that while many are going off the live register of the Exchanges and the number receiving unemployment benefits is decreasing, the number receiving relief from the poor rate is steadily increasing. I have an example of this from the borough in which I reside, Camberwell, and I think it is a true gauge of the policy which has been pursued during the last 12 months. I hold in my hand my rate paper for the current six months, and I notice that the rate has increased by Is. 6d. in the £. The rate for the last six months was 5s. 8d. in the £, and for the current six months 7s. 2d. in the £. I look at the details and I discover that the 1s. 6d. increase is spent, with the exception of ⅛ of a 1d., on the rate calls of the Camberwell Guardians and the Metropolitan Asylums Board. The whole of the increase in the rates is used for paying relief to those out of employment, many of whom seem to have been shifted from the Labour Exchange on to the board of guardians.

We are in the position of a nation with much unemployment because of the fact that we are getting a very much increased production over that which obtained previously to the War, and concurrently with that we have a considerable decrease in consumption. Many suggestions have been put forward as a remedy for our troubles. In the Debate last year it was suggested that we should recover our foreign trade. Everyone on this side of the House is particularly anxious to see industry recovering and the usual trade between nations taking place. But we must not forget that the War period created conditions in other countries which compelled them to start to produce things which they needed but which they formerly imported They will not return to the old state of things. They will continue to carry on the trades which were first started during the War in their country. The same thing is also true of our Dominions and Colonies. They are seeking more and more to become self-supporting, to do their own work, and as far as that is concerned we cannot get back to the pre-War state of industry.

All sorts of suggestions have been made in this House as palliatives or part solutions of the problem of unemployment. We have heard discussions on peace in industry. Speaking for myself, there is no one who more earnestly desires peace in industry. I regard all lock-outs and strikes very much like international war; vanquished and victors are alike sufferers in the ultimate result. Profit-sharing has been suggested as a part solution of the problem. I am convinced in my own mind that while it may be useful in creating peace in industry, it is far better that the results should go to the consumers rather than to individuals in small amounts which do not equal in many cases a Is. a week rise in wages. Co-partnership has been suggested. Hon. Members will remember the speech of the hon. Member for Mossley (Mr. Hopkinson) in which he warned us of the dangers of imposing on employers the liability of looking after the small savings of the employees employed in their business. It is also said that what is necessary is a decrease in the heavy taxation of the country. No one who pays taxation likes to pay heavy taxation. Have we not attempted it in large measure, and yet the results are not what were anticipated or expected by hon. Members opposite. In 1922 Income Tax stood at 6s. in the £. A 1s. was taken off, equivalent to £52,000,000 a year in the pockets of Income Tax payers. The following year another 6d. was taken off, adding another £26,000,000 to the £52,000,000. That was a reduction in Income Tax alone of no less than £78,000,000 a year. Last year another 6d. was taken off, bringing it to over £100,000,000—and the result is what we see to-day.

Altogether we have had over £308,000,000 in Income Tax saved to the Income Tax payers since 1922, and the result is that little or nothing has been done in the direction of relieving distress caused by unemployment. I need not add that while Income Tax has been saved to this extent, with no evident result, the amount that has been taken out of the wages of the workers has been of such an enormous character that it also might have been expected, according to hon. Members opposite, to have created trade and industrial activity. Now we are up against the latest proposal entertained by hon. Members opposite. They are not prepared to accept this Bill. As far as I can understand they are inclined to stick to that policy of theirs, which means nothing more than a continued lowering of wages and a possible increase in hours. There is no solution that way. It would rather aggravate the disease; it would cause unemployment to increase by leaps and bounds. What is the object of the Bill? Criticism has been levelled against what is called the Government Development Board. Surely all those in the different Departments interested in employment should meet together and contribute towards a solution of this problem instead of, as I suppose they do to-day, each ploughing his own particular furrow and giving us no direct result. I imagine that as a result of the establishment of this Board there would be careful investigation along all lines on which employment might be found. I imagine also that much good would accrue in relation to agriculture and fisheries, housing, and other sources of employment.

I must say something about the finance of the Bill. It is proposed that there should be £10,000,000 annually paid into a central fund for the purposes of unemployment. No one suggests that £10,000,000 is going to solve the problem, or that this Bill will deal with the unemployment that exists at the moment. But it contains in it the germ of a solution of the problem in the future. I confess, however, that I am not enamoured of the proposal to add unduly to the borrowing powers of local authorities. Local authorities are already overburdened with debt. They have done as much as they can to reduce the numbers of unemployed in their localities. As a result, they have mortgaged the future to a very large extent. I would have preferred some more practical and definite way for the local authorities to contribute to the central fund. Nevertheless, it seems tome that the only thing that can be done meantime is to call upon the local authorities to assist by borrowing money. The £10,000,000 seems to contain the germ of a solution in the future. If to this £10,000,000 we could ultimately add, not the result of borrowing by a local authority, but a contribution by local authorities of the proceeds of a penny rate towards the central fund, in a very short time there would be amassed such a sum that when unemployment returned there would be money sufficient for doing necessary and useful work throughout the country.

It cannot be said that this is a Socialist Measure in any way, that it attempts to destroy or undermine or impair private industry. In fact, the Bill refers to private employers of labour and private associations who may undertake work. If this Fund grew as we expect it would grow, the use of the money in the many directions that have been indicated would be better than the way in which we attempt to solve the problem to-day. Take my own constituency, a scattered constituency. It wants a new town hall. Suppose that it decided to build that town hall. It might apply for assistance from this central fund, and the more readily if it had contributed to the fund through the rates. The town would get a grant. The new town hall would be built, and the saving ultimately would be a saving in rates, not only to those who were manufacturers in the constituency, but to the ordinary ratepayers. Take the proposal in another way. Let us refer to the beet sugar industry. Suppose that we had had this fund in existence. The Government are to-day giving assistance to the industry. Suppose they gave the assistance through this fund, and maintained a certain amount of control over the industry in consequence.

Take also the proposed Kent coalfield development. Provided the Government were satisfied that it was a necessary undertaking, what would prevent them from taking shares in it, or giving a loan or grant to such an undertaking, and then having some say in the industry so long as the loan was being paid off or the industry was indebted to the fund, laying it down all the time, as we ought to lay it down, that in circumstances of that kind there would be a definite rate of interest to be paid to the shareholders, and anything accruing beyond that should go to the benefit of the consumer. Much has been said by previous speakers about wise economics. I studied most of my economics under my hon. Friend who moved the Second Reading of this Bill. He will readily grant that I am not a slavish follower of any particular economic doctrine which he explained to me. During later years I have rather inclined to throw economics to the wind, and to adopt something more ethical.

But, after all, I think this is a wise and economic way to proceed. It is infinitely better than the way in which we are going now. There is a precedent for attempting to solve the problem as the Bill proposes. There was a man named Joseph. Most of us know him by the fact that he had a coat of many colours. I am not referring to anyone in this House, present or past; I am going back very far indeed. He had a similar problem with which to deal. He realised that the economic condition of his country was such that famines and unemployment periodically occurred. In times of prosperity and plenty he took a fifth of the produce of the country and stored it up against the days of distress and pastoral and agriculture unemployment. He was a very wise statesman; he was the kind of statesman that we want to-day—someone who will realise that we have to tackle this question along continuous lines, taking something of the proceeds of the prosperous years in order to provide for the leanness of the years that come after. Unless we are prepared to do something like that with a central fund of this kind, which the ratepayers should be called upon to subscribe to instead of borrowing money as they do now, our difficulties will not end. With such a fund available, unemployment would be less severe to those who have to endure it, because there would be at the disposal of those appointed to deal with unemployment money sufficient to enable them to undertake useful and educative work, and to place that work at the disposal of those who needed it.

We are not calling upon the House to enter upon new schemes that are not necessary. The Minister of Labour knows perfectly well that, at the moment, local authorities are saying that they have done all that they can do. He knows that there was a deputation of Lancashire Members to the House only a fortnight ago, and that deputation came from the great city of Manchester and other industrial centres which have Conservative town councils and are represented by Conservatives in this House. They told us that they were at their wits' end, and that the latest policy of the Labour Ministry was such that they would have to throw the whole thing back on the State. Probably that is the best thing that could occur in the interests of the unemployed, for this ought to be recognised as a national question which has to be settled, not so much by the localities as by the nation calling in, if need be, the local authorities to help, and thereby doing much to relieve the volume of unemployment and to create a condition of things which would prevent the distress and degradation which unemployment is now causing.

Lieut.-Colonel HEADLAM

I think the speeches which have been delivered from this side of the House have made it clear that we are just as much concerned in this problem as anybody else. The only ques- tion which arises between us and hon. Members opposite is whether this Bill, now introduced for the second time, fulfils the object it has in view. That object is to make provision for the prevention of unemployment and other purposes connected therewith, yet having listened to the whole of last year's Debate and the present Debate, I have not heard any Member on the other side admit that the Bill can carry out the object it professes to have in view. Indeed the whole argument last year was based on the fact that we must always have unemployment and that production in this country had increased to such an enormous extent that the consumption could not meet it and that, consequently, we were always face to face with unemployment because we produced more than we could consume. If that be the case, it seems a little unfair to retain the present Title of the Bill. One cannot help feeling, as the Seconder of the Amendment pointed out, that this Title is intended as a suggestion that the party opposite can put an end to unemployment, though by its own admission it is prepared to face a perpetual state of unemployment. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] Let me be quite fair to the party opposite and add—as long as we live under what is called the capitalist system.

On this side of the House our great desire to get rid of unemployment and to case the burden of unemployment is because we believe that if once unemployment could be reduced, there would no longer be any outcry for the particular tenets which are preached by the party opposite. It is largely due to unemployment that there is any cry for Socialism in this country. I listened with great interest to the speech of the hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Shepherd), and I could not help feeling it is desirable that he should be a Member of this House, rather than a teacher in a school, when he made the statement that there was no unemployment in this country before the industrial revolution. There never was such a gross misstatement of history. Unemployment has existed since the world began, at certain epochs of history.

Mr. MONTAGUE

What about the fifteenth century? [An HON. MEMBER: "The Garden of Eden!"]

Lieut.-Colonel HEADLAM

The hon. Member may exclude the fifteenth century if he likes. I do not propose to go into details with him, further than to point out one example. If we take the rebellion of Wat Tyler, we find that it was due to the fact that there was great unemployment. Unemployment has always been and always will be a cause of unrest in any country where it exists, and the object of all statesmen must be to do what they can to case the condition of the unemployed. But to bring up a Bill of this kind and suggest that by setting up this board, you are going to do anything which will in any way reduce unemployment, seems positively absurd. The hon. Member for Oldham (Mr. Duff Cooper) illustrated many of the absurdities which exist in the contentions of hon. Members opposite. I should like to put one pertinent inquiry to the right hon. Gentleman who, is, I understand, to wind up this Debate. Let us suppose that this board is to take the steps which have been indicated in regard to the factories and that it is to co-ordinate and combine the efforts of the Government and the local authorities with regard to the work which they undertake or do not undertake in the factories. Let us suppose that some corporation is anxious to undertake a particular work, such as a new town hall, to use the example given by the last speaker. That corporation being flush of funds, proposes to erect the town hall in a year in which this board might conceive that it was inopportune to spend money. Does any person suppose that such a local authority will be dictated to by a board sitting in London? Of course not. It would introduce a private Bill in this House, and whether the board approved or disapproved, it would carry out its intention.

Mr. R. YOUNG

Without funds?

Lieut.-Colonel HEADLAM

No, with funds. Parliament will grant it power to borrow the funds. You cannot override Parliament. Any municipal corporation can introduce a Private Bill and carry it through Parliament whether this board wishes it or not.

Mr. YOUNG

At the moment local authorities are being refused loans for housing schemes, let alone town halls.

Lieut.-Colonel HEADLAM

It is true and you might say so about anything. Parliament does not always grant money to local authorities, but the local authorities can raise money with the approval of Parliament. My point is that by setting up this central authority in London this super-Ministry—because that is what it is intended to be if it means anything at all—you cannot prevent Parliament doing what it wishes to do, with regard to proposals suggested by local authorities. My complaint against the Bill is that, and that alone—you are trying to set up an authority which would be nothing but the Ministry of Labour disguised in a new aspect. The Minister of Labour is the only Member of that body who would ever take any effective part in its deliberations. It would never be a body that would act as a whole.

Mr. PURCELL

Under a Conservative Government.

Lieut.-Colonel HEADLAM

Under any Government. All Governments are the same. Every Minister who comes into office can only see the point of view of his own office and you cannot expect that Ministers, who are busy men and who have their own affairs to direct, would attend to this bureau-board or this committee. It would simply be the Minister of Labour.

Mr. RICHARDSON

Does not the hon. and gallant Member know that, whatever the Minister of Labour has to do in regard to unemployment, he has no power to provide work?

Lieut.-Colonel HEADLAM

I do not quite see the reason for that interruption, because the Minister of Labour is exactly the person who will still be in the same position as he is in to-day. You cannot override facts. You cannot get people to believe that by the creation of a body of this kind, you are going to do away with an admitted difficulty. If we believed the Bill will really carry out the purposes which are set out, no one on this side would oppose it, but because we know it is an unworkable scheme and means nothing at all we propose to vote against it. As the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) very sensibly put it last year, you will not by converting a Committee of the Cabinet into a statutory committee, make it any more effective for dealing with unemployment than the Cabinet Committee is to-day.

Mr. TREVELYAN THOMSON

The hon. and gallant Member was very scathing in his references to the practical possibilities of the Bill, and he seems to assume that a great many of the powers indicated in the Bill will never be operative. Surely Parliament can frame a Measure so as to make it effective and not non-effective.

Lieut.-Colonel HEADLAM

Then you would bring into existence a body which would be over and above every other body in this country and would take the place of the Cabinet.

HON. MEMBERS

"Why not?"

Mr. THOMSON

We want the Cabinet to function and the Cabinet have not been functioning on this particular question. Here we are, year after year, discussing this appalling difficulty but we get no new proposals for a solution. With unemployment as it is to-day, the House should think carefully before they turn down a proposal of this kind. I think I am correct in saying that this proposal is by no means a new one, and was embodied in the Minority Report of the Royal Commission in 1901. Therefore, it cannot be charged entirely for its credit or discredit to the Labour party. The hon. Member who moved the Amendment deprecated our dealing with this matter on sentimental lines. I suppose he was so impressed by the able speech of the hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Shepherd) that he did not want to have many similar speeches of the kind, but he asked us to deal with the question on hard economic facts, and I want to challenge his Amendment on the ground of facts. The first criticism I would make is with regard to his reference to unemployment being in a diminishing degree. I wonder what sign there is of that. We have not the figures of the last week or two, but, taking the last published reports from the Ministry of Labour Gazette, I find, for the month ending 25th January, unemployment was 11.1 per cent., compared with 10.5 per cent. for the preceding month, showing an increase in January over December; and if you compare it with a year ago there is practically the same percentage. Taking the trade union returns for the month ending 26th January, the figure is 10.6 compared with nine per cent. a year previous.

Therefore, it seems to me that a diminution of unemployment is not very evident, and that there can be no excuse for opposing this Bill on the ground that there are any signs of an end of unemployment. In fact, the figure of unemployment is 50 per cent. in shipbuilding and 35 per cent. in the engineering trade. Therefore, it is a mockery to talk about any sign of a diminishing degree of unemployment. I wonder whether Members opposite are satisfied with our method of tackling this problem. They talk about the expenditure of money under this Bill. Do they not realise that expenditure of money is going on whether this Bill is passed or not. What have we done during the past few years? I put a question to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour the other day, and he told me that since the Armistice we have spent in this country £340,000,000, which has been paid away for no services rendered. Of that sum, £62,000,000 was for out-of-work donation, £238,000,000 for unemployment benefit, and for Poor relief, not in the ordinary sense, but for those ordinarily employed but out of work, £39,000,000, making the appalling total of £340,000,000 paid away for no services rendered whatsoever.

Are we prepared to go on in the next few years paying away as many millions without any services being rendered? Surely it is infinitely better to spend a few more millions and get something in return? It is not a question merely of the value of national assets, but there is the question of the morale of people who do not want unemployment benefit or poor relief, but who do want work, and surely if you had this Bill, which would enable co-ordination of the various spending departments, you could arrange, expedite or retard public works according as trade was good or bad. We were told by the hon. Member who moved the Second Reading that something like £30,000,000 a year was spent by these public departments, and although, no doubt, it would be impossible to retard the whole, it could be arranged, when trade was good, that public work should be kept back, and when employment fell off, you could have more of this work put in hand, and spend millions then rather than spend it when the money was not so needed.

If only the Government had a vision, there are any number of ways in which valuable work could be carried out, instead of spending this money in unemployment benefit and poor relief for no services rendered. In our discussions earlier in the Session on the question of roads, we heard complaints from all parts of the country as to the bad condition of the present roads and the lack of main arterial roads. Could we not spend some millions very advantageously in improving the main arterial roads of our country? Then there is the question of inland water transport. A Commission, of which the present Minister of Health was Chairman, went into this question some years ago, and they reported that valuable improvements could be made in our canals and inland water services which would yield valuable means of transport and competition with railways and roads. That is surely a work of a valuable national character, which it would be well worth putting in hand, and would be far better than spending money for no services rendered. The same applies to afforestation, reclamation of foreshores, docks, harbours, and all kinds of useful work which would give a valuable return for the money spent, and would be infinitely better than paying money away for no purpose whatever.

Then we are told that if you spend this money on work of public utility, you will have so much less to spend on industry. I do not think that follows at all. I do not think there is any sign that industry is short of capital. We were told the other day, in discussion on the London Electric Power Bill, that the money they were prepared to raise was subscribed within a few hours of the prospectus being on the market, and when any industrial concern of a bona fide character is anxious to raise money, so far it has had no difficulty in getting all it requires. As a matter of fact, the bulk of industries have too much capital rather than too little. It is not a question of spending £6,000,000, £10,000,000 or even more in this particular way. The money will have to be spent in relief, if it is not spent in public works, and, therefore, industry will be so much short of money whatever happens. I do submit that instead of spending hundreds of millions in the next few years in the old way, it is far better to have work and something to show for this public expenditure.

Reference was made to the Unemployment Grants Committee. It was said that that Committee was functioning so satisfactorily that there was no need for any change. The experience of some of us with regard to the Unemployment Grants Committee does not bear out that construction. Criticism after criticism has been made of schemes turned down, and I do think it is no excuse to say that we do not require this particular Measure because we have the Unemployment Grants Committee, which is only functioning in a very secondary way. I do hope this House will give a Second Reading to this Bill. No doubt there are points that are open to criticism and to amendment in Committee, particularly the Sub-sections which threaten to throw a larger sum on to the local rates. I think that will have to be safeguarded, but it is purely a Committee point, and one which should not jeopardise the passing of this Bill. It seems to me that this Bill is essentially based on a sound, common-sense point of view, that where you have public money to spend over a series of years, you want to spend that money when employment is bad, and retard the spending of it when employment is good. Therefore, I hope the House will give a Second Reading to this Bill.

Mr. ALBERY

I intervene in this Debate because I do feel that there is in this Measure the germ of useful legislation. It seems to me, looking at it from a purely business point of view, what is sought to be done is only to carry out the main idea carried out in every wisely-conducted business. In times of prosperity one certainly should endeavour to consolidate one's arrangements for times of bad trade. One should endeavour to build up reserves with which to meet distress if and when that time comes along. On those grounds there is a good deal in this Bill which eventually might be put through. I wish, however, to say right at the start that I do not propose to vote for this Measure. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh…"] Yes, there are two or three reasons I