UNEMPLOYMENT BILL.

§ Mr. ANEURIN BEVAN

The House will perhaps pardon me if, in resuming this Debate, I offer a few general observations. I have listened, as have many other hon. Members, from time to time to many Debates on unemployment insurance and indeed upon unemployment generally, and it seems to me that the house is divided in this matter upon grounds of general principle. It is difficult to see how it is possible for the party to which I have the honour to belong to reconcile their views with those of the bulk of this House. The party to which I belong hold the view that the ideas which have inspired the Minister of Labour and the Government in drafting this Bill are entirely out of accord with the realities of society to-day and that they are founded upon assumptions which belong, not so much even to pre-War days as to the early 19th century. The Minister of Labour indeed has failed to keep pace not only with the change in society, but with the change in the views held by people in the course particularly of the last two years. The assumption upon which the Government have proceeded in this Bill is that unemployment is primarily the responsibility of the individual citizen. The assumption upon which we proceed is that unemployment is not an individual but a social act, and 1310 that over that circumstance the individual has comparatively little control.

Almost all the assumptions underlying public assistance were to the effect that, if a man became idle, he was committing a crime against society, and that the longer that crime continued, the heavier his punishment should be. Indeed, the principle which has governed the administration of the Poor Law in this country has been that an idle person was a shiftless person and that as long as he was idle it should be impressed upon him that he was an undesirable member of the community. That principle is contained in this Bill. As a matter of fact, most of this Bill has been derived from that principle. The Minister of Labour has carried over into Part II of this Bill almost all the principles of the Poor Law, and he has impressed on the unemployed person that somehow or other he must, by the use of his own resources, attempt to secure employment.

I was brought up in a mining community in South Wales, and I mention this, not because I want to influence the House by personal considerations, but simply because my circumstances are typical of those of millions of my fellow creatures in this country. I was born the son of a miner, and I went underground when I was 13 years of age, inevitably. Down the pit was the only place to go. I was as inevitably made into a collier as I would have been made into a shooter of big game if I had been born in Mayfair. I went down the colliery then because of the fact that I lived in a mining community and that there was no other way in which I could earn my livelihood. There were very few choices. I might have become a railwayman or a shop assistant, but I had to become a collier because most of the people in my district were colliers. I worked underground until I was about 21 years of age, and then I became unemployed, because society discovered that it no longer wanted the product of my labour. The eight years which I had spent serving an apprenticeship became entirely valueless, and for three years I was out of employment.

I ask the Minister of Labour, What control had I over that destiny? Could I have adopted any other course? Was there any other course available to me For practically three years—indeed for 1311 10 years—in my district steel workers and miners, living in hamlets and villages, largely cut off from the rest of the community, have been living in helplessness and despair and have no way of escape at all. Had they lived in the early 19th century and had they been craftsmen as men were in those days, they could have turned their hands to various occupations, or indeed, not having long left the soil, they might have emigrated to some other part of the world, but that resource is not available to-day. Those men are completely helpless, and the longer they are idle the more helpless they become. [An HON. MEMBER: "Unless they go in for politics."] That is the kind of observation one would expect from a product of the Oxford Union. The circumstances I have attempted to describe are the circumstances of millions of our fellow countrymen.

This House has indeed recognised in the course of the last two years that the individual has comparatively little control over the destiny of his economic enterprises. If the House has abandoned anything, if has abandoned the principles of 19th century Liberalism. It has declared that modern society has called up forces which are overwhelmingly against us. The individual can make little headway, and it is declared that so little control has the individual property owner over the destiny of his economic enterprises, that the State must come to his assistance when those enterprises fail. We hear to-day a clamour for assistance for the Lancashire cotton trade against importations from Japan. If individual enterprise, if economic exertion, is still to be carried on independently of the community, and if the individual enterpriser has no right to look to the community for support, why has this House on numberless occasions intervened on behalf of occupation after occupation? It is because the House has recognised that society has fundamentally changed, and that there is an obligation upon the State to come to the assistance of the individual when the individual is brought face to face with social circumstances over which he has no control. Why should that apply to the Lancashire cotton owner and the coalowner and not to the textile worker and the miner?

1312 The Minister of Agriculture is engaged laboriously every day, and I expect now most of his nights, in attempting to charge the community more for their foodstuffs in order to promote the welfare of the agricultural industry and, incidentally, the revenues of the landlords. He is doing that because he recognises the fact that the agricultural labourer, the farmer and the landlord are faced with circumstances which overwhelm them and that without the assistance of the State they are helpless. I submit that if this reasoning holds good for the owner of property, it holds good with respect to the owner of labour. We therefore ask the House in face of this problem of unemployment to start off on the fundamental principle that the individual worker is caught up in circumstances over which he has no control and that consequently the State should comport itself towards him as it does towards the owner of property.

Our first principle, therefore, is that the individual worker when he is unemployed is helpless, and consequently ought not to be punished for a circumstance over which he has no control. But compare the treatment in this Bill of the unemployed worker, the miner, the textile worker, and the agricultural labourer with the treatment which the Government propose to mete out next Thursday to the owner of Newfoundland bonds. Compare it with the treatment that they mete out to the owners of American stock, or to the treatment meted out to the Rothschilds in connection with the Austrian loan, or to the owners of German stock. These people have invested their money in Austria or Newfoundland or Germany or America and the Government say, "These poor creatures cannot be blamed for the fate that has overtaken their investments," and a generous State rushes to their assistance. That is characteristic of the Tory party, which never shares the point of view of the Liberals. The Liberals say that the State should hold itself aloof from economic enterprises. The Tories were never of that view. They always held the view that the State is an apparatus for the protection of the swag of the property owners. They are true to it in this House, and they instruct the Minister of Labour to punish the unemployed person, to depress his standard of livelihood, to pursue 1313 him and to whip him whenever possible by the most malignly conceived regulations, but they put the whole resources of the State behind the bondholders and the rich when they get into difficulties. Christ drove the moneychangers out of the temple, but you inscribe their title deeds on the altar cloth. The individual worker, if he wanted to have economic security, should not have invested his labour in the valleys of Wales or the looms of Lancashire; he should have invested his resources in Germany or Austria and a grateful country would have come to his rescue. The only investment which the worker made in foreign lands was his blood, and those who fought came back and dragged their tortured limbs through the streets of our towns, and they were told by a grateful country that they are still allowed to retain half the miserable compensation which they received.

The distinction in this Bill which is drawn between the man who is still drawing his insurance benefit and the man who is now to have unemployment assistance is a distinction which is founded upon a reality which has long since disappeared, and it should now be abolished. I admit that a few years ago the Minister of Labour was correct and large numbers of workers held the view that a distinction should be drawn between the man who had been out of work a long time and the man who had periods of intermittent employment, and that insurance benefit should bear some relationship to the contributions which he had paid. Among the workers, however, a great change of view has taken place. Men now regard it as a great privilege to be employed, and they no longer consider that a hardship is imposed upon them if they are asked to pay 10d. a week unemployment insurance premium. They are only too glad to pay it.

The Minister of Labour takes the view that the longer a man has been idle the more undesirable he becomes. If you are going to be equitable, you should take the opposite view, namely, that the longer a man is idle the heavier crime society has committed against him. Indeed if you are going to measure the treatment of him according to his need, the longer he is idle the snore he wants. The Minister of Labour, despite his urbanity and his kindliness of demeanour, proceeds 1314 upon a principle which is fundamentally bad, and the heavier a man's need the heavier the burden he is putting upon his shoulders. Those, hurriedly put, are the general assumptions upon which he is proceeding. This Measure does far more than that. It perpetuates the means test. Many hon. Members have defended the means test, and, indeed, the Minister did so in his opening speech, on the ground that a man should first of all be expected to look to his family for support. It makes me wonder, sometimes, whether I live in a different sort of world from other hon. Members. Did not the family cease to be the unit some long time ago? The family is no longer the unit of modern society. The unit of modern society, if it can be said to have a unit at all, is the adult individual. The family has virtually disappeared; the industrial revolution destroyed it.

In a recent Debate, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour said, in answer to an hon. Friend of mine, "You will not keep your own father, but you expect other sons to keep your father." But we have had to keep his father and the fathers of most of those who are here. As a matter of fact, my own people have been keeping your fathers for generations. The point of view is absurd and ridiculous that an individual of 70 years of age, if he should happen to be in employment, should be expected to support sons of 30 or 40 years of age; that a young man of 20 or 25 years of age, who is building up a home for himself and is for the time being living under the roof of his parents, should be asked to support brothers and sisters of 30 or 40 years of age; that sisters of 17 or 18 who happen to be lucky enough to get a little domestic service should keep their brothers of 30 or 40; that aunts should keep their nephews; that nieces should keep their aunts. All that is ridiculous, and simply has no relationship to the facts of the case. That a son who happens to find employment near home, and therefore can live at home, should help to maintain the home, while a son who has gone to work in the south of England, perhaps 100 miles from home, should not make any contribution, is ridiculous. It amounts simply to making accident a basis of responsibility, and is not firmly founded on any principle of equity that this House can defend.

1315 I have made the challenge before, and I repeat it, that I will go to any hon. Member's constituency and get that principle rejected by any ordinary meeting of citizens. The Church has condemned it. The Church has said that, in so far as family life still remains, this principle is destroying it. I have actually known young men to be so oppressed by the humiliation of having to live upon the earnings of their brothers and sisters that they have contracted marriage on 23s. a week in order to avoid it. [An HON. MEMBER: "That is perpetuating the system."] No; but it may be perpetuating the race. Hon. Members, when they are not thinking as Conservative Members of Parliament, but as decent citizens, will admit that that is a principle which cannot be defended, yet the Minister in this Bill proposes that the principle shall be continued, and administered in future by a national board and not by elected representatives of the people, a point to which I shall return.

Our party ask the House to reject the Bill, first, on the ground that it assumes that the individual citizen has still some control over his economic resources, and, next, assumes that the family is still the basis of the State. I have been at some pains over the week-end to ascertain what are the views of my fellow countrymen, and I believe that the complacency with which many hon. Members have welcomed this Measure will not last for many months. A strong sense of indignation is growing up in the country, and it will increase in volume as the terms of this Measure become better known. The Minister of Labour and the Government as a whole, having decided that the distress of the unemployed is not only not to be alleviated, but intensified, will, in the course of the next few years, see themselves faced with a difficult situation. Local authorities up and down the country have found themselves exposed to the attacks of the unemployed. The prophecy has already been made that the London County Council will "go Labour," and many of the Conservative members of local authorities are saying that if those authorities still have to administer the means test the pressure of the unemployed will convert their Conservative majorities into Socialist majorities. In other words, so great is the distress among the poor people, and 1316 so strong is the feeling of the working class against the administration of the means test by public assistance committees, that those authorities are moving left.

The Minister of Labour and the Chancellor of the Exchequer say the time has come when we must take the administration of public assistance out of the hands of the local authorities. Why? In order to remove the taint of the Poor Law from the treatment of the unemployed? No; but in order to protect the local authorities from Socialist majorities. They say not only must we do that, but we must also protect the House of Commons from the pressure of the poor. In this Bill it is proposed, for the first time in British history, that a Member of Parliament shall cease to be the natural custodian of the welfare of his constituents. The Minister said in his opening speech that he would accept no individual responsibility for the treatment of individual cases. The means test is by its very nature an individual affair, because we are adjusting the amount of unemployment assistance to be given to the condition of each family; the very essence of it is an amount of money in proportion to that family's needs. If we say the Minister of Labour is not to accept Parliamentary responsibility for the individual case, we are disfranchising British citizens, taking away from the elected representative a right and a responsibility which he has enjoyed for generations. Indeed, we are cutting away the foundations from democratic representation; but, of course, that is nothing new in this country; that is an old story.

The Lord President of the Council has accused my hon. and learned Friend the Member for East Bristol (Sir S. Cripps) of harbouring designs against the Constitution. He can harbour nothing more deadly against the Constitution than the' Minister of Labour is proposing in the Bill before the House, which will do more damage to representative government in a few short months than we could dream of doing in years. He has decided, in this Measure, that from now on there is to be no unemployment insurance legislation in this House. It finishes to-day; this Bill ends it. In future, unemployment insurance legislation, if there is to be any, is to be by Order. He has decided that, in regard to the millions of people receiving unemployment assist- 1317 ante, there shall be no legislation, except by Order. It is an attempt to take poverty out of politics. We shall have to leave it at home.

This is a Bill to make the poor dumb. Indeed, that very point is emphasised in the language of the Bill. I believe that it is in Clause 38 that the Minister of Labour protects himself against appeal. Local appeal tribunals are to be established to hear the appeal of an aggrieved applicant for unemployment assistance. The chairman of the local tribunal is to decide whether an applicant is to have the right to appeal. The Minister of Labour not only refuses to accept responsibility in this Chamber, and abolishes the natural representatives of the unemployed man, the local council, but he is also suffocating and stifling that man by saying that he has to be satisfied with a paid lawyer—because lawyers are usually the persons appointed before whom one has to make a grievance articulate.

The only recourse that an unemployed man will have, in order to attract public attention to his grievances, will be to throw a stone through a shop window. Unless he does that, no one will know that he has a grievance. At the moment, the public assistance committee can be approached, or individual councillors can be spoken to. An unemployed man can knock upon the door of his alderman, or he can hold his meeting and pass his resolution for submission to the local council. He can make his grievance articulate; but he will not be able to de so from now on. If this Bill is passed, it will be an attempt to suffocate the cries of the unemployed man in the mazes of bureaucratic machinery. This Bill is going to do, for this Conservative majority what the not-genuinely-seeking work Clause did for the Conservative majority in 1929—abolish it.

I have listened to hon. Friends of mine in this House pointing out that the character of the Parliamentary machinery is unsuited to the new tasks which have to be discharged, and that, now that the State is interfering more and more in the economic process, our Constitution has to be adapted. With that point of view I have every sympathy. The Parliamentary machinery that we have here was constructed at a time when the Government had no economic obligations 1318 of importance, but now that the State is taking on new duties of providing economic services some adaptation must be made in the machinery. There is, however, one subject with which we must ever deal, and which lies at the very root of representative government, and that is the subject known as "the condition of the people." This subject must always be dealt with here on the Floor of this House, if this House is to remain healthy. It is the very core of Parliamentary representation. The Bill seeks to destroy that, because this House, unable to face up to the problem of unemployment and of poverty, must, if it possibly can, put wadding in its ears. That is what this Bill does.

I hope I may be allowed, not to digress but to illustrate my argument by saying that I was looking the other day at the Clarke Papers. I was reading an account of the meeting between Oliver Cromwell and Colonel Rainborow in Putney in 1647. At that meeting Colonel Rainborow, representing the Levellers, was asking for adult suffrage and for the new Parliament to be elected on the basis of one man one vote. Oliver Cromwell was arguing that the Parliament ought to be elected by the people who had property. Colonel Rainborow said that there was nothing in the law of God or of nature to warrant any Englishman living under the law of another Englishman, and that if an Englishman was to be asked to obey the law he should have a share in the making of it. Oliver Cromwell replied that if those who had no goods and chattels were to be allowed to make laws equally with those who had goods and chattels, they would make laws to take away the goods and chattels of the others. It has taken a few centuries to reach that position.

Democracy, poverty and property can live quite amicably side by side, in circumstances of alleviating poverty, and, so long as progress is made, property is not in serious danger. To-day, this House says that 2,500,000 of our people are to be unable to relieve their distress, and this House therefore has to choose whether it will make inroads upon the rights of property or of Democracy. It has chosen to destroy Democracy, being helpless to destroy property. When this comes to be looked at in retrospect, it will be regarded as a milestone upon the 1319 road to Fascism in Great Britain. Fascism is, in its very essence, the destruction of democratic government. Democracy is increasing its pressure upon property and privilege. This is the modern way. The Lord President of the Council, like the Japanese, makes war in the name of peace; in the name of liberty he puts chains on the limbs of the people, and takes away their democratic liberties.

I would say one or two things about the financial provisions of this Bill, because I know that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is going to deal with that part of it. I do not understand why that is, because I should have thought that a more appropriate time would have been upon the Money Resolution. I suppose he will try to make an answer to the growing volume of resentment among local authorities. During the Recess, we were informed that the Minister of Labour was having a tug-of-war with the Minister of Health, as to who should take over the responsibility for this problem. The Minister of Labour won, but he has lost to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as usual. The Treasury has won. I remember, in the beginning of this year, that Members representing Northern constituencies, and some in the West, were making a protest against local authorities having to carry the burden of the able-bodied poor, but I have not heard those protests this time. Where are they to-day? Those Members were loud in their denunciations. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has won, and has decided that the cost of maintaining the able-bodied poor must devolve upon the local authorities.

§ Mr. THORNE

He has gone back on his own principles.

§ Mr. BEVAN

That is not unusual. It was the complaint of those who represented local governing bodies that the cost of maintaining the able-bodied poor should not be borne by the local authorities, for two reasons. One reason was that it simply added to the distress in areas made distressful by unemployment, and the second was that the local authorities did not possess the means of relieving their own difficulties. This House has the means. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer decided to take 1320 the year 1932–33 as the standard year, and to make the local authorities contribute according to the payment they made to the able-bodied poor that year. First, it was thought that the distressed districts were not going to have the benefit of the allowance of £440,000 which is made this year. Since then that has been adjusted, but it leaves some of the most distressed districts in precisely the same position as they are now. Glamorganshire and Monmouthshire will pay exactly the same for the cost of the maintenance of the able-bodied poor as they are paying this year.

We understood that the most that could be claimed for it was that it put those local authorities in the same relative position as the rest of the country. That means that at the moment they are worse off than the other authorities, because if the payment of the £440,000 puts them in the same relative position, and the receipt of their share wipes out the whole of their relief under this Bill, then the distressed districts are the only districts not having relief. The Chancellor of the Exchequer will have his opportunity of replying, but will he admit that the payment of £440,000 was to try to take the edge off the distress of the distressed districts? If that be so, after they have received the money their position remains the same as the rest of the local authorities, and they ought to be less accountable for the maintenance of the able-bodied poor. Glamorganshire should be paid £224,000 a year, and so with Monmouthshire and Carmarthenshire.

I submit to the Chancellor of the Exchequer that he has at his disposal a very convenient way of settling this matter. I admit it will cost him a little more money, but not very much. Some of the difficulties which have been experienced in dealing with districts arise through the difficulty of abstracting them from the rest of the structure of local government. It has always been found difficult to find a formula to define a necessitous area from one not necessitous, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer managed to find a formula for the distribution of the £440,000, by which a number of authorities benefited, such as Cumberland, Durham, Norfolk, Carmarthen, Pembroke, Gateshead and Grimsby, the figures varying from £94,000 to £1,000. I submit that, in the apportionment of the £440,000, the necessitous areas were, 1321 in fact, isolated from the other local authorities. He, ought to have said, "Those authorities which are able to attract money under the £440,000 scheme are necessitous, and, because they are necessitous, ought not to be called upon to bear the burden of carrying any of the able-bodied poor and I will wipe out their obligation." That is a reasonable request, and should commend itself to Conservative Members in this House. If that is too high a claim to make upon him, is it not reasonable to ask him that he should take the contribution towards the maintenance of the able-bodied poor of those authorities after provision has been made for the £440,000, and then three-fifths of the remainder? That, surely, is reasonable, instead of leaving Glamorganshire, Monmouthshire, Carmarthenshire, Merthyr, and places like that, with some in the same position, and some only slightly better off than at present. I suggest that that is a reasonable proposition, which the right hon. Gentleman ought to take into consideration.

There is one other point I would like to make with respect to the financial provisions. Will the Chancellor of the Exchequer take the House into his confidence this afternoon and tell us what were the rates of interest that were paid on the £115,000,000 advanced? We were informed that some of it was borrowed at less than 1 per cent. Will he tell us why the Unemployment Insurance Fund should pay 3 per cent.? Next, I would ask him whether he would justify to the House the burden of the £115,000,000 on the fund at all? The Chancellor of the Exchequer in this Bill holds that the transitional payments should be a charge upon the Exchequer. If it is a good principle, why not make it retrospective? This debt was accumulated at a time when the cost of transitional payments was a charge on the Insurance Fund. Had the present provision been in existence then, that debt would not have been incurred. Is it not, therefore, reasonable to say that the State was belated in its treatment of this matter, and that the cost of transitional payments should have been an Exchequer burden earlier? In that case, as I say, the debt would not have been incurred. If he tells me that this was part of the misbehaviour of the Labour Government, I tell him it was the finance of Lord Snowden, and I always thought he was a rotten Chancellor of the Ex- 1322 chequer, but hon. and right hon. Members opposite thought he was so good that they took him over. The Chancellor of the Exchequer should explain to us why people 30 and 40 years hence should be called upon to pay for moneys received, say, between 1928 and 1931.

Then I would ask the right hon. Gentleman, is it not unreasonable to indicate to the board the way in which it is to use any future surplus The interest charges, it is said, are to be a first charge on the fund; that the bondholder must get his money first, and the poor afterwards. As usual, the Tory comes to the rescue of the banker. The bondholder must get his money first, but the Government have done more than that. They have indicated that if any surplus accumulates in the fund, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is to get most of the benefit of it. The period of insurance benefit is extended. That takes men off the Chancellor of the Exchequer and puts them on to the fund. It is quite true that those men get a little more benefit—the difference between insurance benefit and the means test. That is the sugar on the pill, but there is very little sugar for the big pill, because the Chancellor of the Exchequer gets more benefit than the unemployed worker, as every time you extend the period of benefit, the number of men chargeable to the Chancellor of the Exchequer is reduced, and he gets the full benefit. The way is therefore indicated to the board in which it is to use every future surplus that arises.

§ The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Chamberlain)

The Board has nothing at all to do with surpluses.

§ Mr. BEVAN

That is quite right. I accept the correction. It is the Statutory Committee. It is merely a matter of nomenclature. The respective functions were quite clear in my mind. The Statutory Advisory Committee has charge of the Insurance Fund, while the board has charge of unemployment assistance. Nevertheless, the Statutory Advisory Committee has had indicated to it the way in which it is to use every future surplus that arises, because you have said now that the existing surplus is to be used to extend the insurance period. Therefore, if a deficit accumulates, the 1323 committee will contract the area of insurance benefits. If it accumulates, it will extend the area of insurance benefit, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer will get the benefit. It is an admirable self-balancing scheme, but it is a scheme to which the unemployed worker can look forward with no satisfaction at all.

Then I would like to say a word to the Minister of Labour. He tried, on Thursday, by a peculiar argument, to justify taking the unemployment assistance from the local authorities and putting it on a national basis. His important reason for this was that the guardians at the moment were a sort of whispering gallery, that unemployed people who go to them for assistance do not like to make their situation known because the guardians gossip, because they tell their neighbours about it. This is an unwarranted attack upon a very fine body of men who have given many years to the work. But I would like to point out to the Minister that he is not removing the abuse in this Bill. The Advisory Committee, according to the Minister, will advise the local officer upon the assessment of individual cases. Will they not know the facts just as well then as now? Will not the whispering gallery be in existence then as now? The Minister of Labour over-stated his case. He is, of course, a very wise person; he did not want to tell the House why this was being done, and he, therefore, advanced that argument, which will not bear examination. Then, again, the Minister of Labour has not made any provision at all for the men over £250 a year. If I understand the psychology of the British middle-class at all, that is the very class to raise most objection to making their situation known to the local public assistance officer; but they will still have to go to the Poor Law, and still have to whisper in the whispering gallery. The Minister of Labour makes no provision at all for them; in fact, as I said, he overstated his case.

I apologise to the House for having taken so long, but the Bill is an extremely complicated one with very many provisions, and I was anxious to cover one or two of the main points. I should like to say, in conclusion, that in my judgment the Bill as presented to the House 1324 outlines a scheme entirely unworthy of the opportunities and the powers of this Government. They could have done something really comprehensive and statesmanlike, but they have done nothing of the kind. They have missed the best opportunity any Government ever had of dealing with this problem. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has been niggardly and parsimonious; he has carried on the worst traditions of the Treasury. His attitude towards the local authorities is one that has caused universal resentment, and will cause more resentment as the situation develops, because the sinister feature of the Bill consists, not only in its outward lineaments, but in what its administration will do as the years go on.

Proposal after proposal in this Bill depends, not on what can be seen on the surface, but on what will be done administratively, and our experience of the administration of the Ministry of Labour is that throughout that Department, at least in its higher reaches, there is the most unsympathetic attitude towards the unemployed. Indeed, that attitude is indicated by the revival of a Clause which is quite unnecessary unless you mean to be cruel. No complaint at all has been heard in this House against the way in which the statutory conditions have been operated. It is an absolutely unnecessary change, and simply indicates the hard-faced character of the Ministry of Labour, because I cannot believe that that provision has been resurrected at the request of the Minister of Labour; it must have been at the request of the people who have been making these regulations. Government by regulation might protect Conservative Members from the consequences of not meeting the problem with which they have to deal, but they will have to meet it. They will meet it in the country; they will meet it in the constituencies, and, so far as we are concerned, we shall fight this Bill in Committee and in the country, knowing very well that, when the opportunity comes, the country will drive from power the people responsible for this outrage upon its welfare.

§ Captain HEILGERS

The hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. A. Bevan) has gone through the same tale that has been told about this Bill by the Labour party 1325 right from the beginning, but I think that the criticism they have put forward has been largely discounted by the fact that they announced, even before they knew the contents of the Bill, that they would oppose the Bill tooth and nail. The hon. Member attempts to make capital by saying that the Bill is an attempt to take poverty out of politics but to leave it in the family. I myself take a different view of the matter. I believe that this Bill will do much to raise the condition of those who are so unfortunate as to be unemployed. I confess that I speak with considerable trepidation, inasmuch as I am a. rural Member, and only one Member has intervened so far in the Debate who can be regarded as in any way representing a rural constituency. An hon. Member for one of the distressed areas said only last week that he felt that no Member for a rural area would appreciate the immensity of the seriousness of this problem. Perhaps that may be true, but I submit that, be the amount of unemployment large or be it small, the same individual human problem is there. Moreover, speaking, as I do, of a rural area, I would point out that hitherto we have had a great number of rural unemployed who have never figured on the register. Thank goodness, justice is going to be done to these men, and they are to be removed from the stigma of the Poor Law.

The Minister has done a big thing in changing the whole responsibility for the able-bodied unemployed from a local to a national responsibility; he has done a big thing in making the whole charge really national. I am afraid that, from my experience of local government, lasting over some 10 years, I have become, perhaps, rather a "last-ditcher." I cannot feel that I can entirely agree with the Minister's taking the entire responsibility out of the hands of local administrators and local people who know the circumstances. I know Tat the Minister paid tribute to those people who have devoted their lives and services to helping in this work of relieving the distress of unemployment, but he is making very little provision for making exceptions. It may be that the advisory committees are going to play some part, but their part is not executive.

Some provision for exceptions seems to me to be essential in counties like my 1326 own, where the administration of the relief of distress and unemployment has been satisfactory in the past—satisfactory to the Minister, to the taxpayer, and to the unemployed as well. I say that advisedly. The leader of our Unemployed Workers' Association has publicly stated that, barring his fundamental objection to the means test as such, in our county the needs test has been administered with sympathy, fairness and justice. I fear that, if we have officials of the Ministry administering the system in counties such as West Suffolk, we shall lose that human touch and local knowledge which are so essential. Therefore, I would ask the Minister very earnestly whether, during the Committee stage, he cannot make provision for making exceptions in the case of counties where the administration of relief and assistance has been successfully carried out, allowing at any rate the advisory committees to become executive local committees, and to function as a. local administration under central regulation.

The thought of unemployed agricultural workers brings me to the question of unemployment insurance for the agricultural worker. I agree that the Minister is right to refer this matter to a statutory committee. Nothing else can be done, because agriculture must have a special scheme of its own; the farm worker cannot afford to pay the contributions that are paid by the industrial worker. But I regret that the Minister saw fit, in his opening speech last week, to compare us with Germany. Surely it is not a fair comparison. Agriculture in Germany is a very different matter from agriculture, here. It is a matter of peasant holdings and family farms, and I should think that the number of non-family workers per holding in Germany must be infinitesimal as compared with this country. I believe that the opinion of farmers is changing with regard to unemployment insurance for the agricultural worker. On Saturday night I was talking to a well known farmer about this question, and I said to him, "May I say that the farmers are against unemployment insurance?" He replied, "Yes, it is in the Royal Commission's report that they are against it; and," he continued, "I was the man who gave that evidence on behalf of the Farmers' Union. But," he went on, "if 1327 I had to give that evidence to-day, I would not be at all sure that it would be the same."

I believe that farmers have realised that unemployment insurance is something that has got to come. They realise that the unemployment in agricultural areas has increased enormously, and I think they are willing to adopt a much more favourable attitude towards its introduction than they were only a year or two ago. I think that the agricultural worker himself is, in the majority of cases, entirely in favour of insurance. Except, perhaps, in the case of just a few of the higher-paid and more skilled workers, such as shepherds, horsemen, stockmen and so forth, he fells that he wants some sense of security; he feels that at present he is denied rights that are given to the industrial worker; and, if the clamour for unemployment insurance is greater, perhaps, in the East than in the West, surely the answer is that the number of agricultural workers in the East of England is much greater than it is in the West or elsewhere. There is need for hurry, and I hope that the reference to the statutory committee will be done quickly, because any scheme of unemployment insurance for agricultural workers must start in the spring; we must have time to get any scheme solvent by raising contributions during the good times in order to make it workable before winter comes.

Everyone agrees that the Minister has done a great thing by his enthusiasm and his determination to provide instructional centres for juveniles, and everyone, I. think, will also agree in principle that the camps for the restoration of men to fitness are extremely useful. I went over one of these camps recently and found it excellent in every way as regards the graduation of training, social facilities provided by the Young Men's Christian Association, and so forth, and, as regards the condition and happiness of the men, nothing could be better, but when we come to the work side a difficulty arises. In this camp, they were learning to make trenches for drainage, and there was a demand for men who were semiskilled at that work. What work can he done by these men normally? I am not very clear what is going to happen as the result of Clause 36. There is intense local feeling of jealousy in my part of the world 1328 against the possibility of men from the Tyneside or the Mersey coming to these camps and doing work that could be done by the local unemployed. I realise that the Minister wants to secure an entire change of atmosphere for these workers from the distressed areas, but I beg him to consider very hard before he plants more of these camps in Norfolk and Suffolk. I desire to make one more constructive suggestion. Very shortly conditions will be better in the Dominions. There are large undeveloped territories there. The men in these camps might, without displacing local labour, be employed in clearing land in similar conditions to those that they would experience in Canada or Western Australia. Some of them may emigrate later and it may be of very great value to them to learn something about the way to clear land. The Minister told us the other day that he felt a very special responsibility in introducing a Bill which would affect, for good or ill, many milions of people. He felt that responsibility particularly, because those who faced us on the opposite benches were few in number. I watched their faces while the Minister was speaking, and they became glummer and glummer. I could tell from their faces that in their hearts they knew that the Bill marks a great amelioration in the treatment of those in distress. I claim that the contention of the Lord President of the Council that the Bill means more humane treatment for the unemployed is justified up to the hilt.

§ Mr. CURRY

The hon. Member has told the House that he was the first Member to speak for the rural areas. I come from a district which is mainly industrial, or rather which was mainly industrial but which for some years now has lived under a cloud of depression which has to be actually experienced to be realised. Those of us who come from these distressed areas are conscious that the Bill is so tremendous in its ramifications as to mark the beginning, for good or ill, of a new epoch in this sort of legislation. It is so large that I think it might well have been put before the House in the form of two separate Bills. It would have been a convenience for Members of all parties if we could have had an opportunity of examining the two separate parts as dealing with two dis- 1329 tinct problems. I should like to repeat the conviction that I have expressed before that the first thing to do in approaching the problem of insurance against unemployment is to reduce the actual number of people as far as possible, and it seems to me that the best approach that we can make in that matter is to prevent, or retard, the outflow from the schools into the industrial and commercial world by raising the school-leaving age. It seems to me that, if we can only do that, we shall prevent a certain amount of unemployment. Because the Bill begins to deal with the juvenile when he leaves school we have to be grateful, but sooner or later, as part of the solution of our unemployment problem, we shall have to face up to the raising of the school-leaving age and the development on a large scale of the technical educational system.

I think Clause 5 might very well have been omitted. It will lead in administration to a great deal of confusion, and it will cause a sense of grievance to a large number of insured people. In my view, it violates the principle of insurance when, a man is out of work to say that you will deduct from his insurance benefits that portion which is applicable to a general holiday in the trade. When I come to Clause 6, I am filled with apprehension. No one desires to return to the conditions that prevailed under the genuinely-seeking-work Clause. Administratively it is not what we in the House desire, but what the people who are going to administer the Act will regard as having been the meaning and intention of the House. It seems to me that once we put the onus of proof on to the applicant we have in fact returned to the condition of "genuinely seeking work." These words "but unable to obtain suitable employment" are not put in accidentally. They are put in for some purpose, and they must be put in with the intention of throwing on to the applicant the onus of proof that he is seeking work. I hope before the Bill becomes law that the Minister will very seriously reconsider the wording of that Clause.

I want to come to Clause 18, where we are faced with the problem of the repayment of a debt of something like £115,000,000. We were told the other day that to repay money that you owe is a Liberal principle. I hope it goes much beyond the philosophy of Liberalism. I 1330 know it is sometimes good finance to write off a debt as irrecoverable, and debts are generally written off as irrecoverable when it is found that they cannot be recovered. This attempt to saddle the fund at its recommencement with a burden of debt of this sort is an attempt to treat as an entity the unemployed people of succeeding decades in a way that cannot be done. It means that we are going to impose upon new factories in the future, upon new people some of whom are not yet born but who will come eventually into our insurance scheme, a burden of debt which has been incurred not inside the field of insurance at all but outside it by uncovenanted benefit.

The Bill primarily, as far as Part I is concerned, is one to render solvent the Unemployment Insurance Fund. It contemplates the cessation of borrowing for that purpose, and indeed it has been the policy, I think quite rightly, of the Government to avoid borrowing in order to finance unemployment insurance, but under this Clause power is taken to borrow if the fund is rendered insolvent for the purpose of repaying the debt. It seems to me that the only way that the fund will ever get into debt again in the contemplation of those who have drawn the scheme will be by repaying, or having the liability to repay, more than the fund can carry. It is equivalent to asking the unemployed of the future to pay back the money which the unemployed of the past received. I hoped when the Bill came before the House that we should see in it some indication that the cuts in unemployment benefit would be restored. There is no man or woman who can contemplate with an easy mind the benefits paid in respect of dependent children. No one can say that an allowance of 2s. a week is sufficient to give children the nutriment that they require, and it is common for mothers to make sacrifices of their own health and their own constitution in order that the children may not suffer by the inadequacy of this Measure.

But there is another aspect of it. At the last election great emphasis was laid upon the principle of equality of sacrifice, and a general impression was created that the sacrifices that we were asking, not only of the unemployed but of those who drew their remuneration from the public funds, were temporary sacrifices 1331 rendered necessary by the circumstances of the time and that they would be restored immediately it was possible to restore them. There was also a general feeling that the first of these benefits to be restored would be the benefit to the unemployed people. I confess that I stated over and over again that, in my opinion, the reduction falling upon unemployed people was a temporary reduction. When I look at this Bill I see in it the provision to repay £115,000,000 out of funds subscribed by the working people and their employers and the State, and I contemplate in juxtaposition to that all that happened at the last election about the restoration of those cuts. I feel that if I voted for a Bill in which those two proposals were contained side by side I should be conscious that I had previously misled those poor people. It is because I feel a personal responsibility in this matter—which is shared, I submit, by every hon. Member in this House—that I take the attitude which I do. At all events, I can look the people whom I faced then in the face again and say that I, at least, have done my best.

§ Mr. HOLFORD KNIGHT

Does the hon. Member contemplate the payment of this debt on the insurance fund, and, if so, how is it to be done except as a charge on the fund?

§ Mr. CURRY

I submit that it is not a debt which is properly chargeable to the fund. That is my view. Hon. Members and right hon. Gentleman are entitled to take the opposite view, and I am not seeking to saddle my hon. and learned Friend with my own conscience.

§ Mr. KNIGHT

Wait and see.

§ Mr. CURRY

I am sure that we need not bandy words on that matter. It is one of personal conviction which we all understand. I regard Clause 37 of the Bill as one of the central portions of our controversy. Let me say at once that I cannot see how a fund of these dimensions—I am now talking about the other fund to be managed by the board—can be properly or efficiently administered, unless you give to the people who are responsible for the fund statutory authority to make inquiries. That means a test—a means test if you care to call it such. It is an integral part of the administration of such a fund. When we 1332 look at the Bill and see repeated the means test as we have known it, it would appear that we have not learnt anything from the experience of the last two years. The hon. Member for Sunderland (Mr. Thompson)—I am sorry he is not in his place; I would not have mentioned him if I had noticed his absence—gave unqualified support to the Bill, and then asked how far the responsibility of a family was to be carried. It is not the responsibility of the family which is in the means test as we know it. It is the responsibility of the household. I submit that that experience has proved that the household is not a convenient unit upon which to base inquiries. We in the county of Durham, to whichever party we belong, would say to the Minister that none of us is satisfied that the means test worked on the basis of the household is working equitably, and without serious injustice.

Those of us who believe in a test at all —and hon. Members below the Gangway have long since departed from that very sensible and just attitude—should try to co-operate in order to find a test which would operate with the minimum of friction and of injustice. We have two better units to work upon than the household—either in the family, or in the individual Speaking for myself alone, I should prefer to see the test applied to the means of the individual applicant without reference to his relations or to his household. It is certain that, under the household. test, even family responsibility does not carry through, because a person may leave the household of his father and escape all the responsibility of a family. In that respect, we should try to co-operate in finding a means test which would be equitable.

In making a passing reference to Clause 44 dealing with contributions of local authorities, I am not going to charge any right hon. Gentleman on the bench opposite with a breach of pledges, and least of all the Minster of Health, who is always so meticulous in the words which he uses at that Box. But I think I shall carry most people with me when I say that the legislation proposed in this Bill does not follow the reasonable expectations which were aroused by the statements made in April last. I have always declared that I believed that the whole cost of maintaining able-bodied unemployed people should be borne as a charge 1333 upon the national funds. As long as you adhere to the principle which is laid down in this Bill that it shall be a percentage contribution, no matter how large is the percentage, it will still leave untouched the inequalities of those areas which carry the heaviest burdens, and leave unadjusted the tremendous inequalities and injustices as between one local authority and another. This proposal is bound to come as a great disappointment to those who have endeavoured to establish the argument that, as unemployment springs from a national condition, it should be alleviated from a fund drawn from taxation and not by the rates. As long as that is so, it will be a disappointment and a grievance.

I will say a few words about what I believe to be the fundamental error in the Bill, which is in the appointment of the board itself. It is no good our trying to get round the principle involved here by talking about removing this great problem from politics. We cannot remove a matter which affects directly over a million people, and which may affect great numbers more, in their daily life and in the quantity of their sustenance, out of politics by any means at all. You may remove it from the power of this House to deal with it, and remove from the purview of Parliament the duty of grappling with grievances which spring from it, but you do that at the peril of Parliament. You do not grapple with the situation by simply saying, "We take it out of politics." You can only grapple with it by removing it at its source.

I ask the House in all sincerity to consider whether it is really a wise thing to attempt to hand over the control of matters of this sort affecting over a million people to an unelected and an uncontrollable—for there is no really effective Parliamentary control over the new board—board and give it powers to destroy the responsibility of the Minister to the House, and, thereby, to the electorate at one fell swoop. It is an error of a fundamental nature. Parliament in the very nature of things is a safety valve through which you relieve popular indignation. Close down that safety valve, and create for the first time the position of a Member of Parliament meeting his electorate who have grievances relating to the management of the fund and to the control of policies which affect their home life and saying, "This has nothing 1334 to do with us in Parliament; we have no power to intervene." You tend to force every person so affected to inquire, "What is the use of Parliament?" You strike a blow at popular democratic Government. You do something infinitely more; you jeopardise the continuation of civil peace in this country, which only a year ago we were priding ourselves had lasted for over 100 years.

I do riot blame the Government for taking the responsibility of making such a suggestion. It is a tendency of our time. In 1929, in the Local Government Act, we abolished the boards of guardians, which was an attempt to take out of the hands of the people matters which related very directly to their affairs. We have had a less important experiment in the same way in regard to tariff boards. But this is a matter which affects so many people in so many areas, and I think that we are going too far in the direction of abrogating the powers of the House of Commons in favour of the bureaucracy. It is high time that we called a halt in the best interests of our country and of the masses of the people, and, most of all, in the interest of the system of government of which we pride ourselves to be the pioneers in the world, and called at once for a halt in this retreat from democracy.

§ Mrs. TATE

I fully agreed with the Minister when he told us that he considered this Measure to be a very great Measure of social progress, if only because under the Bill, for the first time we take upon ourselves such an increased measure of responsibility for those young people who are now leaving school; young people, in the majority of cases, who are educated by the State but who, until this Measure passes into law, have been at the mercy, at a very impressionable age, of the chances and mischances of a disordered world, and of a very unstable labour market. In his speech when introducing the Bill on Thursday last the Minister said: The Bill makes provision enabling me to require employers to notify the discharge of juvenile labour. Unless we have that information, it is impossible for us to carry out the duties imposed upon us by the Bill."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 30th November, 1933; col. 1086, Vol. 283.] 1335 But in the Bill on page 14, Clause 16, I read: The Minister may make regulations requiring employers to notify to the Minister. I doubt whether there is at this time one person in every thousand living in London who would care to embark on a list of the powers which, in certain circumstances, Ministers of the Crown or local authorities "may" use. Many of those powers might be described in the words of Swinburne as being: Out of the world's way, out of the light, Forgotten of all men, altogether. The Minister himself told us that the information with regard to the question of juvenile labour was incomplete. This subject is one of such importance that we cannot afford to allow the information upon it to be incomplete. Therefore, I propose to move an Amendment, after the Second Reading of the Bill, to amend Clause 16 in order that it shall read: "The Minister shall make regulations."

I should now like to touch on the courses of instruction for juveniles to be provided by the local authorities where the need arises. That can only mean where there is much juvenile unemployment, and that, of course, must mean in the depressed areas. That scheme is certainly going to cost a very considerable amount of money. In many parts of the country—and we have to face the position —there will for the next few years be a large number of juveniles leaving school for whom there will not be much chance of employment. These juveniles are to go—and we are thankful for it—to training centres and have the advantage of training. Therefore, one cannot too greatly stress the importance of the training which they are to have in those centres. If they are to have, as many of them will have, practically continuous training from the ages of 14 to 18, we should be able to turn out from those centres, if they are run properly, and kept in close contact with the needs of the labour market, a fairly skilled boy or girl at the and of the four years.

It would be best for us to face the situation courageously and honestly, and to arrange that a certain number of these training centres should have a curriculum which would last for four years, and thereby be able to turn out skilled people at the end of that period because, 1336 terrible as are the unemployment figures, it is nevertheless true to-day to say that in certain industries there is still a lack of really skilled labour. In many industries there is even a lack of semiskilled labour, although the labour market is flooded with the unemployed. I believe it would be better to send a smaller number of people to undertake a really full course of training, and to turn them out as trained men, capable of earning good wages, than to send a larger number there and again flood the market with people who are not fully trained. I believe that if we spend the money, which we are going to spend, in that way, we shall not thereby have impoverished our country but, on the contrary, we shall have enriched it.

I wish also to speak of training centres for older people. This is a matter which particularly interests me because I have in my constituency the Government training centre of Park Royal. I have visited that training centre on more than one occasion. We have men there drawn almost entirely from the distressed areas of Wales, with a few from the northern parts of England. They are trained in motor engineering, hairdressing, and acetylene welding. There is another branch of very recent development, which has only been in operation for the last year, and it is a matter of interest that that branch has been far the most successful. It is devoted to the training of young men from distressed areas as waiters. The men who go to be trained as waiters only do a 15 weeks' course, and they are then placed in positions in London as "commis" waiters, that is, apprentice waiters. It is interesting to know that of all the men who have completed the training at Park Royal as waiters in the past year, and they number over 130, not one who has completed his course has failed to find a position.

I was told that the men had found positions at, among other places, the Dorchester, the Savoy, and the Carlton Hotels. I like to have my information first-hand, and therefore I wrote to those hotels to ask for confidential reports as to their opinions on the men they had taken on from the Park Royal Training Centre, and in all eases they told me that I could make the information public. Thirty of the men went to the Savoy Hotel, and the management have 1337 been delighted with them and said that they were most anxious to take British men to be trained as waiters. I think there is no hon. Member of this House who will not admit that the catering trade in London, especially as regards male waiters, has been in the past and is even now far too much in the hands of foreigners. The Carlton Hotel informed me that sometimes boys who, until they had been to the training centre, had never done work since leaving school, had at first found it a little hard to settle down to regulated discipline, but after a few months in the hotel they proved entirely satisfactory.

But you cannot consider a training centre wholly satisfactory unless you look at it from many different points of view. First, you must have the men anxious to enter the training centre, and appreciative of the training which they get there. Secondly, you must have the conditions around the training centre satisfactory and, thirdly, you must have the training in the training centre satisfactory. I think I have proved that the training centre at Park Royal is satisfactory, and now I come to the conditions surrounding the training centre, and they are not so satisfactory. In my constituency, the housing conditions are appalling. The rents are very high and the congestion is very great. There is little space left upon which to build houses, even if people could afford to build working-class dwellings, where land ranges in cost from between £1,000 to over £2,000 an acre. There is in any case a constant drift of unemployed to London, and now in addition the Government bring to the outskirts of London these men from distressed areas, to the training centre, making an already congested area more congested.

I want to ask the Minister to consider the point of view of the local people in this connection. Although my area cannot claim to be a distressed area, nevertheless we have a terrible unemployment problem. I would ask the Minister seriously to consider the point of view of the local unemployed man who has seen works built up in his vicinity where he had a right to hope that he in his turn might obtain work. That man goes to the Employment Exchange week after week, month after month, and over and over again he is refused a job, while over 1338 and over again he sees a man from a distressed area being given a job over his head, because that man has been given a chance of training in the local training centre which the local man, in spite of constant application, has been denied.

If the Minister is going to increase the number of these training centres, which he must obviously do under the Bill, I would ask him that he should ensure, for the contentment of the people who surround the training centre, wherever a training centre is set up, at any rate in a congested area, at least 50 per cent. of the local people to have an opportunity of entering the training centre if they apply to do so. I feel convinced that those who run the training centre in my constituency would support this view, because they must agree that where the men who enter are anxious and keen really to do so, and where there is competition about becoming a trainee then the training centre will be of greater value and those men will do best. The Bill is so wide in its scope, and so many hon. Members wish to speak on it, that it does not permit of one going into greater detail, much as one would like to do, but I do beg the Minister to give the matter of the training centres his very serious consideration.

Mr. GURNEY BRAITHWAITE

The hon. Lady who has just spoken has dealt with the question of training centres with her usual lucidity, and has touched upon a, question which is of great interest to all of us. I desire to deal with a matter affecting the city of Sheffield, which I have the honour to represent, arising out of the Debate on Thursday last and from the speech of the right hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood). I gave the right hon. Gentleman notice that I intended to raise the matter, and may I now express my regret in seeing him arrive as a casualty. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman's injury is not serious, and that he will soon recover from it. It was not, however, that injury of which I wish to speak so much as the injury he has done to my constituency by his speech of last Thursday. When he was addressing the House he used these words: In a city like Sheffield, according to the latest returns, as they will be affected by the Bill they will still be left with an out-relief burden, primarily for the unem- 1339 ployed and their dependants, of 3s. 10d. in the £, and certainly over 3s. of that will be devoted to dealing with able-bodied unemployed who do not come under Part II. At that point I rose and asked the right hon. Gentleman if he would give us his authority for the statement. The right hon. Gentleman passed on to the next point of his speech, and I again rose and put the same question, until I was told by you, Sir, quite correctly, that I was out of order because the right hon. Gentleman had not given way. He did, however, proceed to say this: It is an official document emanating from the City Treasurer's Office."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 30th November, 1933; col. 1,109, Vol. 283.] My intervention and my astonishment were due to the fact that no document on the subject of this Bill had reached me from the City Treasurer of Sheffield or anyone else in authority in the City of Sheffield. I immediately put inquiries in train by telegram and by post and also also during the week-end when I was in Sheffield. I pursued my investigations and the situation would appear to be this, indeed the situation is this, that when the first Bill, containing 56 Clauses, was printed, and before the present Bill appeared, certain calculations were made in the City Treasurer's office as to the effect upon the rates of the proposals contained in the first Bill. A few copies of that statement, which were marked "private and confidential," were circulated to certain members of the council, 'who were coming to London to attend a meeting last Wednesday of the Association of Municipal Corporations. The Chairman of the Public Assistance Committee was asked by the right hon. Member for Wakefield what would be the effect of the Bill upon Sheffield and I am informed that he handed to the right hon. Gentleman one of the copies of the statement referred to. A copy of the same document reached me on Saturday morning, also marked "Private and Confidential."

The Chairman of the Public Assistance Committee assures me that had he known that the document was going to be used in this House for the purposes of debate he would not have parted with it, particularly in view of the fact that the figures are already out of date and inaccurate owing to the addition of the 1340 new Clause to the Bill. I take this the first opportunity of correcting an inaccurate account of the effect of the Bill upon the City of Sheffield. That is all I wish to say, but in conclusion may I reiterate these facts. In the first place, the document was marked "Private and Confidential," and as it was confidential I submit it should never have been disclosed in this House at that time. In the second place, the calculations were based on the Bill not in its present form but in its original form, and I am assured that the right hon. Gentleman had no authority to speak on behalf of the Sheffield City Council. May I suggest with the greatest respect that until such time as Wakefield obtains powers from this House to include Sheffield within the boundaries of Wakefield matters affecting Sheffield are best dealt with by representatives of that City.

§ Mr. GREENWOOD

May I make a personal explanation?

§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Captain Bourne)

It is a well-known Rule of this House that a Member who has spoken once in a Debate cannot address the House a second time in the same Debate, but there is an exception to that Rule, and that is when a matter is raised in the Debate affecting the conduct or observations made by an hon. Member in an earlier speech. But the second speech of the hon. Member must be strictly confined to that subject.

§ Mr. GREENWOOD

By the leave of the House I should like to reply to the hon. Member for Hillsborough (Mr. G. Braithwaite). I am sorry to have to appear in a somewhat damaged condition. I did not speak last week with the authority of the city of Sheffield, and I do not understand the hon. Member's gibe about Sheffield being included in Wakefield. I spoke from information which came to my hand, and it is a new Rule to me that no Member of this House should refer to any constituency but his own. Nor do I know any Ride which requires a local authority, necessarily, to communicate documents to those who happen for the time being to be Members of Parliament for that particular area. If the hon. Member for Hillsborough did not see the document until Saturday that is not my fault. I understand that the 1341 hon. Member now complains that the document was one which was published before certain changes had been made in the Bill. I shall not argue that matter now; and I do not understand that the hon. Member accuses me of inaccuracy in the statement I made. The whole point, as I understand it, is the propriety of my mentioning figures relating to Sheffield which were regarded as private and confidential. If I have committed any impropriety my apologies are due to the city of Sheffield, and I am prepared to tender them now.

The document I received, it is true, was marked "Private" and "Confidential," but I understood that at least one of the Members for Sheffield had received it the day before. Many documents come to this House—and this is perhaps where I failed — marked "Private and Confidential" of general publication up to the point. I was under the impression, and I apologise to the city authorities in Sheffield if I was wrong, that the document had then ceased to be private and confidential and that it was common knowledge, because it is clear that documents of this kind must become common knowledge sooner or later. If I have in any way acted improperly in regard to Sheffield, let me say that I tender my humble apologies. I understand that no apology is required to this House; one apology is sufficient for any normal person to make, but if I have disclosed any facts which were not intended to be disclosed at that time for public information, let me say that I am very sorry.

§ Mr. BANFIELD

The right hon. Gentleman in introducing this Bill explained its provisions in a way which I think afforded great satisfaction to every hon. Member. He is always courteous and kind. He said that above everyone else he realised the responsibility that. lay upon him. We also recognise his kindness of heart. He always put me in mind of Byron's pirate, the kindest hearted man that ever cut a throat or scuttled a ship. Our objections to the Bill are fundamental. I understand that the right hon. Gentleman and his supporters are going down into the country to explain its provisions and tell the unemployed and employed of the benefits which the 1342 Bill confers upon the unemployed man. I do not envy them their job. It might be easy to show the tremendous benefits of the Bill on paper, but I suggest that when it comes into full operation, when the unemployed are actually under its administration, in spite of all the nice things they will hear from the right hon. Gentleman and his supporters in excellent speeches in various town halls, the unemployed will then know that the Bill, instead of bringing relief and comfort into the homes of the unemployed, will make their condition considerably worse.

Hon. Members opposite have expressed the satisfaction that the Bill takes the unemployed man out of the Poor Law. It does nothing of the sort. It continues the system of Poor Law administration under another name. Technically they may be out of the Poor Law but really it is nothing but a reproduction of that system. The applicant for unemployment assistance outside the insurance scheme will be treated in exactly the same way as the able bodied applicant. for Poor Law relief, and not being an expert he will be unable to tell the difference. A committee will assess his needs, but he will not be able to distinguish between the new kind of official and the old. It will be interesting to see how many new officials will be required to work Part II of this scheme, how much duplication of officials will take place, and how much of what is saved out of the pockets of the unemployed will be spent in the extra number of officials who will be required.

There must be some uneasy consciences in this House. We heard one this afternoon. At the last General Election the hon. Member, like many more Members of this House, in explaining away the cuts in unemployment benefit said that it was only a temporary measure. They asked the people in the spirit of self-sacrifice to submit to a cut of 2s. 9d. as a temporary measure, and said that they would be able to restore it to them in due course. It will be extremely difficult for the Government and hon. Members opposite to look their constituents in the face and say, "We have brought in a new Unemployment Insurance Bill and treated this matter in a big way. We have brought in a permanent Bill which will settle this matter once and for all, or at least until possibly a wicked Socialist Government comes in." The unemployed 1343 man to that will say, "I understood that my 2s. 9d. was to be restored." The Government will have some considerable difficulty in explaining this position and why they have not been able to restore the cut of 2s. 9d.

Lieut.-Colonel CHARLES KERR

It was 1s. 9d.

§ Mr. BANFIELD

No, 2s. 9d. These men will feel that in some way they have been deceived. Only the other week a Measure was passed in this House on the understanding that it was to be temporary, the two-shift system for young persons. As time goes on it is to be made permanent. In the same way this cut of 2s. 9d. is being made permanent. The Bill definitely establishes a means test as a permanent feature of our legislation. I know that there is a difference of opinion as to the means test, but I should have thought that every Member of this House, irrespective of party, would have come to the conclusion that the working of the means test has undoubtedly led to a great deal of dissatisfaction, discontent and injustice. Even Conservative Members must be aware of this, but the hill makes not the slightest alteration. If anything, it makes the position tighter, and whatever opinions one may have as to a modification or abolition of the means test some modification at any rate is desired by hon. Members on this side and, I should have thought, by hon. Members opposite, who will have to face their constituents in due course.

I have heard hon. Members opposite say that people have to be subjected to a means test so far as Income Tax is concerned. If the unemployed man was subjected to the same kind of test as we are for Income Tax purposes, we should not have had one-half of the trouble and discontent. The Income Tax return is a personal income return. The difference, of course, is that under the means test you compel a sister to keep a brother, compel the children to keep a father, compel a father to keep the children; you break up family homes; you cause dissatisfaction and strife inside the homes of the people. It is all very well for the Minister to say, "After all members of the family should support one another." I reply that working people have always had big hearts so far 1344 as their own families are concerned. They have always put their hands in their pockets, even when they had very little indeed, for brother or sister or mother or father. There must be within the recollection of many hon. Members cases of working people who had very little indeed but had always been willing to recognise their obligations to their families. But this is a different matter. This proposal makes odious a thing which in many instances has been a gesture of generosity and love. It makes the iron enter the soul of the men or women who receive the money. They feel that in some measure they are not wanted in the house. Brotherly love and sisterly love disappear. On this matter something else might have been done. The system has been condemned not only by Members on this side, but by men and women of good will up and down the country.

I am afraid that this Bill, not only for what it contains, hut because of the spirit of the administration behind it, will make matters worse. It is all very well to take out of the hands of local people the duty of making local inquiries into unemployment, and to take out of their hands also the local administration, but I fear very much that if this scheme is to be administered by paid officials who get thousands of pounds a year in salaries, it may be administered in a very narrow way indeed, and probably in a way which would not appeal to the Minister of Labour. One knows that in administering this kind of thing from a central office, with no knowledge of local circumstances or the peculiarities of an individual man or woman, however much injustice may have been done up to now, still more injustice will be done in future under this Bill. It is this question of administration that makes me more against the Bill even than do the things that are in the Bill.

Take the penal Clauses of the Bill. I know it is necessary to have penal Clauses to deal with a very small minority of unemployed people with whom it is extremely difficult to deal. I speak as a former member of a board of guardians who quite understands the difficulties; but I am very much afraid that if this matter is dealt with by people who do not understand the individual and the local circumstances, these penal Clauses may be used in a very harsh way and may 1345 result in very grave injustices, which in turn may react on public conduct and public life. When right hon. and hon. Gentlemen go down to the country to explain the Bill one of the big points they will make will be, "You see that we are increasing the number of weeks of benefit. Some of the wicked Socialist people, like the 'hon. Member for Wednesbury (Mr. Banfield), were very much afraid that we would reduce the number of weeks of statutory benefit, but instead of that see what fine fellows we are." That may be so, but it will apply only to a comparatively small number in the first place. I fear that under the alteration of the statutory conditions, under the Clause which in effect brings back the old "not genuinely seeking work" provision, the effect may be to exclude from benefit a great number of people. By that means it may be possible to pay the 52 weeks statutory benefit. My point that it is no use right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite talking about what they think is to happen under the Bill. That can only be proved by the operation of the Bill. I am satisfied that the condition of the unemployed people will be considerably worsened.

I want to say something about the provision of works schemes. I have had a little experience of this just recently. I asked the Minister of Labour something about the Bilston scheme. He said that this was work not being done as a commercial enterprise or for an immediate return. Let me give the history of this scheme to show what I fear may happen under these training proposals. I have here minutes of the Bilston Town Council. The Chancellor of the Exchequer will be interested in these facts. On 10th April the town council bad a circular from the Ministry of Health stating that the Government wished the council to do something in slum clearance. It was consequently agreed on that date that the council would build 100 houses on land in a certain area, and the Estates Committee was asked to surrender the land. On the same day the Estates Committee surrendered the land. On 11th May the council had a report from their architect showing the position of the scheme, the site and the roads. This the council adopted. It was proposed that the scheme should be proceeded with. On 20th July the surveyor made a report. 1346 He told the council that preliminary work on the ground for this slum clearance had been proceeded with. This preliminary work had been done under a so-called voluntary training system by unemployed men, drawn not from Bilston but from surrounding towns. The surveyor said that the preliminary work had been commenced, including the shaping of an approach road, the erection of a main hut, and arrangements had been made for water supply and a temporary weather shelter.

Surely in a slum clearance scheme it can never be intended that the labour of men on transitional benefit should be employed. Surely this was work which should have been done in the ordinary way. A great part of this scheme had been developed before, when the preliminary work of clearing the land had been done by men employed at trade union rates with trade union conditions. This council took advantage of the so-called instructional centres to get this ground prepared for this slum clearance and the building of another 100 houses. hope that under Clause 36 that kind of thing is not to be repeated all over the country. Surely the Minister will agree that there must be something wrong in an instructional scheme of that kind.

There is another point. In all these training schemes, these instructional centres, for adult labour at any rate, I find plenty of provision for men with the pick and shovel. Is there some class distinction in these centres? Does the scheme apply only to pick and shovel men? What provision is to be made for the black-coated worker who has been out of employment for two or three years? Is it only the unskilled or the semi-skilled man who is to be found work at these centres? In spite of the good intentions of the Minister, in spite of the hopes that are founded on this Bill, I am afraid that in practice the condition of the unemployed will be made worse. It seems to me that up to now they have been chastised with whips, but that under this Bill they will be chastised with scorpions. I am satisfied that the purpose underlying the Bill, not necessarily the purpose of the Minister but the purpose of those responsible for drafting the Bill, is in some way to save money at the expense of unemployed men and women.

1347 Hon. Members know as well as I do the misery and poverty of the unemployed. They are sympathetic with the unemployed. Sympathy does not lie only on this side of the House; it is in the hearts of men who represent constituencies all over the country. I appeal to the Minister, irrespective of party politics. I say to him, "Do not do anything wilfully or wantonly to make the lot of the unemployed man or woman worse than it is now. Very carefully consider the Bill." I ask hon. Members opposite individually to use their judgment and conscience, and to see whether they are satisfied that the lot of the unemployed will be made better by the Bill. If they come to the conclusion that it will not, which is the conclusion that I have reached, surely there is enough manhood in men for them to stand up in this House, and in spite of the fact that they may be supporters of the Government, to declare that they find themselves unable to accept the Bill.

§ Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

I sincerely hope that all Members of the House will follow the advice which has just been given by the hon. Member opposite and will consider this Bill carefully. I am certain that, if they do so, the majority of them will, unlike the hon. Member, come to the conclusion that the inevitable result of the provisions of the Bill must be greatly to improve the lot of the unemployed. The hon. Member himself had to say that it was not so much what was in the Bill that he was afraid of as the way in which the Bill might be administered; but, in face of all the evidence which appears in the Bill itself, he was quite determined to be of the opinion and to remain of the opinion that the unemployed are going to be seriously injured by its provisions. I do not propose this afternoon to repeat any part of the complete and admirable exposition of the provisions of the Bill given by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour last week. He has received many deserved compliments, not only upon his clear explanation of its provisions, but also upon the good intentions with which he is universally credited even by those who do not believe that his intentions will be carried out in practice. Now that the Second Reading Debate has proceded a certain distance and a number of com- 1348 ments and criticisms have been offered, I think it would be convenient if I were to make some observations upon those criticisms and, in particular, devote myself to the financial provisions of the Bill on which, it appears to me, a great amount of misapprehension exists.

Of the three parts into which the Bill is divided, the third part deals only with transitory provisions, and I do not think it necessary to say anything now upon that aspect of the Bill. With regard to the other two parts, I would like to deal with them separately, because they relate to entirely different subjects, and already I seem to have discerned a certain confusion, sometimes of speech and sometimes also of mind, as between Parts I and II of the Bill. I would, therefore, remind the House that Part I comprises an amended and improved insurance scheme which is not only to be begun upon a self-supporting basis, but is to be maintained in the future in that position, on the advice of an independent Statutory Committee. Part II, on the other hand, deals with those persons who, for whatever reason, are outside the insurance scheme, and it entrusts the administration of the relief which will be given to them to an Unemployment. Assistance Board, upon whom will lie the duty of ascertaining and meeting, so far as is possible, the physical and mental needs of those persons. I say physical and mental needs, because the Bill clearly and specifically states that in, particular it will be the duty of this Board to attend to the mental condition of the unemployed work-people and to put in the very forefront of their duties the necessity for trying to preserve a condition of mind in which those people will always retain the hope that work in time sill come their way, and the determination that when it comes they are going to be ready for it.

I do not think I need take up the time of the House in arguing the case against the view of the party opposite upon Part I of the Bill. As we have been told by the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. A. Bevan), there is a fundamental difference between us in regard to this question but that is not a difference as regards the attitude which we take towards the unemployed people. I repudiate absolutely the description which he gave of the attitude of the Government 1349 and of their supporters towards the unemployed. This Bill is an illustration of the exact reverse, inasmuch as it means that something over £100,000,000 a year is going to be paid out to those who, as he said, through no fault of their own and owing to circumstances entirely beyond their control, are unable to find work. But there is, I agree, a fundamental difference between us as to the method by which the problem should be approached. The party opposite reject altogether the idea of insurance. Now after some meanderings and wanderings to and fro between different views, they have finally come down and crystallised upon the view that if it cannot be proved against a man that he has refused an offer of suitable work, he is entitled to have handed out to him relief presumably at the same sort of rate as he would have received if he had been at work, and entirely independent of what his private resources may be. That is the view of the party opposite, but I think it will be time enough to discuss that view when proposals to that effect are brought before the House by hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite. In the meantime, I say that it is not our view, and that in our opinion, not only would it be disastrous to the finances of the country, but entirely contrary to the real interest of those for whom it is intended.

It seems rather illogical on the part of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood) that having put forward this view and having denounced a system of insurance for the unemployed, he should next complain because we had not extended the system further than it at present extends. He asked why we had not brought in agricultural labourers and domestic servants. If he has read the report of the Royal Commission he will recognise that we have followed the recommendations of the Commission on these two points. Everybody knows that in all probability it would be quite impossible to bring the agricultural industry into the present scheme of unemployment insurance. The conditions in that industry are so different that some special scheme would have to be devised in order to bring in the agricultural labourer and in our Bill we have proposed to remit this question to the statutory advisory committee. If hon. Members will observe the terms in 1350 which this subject is dealt with in the Bill they will see that the provision betokens not merely a fishing inquiry as to whether such a scheme can be found or not, but is a direction to find the best scheme that can be made suitable to the particular conditions of the industry.

As for domestic servants, the Royal Commission considered the subject carefully, and came to the conclusion that it would not be right to recommend that domestic servants should be brought into the scheme. It was pointed out that there was very little evidence of any general desire on the part of the servants themselves to be brought in, while undoubtedly there would be considerable hostility on the part of their employers. It was also pointed out that there were almost as many employers as employés in the case of domestic servants, and that considerable administrative difficulties would certainly accompany any such attempt. If the right hon. Gentleman has still any doubt on this matter, I refer him to paragraphs 364, 365 and 366 of the report of the Royal Commission, where he will find excellent reasons why domestic servants should not be brought into the scheme for unemployment insurance.

There is, however, another criticism of this part of the scheme which I think has rather more substance in it. That is the suggestion made by the hon. Member for East Birkenhead (Mr. White) that it would have been a good thing if the income limit which at present prevails in the case of non-manual workers could have been raised. He expressed the view that the £250 which now forms that limit should be raised higher. I think we ought to distinguish in this matter between unemployment insurance and health insurance. The real demand for the raising of the limit applies not so much to the question of unemployment insurance. There, the rate of benefit is too low to be really attractive to this class of worker, and moreover, in all probability, the contributions would be greater than the benefits.

What these people really would like would be a health insurance scheme with an accompanying contributory pensions scheme. There is where the shoe pinches. There is where they would like to be brought in, and those hon. Members who have studied the report of the Royal Com- 1351 mission will recall that the commission recommended that if and when it is found possible to raise the limit in the case of health insurance and pensions, then it might well be raised for unemployment insurance at the same time. But this is not a Bill to amend the Acts governing health insurance, and I warn the House that when you get into the field of health and pensions the financial difficulties at once become formidable. In the case of pensions, the capital liability which would be incurred by bringing in these extra pensions would, at the commencement of the scheme, amount probably to about £28,000,000, and the annual charge upon the Exchequer would probably rise in the course of the next 20 or 25 years to somewhere in the neighbourhood of £3,000,000 a year. Thus the House will see that there are serious difficulties in this matter, and though, for my part, I recognise and sympathise with the desire of these people to come into a scheme which would confer so much benefit upon them, I think the time has not yet arrived when that can be considered to be practical politics.

I would like to say a few words about the finance of the scheme which affects juveniles. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield recognised that this was one of the strong points of the Bill.

§ Mr. GREENWOOD

I never said so.

§ Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

No, the right hon. Gentleman did not say so, but he indicated his view by his attempt to belittle the scheme, and to suggest that the juveniles were being brought into insurance in order to assist in restoring the solvency of the scheme.

§ Mr. GREENWOOD

Hear, hear.

§ Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

The right hon. Gentleman will be sorry he said that in a moment. The only result of his reaffirmation of that statement is to show that he has not studied the figures which were given in the Actuary's Report published with the first copies of the Bill. For the benefit of the right hon. Gentleman and also to remind other hon. Members who no doubt already have the figures in their minds, let me point out what the actual position is in regard to the finance of the new provisions for juveniles. I need hardly say that the 1352 real object of this provision is not financial at all; it is to get some control over these children in order that we may be sure that they take advantage of the courses of instruction which we are going to provide.

How does this affect the fund? As a consequence of the scheme, the fund will bear half the net extra cost of instruction centres, which is estimated at £425,000 a year. Then we have to debit the fund with the benefits which will accrue to the juveniles owing to their coming into benefit at 16 instead of 16½, and that will cost an extra £230,000. Then there is again a debit to the fund because of the dependants' allowance that will be paid to the unemployed parent of the unemployed child, and that means another £75,000. Finally, there is the cost of the administration of the scheme, which is estimated by the actuary to be £95,000. Altogether, therefore, the extra annual expense which will be placed upon the fund by reason of this provision comes to £825,000. The extra income which is derived from the 2d. a week to be paid by each of the three contributors amounts to £760,000, and therefore the fund will on the whole be worse off, not better off, every year by an amount of £65,000. May I add, since many attacks are being made on the Exchequer, which is represented to be a sort of financial bloodsucker in all these matters of insurance, that the Exchequer too is going to be considerably worse off by reason of this scheme for juveniles, for the Exchequer bears the other half of the net cost of the instruction centres, £425,000, and also bears in contributions a sum which is estimated at £253,000 a year, so that it will cost the Exchequer altogether £678,000 a year in addition to what it is already paying.

Now I would like to come to the question of the debt on the fund, which has been the subject of criticisms from a number of those who have addressed the House. This is one of those matters which is surrounded by misapprehensions, and the number of inaccuracies which have been expressed about the figures of the fund is so large that I do not think I shall be able to remember every single case, but I hope to correct a fair proportion of them. First of all, the hon. and gallant Member for South-East Leeds (Major Milner) said that this debt had been accumulated, I think, to the extent 1353 of about half by the Conservative party during their period of office. I do not wish at this particular moment to be making accusations against one Government or another. I think all Governments lo some extent are to blame for what has happene