UNEMPLOYMENT BILL.

§ Mr. McGOVERN

I desire to continue the discussion on the Amendment for the rejection of this Bill, and I want to say here that, so far as we are concerned, we are entirely opposed to the Bill in every shape and form. We take our stand, as is well known, in favour of a completely non-contributory scheme of benefits and allowances for the unemployed of this country. No doubt it is the duty of the Government to pilot the Measure through the House, to defend the substance of the Bill, and to take their stand on the Bill in the country after they have brought it in. The report of the Unemployment Insurance Commission, of which this Bill is the outcome, was the result, as everybody knows, of the deliberations of a Commission set up by the late Labour Government. The late Labour Government set up what might be regarded as a completely Tory Commission to inquire into what action" should be taken in order to put unemployment insurance in this country on a sound actuarial basis. The fund for a long time had been gradually going into a more and more bankrupt state, and various Governments in this House postponed taking action along these lines because, according to their advisers and to their own opinion, the depression that was taking place in this country was of a temporary nature. Various Govern- 1500 ments since 1918 or 1920 hoped, like Micawber, that something would turn up to put the fund into a state of greater solvency, but as time has gone on from 1918, the fund has gone more and more into that state of insolvency that we have seen within the last year or two.

Owing to the fact that large sums of money had to be found from the taxpayers of the country in order to balance Budgets and deal with unemployment insurance, there were the usual scares that large numbers of people were drawing benefit who were not entitled to benefit, and we had wild stories from one end of the country to the other about unemployed people living in a state of complete affluence who were not anxious to work, and who were drawing benefits from the Employment Exchanges. If I may digress for a momant, I was surprised to hear, in the Debate the other day, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Darwen (Sir H. Samuel), who is usually credited with being astute and fair in discussion, introduce the old bogy of the man with £1,000 in the bank who was drawing unemployment benefit. This argument about the man with £l,000 in the bank has been used by many people in the Liberal, Tory and Labour parties at various times, in order to keep great masses of the people in destitution and in poverty.

The Labour Government took action by setting up a commission. In most cases, when Governments in the past, Liberal and Tory, set up commissions, those commissions were composed of their particular supporters-people who believed in capitalism in every phase; but the Labour party, hoping to carry on as a Government, appointed a Tory commission with a small percentage of moderate Labour representation, in the hope that its recommendations would get through the House. We have been told from time to time on Labour platforms that it was the Liberal party that forced them to adopt the personnel of this commission, and that, if they had been able and free, they would have appointed a more sympathetic commission in connection with unemployment insurance. I am not going to grumble about the members of the commission. They believed in capitalism, and they believed that capitalism can only be carried on by protecting the people at the top at the 1501 expense of the great majority of people at the bottom. If that be their point of view, I have no grudge against them. But there were demands for interim reports, and in the first place a report was presented, and the Labour Government took action on that report. When this commission was set up, the then Minister of Labour, Miss Bondfield, said this: We wish it to be recognised that the Royal Commission will be required to give us what light they can on the additional experience since the Blanesburgh inquiry; and upon the further evidence which they will collect and upon which they will base their recommendations we shall have to frame the next Bill."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th February, 1931; col. 911, Vol. 248.] That was the statement of Miss, Bond-field, that when this Tory commission reported, the Labour party, if in office, would be prepared to accept its recommendations and upon them to frame the Bill. I want to say at this stage, that in connection with the first report that was made concerning the Anomalies Act—and I raise this point because it is important—this Bill is simply a continuation of the recommendations which were made and carried into effect. The first portion was the Anomalies Act, which was more outrageous in many ways than this Bill, bad as it is, because it deprived large numbers of people of the whole of the benefit they were drawing at the Employment Exchange. We have been making history within the last week or so. Mr. Greenwood, on 30th November last, speaking of the abolition of the not-genuinely-seeking-work Clause said: When the late Labour Government altered that regulation and shifted the onus of proof from the worker there was a great outcry about anomalies, and the Anomalies Act was passed to meet the clamour in the House of Commons. The Anomalies Act still remains, although the justification for it has gone."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 30th November, 1933; col. 1105, Vol. 283.] He said that if this Bill passes, it will introduce practically a new not-genuinely-seeking-work Clause, and therefore the Anomalies Act is absolutely unnecessary. If that be true, I want to ask this question. We had a declaration last week from the Labour party concerning the means test. I want to know if they stand for the abolition of the Anomalies Act in its entirety. I am asking the official Labour Opposition, because if we make progress in the way they were doing last 1502 week in throwing over the means test, and they can throw over the Anomalies Act, then in about 50 years' time they will be competent to defend the working classes of this country. I am putting it to them definitely, in order to get it in the country, where they stand according to that statement, because, in my assumption, it is drawn up with a view to encouraging the belief in the country that they stand for the rejection of the Anomalies Act. I want to know whether they are prepared at this stage to declare for the overthrow of the Anomalies Act along with the means test, and not to go on defending the indefensible, while at the same time going to the country and making people believe that they are not supporters of either of these Measures. This is an attempt, in answer to the recommendations of the Commission, to put the fund on a sound actuarial basis. All Governments have been struggling for that, and the Prime Minister at Bedford on 14th November, 1930, when he was Prime Minister of the Labour Government, said: Unemployment insurance as an insurance must be put back on an insurance basis. In October, 1930, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Snowden, at the Guildhall, said: I think it is the duty of Parliament to face up to this problem, and put the Insurance Fund on an insurance basis. There was no repudiation of that point of view by the rank and file Members of the Labour party at that time. It is all very well to say, "We have now got rid of the Prime Minister. We have now got rid of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. We have got rid of the intellectuals, and, therefore, we can go along and pretend in the House that we are a working-class party, that we have left our philosophy and policy of make-believe behind, or in front on this bench, and we stand as an orthodox working-class party." I would welcome an open declaration in the country by the Labour party that they have repudiated their past policy, and have taken a new line which is necessary according to the conditions we see to-day. But I see no change from the actual line of policy which operated when the Labour party were sitting on the other side of the House.

1503 The Labour party over this Bill are in a very difficult position, and I sympathise with them, because everything contained in the Bill they stood for. Last week they threw over publicly the means test in this House, although it still remains part of the policy of the Labour party at its annual conference, and it is not throwing over the test in any shape or form. It was done on the eve of the introduction of this Bill. They can only say that they stood against a Poor Law test, and as the Government now propose to take the power out of the hands of the actual Poor Law authorities, they had to queer the pitch last week in order to make a semblance in this House. I say that it is hypocritical in the extreme to come down to this House after the decision of an annual conference for the carrying out of a means test, and to say at that bench that they stand for the rejection of the means test in its entirety.

I remember the hon. Gentleman for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson) making the statement in this House, shortly after the beginning of this Parliament, that they had rejected a means test, though there have been open declarations by the Leader of the party that he stood for the means test. I do not care what Members are inclined to mutter or whisper. I say that if we know the policy of the Tory party, we are entitled to know the policy of the Labour party. They have no right to say that the Tory stands for the starvation of the working classes under the Insurance Bill, when they themselves during 1929 and 1930 walked into the Division Lobby for a 2s. standard for the unemployed man's child, and go back again to the country, as they did at Kilmarnock, and condemn this brutal Government—and I believe it is brutal. They are not justified in going to the country and saying that there is any demarcation, or line of division, between themselves and the Government at the present moment.

Therefore, I say that we have really no official Opposition in this House. We have a sham Opposition. We have elements in the Labour party that do not approve of the means test, that did not approve of the Anomalies Act, that do not approve of any parts of the Labour party policy, but they will go to the by-elections and back candidates who 1504 go for all these things, and claim independence in the House while tied to the party machine in the country in every way. Let us hear what Mr. Citrine, speaking for the Trades Union Congress, said: We therefore suggest that an Unemployment Benefit board should be constituted of three nominees of the Trades Union Congress General Council, three nominees of employers' organisations, one nominee from the Ministry of Labour and one nominee from the Treasury, together with an independent chairman. Our old friend the independent chairman! Where they get the illusion that there is such a person as an independent chairman, I do not know: he must either be drawn from the ruling class or the working class, either from the exploiters or the exploited. But the board comes along, and these people say that the board is all wrong, because the National Government have adopted the policy of the Trades Union Council and they see it in print. It reminds me of the soldiers of whom the famous General said, "I don't know what you think, but, by Heaven, they frighten me!" When they see the actual thing put into a Bill they say, "We do not want that," like a child buying a toy; it wants an engine, and, having got that, wants a doll. To continue the quotation: We are convinced that the formation and functioning of such a board, by largely removing the question of unemployment benefit from the arena of party politics and by relieving the legislative congestion of Parliament"— I have seen the congestion when it has five months holiday in the year— will ensure sound administration of the scheme on democratic and business-like lines. That is Mr. Citrine, of the Trades Union Congress. We shall be told by some people that he does not matter, but we know that he does matter. They are the men who walk to the rostrum with 250,000 votes never asked for by the rank and file, and vote down elements that are Socialistic in the movement.

We are attempting to put the fund on a sound actuarial basis. We never attempt to put the Army and Navy on a sound actuarial basis. We never consider the cost of battleships, of guns, of tanks, of poison gas, of rifles, of Dreadnoughts, of submarines, of airships or aeroplanes. They are all put as a burden 1505 on to the people in order, we are told, to defend the interests of the country if it had to go to war. Why should we have to put human beings below that level? People are not unemployed because they want to be unemployed. People are running around and appealing in every way to get employment.

The Unemployment Fund is in a state of insolvency, because capitalism is in a state of insolvency, not because individuals are not anxious or willing to work, not because they have done something deadly in the line of crime in any way. They are anxious and willing to work, but the State cannot give them employment, and as capitalism declines and declines, and goes headlong into disaster, with every step downward on the private profit-making system, various Governments come along to the House, and it is the fifteen and threepenny man, to whom the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton) referred, who has to go down another step. I am not adverse to economy; I am not averse to sacrifices, to pruning with the knife, but I want to start from the top, and not from the bottom. I think that is the only logical way, and if you are going to place everyone on a means test, let us go right down the rungs of the ladder, and the man at the bottom will go up.

The National Government, like their predecessors, say that they must put this fund upon a sound actuarial basis. The system of privately-owned industry has ceased to be self-supporting and, therefore, the needs of the unemployed must be adjusted to meet the needs of a bankrupt system of society. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. K. Lindsay) yesterday approved the Bill as a sound, courageous piece of legislation. I do not see where the soundness of it is. I do not see where the courage is required, because I never thought it was courageous to set up machinery for the purpose of attacking the common people. The hon. Member said that before any of the cuts were restored to the teachers or to any other persons, including Members of Parliament I assume, there should be a 1s. extra for each child. Even that is a revolutionary demand compared with the Labour party.

The hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. D. Graham) last night waved his hands and carried on, threatening the Govern- 1506 ment and the ruling class with what the Labour party would do if they got into power. I know what they would do. He said, "We will assist the common people; we will abolish the means test, and we will take away the whole of this outrageous legislation."

In December, 1930, when the Independent Labour party proposed 5s. for the unemployed man's child, he walked into the Lobby with the landowners, the coal-owners and the royalty owners and declared that 2s. was sufficient for the children of the unemployed man. It takes a brass cheek to come to the House and pose as a defender of the common people after having voted with Members of different political parties for a continuation of what is described by several medical men as a miserably inadequate scale of benefit for the unemployed man's child. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock said this was a courageous piece of legislation. They are doing a very drastic thing to the children from 14 to 16 years of age. They are taking 2d. a week from them, and at 15½ or 15 and 9 months, if they become unemployed, the father, who may be unemployed also, is going to be able to return to the 2s. standard for the three or six months until the child is 16. Is not that a courageous thing? The Government are giving 2s. a week for a boy of 15½ or 15 and 9 months with practically all the wants and desires of a man, including entertainment, food and recreation under this bold, comprehensive, courageous scheme brought in by the strong men of the House.

The Prime Minister and his so-called National Labour supporters are in a coalition of all the elements which at one time they denounced. I do not say that people have not a right to change minds and their ideas, but he has become contaminated and debauched by the association of the Londonderry's and others who are his daily companions. He told the country over the wireless—fancy a man claiming to be a Socialist saying this: "We are putting through the cuts, but we want it to be understood that we are not cutting the 2s. benefit of the child." Was not that a generous thing, was it not a civilised thing, was it not a Christian thing that a great man with £5,000 a year, and another member of his family with £1,250 or £1,500, were not going to put through any cuts on the child drawing 1507 2s. a week. I remember the time during the War when I went with the Prime Minister to Glasgow. I was looked upon as the leader of his bodyguard. I helped to defend him with rubber pipes, lead pipes and various instruments of warfare at peace meetings. I never believed he was much of a Socialist, but I thought at least he would put up some fight in the War, and we defended him. At that time the Press, Liberal and Tory, were hounding him from one end of the country to the other, but to-day he is their darling and, when he sits on that bench, they all get behind him like beasts of the jungle in order to attack the working-class. I have been in houses where, since these cuts have been made, the people were practically broken hearted over what they termed his betrayal of working-class interests. They had almost worshipped the man, but now his name stinks in the very nostrils of every decent minded progressive individual throughout the length and breadth of the land. He played the Judas to the class who put him into supreme power and authority, and he used the poverty of the common people to get on to that bench and become the puppet and the darling of the people with whom he is now associated.

What is the reason for the introduction of this legislation? It is simply that it is not the people in the House who rule. It is not the landowners; it is not the capitalists. We have a new financial ruling class, and the financial dictators lay down the lines of Parliamentary business, and they lay down to the Cabinet their wishes and desires, because they own and control almost every human being from one end of the land to the other. They are the King Herods of our 1933 civilisation. They abstract the energy of human beings in employment in order to provide luxury for themselves and their friends and, when creeping paralysis has overtaken industry and they can no longer employ the workers, they reduce their standards to the level of starvation and degrade the mothers and young women and destroy children more rapidly than King Herod under the system that is in operation to-day. Under this Bill you will make permanent the cuts which have been operated by the so-called National Government. The hon. Member for North-East Bethnal Green (Major Nathan) said yesterday 1508 that the country had been cheated by the application of these cuts. We were told that they were temporary and that as soon as the crisis had passed away they would be restored, and he demanded that they should be restored. He only showed that he was a simple supporter of the National Government, because the very essence of capitalist decline in every part of the world means that capitalism can never be stabilised and will never be out of crisis until it is finally destroyed in every way.

Under this Bill you are dealing with one important feature, the question of training. The late Minister of Labour, Miss Bondfield, approved of training, and the Labour party at that time were committed to it. But the Bill sets up what might be termed slave camps. I believe they are practically on the model of the camps that have been set up by Hitler in Germany and Mussolini in Italy, and I can see at every stage of your legislation that you are quietly and cunningly setting up a dictatorship which, at any given moment, can suppress the whole of working-class institutions and working-class freedom and which may take the ownership and control of the lives of every human being and completely put your schemes of dictatorship into operation without a struggle. There is one called High Lodge at Brandon in Suffolk. There is no need for ex-service men to picture this. He knows what a desolate camp in the middle of a moor is like. He lived in them and they almost made going to War seem intolerable. Each man receives 3s. for each of the 12 weeks that he is at camp. If he is a man receiving 15s. 3d. in benefit, the Government deduct 12s. Whatever the man's financial position, he gets the standard 3s. rate of pay. I would never suggest that they would ask a man to work for nothing. They are not as mean as that. They give him 3s. a week. At first he is given light work to do and then, after physical exercise, he is promoted to heavier work.

At High Lodge this consists of cutting trenches to guard again forest fires, land drainage and reclamation and trenching and shoring. No wonder the men sing, "Yield not to temptation." It is difficult to see what temptation they could yield to on 3s. a week in such a hell- 1509 hole, except the temptation to run away. They are up early-early to bed and early to rise. The ordinary men rise at 6, and the others at 6.30. After breakfast at 8 o'clock they start the day's work. The work is of the hardest description, and all for 3s. a week. The camps are full of men who have been kidded on to volunteer. The new Bill gives the Unemployment Assistance Committee power to make them compulsory. [An HON. MEMBER: "Who says this?"] The hon. Member is assuming that it is the "Daily Herald," but he is quite wrong. I would never quote from the "Daily Herald." It is the "Daily-Worker." There is another camp at Dunoon where the work is swinging a pick or hammer for eight hours a day. If you are caught smoking during working hours, the manager threatens to send you home, which means a loss of six weeks' money at the Exchange. It is just like the Army. You go on parade after breakfast and dinner and a loudmouthed instructor bawls out to his heart's content. If you want to go home for the week end, it costs a matter of 6s.—a fortnight's pay.

We have no hope of defeating the desire of the Government to carry out the training camps, but we are certainly not without hope of being able to stir up trouble outside the House. We do not hope to convert Members to our point of view, but there is a great mass of people in the country whom we have hope of converting, because they are the unconscious victims of the present system. Therefore, they should be encouraged to revolt. Every action and activity, and line of obstruction and attack that we can take will be taken in connection with the attempt to put training camps into operation in this country; to use men in that way and put them into military camps and upon the soup kitchen standard of life. It is something like the German prisoners of war camps. We have got to a fine stage in this system of capitalism. Your system is going down into degradation when all that you can do and work for is to use their bodies ·and prepare them for future warfare in defence of capitalism in this country and abroad. We shall do all that we can to obstruct, not only the passage of the Bill, but to destroy the effect of the Bill in its application outside.

1510 There is the question of political influence which has been raised on many occasions. Every speaker says: "I am glad to see that this is being taken out of the political arena." Why should it be taken out of the political arena? Why should not working men and women be able to make known to their representatives their wishes and desires in a so-called democratic country? Why should they not be able to make demands upon the willing or unwilling politicians in this country? Why should it be taken out? There is no objection to the long line of financial deputations which come to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and no objection to lobbying, correspondence and Press which come to Members of this House. If you do not take particular interest in them, they threaten to turn their army and hoards against you at the election. That is all legitimate. It applies to big business and to the exploiting section, but we are not to be allowed to have the men and women who have fallen into the gutter in the backlands and in the slums coming to political meetings and demanding a humane standard of life from the governing authority and the ruling classes of the country. We see tariff boards, and lobby and Ministerial deputations permitted. I say that to keep unemployment insurance in politics is not only the life of politics, but it helps to galvanise, inspire and to keep going those who are desirous of evading the influence of those people.

With regard to central and local boards, I would rather have the local board under the public assistance auspices. We have always been told by people who approve of capitalism that they would welcome a return of the good old days when every man in the workshop felt that the employer was his friend and when the employer went round with the personal touch. They say that he had a knowledge of their conditions and that there was more humanity and consideration in those times. But as rationalisation and combines have developed, there has been nothing but a keen sense of business responsibility, profit and dividend, and the human element does not count. If you are to operate this scheme, a great amount of play in connection with its application is absolutely essential. There should be on the local boards people who understand 1511 local conditions and appreciate the position of individuals, so that they can assess their needs in a more humane and decent way than a board sitting in London or elsewhere whose only job is to see that the fund is balanced irrespective of the tears, suffering and agony of the people in working-class areas. I know that there are some people who are not inclined to give consideration to that point of view, and, therefore, I would desire to see, if the Bill is to become law, that the local influence should be allowed to operate to the full.

We have been told of the effects of the means test. There has been no dubiety so far as we are concerned. We have never stood for the support of any kind of means test at any time. We are antagonistic to a means test unless there is a means test applied to every individual in society. We realise what a means test under capitalism really means. By close knowledge and experience of local work I am able to understand the application of a means test in respect of the ordinary able-bodied man requiring relief from the parish council and the public assistance committee. Knowing what it means, I say to the House without any egotism that I believe there are not 33⅓ per cent, of the Members of the House who know what a means test really is. They do not understand it. There are to-day people on local authorities who do not understand it because they have never given study and time to the individual cases which come before them. From time to time, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and sometimes on Saturday, I have had to meet people at the public assistance offices. There have sometimes been 20 or 30 people, and I have sat on relief work from 9 o'clock till one o'clock on some days studying every individual case. A, B and C may have the same number of children and to all appearances have the same claim, but they may be absolutely different in every way. Their demands are different because of the many demands which they have to meet and of the difficulties in their family life. The means test is operated harshly, brutally, and in the most extreme manner.

I will cite three cases, and ask hon. and right hon. Members to say whether they are right or just. There is No. 1, a girl 1512 of 23 years of age, earning £2 5s. per week. The father, aged 59, is unemployed, a brother, 28, unemployed, and another brother, 31, unemployed. None of these three men has any benefit at all because the girl's wage of £2 5s. has to go into the home to keep the father and two brothers. Many things happen. You undermine parental authority, because the father feels that he is a charge upon the daughter, and the brothers feel the same. Before they can get 6d. for a packet of cigarettes, a penny for a newspaper, a pair of socks—the mother is dead—before they can get anything, they have to go to the daughter with her £2 5s. a week. She is being denied holidays. She cannot get the ordinary decencies of Life. She cannot have a dress in order to go to a dance and make herself as becoming as those with whom she associates. The family are reduced to the gutter and are in poverty, with each individual in the home clinging to the girl of 23 years of age. Is there any hon. Member in this House who would defend conditions of that kind as applied to three men living out of the bare income of a girl of 23? Not even a penny can be put by for her future marriage, and in this case she is keeping company with a view to marriage. She cannot get a holiday, clothe herself decently, or get the ordinary nourishment she needs. It is a scandal and an outrage that this sort of thing should take place in the year 1933, when you have bountiful supplies of food and are destroying the results of the energy of the people in every part of the world in order to keep a bankrupt, selfish and soulless system of society in operation.

I come to case No. 2 of a girl of 29, with £1 5s. per week as wages, and another girl of 32, with £1 8s., bringing £2 13s. into the home. There is the father, who is unemployed, the mother, and a sister of 26, none of whom has a single penny of benefit. Would any person care to say that this is equity and that he would like to go into my division and defend those cases in the interests of the National Government? I assure, hon. Members that they would be lucky to leave the division with their lives. Here is the case of a girl, a teacher, whose parents put the whole of their surplus money into educating her in the hope that they would, at some distant 1513 date, see her become a good citizen and take her place in life and be able probably materially to contribute to the home. The girl has £3 10s. The father is unemployed, there is the mother, a sister, aged 22, a brother, aged 19, and two boys at school, aged 12 and 9, respectively, and they are all living upon the £3 10s., and the girl herself is paying Income Tax. Would any Member care to defend such a case?

Is there any Member in the House who is prepared to say that these cases are just or that they ought to be allowed to go on? This sort of thing is going on in thousands of cases throughout the country. Working-class people are being crucified at the present moment in order to keep the brutal and ruthless band of money barons in operation with their affluence, wealth and power in this country. We see the results of this sort of thing in Glasgow. The chief constable says that child crime is on the increase. I met a magistrate from Glasgow only yesterday, and he told me that when sitting on the bench last week he had before him a boy of 10 years of age who had been six times in the court this year for stealing. You find that the denial of money for sweets, pictures, and other little entertainments and decencies which the parents cannot afford to provide for their children is driving children to crime in this way. These people have desires just as every Member in this House. Why should not their wants be satisfied?

It is now getting near to Christmas time. Last Friday there were two birthdays in my family, a girl of 23, and a boy of 5, both having been born on 1st December. I love my family, and I should like to see every child given an equal opportunity with my children. I look forward to being able to go home and to buy something in order to brighten the lives of those children at such periods. When it comes to Christmas time, the season when people are asked by their children for presents, what will be the position in the homes of the poor? Little children, ragged and ill-shod, will see others whose parents are in a happier position, with their tricycles, their Meccano sets and their games, and they will not understand why they are denied these pleasures. I have seen children—I am deeply interested in children—where 1514 that contrast operates. I have seen a child coming along the street, badly dressed, ragged, without boots. That child sees another, well and brightly dressed, and one always sees a consciousness developing in the poor child as it looks at the well-dressed child. One sees admiration, the face beaming; then the poor child takes a sly look at its own garments and slips away, feeling incapable of being in company with the better-dressed child.

That is what the means test is doing. I know of cases in the area that I represent where children have been born in a home where the electric light or the gas has been cut off, where eviction notices have been served, and where the 40s. maternity benefit has been denied them; the woman lying in bed, with not a blanket, not a ray of hope, no nourishment, no comfort, no decency in the home, and we are told that this must continue. We are told that the means test must operate. If economies were essential, there is no man in this House who would be more ready to practice economies. I neither drink nor smoke and I am prepared to surrender part of my salary at any time if it can be shown to me that it is essential that it should be surrendered in order to meet the needs of the people who are less fortunate in life, but when I know that people at the top have the right to purchase, if they had the power, to consume 1,000 dinners while other individuals have not the right to one decent dinner, I say, quite frankly, that you cannot satisfy outraged humanity that it is essential that these things should continue.

The men who operate this scheme of things ought to feel ashamed that they are using their power as a so-called National Government to harass their fellow men and women who are in a less fortunate position, to degrade them, to destroy them, to drive them into asylums and into early graves, because of a bankrupt system of society, instead of declaring that the system can no longer operate to the satisfaction and well-being of the whole of humanity. Let us reorganise on the basis of common ownership instead of private ownership in the interests of the few. We are hampering people to death at the present time. We know that they are suffering acutely under the system known as the means test, and 1515 I ask the House to pay serious attention to the question. You may pass your Bill and carry it through the Lobbies by the sheer numerical weight of hon. Members defending the National Government, but I tell hon. Members that in the slums, in the back lands, there will be a rumbling, a revolution of feeling which is gradually developing, as Members of the Government know, and which is encouraged and developed when the people of this country realise that nothing is to be got by pleading with this House or on the public platform, and that this House is using its majority to force through these Measures.

I wish the Labour party would declare itself openly and unashamedly the working-class party and stop chasing after the middle-class shadow while losing the working-class substance. Let them take their stand along with the people who are in the gutter, inspire them, galvanise them into activity, bind them into one strong army of labour, with a strong policy and programme. If they take their stand in that way, men and women, without fear or favour, will cooperate with them on the basis of the revolutionary demands of the common people for the ending of capitalism. Do not imagine that in this Bill or in any Bill you are going to put oxygen into the dead carcase of capitalism. It is not a doctor's mandate that it wants, but the undertaker's mandate to cremate it. This system has outlived its usefulness. Let us go forward to the next step in civilised development. Commonly we produce and commonly we ought to own and distribute the goods of life. If the sufferings and the anguish of the people of this country in working-class homes could be condensed into one human cry, it would rattle and appal the people in high places. I for my part go out to the country every week-end and at every moment that I get the opportunity and tell the people there is no hope from this House, and that sitting in this House is a gang of hard-faced business men and women, with the outlook of the capitalist class. [Interruption.] Yes, hard-faced and hard-hearted in every way to the demands of the common people.

§ Captain Sir WILLIAM BRASS

That is not true.

§ Mr. McGOVERN

If my hon. and gallant Friend suggests that I am un-truthful I can only say—

§ Sir W. BRASS

I say that the hon. Member's remark is just as truthful as those of the "Daily Herald" and the "Daily Worker."

§ Mr. McGOVERN

My hon. and gallant Friend is not entitled to say that. He may defend the present system, but I am antagonistic to it.

§ Sir W. BRASS

I am talking of the hon. Member's remark about our hard faces.

§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Sir Dennis Herbert)

I must call the attention of the hon. Member for Shettleston (Mr. McGovern) to the fact that he is getting so enthusiastic about the system that he seems to have forgotten the Bill.

§ Mr. McGOVERN

I am prepared to accept your Ruling, but I am not going completely into details or making any plea just now. I am dealing with the general effects of the Bill in working-class homes, and I can only say, in passing, that the hon. and gallant Member who interrupted me is too sensitive. His name makes him too sensitive. Brass is always much cheaper than gold. I would point out to the Government that there have been many periods in history where the ruling class have used their power—as the Government are using it in this Bill, and as they use it in the general lines of legislation in this House—to force through that which the people of the country on a referendum would overwhelmingly turn down. Therefore, the Government are not democratically carrying through the wishes and desires of the people. There have been many periods when people have been so carried away with their power that they have carried through legislation that has been harmful to the people, but the people in the end have risen from their slumbers, and have swept the ruling class away.

I believe that we are within measurable distance of the time when the working class of this country will rise in revolt against those who are imposing this injustice upon them. We will encourage them to do so, knowing that only by a complete change of system, with the working class against the ruling class, and the working class transferring power from the present ruling class to themselves, with 1517 a new economic order, is there any hope. We shall live to see the day when the various political parties who have misused their power will be swept away into the limbo of forgotten things, and men and women, with courage, with knowledge and consciousness will take their place in a new system which will be substituted for the present bankrupt system.

§ Lord EUSTACE PERCY

I shall not detain the House one tithe of the time that the hon. Member for Shettleston has taken. I want to make one point which has not been made in the Debate. There are in this very comprehensive Measure of social legislation three weaknesses, three omissions or ambiguities. One was dealt with very fully last Friday, and to a certain extent last night, and I do not intend to refer to it again, namely, the whole question of the control of the recruitment of juvenile labour into industry. That remains a question which the Government will have to tackle beyond and in addition to this Bill. There is, secondly, the whole range of questions referred to in the very remarkable speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. K. Lindsay) last night—the question of the mode and operation of the Unemployment Assistance Board. It is clear that that board as it is set forth in the Bill at present may be the greatest organ of remedial action that has ever been planned in this country for two generations, or it may be a mere piece of bureaucratic machinery handing out payments at certain rates to persons qualified by assessment on the application of certain tests of means. We shall have to examine very closely during the Committee stage of the Bill whether it is possible to make clear by any Amendment of Part II that it is the remedial action which we expect that board to take, and that the board must be adequately equipped to take such action. I will say no more on those two points.

I come now to the one point which I do want to make and which has not been made so far in the Debate. Part I of the Bill attempts to remove the Insurance Fund out of pure politics and to give it a financial administration representing the contributors to the fund and the beneficiaries of the fund. It does not stereotype the Unemployment Insurance scheme, because the Statutory Committee 1518 is to have very wide powers to vary contributions and benefit according to the financial position of the scheme, but it does tend to stereotype it in one respect—it tends to stereotype the whole scheme of contributions in their amount and their arrangement. There is one feature in Unemployment Insurance which I have always thought to be a scandal and that is the employers' contribution, a contribution assessed rigidly at so much a head for every person employed. That represents a barbarous conception of the relation between capital and labour—I do not pause now to consider in whose hands capital should be. Even if it is in the hands of a public authority surely it is a barbarous conception that the business of the holder of capital is not to employ labour, that the manager of capital in employing labour is not discharging his obvious duty but is assuming a risk against which he must insure himself and the State. So much for the conception of the thing, but think of the effect of it.

I believe that insurance contributions fail in respect of Unemployment Insurance, Health Insurance and insurance against workmen's compensation liability. These insurance contributions are probably a greater cause of unemployment than any other single factor at the present moment. We talk a great deal about technological unemployment and the replacing of manual labour by the machine, but, surely, historically and economically, the motive for replacing man's labour by the machine is not that the machine is in itself cheaper but that the production of the machine is far greater than that of manual labour. In other words, the adoption of the machine in place of human labour is a characteristic of expanding industry, expanding production and expanding consumption. We know only too well to-day that in most of our staple industries there is no question of expanding production^ we are coming down, for the moment, to a more or less stationary rate of consumption. Therefore, the motive for the replacement of man by the machine, the ordinary economic motive, is much less to-day than it has been for the last 100 years. But on the employer who is considering whether it will pay him to replace human labour by the machine you put this extra incentive to incline him towards the machine that he has to take 1519 out, as it were, a sort of dog licence for about £5 for every single man he employs. That poll tax is throwing men out of employment steadily every day in this country. Obviously, it is difficult to devise an alternative but I think we shall ultimately find that it is essential to get rid of this poll tax.

§ Mr. WALLHEAD

Will the Noble Lord bear in mind that the Americans never had this poll tax and they have millions of unemployed?

§ Lord E. PERCY

I did not quite catch what the hon. Member said, and I want to get through my remarks as quickly as possible. It will be impossible to get rid of this poll tax unless you can so develop representative organisation in industry that you can make a block assessment of industry, in substitution for its poll tax on the number of men employed; and that, surely is a problem to which the Statutory Committee and the Government should devote prime attention. I hope that the Government will consider this matter in view of the fact that they are in danger, to some extent, in this matter of stereotyping the insurance scheme and will look with favour on proposed Amendments to the Bill which will at any rate make the question open for the consideration of the Statutory Committee and the Government.

§ Mr. LUNN

We are in the third day of the Debate on this Bill and many varied speeches have already been delivered. The Noble Lord the Member for Hastings (Lord E. Percy) is usually fairly clear in his analysis of any Measure before the House, but he has not been quite so clear to-day. I admit that he has raised a new point which may be considered by the new Statutory Committee which is going to make regulations and deal with this subject instead of the representatives of the public who are sent to this House. The Noble Lord suggests some new method of dealing with the workers of the country in a kind of block contribution. We have hardly got that in this Bill with regard to unemployment insurance, but as the Statutory Committee is going to have wide powers I have no doubt that they will give consideration to the suggestion of the Noble Lord. But we have had another speech to-day, a very long 1520 one, much longer than the speech I propose to make, from the hon. Member for Shettleston (Mr. McGovern). The first 25 minutes of his speech, beginning last night, was an attack on the Labour party without any reference to the Bill, but that is usually the case with the hon. Member when he speaks in this House. He is allowed to do it. Last night he quoted a resolution passed at the Labour party conference at Scarborough. I was present at that conference and I remember a resolution coming from the national executive and being placed before the conference condemning the hon. Member. I remember a very impressive speech delivered by Mr. Willam Shaw, of Glasgow, to that conference, composed of the best and most highly-respected men and women in the working-class movement in this country. That conference confirmed that resolution, and I say that when a man deceives my class, the working class, he is not worthy of my consideration.

§ Mr. McGOVERN

The hon. Member is now raising a personal issue. The statement made at the Scarborough Conference was made whilst I was lying in prison, and I had no opportunity of replying to it. I only say that it was a lying and slanderous statement, for which I could have taken action for slander had I been so disposed. I ask the hon. Member to recognise that the right hon. Member for Clay Cross (Mr. A. Henderson) is in the dock just now for much worse than I was.

§ Mr. LUNN

It is more than two years since that conference took place, and if the hon. Member was in prison at the time he has not been in prison all the time since then. He might have dealt with it.

§ Mr. McGOVERN

The electors of Shettleston endorsed my action.

§ Mr. LUNN

There is one great feature of our public life and that is that the men and women who come into it are men and women of character. I know that there are exceptions. I see them.

§ Mr. McGOVERN

So do I.

§ Mr. LUNN

I hope we shall still carry on this tradition, and that men and women of character will be supported by us. I feel that I must leave the hon. Member there and say no more about his speech.

§ Mr. McGOVERN

rose

§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Captain Bourne)

Order, order!

§ Mr. McGOVERN

If there are going to be any personal references to me no matter what may be the orders of Debate, I am going to have the right to reply; and if there are going to be any lying insinuations about me I am prepared to challenge the hon. Member or any other hon. Member in this House to debate them in public.

§ Mr. LUNN

I consider that the speech of the hon. Member, and the hon. Member himself, is unworthy of further consideration by me, and I think I can leave him there to take his own course in whatever way he thinks.

§ Mr. McGOVERN

So I will.

§ Mr. LUNN

In the few words I propose to address to the House I want to put what I have always understood is the Labour party's position with regard to unemployment. I have been a member of the Labour party since its formation, a loyal member, and I am a loyal member of it to-day. This Bill does not in any way cope with the problem of unemployment. The Minister of Labour, in moving the Second Beading, calculated that he would have on the live register 2,500,000 unemployed, but he did not say for how long, whether it would be for months or for years. But this we know, that there is nothing in the Government's policy which is going to ensure work for any of these 2,500,000, and that after all is the most important question. We shall spend weeks of consideration on this cumbrous Measure of great complexity, with very costly machinery, which is designed more for the purpose of preventing men and women getting either work or maintenance. We shall see that when the Measure is in operation. We are compelled to oppose the Bill because it does not meet the policy of the Labour party, that is, work or maintenance out of national funds for those who cannot get work. That is our policy and has been our policy for a long time. The Prime Minister was the Leader of the Labour party for many years. He is now the Leader of the Tory party. I remember him speaking in support of a Motion similar to that on the Paper today, and he used these words: 1522 In a statement on unemployment, such as we have to-day, we must have ameliorative work or ameliorative treatment, and as has been said again and again from theee benches, if you cannot find work, which is your first resiponsibility, then maintenance must be found. You have not found maintenance and you have not found work. That speech was made on 1st December, 1923, 10 years ago. I wonder whether the Prime Minister holds that opinion to-day. I would have liked to have heard him in this Debate. I have often heard him speak on this subject, and I can hear him at any time in my own home making the same declaration from a gramophone record that was produced in 1929. It would be to the advantage of the House if we could know where the Prime Minister is on this matter at this particular moment. After all the gospel is the same yesterday, to-day and for ever. What the right hon. Gentleman used to say, I admit, was often the gospel truth. I am extremely sorry that I have the impression that he is not a supporter of he Amendment that we are discussing, an Amendment whose purpose he supported on many occasions in this House when he was associated with us on the Labour benches.

The Bill does not restore the cut in unemployment benefit which was imposed in 1931 and by which the unemployed have been robbed of more than £50,000,000. I do not say that even restoration would be satisfactory to me or to the Labour party. There is no doubt that Amendments will be moved to the Bill asking for something more than restoration of the cuts. After all 2s. or 2s. 6d. or 3s. is not sufficient to keep a child, and 8s. or 9s. is not sufficient to keep a woman. This Bill stabilises, for how long we do not know, the present miserably low rates. That is unjustifiable. What has been the result of it? Millions of our people have been prevented from obtaining a sufficiency of good food, of good boots and of decent clothing, and we shall soon have to pay the price in the lowered standard of the physique of our people. We have seen during the last week or two what has been quoted many times in this House—the report of a commission or committee which was set up by the British Medical Association. Nine doctors considered the physical condition of the people under these terms of reference: 1523 To determine the minimum weekly expenditure on foodstuffs which must be incurred by families of varying size if health and working capacity are to be maintained, and to construct specimen tariffs. I have read that report. I have seen that the food purchased was purchased from the cheapest market. Yet they say that the minimum to provide food for five persons is £1 2s. 6½d. I have a family of five. They are all taller than I am, and some of them are heavier. I would like to see the nine doctors keep those five in food on double the 5s. 11d. which they say is the minimum required for an adult. I would like to see them do it and keep the five in physical fitness. But even that is more than is given by the Government to the unemployed. When the £1 2s. 61/2d. for a family of five has been spent there is only 6s. 8d. left, if they are lucky enough to get the unemployment benefit, with which to provide rent, coal, light, clothes and boots. How can it be done? We know that it cannot be done.

We have no right to impose such conditions on any people. But they are not even assured of that miserable existence, for the Bill reimposes the means test in its worst form. The household income is to be taken into account by a soulless official acting under regulations made by a well paid Unemployment Assistance Board. Although everyone of us in the House knows of innumerable cases of hardship that have arisen in the last two years through the operation of the means test, we shall see the principle of the means test applied more rigidly than it has been applied before. That, I believe, is what the Government want to see. What hope is there for young men and young women, in homes where there is unemployment, to provide a home of their own? There can be none. Through the means test we are laying the foundations of a population seriously deteriorated in physique. We cannot vote for the continuance of a system which we have had no part or lot in bringing into being.

The Bill provides for children of 14 coming into the scheme. They have to pay in but they are to receive very little out of it. If out of work they will get 2s. a week. I say deliberately that it would have been better for the Government to have raised the school-leaving age to 16 and to have provided means for the 1524 parents to keep the children at school. If that were done work would be provided for many who are now unable to obtain it. Instead, the Government are introducing a shilly-shally course of instruction for some of those over 14, and they are going to make the ratepayers in the poorest areas meet the cost. It is the wrong way about and is certainly not in the national interest. Education is an incalculable asset both to the individual and the nation, and we ought to be generous in the provision of it at a time like this.

The Bill imposes an unfair burden on local ratepayers in maintaining those who have not an insurance claim. The Government have already driven 320,000 more persons to seek Poor Law relief than we had in 1931. Who can tell how many more will be affected by the operation of Part II of the Bill. There are 2,500,000 unemployed and hundreds of thousands who have been out of work for years, especially in the mining industry, who have nothing to thank this Government for, as it has done its very worst for that industry in everything it has done since it came into being. It will be a difficulty in that industry to find any man with a five years qualification for the extra benefits under the Bill. I would like the Minister of Labour to make inquiries as to the position in the mining industry. I think I am safe in saying that there would hardly be one in a thousand who would be qualified for extra benefits under the Bill.

We say it is the duty of the nation to maintain these people, and that the burden should not be placed on the poor in the industrial areas, as is proposed in the Bill. Moreover the contributors should not be called upon to pay back the £115,000,000 owing to the fund. I notice that the Chancellor of the Exchequer said something on this subject yesterday. I differ from him completely in this conclusion. He said: I object altogether to the proposal to transfer this debt from the fund to the Exchequer, which is already bearing £70,000,000 out of some £100,000,000 to £ 110,000,000, which is the total cost of unemployment, because it seems to me to encourage that slovenly sort of idea that if you put a charge on the State, nobody is going to have to pay it. I cannot conceive a worse way of starting a new fund on a self-supporting basis than to suggest that it does not matter what money the fund runs up in the way 1525 of debts, because in the end the State will bear it."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 4th December, 1933; cols. 1365 and 1356, Vol. 283.] I wonder whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer put that view in front of the Cabinet when the report on Newfoundland was presented? It would be interesting to know. We shall be considering the Newfoundland question in a day or two and we shall then see what the policy of the Government is. That is a case where they will hand over money without any question as to qualifications, and I think in a most undeserving manner. But this is the most useful and the most necessary expenditure of money, in my opinion, since the War, in providing for our unemployed people who are in need. The Government ought not to impose a payment of £5,500,000 a year for the next four years, to pay for what has been spent on food and necessary light for the poorest of our people.

In Clause 36 the Bill deals with training. I ask the Minister or the Parliamentary Secretary to explain what is meant by training. What form are the training centres to take? Are they to be centres for doing work which ought to be done by ordinary work? Are they to do work for nothing, and are people who are in employment to be thrown out of that employment because, just for mere food and to provide work for those who are sent to the training camps, this scheme has been devised? Or are these people to be trained on the land? The Minister has had some experience of training the unemployed on the land. He knows that such schemes are costly, extravagant and wasteful. He knows that perfectly well. I was associated with him a little in two schemes that have been run, and he would agree with my statement. It would be much cheaper and far more satisfactory to give the unemployed people benefit than to reinstate that form of training. I agree with the idea of finding useful work. I want to see useful work provided for every man and every woman who is willing to work. But a successful centre is not the rule. I know that there are exceptions. I know of one undertaken by a man well known to the Minister and myself, but he is a rarity in that sort of thing. It may be possible to do a great deal for those who desire training. There should be no compulsion or the scheme is bound to be a failure. If there is a desire for training 1526 and you start proper schemes, something might be done to enable people to keep themselves fit, but you should give them something to live upon until work comes round.

In our opinion this Bill will not, in any way, be of service or benefit to the unemployed. It does not meet our claim for adequate maintenance from national funds. We do not believe in the separation or division of the unemployed into two classes or categories, nor do we believe that they should be treated worse than criminals. They are decent, self-respecting, deserving people whose only crime is lack of opportunity to find work. We do not believe it is fair to impose burdens such as those proposed in the Bill upon the rates for their maintenance. We have excused nations from paying their debts to us since the War to an amount which would have kept our unemployed in a suitable manner for years. We are going to find money in a few days time for people in various parts of the world who will not meet their obligations, because of their own selfishness, greed, graft and corruption. But as this Bill shows clearly, we refuse to find money for our own people, for those who are, in my opinion, among the most deserving in the community. For those reasons I shall vote for the Amendment.

§ Mr. O'CONNOR

The hon. Member for Rothwell (Mr. Lunn) always delights the House with his charm and sincerity, and I hope he will not think me aggressive if I point out that a great deal of his speech would have been more appropriate when any regulations which may be made or suggested by the Board in future are brought before the House for review. He made one or two remarks which showed that he laboured under some misapprehension. He said that the Government contemplated a figure of 2,500,000 unemployed. That is the reverse of the truth. The figure of 2,500,000 upon which these estimates are based, is one which errs, we hope, upon the side of conservatism and it is inserted in the interests of the fund itself.

§ Mr. LUNN

If the hon. and learned Member will look at the speech which the Minister of Labour made on last Thursday, he will see that the Minister on more than one occasion referred to 1527 the fact that he was dealing with a live register of 2,500,000. The right hon. Gentleman also said: In regard to the live register of 2,500,000, I want to make it perfectly clear at the outset that I believe that our prospects now are brighter than they have been for many years past, and that we may face the future with greater confidence. At the same time, I remember the experience of other Ministers of Labour who have one after another based their estimates upon expectations which have not been realised. Later, he said: I have based the finances upon this very large figure of 2,500,000. I think, therefore, I am justified in quoting that figure.

§ Mr. O'CONNOR

I hope that I made my point equally clear. My right hon. Friend the Minister followed the words just quoted by saying: I may be criticised for excessive prudence but I trust at any rate I shall escape the charge of approving doubtful finance. He also used these words: While, …. I believe that conditions will improve, no one can tell what the state of world trade may be in the future, and I do not think I should be carrying out my duty as custodian and trustee of this fund unless I took all possible precautions against contingencies which cannot be foreseen."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 30th November, 1933, col. 1079, Vol. 283.] The point at issue is, however, a email one, and as the hon. Member for Roth-well will probably want to intervene later when I make some remarks about him, perhaps he would reserve himself until then. It is quite clear that the figure of 2,500,000 errs on, the conservative side and it is in the interest of the fund and of any scheme which is going to weather the coming years that the most conservative basis possible should be taken. If the figure is lower than that estimate, the advantage will accrue to the fund. Another matter in which the hon. Member seemed to be under a misapprehension was indicated when he said that the Bill would not produce work. Of course, it will not wash clothes and it will not lay eggs. It is not a Bill for producing work, but a Bill for dealing with the unfortunate condition of those people who are unable to find work, and it attempts that task in a more constructive and comprehensive way than, any Bill of this character that has ever been before the House of Commons.

1528 The hon. Member went on to say that the Bill perpetuated the inadequate provision made for children and dependants, but that is inaccurate. There is no schedule of scales of relief anywhere in the Bill. That matter is entirely at large and the provision will have to be suggested to the Minister by Regulations from the board which will be laid before the House. When those Regulations are considered there will be an opportunity which, I am sure, the hon. Gentleman will take with alacrity, to express his views as to the adequacy of any particular sums of money. Lastly, he said that it was proposed that children between the ages of 14 and 16 who were out of work should get 2s. a week. That must have been a slip of the tongue. There is no provision in the Bill for the receipt by children between 14 and 16 of any sum at all. This very valuable part of the Bill is in fact an addition to the dependants allowance by offering a supplement of 2s. in the case of children between those ages.

§ Mr. BUCHANAN

Is the hon. and learned Member suggesting that the 2s. supplement is 2s. in addition to the 2s. which is now paid? That is what one would take from his remark.

§ Mr. O'CONNOR

As I understand it, the existing dependants allowance would cease at the age of 14. This proposal is to supplement it, in the sense that it is an extension of the existing dependants allowance, not in amount but in time.

§ Mr. BUCHANAN

I wanted to make that point clear.

§ Mr. O'CONNOR

That is how I read the Bill. When we look at the stability and confidence which evists in this country at present it is material to remember that a certain amount of it is due to the fact that we have had a system of unemployment insurance. That stabilising element has prevented us from experiencing some of the worst economic disasters that have been seen in other countries. It has been a stabilising element, constitutionally and economically. But it became clear a couple of years ago that the edifice itself was creaking very audibly and that any Government which pretended to call itself National, would require radically to recast the structure which had proved itself unequal to the storm of 1931. This Bill is the product, 1529 therefore, of two years of work by the Rational Government. Hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite have also had two years in which to contemplate the question of what alternative they would present to the Bill which the Government has now produced.

§ Mr. BATEY

That is not for us; we are not the Government.

§ Mr. O'CONNOR

I have read with the greatest attentiveness—and it does not take long—the Amendment which the party opposite have put down, in order to see what is their alternative to the Bill. Hon. Members opposite will forgive me for saying but I am still quite in the dark as to what are the constructive alternative proposals of the Labour party after the two years which I am sure they have devoted to intensive deliberations on this subject. What is the alternative proposed by them in what is, I think, the silliest Motion for the rejection of a Bill that has ever been put on the Order Paper of this House? I can understand the Amendment of the hon. Members below the Gangway. They are like the crackers on the tail of the Labour party—pushing them on, driving them off the means test, driving them off insurance altogether as we shall see in a moment. But what do the party opposite propose? A plan whereby—" "all the victims of unemployment"— I leave out the propagandist verbiage which we always take for granted and which may in future be inserted by means of a rubber stamp— are entitled to equal … treatment and maintenance. But no speaker on the other side has dared to suggest it in this Debate. Could not the Labour party's draftsman have produced something which expressed their mind better than that? How is it possible to give all the victims of unemployment equal maintenance and treatment? For instance, is the unemployed man who has fallen out of insurance to be required to pay insurance contributions? Is that contemplated? If not, the Motion is nonsense because it demands equal treatment for all. It also demands equal maintenance for all. Is there to be a general level, a minimum which is to be applied to everybody whether he is a married man or not, whether he is the father of a family or 1530 not? That is what the Amendment says. Then, if there is not to be equal treatment for all, how are different cases to be differentiated unless we investigate need? You are driven to a need test whatever way you attempt to do justice as between the different categories of unemployed.

It is a need test if you ask a man, "Are you married?" It is a need test if you ask him, "How many children have you, and how many are legitimate and how many are illegitimate?" You must have a need test if you are going to-do justice and if you are not going to do what this Amendment suggests, namely, distribute equally over the whole unemployed community a certain dead level of assistance towards their needs. If you are going to have a need test—and in my submission you must investigate need—that involves a means test. You cannot ascertain a person's need without ascertaining his means and I venture to think, whatever the crackers on the tail have forced the Labour party into, that if ever they have the responsibility of administering unemployment insurance they will find it absolutely impossible to administer a system which is devoid of a means test.

Are they going to say to those who are to receive benefit, "You are not required to present any case for the particular benefit for which you are asking, but the taxpayer who is to provide the money must be subject to a means test." Or do they propose an equal level of taxation to raise the money to provide the assistance. Do they not recognise that by the aggregation of the incomes of husbands and wives, millions of pounds go to the tax-gatherer in this country which would not otherwise go in that way. There is a means test, there is a domestic test in the collection of the very revenue that is to be distributed in this way. It is not the fact of a means test but the administration of the means test that gives rise to the grievances that have been so frequently brought before the House by hon. Members on all sides, and to some extent the great advantage of this Bill is that it gives the opportunity to the House of Commons of taking responsibility that the means test shall be neither unequal nor harsh. Hitherto it has been to a very large extent outside the purview of the House of Commons altogether.

1531 Public assistance committees may have operated in entirely different ways in different parts of the country, and the Minister has had a perfect answer under the existing imperfect system, namely, "It is not my responsibility, and I cannot interfere, because the local authorities are charged with that duty." This Bill gives the House of Commons the chance of seeing that the regulations upon which the means test is administered are at any rate regulations that commend themselves to the conscience of the House.

§ Mr. LAWSON

They did on the last occasion too.

§ Mr. O'CONNOR

Now we have the chance again. The House will now have the chance—a very different thing from last time—of framing regulations and scales which will be of general application throughout the country, on the recommendation of the board, and I am very surprised to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson) making any complaint, because I always thought that he was in favour of a means test. Certainly the right hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood), I well remember, said in this House: I am prepared to-day to agree to a national scheme which involves the investigation of the question, but not under Poor Law auspices. Well, here it is. It is in the Bill. The grievances that the right hon. Member for Wakefield had about the means test as it existed under the previous Act of Parliament is removed in this Bill, and I should have expected, if the cracker had not been working, to have found him congratulating us on at last doing the very thing that he always thought was the right thing to do. We know now, however, that the abolition of the means test is the programme of the party opposite, but what is their position about insurance? This Amendment and the speeches to which we have been listening are quite inconsistent with insurance. The hon. Member for Rothwell said that it was entirely wrong to divide people into two categories, insured and uninsured. I have read or listened to all the speeches made from the benches opposite on this Bill, and I can see no vestige of approval of any insurance system whatsoever. What becomes of 1532 what the late Minister of Labour, Miss Bondfield, said, namely: It is our considered view that a scheme of unemployment insurance should be a self-supporting scheme, that it should contain the elements of the tripartite contribution, that it should cover the able-bodied unemployed, and that we should do everything that we can to see that there is a fund which will cover the risks that it is intended to cover. Is that the policy of the Labour party to-day? If not, when has it been changed? The hon. Member for Chester-le-Street himself said: The piling up of debt cannot go on; the scheme must be put on a self-supporting basis. That is agreed. That is strikingly different from the speeches to which we have been listening in the last few days. This Bill, as I see it, has two or three really outstanding virtues. It has some defects, about which I propose to have a word or two, but it presents us with what we have been waiting for a long time, and that is a watertight insurance scheme; it presents us with a system by which there is national responsibility for the relief of the able-bodied unemployed and uniformity of administration—whether or not that administration will be sympathetic is a matter for the House of Commons to decide when it considers the regulations that are put up—it provides, further, steps for reconditioning the chronically unemployed, which no other Bill has ever attempted to do; and it provides for an extension of children's allowances, coupled with juvenile training. Those are four pillars of the system, and upon them I want to see whether we have a foundation upon which future Parliaments can erect a structure. That is the important point. Have the Government presented the House of Commons with a stiff, unalterable Measure which will not be capable of evolution? If they had, I should vote against it, but I think they have given us scope for the evolution that we want to see of this important form of social service.

Now I want to offer one or two criticisms, first of all as regards the insurance part of the Bill. I listened to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer last night, and I am bound to confess that I should have a very strong feeling of disappointment if I felt that he had spoken his last word on the 1533 subject of the debt on the fund. His arguments are perfectly sound as far as they go, but I will put another aspect of the matter to him. It is possible that the Statutory Committee may make a recommendation which would include agricultural workers within the framework of insurance in the future. Thus there would come into the scheme people who had had no contact at all with the finances of the fund. Does (he consider it right that new entrants of that kind, new types of workers brought in, should have cast upon them the burden of amortising a debt contracted when the fund had nothing to do with them at all? I cannot think that that is fair, and I also hope he will bear in mind that the Commission inquired into this very point and considered it very carefully. They considered it from the point of view of what would be fair and reasonable, and the conclusion to which they came was: We formed the definite conclusion that it would not be equitable to call upon employers and workers to contribute separately at the same rate as the Exchequer towards the repayment of the debt of £115,000,000. They recommend that that debt should be divided as to two-thirds to the State arid as to one-third to the contributors to the fund. I hope very much that the last word has not been said about this matter, because although upon financial grounds you can make possibly an unarguable case—you can establish a parallel between it and the National Debt—you will never get away from the feeling that you are going to surcharge the contributors to the fund for the ineptitude of the Labour Government in 1929 which permitted £65,000,000 of this debt to be accumulated.

There is another matter on which I want to offer what I hope will not be destructive criticism, and that is on the question of benefits under Part I to insured contributors. I should very much like to see those benefits different, not so much in amount, or duration as in kind, from the benefits that are payable under Part II of the Bill to those who are under relief. I see no power at the present time for the Committee under the Schedule or under the Bill to make recommendations, for instance, that will result in a lump sum payment at some advanced age to men who are getting beyond their best in the working areas, 1534 and that, I should like to see. I do not say that it should be embodied in the Bill at the present moment, but I think that power ought to be given to the Committee to make recommendations which would permit an insured worker who had a long, good, and steady record of contributions to the fund to take his benefit, not as 26 or 52 weeks' benefit at the end of his working life, but either in a lump sum or by way of getting an old age pension at an earlier date than he would otherwise be entitled to, and so to be brought out of the industrial field at an earlier age than that at which he would otherwise depart from it; or, what would perhaps be even more revolutionary, I would rather make this concession to my hon. Friends on the Liberal benches and see an aged insured worker who had a good record of contributions paid a lump sum in land, so as to enable him to settle by way of small-holding on the land and with a certain amount to assist him starting.

Consider otherwise what the position is at the present time. It is not generally observed, at any rate, that the scale of relief payable under Part II may be higher, and must be higher in many cases, than the scale of benefit payable under Part I, because the scale of benefit payable will, of course, be fixed by the Statutory Committee, but the scale of relief payable under Part II will be assessed according to need, and it may very well be, therefore, that if you take a man of 58 years of age, with 20 years' contributions to his credit, it will be a positive advantage to him to find the moment at which he ceases to draw benefit under the insurance part and count upon the relief administered by the board, because in the latter case the need will be assessed and in the former case he will be offered only a scale of benefit. Therefore, there is little or no inducement, when a man is ending his working life, in offering him as an advantage of being a good, steady contributor that he will get as much perhaps as two years of benefit without means test, whereas if he had not got such a record, he would be getting only six months. For these reasons, I think that at the present moment Part I is not as attractive as it might be to the better paid and regularly employed workers, and I should like to see the Schedule amended so as to give 1535 the Statutory Committee power to make recommendations along the lines that I have been suggesting.

I would like to make one or two observations upon what I think is a misreading of Clause 6, Sub-section (1), which, it will be remembered, is the Clause that alters the present third statutory condition. It reads: "The following shall be substituted for the third statutory condition for the receipt of benefit by insured contributors— '(iii) that he proves that he is capable of, and available for, work but unable to obtain suitable employment.'"

It is suggested that that is really restoring the "genuinely seeking work" Clause, but nothing could be further from the truth, and that allegation must be based on an entire misapprehension. In the first place, these words were recommended by the Royal Commission, and not by the majority only, but by the minority as well, who adopted these very words. Secondly—and this, I think, is a most important consideration—these words have existed in Acts dealing with unemployment insurance from 1911 right down to 1924. They existed in 1924, when the Labour Government added to them the words "not genuinely seeking work." That seems to me to dispose of that argument entirely, because they would never have added those words if they had thought they were synonymous with the words in the present Bill.

They are framed to deal with a very limited number of cases, but they are real cases. They are framed to deal with the case of the man who has himself avenues in which he knows, he can find employment, but who is too idle to find employment along those avenues. No party in the State, I am sure, wishes to deny the proposition that the first efforts to obtain employment should come from the unhappy victim of unemployment himself, and that is a principle that is supported by sound common sense, a principle that has been enunciated over and over again from the opposite side of the House, and by none better than by the late Attorney-General, Sir William Jowitt, and by Miss Bondfield, when she was introducing the Bill in 1924.

The present fourth statutory condition is found not entirely to meet those cases, and although it is said that this Bill— 1536 and in a legal sense, no doubt, it is to some extent true—throws the onus, in the first instance, on the man to say that he is unable to obtain suitable employment, and to that extent there is a burden upon the man. He discharges that burden as soon as he says, "I have been looking for work and have not found it." The burden then shifts on to the Exchange to prove that he has not availed himself of sources that are open to him. To clinch the matter, it might be serviceable if I read a ruling, which was made by the umpire under these exact words in a previous Act, as to how that condition is interpreted: It is for an applicant to satisfy the court of referees or the umpire that on any day for which he claims benefit he is unable to obtain suitable employment, and if he knew there was a possibility of getting work, and did not take reasonable steps to get it, he does not shew that he was unable to get it. If that was a ruling on these very words in the new Clause, it appears that they have not the application that the genuinely-seeking-work Clause had, and the apprehensions of hon. Gentlemen opposite are very much overstated.

I congratulate the Government on this Bill. I think that it is a bold and courageous Bill. The spiritlessness of the Second Reading Debate and the lack of reality show that fundamentally there is no one who can attack the broad general principles of the Bill It can be attacked upon details, and there will be a good deal of attack, and I am sure that the Government will not commit the fatal error of thinking that, because they have had no real opposition on the Second Reading stage, it will not get a good deal of opposition on minor points during the Committee stage. That is right and natural, and is in the nature of things, because this is a great Bill which will affect the lives and the economic happiness of more than two-thirds of the population at one time or the other in the coming years. It is idle to expect that a Bill of this kind will remain unchanged for a generation, or even for a small part of a generation. It is a Measure that will undergo evolutionary change from time to time, and it is because it seems to me to afford scope for evolutionary change, and because it is a bold and real attempt to solve a very 1537 difficult problem, that I certainly shall not have the smallest hesitation in giving it my support.

§ Mr. DINGLE FOOT

It is a curious fact that I find myself in agreement with most of what was said by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Central Nottingham (Mr. O'Connor). The only part of his speech with which I disagreed was his peroration. I can agree with the criticisms he directed at the Amendment which has been put down by the official Opposition, but I suggest how much better it would have been if, instead of discussing that Amendment, we had discussed the Amendment which is on the Paper in the names of my hon. Friends. It is but a month ago since this Bill was first put into our hands, and in that time, in spite of the chorus of praise from the apologists of the Government, and in spite of the undoubted virtues which are contained in certain Clauses of Part I of the Bill, nevertheless I think it is fair to say that in many parts of the country the Bill has been received with disappointment and misgiving. I believe that as we go on discussing the Bill Clause by Clause, particularly Clauses in Part II, and as there comes a full realisation of all that will be implied by the Bill being carried into law, there will come a rapidly growing volume of protest from both the unemployed and the local authorities.

The local authorities were certainly led to expect that they were going to be relieved of the whole burden of the able-bodied unemployed. They may have been wrong in taking that attitude. It may have been that the words that were used in the speech of the Minister of Health on 12th April leaves some loophole for the Government through which they can manage to scramble. Nevertheless, anyone who read that speech would receive the impression that the Government were going to take over the whole burden. Certainly that impression was given. Only three days ago I attended a meeting of my own public assistance committee in Dundee, and found that while different views were held by different Members with regard to the various provisions of the Bill, there was very little opposition on the subject of financial responsibility for the able-bodied unemployed. The committee were strongly of 1538 the opinion that that burden was one that they should no longer be called upon to bear. They are to be asked to find 60 per cent, of the expenditure, not for a normal year, but for the year 1932-3 which was a year of peak unemployment. That 60 per cent, has to be borne by the local authorities without their having any voice or say in the way in which the money is to be disposed of. It is a sound principle, to which all parties have agreed, that taxation and representation ought to go together.

The criticism which the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Labour aimed in his speech the other day at the present system of transitional payments was that taxation and representation were being divorced, but under the present system, at any rate, in the last resort, the Minister and the Government that provides the money have some means of control over the local authorities, because the Minister can sack a public assistance committee and put a commissioner in its place. Under the arrangement which is now to be made, the local authorities which have to contribute this high percentage of the cost will not have any voice in the way in which the money is to be spent.

§ Miss HORSBRUGH

Has the hon. Gentleman deducted from the. 60 per cent, the amount that Dundee is getting in block grants?

§ Mr. FOOT

I am coming to that, and perhaps the hon. Member will allow me to deal with it in due course. The only way in which any influence can be brought to bear by the local authorities is through the advisory committees. It is difficult to tell how those committees are to be constituted. They will not necessarily have any connection with the local authorities. Will the Minister tell us a little more about the constitution of the committees? Are they going to be local committees or regional committees? Will they be large like the present public assistance committees or will they be small bodies? That is an important point becuase if instead of having a large committee of about 20 persons, you have an advisory committee of two, or three or five persons, it will mean that the odium of administering the means test will have to fall on a smaller number of shoulders. That may have serious effects, and you 1539 may have great difficulty in getting the right people to serve. Whom are the advisory committees to advise? Are they to advise the board or the local officers of the board? It is provided in Clause 38 (1) that the officer shall make all the determinations. Is he to be subject to the advice of the advisory committee or is the committee simply to advise the central board on the general tendency of their policy?

It seems to us that this arrangement offends against every canon of sound finance. Our opposition to this arrangement with the local authorities is not something like the attitude of the Socialist party towards the means test, not something that is simply invented for purposes of by-elections, but something which has been for years the policy of the Liberal party. I have here a copy of the Yellow Book. [Laughter.]. I hear loyal supporters of the National Government laughing at this book. It is not open to them to laugh at it, because it was the report of the executive committee of the Liberal Industrial Inquiry, and when I look through the names of the members of t