HC Deb 08 April 1913 vol 51 cc983-4
35 Mr. WEDGWOOD

asked (1) whether, with reference to the Portsmouth scheme for training and indenturing pauper boys, the right hon. Gentleman, before sanctioning the scheme, will take into account the fact that such State-regulated contract labour will compete injuriously with the labour of independent youths not under Poor Law control; and what precautions he proposes to take to prevent those indentured labourers being used as strike-breakers in trade disputes; (2) whether there is any limit to the age up to which the guardians are or may be able to keep paupers in this form of unfree labour and to appropriate their wages for their keep; and, if not, whether the Board contemplate eventually the organisation of the whole of the Poor Law unemployed into a body of efficient hired artisans, living in compounds under the control of the guardians or other central State Department; (3) whether the President of the Local Government Board's attention has been called to a scheme of the Portsmouth guardians, in which it is proposed to obtain the consent of the Local Government Board to keeping pauper boys under the guardians' control until the age of eighteen, and, with the view of preventing them from drifting into blind alley employment, to apprentice them after school age to some useful trade in the town, keeping them meantime in a specially provided home and appropriating the wages they earn to the cost of their board and lodging, in that home, but allowing them some fraction of their earnings as pocket money; and whether this scheme has yet come before the Board for approval; and (4) whether the Department will fix what proportion of their wages the labourers are to receive as pocket money; and whether the pauper boys themselves are to be in any way consulted as to giving their consent to becoming workers on the arranged terms?

Mr. BURNS

I received yesterday a communication from the Portsmouth guardians giving the outlines of the scheme which I suppose is that to which my hon. Friend refers. Before deciding whether to consent to the proposal I shall obtain somewhat fuller particulars.

Mr. WEDGWOOD

Will the right hon. Gentleman allow me to see that scheme?

Mr. BURNS

If the hon. Member will put a question down I will do my best to provide him with information.

Mr. ROBERT HARCOURT

Is the phrase "indentured labourers" an accurate description?

Mr. BURNS

No; I should say it was an illuminative title.