UNEMPLOYMENT.

HL Deb 29 March 1939 vol 112 cc486-528

4.18 p.m.

LORD ADDISON rose to ask His Majesty's Government if they have any proposals for dealing with unemployment and, if so, of what character; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, in these days our minds are very much occupied with international affairs. It is true that whatever else many demand attention, the safety of the State must come first. Nevertheless, whatever may be the external appearance of our wealth and strength, whilst multitudes of our citizens can find no useful work to do and are compelled to spend their time in enervating and demoralising idleness, we have within the body of the State a source of impoverishment and weakness which is penetrating and most malignant. It is not many years since, when we found there were a million people unemployed, we were horrified at the discovery. But if it were as low as that to-day we should be highly pleased. The figure is beginning to hover round about the two million mark. That is getting the basic figure, and somehow or another it cannot be denied that our present system does not provide an opportunity for work for all our citizens, whilst at the same time there is undeniably a large amount of useful work which can be done and which people would be glad to see done.

May I remind your Lordships very briefly of what the actual figures are? The Minister of Labour told us in another place on March 7 that there were 12,220,000 insured persons in work, and there were 1,896,000 odd unemployed; that is to say, out of an insured working population of some 14,000,000 one in eight, or rather more, has no work to do at all. The previous month the figure of these unemployed was over the two million mark and there was a welcome fall, as is usual in the month of February—a fall of 143,000; and many trades, such as building, iron and steel, land, tailoring and others which usually show falls at that time, showed an increase in employment. Nevertheless, there were still 86,000 more out of work in February than there were in the same month a year ago.

Those are the bulk figures. The Minister of Labour provided a very useful analysis of these figures in another place. He drew a conclusion from them which I do not think is warranted, but these are his figures in round numbers. There are 289,000 people who have had no work at all for more than twelve months. There are another 250,000 people who have had no work at all for from three to six months, and another 280,000 who have had no work for from six weeks to three months, and the remainder have been out of work for less than six weeks. The Minister of Labour objected to describing these figures as a standing army of nearly two million unemployed, and sought rather, I think improperly, to detract from the gravity of the case by directing our minds particularly only to those who had been a very long time out of work. But I suggest it makes little difference socially and in bulk if Brown is unemployed this month, and his place is taken next month by Jones, and the month after by Robinson. The fact is that at any one time there is this multitude of people with no work and it is immaterial, taking the case as a whole, how they change.

We are spending £66,000,000 a year, taking the figures spent on unemployment assistance under the noble Lord, Lord Rushcliffe, and the contributions to unemployment insurance, and I am not going to say anything about the amounts of the payments individually, or the means test, or anything of that sort. I want to draw your attention for a short time to the main issues which lie behind these figures. But at all events we shall all agree that, though the people may be unemployed, they should have contributions large enough to enable them to feed themselves properly so that, if by any good fortune a job of work turns up, they will be able to do it. Well, the fact is that there are at least 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 people, taking the workers and their families, who are seriously underfed.

If you come to look at those who are among the younger workers in the prime of life, the case is even more serious. The Minister told us that there were 806,000 insured persons last July between the ages of 18 and 20, and of these 81,000 were unemployed; in other words, one-tenth of the whole number at almost the best employable age in life were unable to find any work. The noble Lord, Lord Rushcliffe, in a debate that we had here in February, gave us some terrible figures about those who come under his Department—and he only has them when they have exhausted all the benefit to which they are entitled under unemployment insurance. Nevertheless, he has 146,000 men under the age of 35 who have exhausted all benefit, and 80,000, he told us, have had either no work at all or less than six months' employment during the last three years.

In this connection I would like, before I examine the matter more closely, to call attention to two attendant circumstances, one a short-term influence and the other a longer-term influence. I think one of the most surprising things is the relatively small effect upon these vast totals of the expenditure on armaments. We are spending prodigious sums on armaments; nevertheless the effect of that expenditure and of that employment upon the gross figures is relatively small. When you come to examine this case in the industries which are specially affected in armaments manufacture I think we see the reason why. For instance, in the pig iron industry I find that in January, 1938, there were 9 per cent. unemployed, but in January, 1939, there were 25 per cent. unemployed. If you examine the increased capacity of the blast furnaces you get the explanation. During the past ten years, the output capacity of our blast furnaces has increased 250 per cent., but the number of men employed upon them has diminished by 60 per cent. In other words, you come there to the long-term influence which is perpetually forcing up this total of unemployed, that is to say, the influence of machinery and improved methods of production.

I see that, according to a Memorandum of the Royal Economic Society, between the years 1930 and 1935 the average increase of output per man employed in all trades has gone up by 27 per cent., but in the engineering trade it has gone up by 57 per cent. In other words, one man now nearly does the work that two did in that trade only eight years ago. That process is continuous and will continue, because I think the improvement of industrial methods justifies one in saying without a doubt that the figures will increase. It is true that at the present time industry all over the world is crippled and hindered by insensate international restrictions of all kinds, fears of war, and so on. But I think, if we discount all that and allow for the continual and rapid increase in the displacement of labour by machinery, you will see that even these crippling and, I hope, transient conditions do not account for this vast total of people unemployed.

I believe that other speakers will deal with the effects of long-term unemployment upon individuals. It was my experience for a short time on the executive committee of the Land Settlement Association to see at first hand something of the effects of long-continued unemployment on men. That Association, I think quite illogically, has to recruit its settlers from areas which have been specially affected, and they must take people who have been unemployed a long time. It is fair to say that the experience of the Land Settlement Association is that it takes from six to nine months of regular feeding and gradual introduction to work to get an average settler physically able again to do a day's work. Lord Rushcliffe, in the speech he made the other day, gave us further examples of the debilitating effect upon the individual of this long-continued unemployment. In another place on February 16 Mr. Greenwood gave a quotation from a report of a medical officer of health in Glasgow as to the effect of this unemployment upon the men themselves: His opinion was that the principal effects of prolonged unemployment on the health of the men themselves were a subtle undermining of the constitution through lack of physical exertion, the absence of physical stimuli, insufficiently varied diet, worry, and the emergence of abnormal psychological conditions characterised by disabling fears, anxieties and sympathetic physical conditions, functional disorders and the like. I have no doubt that was a very moderate statement.

I do not propose to trouble the noble Earl opposite to reply to a partisan political speech. The issue is far greater, but I confess I am disappointed that I see no sign whatever that the Government are giving any considered thought to this problem as a whole or taking any concerted action to deal with it. Certain ameliorative measures are being attempted. I shall look at one or two of these. First, there is what is called the training centre—training, in the words of the Minister of Labour, to take a man "from no skill to some skill." To put it briefly, we have had these training centres developed during the last thirteen years. During these thirteen years altogether 109,000 men have passed through these training centres, of whom 81,000 have completed their training and 73,000 have been found work; that is an average of 6,000 men per annum over thirteen years. Last year it was better; 12,000 were found work. At the present time there are 7,500 men in training. Then we have a series of instructional centres. What is done precisely there I do not know, but they are of a more elementary character so far as instruction is concerned. These centres are most disappointing.

The Minister of Labour told the House of Commons that in 1938, of young men between 18 and 25, 54,000 had been invited to have training and 43,000 for one reason or another, which he gave in the House mostly as good reasons, declined. But when you see what has happened after going to these instructional centres I do not think there is much room for surprise. In Glasgow to date, according to the Minister of Labour, 4,092 have been through the instructional centre, but only 338 of them have got any work. If that is the record of these instructional centres you cannot wonder that people should have no enthusiasm to go to them. Taking them altogether, 16,644 men have been through the courses and only 3,037 of them have been found work. That is clearly a fleabite; it does not touch the multitude of the 146,000 that the noble Lord, Lord Rushcliffe, has to deal with.

There are one or two other ameliorative steps being taken or which could be taken, but we do not find any concerted action—and this is what I complain of—on the part of the War Office, the Air Ministry, and the Ministry of Labour. Take, when there is Government work going, the method of filling vacancies. A good case occurred, illustrative of the departmental disorder which prevails, in Manchester not long ago. Some big works were being erected for the Air Ministry, and they had 4,000 Irish labourers amongst others. At the time of the September crisis a large number of them decamped, but they came back again after the crisis and were reinstated. The reason given is that the recruitment of labour is left to the contractors. The Air Minister was asked some questions about this in the House of Commons the other day, and this is what he said: The arrangements for the engagement of labour must be left to the contractor concerned. Then he was asked whether the workers were recruited through the Labour Exchange, and he did not say they were. All he could do was to go back once more—in fact, twice—to his statement that the recruitment of labour must be left to the contractor. In other words, although we have a Ministry of Labour fully informed as to the qualifications of vast numbers of men, many of whom would certainly be exceedingly suitable for this kind of work, it is not the Ministry of Labour that is brought in at all to help to fill the vacancies. In the words of the Air Minister, that is left to the contractor.

If we maintain at great expense a Department of State to have a detailed knowledge of the men who are unfortunately unemployed, it is surely elementary sense that we ought to make use of that Department when we try to fill vacancies. We had another case the other day when we were talking about the provision of camps, and your Lordships may remember that the noble Earl, the President of the Board of Education, was compelled by the sense of the House, almost, to make concession to the case put before him and to agree that so far as possible suitable men among the unemployed should be given the chance of work in connection with these camps. In the ordinary way, of course, as it is operated at present, it is left to the contractor. I suppose the contractor gets the work done more quickly. I think it very likely that he gets it done more cheaply. I think that must be true. Yet, at the same time, we have this army of men known to another Department who all the time are receiving so many shillings a week for doing nothing at all. Surely it is good sense that we ought to put the two side by side.

Let me give another simple illustration of the departmental working in this matter. Some time ago we had trouble with General Franco about an attack upon a ship which was carrying grain from the Danube. At that time there were fifteen or sixteen ships carrying Danubian grain for the British Government—grain purchased by us—but every ship was a foreign ship. There, again, even if it costs a bit more because we pay our sailors better than do foreign shipowners, it would have been preferable to have made a contribution to lessening the unemployment in the Mercantile Marine by seeing that British ships were used to carry British wheat. But it did not, of course, occur to the Department that was concerned with the wheat contract to have any cognisance whatever as to what the Ministry of Labour might tell them about unemployment in the Mercantile Marine. And that is how we go on.

May I draw your Lordships' attention to one or two other considerations—what I may call longer-term considerations? It is fair to ask a question: Is there work that wants doing in the country? I do not mean fancy work; I mean really justifiable work that everybody would agree is needed. I am glad to find in to-day's newspaper that the Government have decided to do something about the shipbuilding industry, and I hope what they propose will be materially helpful; but I saw a report that was issued a short time since stating that, apart from what might be done by this scheme, there are £7,000,000 worth of shipbuilding for British firms being done in foreign ports, while at the same time it is estimated that of sixty yards in Great Britain capable of building 2,000,000 tons of shipping 75 per cent. will be unemployed this summer. I hope that now we shall have some co-relation between the Ministry of Labour and those who have knowledge of these facts and the Board of Trade who are going to administer the new grants.

You would not expect, I am sure, that I should speak on this subject without saying a word about land. I shall not detain your Lordships long on this point, but I would like to refer to one illustration which was provided by the National Farmers' Union at their conference in January this year. I remember making a speech on this subject in this House a year or so ago in which I referred to about 2,500,000 acres of land which wanted draining. Well, this is what the National Farmers' Union survey has revealed. Practically nothing has been done to drain the 7,000,000 acres of fields and pastures whose productivity and stock-carrying capacity could be immeasurably increased if they were restored to a state of fertility by draining. The National Farmers' Union go on to say that, because the field drainage system is incomplete at this most vital stage, nearly a quarter of the agricultural land of Britain is unproductive, or at least is not producing the food it could produce if it were properly drained. I worked out the other day in terms of counties what that appalling figure really meant, and, without boring your Lordships with details, it roughly amounted to this. Take a piece of England between Birmingham and the English Channel, including the Counties of Warwick, Worcester, Gloucester, Hereford, Wiltshire and Dorset—a great chunk of England from Birmingham to the English Channel—and double it, and you would still be short of this acreage which the National Farmers' Union tell us is not producing the food it might produce, and should produce, and ought to product, because it is not drained. It would be perfectly easy to give a dozen other illustrations of work that is urgently required and is not done, but I take that illustration only and will come back to it later. It is not done now because, of course, the occupiers or the owners of the land cannot afford to do it and, therefore, the desolation spreads.

Now may I look at one or two other causes of unemployment? One thing that first occurs to our mind is the restrictions on international trade which Mr. Hull, in the United States of America, has been referring to so forcibly. Undeniably these restrictions must be hampering to trade. There are the difficulties of exchange and a hundred and one other difficulties that traders have to experience in export to and import from some countries. This is an immense handicap on trade and, with the fear of war added to it, the hindrances to trade are perpetuated. Still, if you look back into a reasonably prosperous year like 1937, I cannot but think that if all these obstacles were removed the great causes of unemployment arising from the mechanical improvements in manufacturing and so on would still leave us with the figure of unemployment for 1937, which was round about 1,500,000. I suggest, too, that the importance that is attached to the development of overseas markets for the provision of employment is quite easily exaggerated. May I recall the striking figures which were given to us by the noble Lord opposite, Lord Mancroft, in this House a short time ago? He was telling us of the overseas investments of this country, and said that £1,200,000,000 had been invested in Latin America, and that last year not a penny of dividend was received on £650,000,000 of it. He went on to analyse the state of affairs in the Argentine and Brazil, and so it is quite easy to exaggerate the benefits which may arise from the overseas investments. I suggest that even if we have peace, and even if we get some of these absurd restrictions removed, we should not be removing the causes of this terrible unemployment.

There is also one other point to which I wish to refer. The Government, as far as I can see, during the last seven or eight years, have relied on one thing, and one thing only, to assist unemployment—cheap money—hoping that somehow or other, if money can be kept cheap, it will stimulate industry and investment and gradually increase the amount of employment. Well, even if we take the results of that policy during six or seven years and allow everything that can be said in favour of it, still your basic figure of unemployment is getting bigger than it was in the years not long ago. I suggest that there are other conditions. I am not saying it because I happen to belong to this side of the House, but because I believe it honestly arises out of an examination of the facts. In the first place I suggest that our conception of trade and industry is—shall I say?—cribbed, cabined and confined by a worship of cheapness? We had a report from the League of Nations not long ago, and they told us there were 1,200,000,000 primary producers in the world, and that they were mostly horribly poor. I think that is true. Now we ourselves have a Commission out in Jamaica. Why is it there? It is there because unfortunate people, living in a place which I suppose should be one of the happiest places in the world, are so badly paid that they are in perpetual revolt and discontent. What applies to them applies to millions of the peoples of India, because we have a conception of trade which enshrines cheapness as something to be worshipped and cultivated.

If you are going to get your sugar and your bananas cheap from Jamaica, you have to pay low wages and force these poor people down. I suggest that to carry the respect for cheapness to that length, as we do—it is right in the body of our system—means that you must perpetuate the poverty of this countless multitude of primary producers. What hope is there that Lancashire will ever be able to sell cotton goods—to take one example only—whilst these millions of people are so horribly poor? The prosperity of our manufacturing industries depends on the purchasing power of the people, and not of our people only. I have never yet, I am sorry to say, seen any idea, in our conception of dealing with unemployment, of deliberately setting out to increase the purchasing power of the people. Many a time it has been my unfortunate experience to preside at meetings trying to do my best to prevent reduction of wages. Many of us have been in the same position, no doubt.

There is another prime and continuing cause of unemployment, I suggest to your Lordships, and that is that we limit the conception of justifiable employment to employing somebody or other for the sake of getting profit out of them. The noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, shakes his head. I am perfectly convinced that you cannot reasonably expect a person or a company to spend money in productive industry unless they are going to get a return which will enable them to have something left for themselves; but whilst that is so, and whilst employment for personal profit and advantage must still remain undoubtedly one of the major causes of private employment, I suggest that we have to widen our conception of the justification for employment to take account of something more than that. Why is not that land, of which I spoke a few minutes ago, drained? It is not drained, in the first place, because the owners are improverished and cannot afford to drain it, and secondly, because nobody has any right to step in, because, of course, it belongs to private persons.

Therefore we are continually faced with this dilemma, that the owners are unable to do what the land needs and deserves and is crying out for, while we stand aside and watch the desolation spread because, in our conception of a proper system of industry, we are estopped from stepping in and interfering. I suggest that that is unwarrantable and not good sense, and that it behoves us to find some way out of this impasse and to see that this work is done. We have to find a system under national direction whereby national needs and national advantage are added to the efforts of private individuals.

One does not like doing it, but I must direct your Lordships' attention to what is happening in Germany. We all, I think, detest a system which means the destruction of individual liberty and opinion and of freedom of speech, which is turning a great nation almost into a nation of robots. Nevertheless, we know that in Germany there were 6,000,000 people out of work in 1932 and that there do not seem to be many out of work now. How many have been absorbed in the Army and into the multitude of officials which Nazi-ism seems to require I do not know, but it must be a vast number. At the same time, it is difficult to think that absorption into the Army and into the official class will account for it all. There has been a great amount of employment on behalf of the State on new roads and buildings and other purposes which have added to the wealth of the State. Whether the system will last or not remains to be seen. Apparently it is being financed at present by forced loans, and one can imagine a limit to the possibilities of that kind of thing. In Italy, by draining the Pontine marshes and other great works of national enrichment, Signor Mussolini has added to the productive capacity of the State, although each one of those works was beyond the powers of any individual to contemplate. Therefore I suggest that our conception of the possibilities of employment should not be limited to the initiative of individuals or of groups of individuals, but that we must deliberately bring in the national contribution.

I think the plain fact emerges that we cannot afford to leave this matter to chance any longer, or at least we should not. All the facts of the case, I suggest, go to show that if we carry on with the present system, however efficiently, the multitude of the unemployed will grow and grow because the modern development of industry means that work is done by fewer people, not that more work is found for more people. That is going on at an increasing pace. To sum it up, I suggest that we should plan the promotion of employment as the business of the State, just as much as the provision of defence and other national services. We need a Minister of high authority in charge of this business, and for those who have charge the first job should be to overcome the departmental isolation of which I have given a number of illustrations and to see that our public services are used as far as possible for the promotion of useful employment.

And there is another thing. I suggest that the promotion of what I call employability should be much more an object of our State system of education and training than it is now. One could give a large number of illustrations of that. I wish the Minister of Education had been here, because I find that quite a goodly number of the senior schools for country districts are being provided in towns. I think that is wrong: they should be provided in the country districts, not the country children brought to town. They would have a better education in the village, in the country districts, where the children are more likely, when they grow up, to be attracted to agricultural and land employments. I suggest too that our financial system and our great authorities in the City should deliberately seek, not only to make money cheap, but also to use the power of money to increase the purchasing power of the community; and that the private ownership of land or property, where it stands in the way—that is all—of national development and fie provision of useful employment, must give way to public needs.

Further and finally, I suggest that this department I am visualising should work upon the assumption that there are national benefits and national enrichments which we ought to seek to provide but which cannot and never will be provided within the lifetime of a single individual or by any group of individuals; and that this great department of national improvement should be deliberately fostered and undertaken by the State. It calls for a concentration of mind and effort of which so far I am sorry to say that I have perceived no sign on the part of the Government. But, in conclusion, one thing I do feel sure of is that if we continue in our present narrow system, as mechanical improvements and scientific aids to production increase it will not be two million people out of work before very long: we shall be discussing three millions, four millions and possibly more. I am quite sure that that is not a rash conjecture; it is almost as certain as anything can be of the future. There is no escape from this horrible development unless with decision and energy we are prepared to act somewhat on the lines I have suggested, with a wider vision of our opportunities and of our obligations. I beg to move for Papers.

5.3 p.m.

THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

My Lords, I am sure we are all most grateful to the noble Lord for reminding us once again of this persistent problem. He has made, if I may say so, a very able and an ample contribution to it. I do not in the least propose to follow him in his exhaustive treatment of the subject, nor do I wish to trouble your Lordships with any statistics of unemployment. We are all painfully familiar with them. The rates of unemployment rise and fall, but this deplorable residue of between one and two million of men remains constant. Moreover, we are amply supplied, though not always so entirely assured, by the statistics which come so plentifully from the Ministry of Labour. I only want for a short time this afternoon to emphasize the human problem which lies behind the statistics. In the multitude of statistics I think we are apt to forget the human lives and homes which each single unit represents, and we cannot appreciate the force of statistics until we measure them in terms of human lives.

My concern about this human problem has quite recently been quickened by a letter which I have received, signed by a group of unemployed men in one of our Special Areas. It may have been that they were assisted in writing it, but I have every reason to believe that they were excellent types of the average working man. They made a most moving appeal to me. Let me venture to read one or two extracts to your Lordships, because I think they may be regarded as a voice spoken in this House from the very heart of the unemployed: Believe us, Sir, we do not wish to be selfish. Ten years of grinding poverty and of oppression of soul have taught us, we hope, to feel for fellow sufferers the world over. We are only a thousand or two out of two millions at home in like distress. In the circumstances which confront us, with the best will in the world we cannot make two ends meet. This inability to pay our way puts us into an unbearable position, which has now lasted for years. We have to learn to be lazy so that we can do with less food and fewer boots; learn to be selfish and not do a hand's turn for the womenfolk that might risk the loss of the 'dole'; learn to be thriftless that we may not hand over our savings when the means test comes along. We are forced into something that comes perilously near a double life, which makes us feel like sneaks and cadgers; for we must supplement our allowances to live, and there is no means of doing it which is open, honourable and above board and recognised by the authorities. Nearly all of us are in debt, all are half starved, all are weighed down by our present degradation and by the nightmare of what will happen if this goes on. I confess these words make me a little troubled about the operation of the means test; but let that be. Or again, the men who could put us to work do not care enough about their fellow-countrymen to invest their money or apply their brains where only moderate profits can be looked for and only slight prestige acquired. Then they allude to what has been done in other countries, as the noble Lord has done, and then they say: Why should not something more be made of our own distressed area, with its coal and iron, its limestone, its docks and harbours, its bridges, roads and railways, and its decent, steadfast, teachable people longing to be set to work? That last extract leads me to say in fairness that I have ascertained that in this very district a new trading estates company has been formed, and several new factories have been or are being introduced which will give employment to several hundreds of men. But I venture to press that last extract, because it enforces one of the questions which I wish this afternoon to put to His Majesty's Government. It is whether they are beginning to think seriously about the problem of the location of industry. I know they are, of course, awaiting the Report of the Royal Commission which has been established. Many of us, however, have been impressed by a recent report of a group called Political and Economic Planning. It is quite plain that industry is not located in any real correspondence with the actual social needs. For example, between 1921 and 1937 no fewer than 677,000 immigrants came into Greater London from the rest of the country. Yet on the other hand, as we all know too well, there are valleys and towns which are deserted, not by their population, but by the industries which once supported them—"bad spots," as they have been called, in our industrial system—proving that undirected enterprise is failing to meet the actual social needs. I think the question is urgent whether the time has not come when, in a way, the State ought here to intervene, as it has often done in many other branches of private enterprise.

The suggestion made in the report which I have mentioned is that there should be established a permanent Government Commission, partly to take over or extend the work of the Commissioners for the Special Areas in providing facilities for new industries, or even in seeing that no new factory should be established until it has given evidence that it might not be established better where the needs are greater. Of course the matter is encompassed with difficulties, and most of your Lordships at least, if not on that side of the House, would be unwilling to interfere unduly with private enterprise, but surely there is an urgent call for saying that some sustained effort should be made to distribute industry more in accordance with the actual needs of the people. I should like to know whether the noble Earl who will speak for the Government has any observations to make on that very important matter.

Now I return, for a few moments, to the human problem, and I shall touch on it shortly at the two points where it seems to me most pathetic: the case of the older men, and the case of the younger men, who have been long unemployed. I will first take the case of the older men of 55 and over. Many of them are proud of the work which once they were able to do. Think of the pride of the Durham miner in the employment which has been an ancestral honour to him and to his family. Many of them acutely feel the necessity of living on unemployed assistance. Some of them indeed—I think about one-third of the total number of long-unemployed older men—live in fairly prosperous regions in the South and Midlands, and are constituting a new class of compulsory leisure. There they are able to adapt themselves pretty well to new surroundings, because the whole atmosphere is more hopeful. Their lot is infinitely more hard in the Special Areas because when they once lose their work they sink into the depressing atmosphere with which they are surrounded, and once out of work it is very difficult to get back. They cannot adjust themselves to new processes in industry and they gradually lose deftness of hand and eye.

What hope have they? At the age of 65, to receive the old age pension which is very much less than what they receive under the rates of unemployment assistance. In that matter I venture to suggest that there seems some need of adjustment between the rates of unemployed assistance and the rate of old age pensions. Ought not these men, or most of them, to be frankly regarded as honourable pensioners, and ought it not to be possible for them, even with adequate pensions, to be allowed to take occasional and temporary work, and ought not the State to be ready to provide facilities for it? It has been said that the prospect of six months in every twenty-four of such work would revitalise the life of the distressed districts, and help these men to keep their self-respect, and give them a chance of feeling that they have still some place in the life of the community. I do not think I can better describe their: position than in the words of that most interesting report financed by the Pilgrim Trust and called Men without work, which everyone who wishes to understand that problem ought to possess: Anyone who has visited a number of these older men and knows the hopelessness of men faced with an empty future, knows the urgency of their case. Five years in a man's life is a long time, and if, at the end of five veers' uncertainty, there is only the certainty of a pension at a yet smaller rate, it is a fate that can scarcely be tolerated. The ordinary working man is not easily moved, and the sight of some of these older men, broken down and unable to speak for the moment, as they look into the future, is net one that will soon be forgotten. I turn for a moment to the other end of the problem, the younger unemployed, those 80,000 between the ages of 18 and 20 who have not for three years had any regular work, and some also who have never had work since leaving school. I need not enlarge upon the evil of the situation—the noble Lord has already mentioned it—upon these youths, drifting month by month, year by year, into a position in which they gradually lose, physically and mentally, both the capacity and the desire for work, and accustom themselves to a life of idleness. Nor need I enlarge upon the peril to the country of such a large class growing up in our midst. What is to be their future when they reach full manhood? What is to be the position of young men of between 17 and 19, on which the only formative influence has been a complete acquiescence in idleness?

I know well the work which has been done in the training centres. I very much hope that Lord Rushcliffe, who presides with so much sympathy and ability over the Unemployed Assistance Board, can tell us candidly what he really thinks about them. The noble Lord, Lord Addison, has just told us that after all only some 20 to 25 per cent. of the young men who volunteer to go into them get jobs when they come out, and I can say from my own knowledge, and from what I hear, that the result on these young men leaving the training centres—which perhaps they enter with good hope, because only the best of them volunteer to go into these centres—is very pitiable. They are often jeered at by those who refuse to go in, and their return to the old conditions only increases their sense of frustration and hopelessness. If, at the age of 18, we had been compelled to give way to a sense of completely frustrated lives, I think we should understand their position. I know it is said that there ought to be some measure of compulsion and that those who receive unemployment assistance ought to be compelled to go to these training centres. It may be so, but I must say I feel that the chances of such compulsion doing much good largely depend upon how far it may be possible to give some kind of assurance to those who are compelled to enter these camps that when they go out some work will be found for them. Otherwise compulsion, followed by return to the old conditions, will surely only increase sullen resentment and discontent.

Then there is that large class of the younger men between 12 and 18 who go into what are called blind alley occupations where they learn very little to fit them for any other kind of employment, and where they are inexorably turned out just when their manhood is beginning. Of course, I know that this juvenile labour is sometimes necessary, particularly in the great distributive trades, but here surely there ought to be a definite requirement that employers in these kinds of trades should be obliged to provide some continuous education for these young people while they are in their employment. But that, I think, only raises a wider question: Has not the time come when all young people up to the age of 18 ought to be compulsorily brought within some system of continuous education? I am not going to enlarge upon that fertile theme, but I venture to put it very shortly by saying, ought we not to have the courage now to return to the provisions of the Fisher Act of 1918?

I have wearied your Lordships with all these questions because they lead up to the main point which I desire to press upon His Majesty's Government this afternoon. It is exceedingly difficult to envisage the whole problem of unemployment even under the guidance of the noble Lord, and still more difficult to know how to deal with it. But might it not be a great advantage to concentrate upon one special aspect of it, and to take up this most important problem of the younger unemployed, and give it careful, systematic and complete study? I suggest that the Government might appoint a special Committee, consisting of officials, of industrialists and of representatives of the trade unions, to look at the matter as a whole. My impression is that with all the good will in the world we are only tinkering at this problem in a series of quite unrelated experiments. I think it would be of the greatest advantage if it could be quietly and steadily, though as swiftly as possible, studied as a whole. In so saying I am only urging what one who speaks with great authority and experience has urged, Sir Malcolm Stewart, one of our Special Commissioners, and he says of such a proposal that surely if something on these lines could be achieved an effective practical starting point could be found for solving this problem of unemployment. I very much hope that the Government may be prepared to give this proposal very sympathetic consideration.

I have only dealt with the fringes of this vast subject, and that in a very desultory way, but I end where I began, by thanking the noble Lord for reminding us of this problem and preventing us from thinking that we are really at all adequately dealing with it. We make our boast of democracy because it gives a full chance for the development of human personality. When we think of what lies behind this chronic unemployment, of all that sense of frustration, all that sense of hopelessness and helplessness, all that desolating feeling of having no place in the life of the community, these words seem almost a mockery. At any rate I am certain that we dare not ever allow our familiarity with this problem to induce us to acquiesce in its continuance or in its effects on human life.

5.25 p.m.

LORD RUSHCLIFFE

My Lords, the Question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Addison, is whether His Majesty's Government have any proposals for dealing with unemployment, and, if so, what kind. I take it that in respect of a problem so intractable, which has lasted so long and which is full of human tragedy, any suggestion which may tend to mitigation of the evil is worth making and that it will be considered by His Majesty's Government. As the most reverend Primate said, this problem is a problem of many facets. It is a problem of the young and of the old, it is a problem of the skilled and of the unskilled, it is a problem of those who have been a long time out of work and of those who have been out of employment only for a short time. And so obviously a remedy or a suggestion or a proposal which would be appropriate to one class might well be inappropriate to another.

The most reverend Primate began by referring to the older men. Very many of these men, as I know full well from my own experience, are men with fine industrial records. They have had years perhaps of continuous employment, then a colliery is exhausted, a shipyard is closed down, and they find themselves out of a job. There they are, skilled perhaps in obsolete processes, but by the very reason to which the noble Lord, Lord Addison, referred, by reason of the inventions of science and by reason of new discoveries and a new technique, they appear to have been rendered superfluous to the needs of industry on the basis of existing demands. That is their position, and it is tragic enough. There are 62,000 men in the age group to which the most reverend Primate referred, the group between 55 and 64, who have had no employment in the last three years, while a further 42,000 have had work for less than six months.

I think it was Lord Addison who asked, what you can do to make their existence a little more tolerable. I am vary mindful indeed of the enormous value of the work which has been done, and is being done, by such associations as the National Council of Social Service and by the Society of Friends, and in addition there is a very large number of voluntary organisations who are making their contribution to the welfare of these men and are attempting to make their existence a little more tolerable. To my mind the Central Committee on Allotment Gardens of the Society of Friends is doing work of outstanding value. They have through their efforts provided allotment gardens for something like 110,000 unemployed men. That I think is a tremendous contribution towards attaining that very state of mind to which Lord Addison referred, and helping to prevent these men sinking into despair because they have nothing to interest them and nothing to do. My observation on that point is this, that if these allotment gardens, whether provided by the Society of Friends or anyone else, are to be a successful contribution to a social service, then there really must be security of tenure. I have heard this said over and over again. There is reluctance on the part of these men to take allotments. You cannot expect them to take allotments with any enthusiasm, or till them with any pleasure in their work, if they know that at very short notice they may be evicted and their work and the time and trouble they have spent on them entirely wasted. The first suggestion, therefore, that I make to my noble friend who is to reply for the Government, is that it is really time the Government took this question of security of tenure in respect of allotments into consideration, to see whether something cannot be done to do away with what I consider a reproach to the whole system of allotments. I would ask them to see, if legislation is needed to give this security of tenure, whether they will not consider introducing it.

The next point—and to this the most reverend Primate referred—concerns the younger men. I will not repeat the figures that I gave in the House the other day; Lord Addison has already referred to them. The most reverend Primate proposed that a Committee of Inquiry should be set up with particular reference to these men, and he said that that proposal had already been made in the Press by Sir Malcolm Stewart. No one speaks with greater authority on this matter than Sir Malcolm Stewart, because he was Commissioner for the Special Areas for two or three years, and his experience therefore is of the greatest value. In addition to Sir Malcolm Stewart, I have seen letters in the Press supporting this idea, and I think I have read speeches in another place also supporting it. I would like to make this observation upon it. The advisory committees, of which there are in all about 126, attached to the Unemployment Assistance Board, of which I am Chairman, have with great thoroughness and with great sacrifice of trouble and time made a very full investigation into the individual position and status of these younger men of under 30, and they have in fact interviewed no fewer than 40,000 of them in the last twelve months. They have seen these 40,000 either personally or through their panels and made a very careful individual review of these cases. With regard to this Committee which the most reverend Primate proposed should be set up, all I can say is that if it is set up the Unemployment Assistance Board will give every possible assistance by placing at the disposal of this Committee all the information they have which would be useful to them in arriving at the results at which they aim.

There is one point to which reference has already been made by the most reverend Primate, and which to my mind emerges quite clearly from the result of the deliberations of these committees, and that is this. It seems to me to call for quite immediate examination. These 140,000 young unemployed are for the most part unskilled. They left school at the age of 14, and a great many of them entered into what we call blind-alley employment. The wages to a boy seemed attractive, and no doubt he jumped at the opportunity of earning such wages, although the effect upon his future might be almost calamitous. The boys entered these blind-alley occupations in which they had no opportunity either of obtaining experience or acquiring skill, and on reaching the age of 18, 19 or 20 they have in the meantime forgotten everything they ever learned at school and have nothing to offer to prospective employers, either in experience or skill, which is worth anything at all. They then join that number, to which we have already referred, of unskilled unemployed men. If any effort is to be made—and I trust it will—to bring back into industry this large body of unskilled men, it seems to me a condition precedent to success that steps should be taken to ensure that the number of young unemployed is not being from day to day recruited from those who join their ranks from blind-alley employment.

If this Committee is set up I, personally, should welcome it. I do not know whether it would or would not involve an alteration of the Factory Acts or the Education Act—I express no opinion at all about that—but I am encouraged in the hope that the problem of blind-alley employment is capable of mitigation by the fact, already referred to by Lord Addison, that some of the largest and most enlightened employers of the day have inaugurated special educational classes for their young employees, in order to ensure that when they reach the age of 18 or 19 they shall be better equipped either for remaining in the service of the business in which they are, or for taking service elsewhere. This question of blind-alley employment I believe to be an extremely urgent problem, and every possible effort should be made to ensure at least that future unemployment is not being manufactured and created by others passing from blind-alley employment into the ranks of the unemployed unskilled men.

There is another point to which reference has already been made. It is an aspect which should arrest the attention of everybody, and that is that these unemployed to whom we are referring consist of people, both men and women, at an age when their opportunities of getting work should be at their maximum and when at the same time the consequences of prolonged idleness are most grave. That to my mind gives a special urgency to the importance of dealing with these young men—that they are out of employment, firstly, at a time when the opportunity of getting work should be at its best, and, secondly, when the consequences of their not getting work are at their worst. I would add this further observation, which is relevant to what Lord Addison said. In my view a great many of these long-unemployed unskilled men are not likely to get work under ordinary competitive conditions on the basis of existing demand, and I come to the point which he emphasized that there should be conscious co-operative effort on the part of all concerned in attacking this serious social problem. I am encouraged to think that this aspect has been recognised by the Government because in the Bill that is at this moment being debated in another place it is proposed to give to the Unemployment Assistance Board certain powers which, I hope and think, are a recognition of the point which I have just endeavoured to make.

I would just say this, that the Board would welcome any proposals from local authorities to co-operate with them under existing powers—that is, the powers contained in the Act of 1934, which are not nearly so well known as they should be and which operate in the same direction. I trust that local authorities will consider whether, in co-operation with the Board, something more cannot be done to put the powers contained in that Act into operation. I do not want to take up any more of your Lordships' time, but I felt that it was really incumbent on anyone who has any sort of suggestion to make to put it forward in the hope that it will at any rate receive the consideration of His Majesty's Government.

5.40 p.m.

LORD MERTHYR

My Lords, after listening to three such distinguished speeches, if I may say so, I intervene in this debate with a good deal of hesitation. But I have listened with much care to this and the last debate in your Lordships' House on this subject, and there is one point in which I am interested, although in itself perhaps quite a small point, that has not been really touched upon. I would say at once, because I do not wish to be misunderstood, that the plea which I make is a dual one. First I suggest that a man who is unemployed through no fault of his own, who has genuinely tried to get work and failed, should get on the whole better treatment than he is getting now. He should, broadly speaking, get practically as much, if not quite as much, when he is out of work as he is getting when he is in work. But there is the other side to the question, and I couple that plea with another. That is that if a man has been offered reasonable work, timely work and reasonably located work, and has unreasonably refused it, he should be very differently treated.

The speech of the noble Lord, Lord Addison, might be summarised into a question: What is the State going to do for the unemployed? May I put another question; it may apply to a much smaller sphere but nevertheless I think it should be considered: What are the unemployed going to do for the State? I recognise up to the hilt the duty of the State to give proper treatment to the unemployed. I agree with it unreservedly, but I also recognise that the unemployed have some duty to the State. I also entirely accept, if I may say so, the plea, which has so often been put forward by noble Lords opposite and members in another place, that the unemployed are absolutely entitled, legally and morally, to either work or pay. I accept that unreservedly, and I only emphasize it in order that I should not be misunderstood in what I say this afternoon.

It seems to me that the Government, and also, to some extent, the local authorities, could do much to help towards the solution of this problem by insisting more firmly upon the enforcement of Acts of Parliament and perhaps also of by-laws. In particular I would illustrate that by suggesting that such enactments as the Shops Act should be better enforced. I know that in some parts of the country they are not enforced. I know of one county where there has been nobody charged with the duty of enforcing the Shops Acts until the last few months for just about ten years, and, although I have no figures to substantiate the statement, I am satisfied in my own mind that there are a great number of working people in such establishments, mostly young people, who are employed far too many hours a day. Again, we have the Agricultural Wages Act—a very excellent Act of Parliament, I think, but one that is admittedly difficult to enforce. I am not satisfied that it is being enforced as much or as well as it could be. It seems to me that if you are going to pass such an Act at all you should not do so without being prepared to spend a good deal of money in enforcing it. Again, I am satisfied in my own mind that up and down the country there are many persons employed on farms working many hours a day for no overtime pay, in contravention of this Act of Parliament. It is extremely difficult, I admit, to enforce the Act, but it is by no means impossible.

May I quote one other instance, which is a very recent one, from my own part of the country? Only last week I was informed, and I believe, that in a place where an aerodrome is being built, by contract presumably, for His Majesty's Government, the men employed there are working eleven hours a day, and when there is more daylight they will be working twelve hours a day. I do not suggest that they are compelled to do so, and I admit that they are paid overtime, and reasonably paid, but whether it is their fault or someone else's, it does not appear to be right that, in an area which to my knowledge harbours a great many able-bodied unemployed men within easy distance of that aerodrome, men should be wearing themselves out working eleven and twelve hours a day. If that is allowed by a Government establishment it does not seem to me that the solving of this problem will ever appear on the horizon.

This afternoon we have heard a good deal about training centres. I think there is a certain amount of prejudice included in the criticisms which are so frequent of these training centres. They no doubt have their limitations, but I am not at all sure that, if they were examined, there would not be found to be far more grievances in private establishments and in private employers' premises than there are in any of the training centres in this country. At any rate it seems to me indisputable that a man must be no worse off—I say this with very great respect to the most reverend Primate—if he has had the benefit of a six months training at a training centre than he would be if he had not gone there. But I am satisfied that, quite unreasonably, a number of men and women refuse to go to these training centres. It is common knowledge, I should say, that there is a great shortage of domestic servants in this country. There are training centres for domestic servants, and I know that a great number of women will not go to those centres. It cannot be denied that there is a demand, because of this shortage, for domestic servants from Austria and Hungary, and formerly from Germany, and that there are many from those countries working in this country to-day. That may be perhaps another example added to the examples provided by this extraordinary situation which were quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Addison.

The methods adopted with regard to these training centres should be changed, and it should be made more a condition of granting unemployment assistance to a man or a woman that they should not unreasonably refuse to attend these training centres. If the centres are not properly conducted there are plenty of responsible people and organisations to see that the grievances are put right. May I say that I have the very highest admiration for the officials of the Ministry of Labour, who seem to me to be working under great difficulties in this matter? If they hear a criticism of these training centres, they make great efforts to find out whether it is justified or not, and if it is—and no doubt sometimes it is—to put it right. I am so satisfied about that that I say there is something very wrong when we continue to allow people unreasonably to refuse to go there. I will quote three cases, but before doing so I should like to say that one of the most humiliating duties I have to perform is to attend a meeting and try to persuade, cajole and implore able-bodied young men to go to a training centre. I have satisfied myself that they are not asked to go unless it is reasonable that they should be asked, and that if there are really good reasons why they should stay at home and not leave their families they are not asked to go.

The first case I have noted is this: Persistent unreasonable refusal of training, coupled with complete resignment to a continued life of unemployment. Applicant had gone the length of warning officer in charge of out station that he did not desire to be again interviewed for training in any circumstances. The second case is: Applicant, aged 22, allowance 10s. a week as second applicant [in the family]. Registered as agricultural labourer. Anxious for other forms of employment. Obstinate refusal of all forms of training. Indifference due to fairly comfortable home circumstances. I should have thought if an agricultural labourer wanted to change into any other form of service, he could hardly do otherwise than adopt some sort of training. The third case is this: Unsatisfactory work record. Has repeatedly refused training, and has requested that he be not interviewed again regarding training. Between 1926 and the present time, the applicant, a single man aged 40, residing at home with his mother, brother and sister, has worked only fourteen weeks. He has been asked to appear before the subcommittee. I have quoted these three examples to try to justify my complaint that there is a situation here which should be remedied. I am not endeavouring to exaggerate. It may be quite a small proportion, but I think it is one of the many things that should be looked into.

One of these cases, as your Lordships will have noted, was that of an agricultural labourer. I would make the suggestion that the time has come, or has very nearly come, when the distinction between an agricultural labourer and a general labourer should be abolished. It may be a drastic step to take, but it seems to me that it should be done. What is the present situation? In an area which I know, which contains many thousands of unemployed able-bodied men, there is a dire shortage of agricultural labour. The farmers unanimously complain that men they have had for years are taken away for other work, or through other work into idleness. I am sorry to say there is a good deal of the latter. It seems to me—I may be wrong, I do not profess to be an expert—that if this distinction between the status of an agricultural worker and that of a general worker were abolished, if the rate of benefit which each receives were made an even amount, we should have a good deal less of this terrible shortage of agricultural labour and a reduction of the supposed stigma which attaches to the man who works on the fields and furrows.

The noble Lord, Lord Addison, if I may respectfully say so, touched upon what I think is really the key to this situation when he reminded us of the blast furnaces which had so improved their methods of production that they were fast reducing the number of men employed. That is undoubtedly the case, and it is a movement which we cannot resist because economically it is a right movement. Yet it is undeniable that if it goes on—and I am sure I am right in saying it will go on, and I hope it will go on—the problem will be accentuated. Does it not follow from that, that the right way to approach this problem is not so much the provision of work or the starting of public works, which I submit has always failed to cure unemployment, but that we should concentrate on the division of work, the division of the total work which has got to be done by the total number of workers available to do it. That involves the subsidiary problems of the transfer of labour from one part of the country to another and of the location of industry which the most reverend Primate touched upon this afternoon. I suggest that if we concentrate, not on adding to the total toil but on trying to arrive at a fair distribution of the available man hours in this country, we should eventually arrive by that means at an improvement in this problem.

5.57 p.m.

VISCOUNT SAMUEL

My Lords, we have had an important and interesting debate and I think we should all be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Addison, for having initiated it. In the course of the debate, we have had submitted many constructive suggestions by the noble Lord himself, and I think I should be prepared to concur in almost all his proposals; by the most reverend Primate, who urged that we should concentrate on the problem of the younger men, with which suggestion I am sure all your Lordships will heartily concur; by the noble Lord, Lord Rushcliffe, who has devoted great labour to this sphere of public work and who has put forward detailed proposals in many matters affecting the welfare of the work people; and by the noble Lord who has just spoken, who has made important suggestions in regard to allowances, distribution of work and other such matters. I do not propose myself to pursue any of those topics, not that I would minimise their importance or suggest that it is not necessary to pursue with the utmost vigour all of them which are practicable, but because I would submit that it is more important to try to discover the broad economic causes of the problem with which we are faced and to deal with them.

There is a grave disease in the body politic and it is useless merely to treat symptoms. You may have to treat symptoms and alleviate pain and do what you can in those directions; but it is infinitely more important to try to get to the root of the disease and eliminate that. It is perfectly obvious, it is a truism to state it, that the reason for this vast unemployment problem is that many of our important industries do not give the same amount of employment that they used to give. That is the simple, patent, obvious, commonplace fact, and the reasons for it are several. One of the most important is the increasing use of machinery, to which the noble Lord who has just spoken referred. In the coal industry, in agriculture also, and in many other trades, owing to the advance of engineering science the same amount of work can be accomplished with less human labour. In the old days this "technological unemployment," as it has been called, used quickly to be remedied by the expansion of work in other directions. To-day that is not the case in equal degree. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, has just said, this process of the increasing use of machinery is in the long run a beneficent one, and the deleterious effects in depriving people of their employment can only be made good by enlarging opportunities for employment in other ways in the same or in different trades.

But far more important than that is another cause. Where is it that we find these great masses of unemployed workers? In South Wales, in Lancashire, in the North-East of England. And what is the common characteristic of those districts? They were our great exporting districts. This is not a mere coincidence; you have there cause and effect. The noble Lord, Lord Addison, was rather disposed to attach a moderate degree of importance to this factor. I, on the contrary, would put it in the very first place. In the last decade we have lost nearly one-third of the whole of our export trade. Of the vast commerce which was the pride of this country in the economic sphere, a third has gone. Last year our exports were down to £471,000,000; in 1929 they were £729,000,000. Our exports last year were even less than they were pre-War. After a lapse of a quarter of a century, when our population has greatly increased—by one-seventh—when our productive power has enormously developed, our exports are actually less now, and considerably less, than they were in the year 1913. Our coal exports have been halved: of coal and the products of coal, in 1929 we exported 82,000,000 tons and last year 49,000,000 tons. Textiles are down by nearly two-thirds. We have lost £100,000,000 of trade there in that decade. The cotton piece goods in Lancashire are now being exported to a degree for a parallel for which we have to go back ninety years. We have all read in the industrial history of England of the great cotton famine of 1860 during the American Civil War, which brought starvation to the whole of the cotton area of Lancashire. Our exports now are even less than they were at the depth of that depression in a previous generation.

Has our policy succeeded in making good this loss by the encouragement of agriculture? Do we find agriculture prosperous and contented and employing more and more labour? On the contrary, the agriculturists are seething with discontent. Their business has to be supported by vast subsidies from the public revenue, and the number of persons employed upon the land in the last decade has dropped by nearly one-fourth. In 1928, about 773,000 were employed in England and Wales; last year 592,000. This colossal catastrophe—for it is no less—in our export trade is sometimes said to be shared by the whole world. It is said that we are not exceptional in this, and that it is due to political unrest and unwise economic measures all over the world. That to some extent is true, but it is not the whole truth. While during that decade the figures of the volume of world exports show that they have dropped by 12 per cent., the volume of British exports has dropped by 26 per cent.—more than twice the average of the export trade of the whole world. I have taken some part in this controversy for many years past. I remember how in 1931 and in 1932, when my Liberal colleagues and I resigned from the Government on these questions of international trade, with the political consequences which we foresaw, we were told "If you only give us a bargaining power, if we only have some weapon with which to smash down foreign tariffs, we shall soon open the gates of the world to British goods and our export trade will soon recover and revive." We gave that weapon; the full opportunity that was asked for was given; and now the results are what I have described.

After many years of striving along those lines, the present Prime Minister said in the House of Commons a few days ago that what was now necessary above all else in the present state of the world, was the removal of barriers to international trade. That was a strange pronouncement to come from his lips—Mr. Neville Chamberlain, who all his life has been devoted particularly to raising and increasing the barriers to international trade, and who perhaps has done more than any other living statesman to increase the barriers to trade in various parts of the world to the point where we have them to-day! I say nothing of the effect of this policy upon international relations. I would only mention in passing that the cause for the greater hostility to the British Empire from what are now called the "have-not" countries, a greater hostility than we have ever known in the past, is largely due to the fact that we have adopted a policy of endeavouring to maintain our Empire for our own economic and commercial advantage. I trust that no noble Lord will say that the point that I am making is irrelevant to this debate, that it is not concerned with the question of unemployment. It is the vital point. If we had our export trade booming, we should have no unemployment and all these questions and suggestions that have been made to-day would be unnecessary.

Mark the cost of the present situation. It may be taken on the average that one unemployed man, including dependants, costs about one pound per week either to the Unemployment Assistance Fund or to the taxpayer. Either charge is a burden upon the nation. Here we have a dead-weight cost, of some 2,000,000 persons at a pound a week, of £100,000,000 a year—a dead-weight cost upon the nation of maintaining this vast body of men and their families. But far more important than that are the miseries of the people, to which such eloquent expression has been given to-day by the most reverend Primate and by other speakers. I was in the last Parliament a member of the House of Commons for one of the most depressed districts of Lancashire, and I was frequently in and out of the houses of the people who are the victims of the present economic situation in the cotton industry. The human wretchedness caused by this situation, the misery of those homes, and the deterioration of human beings eating their hearts out in unwilling idleness, are of infinitely more importance to the nation than even the great financial burden that is imposed.

His Majesty's Government, I feel it my duty to say, must bear a share of the blame for the present situation. If things had been otherwise, if to-day they were able to point to vast and increasing exports; if it had proved that tariff weapons were effective, and that all these commercial agreements which they have made had changed the whole situation; that the agricultural population was prosperous and increasing, and that unemployment was reduced to a low figure; then the Government of the day would claim great credit for so satisfactory and happy a state of things. No doubt they would be entitled to credit, and the country would be grateful to them. Since the opposite is the fact, for the very reason that they would claim credit for those conditions, they must bear some share of the discredit for the present situation.

I do not suggest that it is possible to effect a sudden reversal in our trade policy. It is easier to slide down that slope than to climb up again. Nor am I against trade agreements between nations, which may do some good here and there. On the contrary, I think these efforts should be pursued. I am not in the least, I never have been, an advocate of laissez faire in questions of trade. To-day, more than ever, it is essential that the Government should assist our industries, and find markets. When the Totalitarian Powers are bringing enormous pressure to bear on the competitive markets of the world, you cannot leave individual industrialists face to face with the power of the Totalitarian States. Organised action is necessary by the industries themselves, supported by the Government. I only hope that that organised action will be directed, not merely to keeping up prices, but also to expanding sales. That is the way to remedy matters in a way to help in the question of unemployment. What are the Government doing in this situation to restore an opportunity for the recovery of our trade?

Let me repeat. I trust that no noble Lord will think that I am speaking in a way that is irrelevant to the matter before the House. This is the vital point. There have been many opportunities. In 1932, at Ouchy, Belgium and Holland proposed a new policy and invited other States to join. They proposed the gradual reduction of tariffs between those two countries. The British Government blocked that measure by saying that it was contrary to the most-favoured-nation clause, and forbad it to proceed. In 1933 the World Economic Conference was held in London, presided over by the British Prime Minister. It was a complete failure, largely because His Majesty's Government refused to enter into any general arrangement on account of the newly agreed Ottawa Convention. In 1933 all the States of America joined in a Pan-American Conference at Monte Video, and again suggested a combined movement for the gradual reduction of tariffs. That was endorsed by the United States of America, who promised the fullest co-operation. His Majesty's Government turned a cold shoulder to the suggestion and made no response. Later, the Oslo Powers, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden and Denmark again proposed a similar measure. Was that welcomed with both hands, and was every effort made in the interest of our unemployed?

At last, in 1937, impressed by the need of securing freedom of trade, the British Government and the French Government agreed to invite M. van Zeeland to inquire into the whole matter, and make proposals. He did. He reported in 1938 and made a series of specific suggestions, all designed with the object in view, but His Majesty's Government have done nothing whatever on the lines which he proposed.

LORD MANCROFT

Nor has any other Government.

VISCOUNT SAMUEL

When we discussed this question in this House last April the Minister who replied, the Earl of Plymouth, dwelt solely upon the difficulties in doing anything. He dwelt upon them so fully that I looked at the OFFICIAL REPORT afterwards, and examined his speech. I found that in a speech of twenty minutes he used the word "difficulties" nineteen times, and "obstacles" three times. Last June the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in the House of Commons, Mr. Butler, was asked what was done in this matter of the van Zeeland Report, and he said: I would repeat that the Report will continue to receive the consideration which it deserves. That was the position ten months afterwards. The right honourable gentleman also said: If we look at the position of international trade we find that in volume it is about half what it was in 1929—a very strong reason for continuing the efforts we have been making. I should have thought that it was a very strong reason for trying to pursue some other line.

I would say this in conclusion. The attitude of His Majesty's Government does deserve the strongest condemnation. They remind me somewhat of the old fisherman who was seen sitting day after day on the quayside, and who, when asked what he did there all day, replied, "Well sir, sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits." The fact of the matter is that this vast body of unemployed is in that plight mainly because of the collapse of a large part of our export trade—the loss of a third of it in a decade. This has not only a direct effect upon those who would be employed in making commodities, but also a great indirect effect on our shipping industry and our shipbuilding, and has results all through the economic life of the nation. There have been many debates in Parliament, month after month, year after year, on the subject of the unemployed, both in this House and the other House. Many suggestions have been made on the lines on which they have been made today, year after year, and still the problem continues not only undiminished but at frequent times increasing. As Lord Addison has said, unless it is treated radically, it may grow to even vaster dimensions than those to which we have now become accustomed. We may debate this question in the Lords and in the Commons, and express our sympathy with the unemployed, we may praise their courage and their patience, we may appoint Special Commissioners in different districts, and engage in our training schemes, and transfer industries from one place to another, we may spend millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions in "doles" and subsidies; but until we restore our national commerce and make our industry prosperous we shall not solve this problem.

6.20 p.m.

THE EARL OF BIRKENHEAD

My Lords, the noble Lord opposite has raised a question which, we must all agree, is of the very highest national importance, and although we may differ upon the remedies which should be applied to it, I am quite certain that there is no noble Lord on either side of the House who would desire in any way to belittle the gravity of this problem or the gravity of the recent unemployment figures. The debate to-day has been extremely in- teresting, and the speeches have, I think, shown beyond doubt the grave concern which your Lordships feel about this question. We on this side welcome the discussion, and we also welcome, if I may say so, the extremely constructive and helpful manner in which my noble friend has moved his Motion. I need hardly say that the various suggestions which have been put forward by him and other noble Lords in this debate will receive the most careful and sympathetic consideration from the Government.

From his analysis of the unemployment figures, the noble Lord concluded that the Government's efforts to stimulate a revival of normal trade and industry, and to create conditions in which business could operate with confidence and efficiency, were inadequate and had failed, and he went on to outline some very interesting special measures that in his view should be applied to this problem. I hope to discuss some of the measures which he mentioned in greater detail at a later stage, but I would first like to examine the validity of the general conclusions which he draws from the recent unemployment figures. We all know that attention has been frequently drawn to the fact that out of 1,970,000 unemployed, less than 300,000 have been unemployed for a year or more. I do not wish to make too much of that point, but I would like to say it is a very significant fact, because it indicates the way in which the total of the unemployed is constantly shifting. It indicates the vital necessity of an accurate analysis of its composition and the danger of adopting sweeping measures to absorb men into special work who may in quite a short time be re-absorbed into their own trades.

The figure for February last was lower by 142,000 than the corresponding total recorded in January of this year. My noble friend has said that it is a normal feature of the returns at that period of the year that there should be a reduction in unemployment, and that is quite true, but the reduction during the past month is considerably higher than usual. Over the last ten years the fall has averaged only 47,000 as compared with 142,000 this year. It is perfectly true to say that the weather on the day of the January count was particularly bad, and it was therefore to be expected that the February figure would show an improvement greater than the normal improvement. But there is here a difference of approximately 95,000 between the improvement this year and the average improvement for the past ten years. I think it is clear that a difference of this magnitude cannot fairly be ascribed only to changed conditions at the time of the count, and is one which your Lordships may well regard with some satisfaction.

The Government's view remains that a final solution of the problem of unemployment can only come from the stimulation of normal trade and industry, because it is a fact that within a month fluctuations in business activity can create variations in employment which can never be produced by artificial means. It has been suggested that the policy has completely failed, but we do not admit that it has failed. We do not admit that the reserve of the unemployed has continued to increase in spite of the Government's efforts, and I would draw your Lordships' attention to the fact that from the time the present Government came into power in 1931 right down to the autumn of 1937, there was a steady improvement in business conditions and a steady reduction in unemployment. But, as your Lordships will remember, in the autumn of 1937 external circumstances outside the control of this and, as far as I know, any other Government, the economic crisis in America and the consequent fall in primary prices throughout the world, which so impoverished our customers, had inevitable reactions in Great Britain.

There was, as your Lordships remember, a sharp rise in unemployment in the autumn of 1937, and in many well-informed quarters a slump comparable in its paralysing force with that of 1929 was predicted. But, happily, this rise was quickly checked, and throughout 1938 unemployment remained fairly stable round the 1,800,000 mark. But the external influences which had caused the crisis in the autumn of 1937 still unhappily persisted Throughout 1938, and I think that your Lordships must admit that it is a great tribute to the staying power of British industry that in the face of these conditions, and in particular during the summer and autumn of 1938, when the wild uncertainties and dangers of foreign affairs for the first time mirrored the strains of 1914, there was no appreciable increase in unemployment.

The noble Viscount spoke with great force about the decay of our export trade, but I was glad to hear him say he approved in principle the policy of trade agreements. Since the conclusion of the Ottawa Agreements trade or payments agreements have been arranged with twenty-five foreign countries, including an Agreement with Eire and the recent comprehensive Agreement with the United States, and we say that the justification of the Government's policy in this direction is shown by the fact that during the recent world recession our exports to those countries have been much less affected than our exports to other countries with whom we have not made trade agreements. Their value during 1938 fell by 7½ per cent. as compared with 1937, whereas the value of our exports to other countries fell by 16 per cent. It would be idle to deny that international fears and anxieties must descend with a heavy and depressing force upon the export trade upon which we so largely depend, but we maintain that the intention of the Government's policy has been, by creating secure markets in friendly countries, to minimise these reactions as far as possible, and that it has succeeded in so doing. The Agreement with America has particular importance, because, as your Lordships know, America is our largest foreign customer, while our purchases from that country exceed those from any other country. America is also one of our most valuable markets for textiles, and it is to be hoped that the concessions secured in the Agreement will contribute considerable relief to one of our most hardly-hit national industries.

It is particularly deplorable that the setback to international confidence in the political sphere should have come upon us at a time when, on the economic side, there were indications that the Government's policy was taking effect and that the recent trade recession was giving place to a trade revival. An analysis of the latest figures shows that not only was the increase in employment greater than is normal for the time of the year, but that that increase was not restricted to industries affected by the change in weather conditions at the time of the count or to industries affected by rearmament such as engineering and iron and steel, but was also shared by the textile industries, the boot and shoe industry, and the clothing industry. Shipbuilding, while benefiting from the Admiralty's programme, is unfortunately depressed on the merchant shipping side, but the Government have been giving careful consideration to this matter in consultation with the industry.

While I hope that I have shown that the Government's general policy of stimulating trade and industry cannot be said to have failed—and we shall certainly continue to place our main reliance upon this policy—it has always been realised that unemployment can manifest itself in different districts, in special industries, and amongst special classes of workers. In 1934 it was realised that, in spite of a measure of recovery in the country as a whole, certain areas unfortunately remained unrelievedly depressed, and this situation formed the background of the Special Areas Acts, one in 1934 and one in 1937, which, by the appointment of Commissioners and the provision of financial facilities, are designed to secure the rehabilitation of those areas and to attract new industries to them. In addition to that, proposals are now under consideration to provide loan facilities for new establishments in certain areas of heavy unemployment which are yet outside the scheduled Special Areas.

The most reverend Primate asked His Majesty's Government a question about the location of industry, and I can only answer that in recognition of the importance of this matter the Government appointed a Royal Commission to consider the question of the location of industry. The report is still awaited, and when it is received I can assure the most reverend Primate it will be most carefully considered. I do not think I can express any opinion in anticipation of it now. The noble Lord, Lord Addison, spoke of the evil consequences of mechanisation, and while the Government would be more in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, and would not be prepared to admit that in the long run mechanisation increases unemployment, and would also maintain that it is an essential process if we are to maintain our supremacy in the export markets, we would agree firmly with the noble Lord to this extent that its effects upon certain classes of workers when new processes are first introduced are very serious indeed. The Government's training centres, to which several noble Lords have referred, fit unemployed unskilled men, or that unhappy class of men whose skill has become obsolete owing to industrial change, for semi-skilled work in expanding industries, and at the sixteen Government training centres nearly 14,000 men completed training last year, of whom 12,000 passed into employment.

Though the numbers of those unemployed for twelve months or more have declined from a peak of 483,000 in May, 1933, to the present figure of 290,000 in February of this year, the Government fully realise that the existence of this hard core of nearly 300,000 persons who have had no employment for a year or more constitutes a most urgent social problem. Inquiry has shown that the big majority of the long-term unemployed belong to the older age groups, but there are of course at the other end a number of younger men whose inability to secure employment and whose consequent demoralisation, about which the most reverend Primate spoke so movingly, is a subject of poignant concern to His Majesty's Government. For the older age group the Government does not think there is any simple or sovereign remedy. The problem is largely one of individuals. Representing as they must do a body of men who have served industry well and faithfully, and whose unemployment means a loss of skill and a loss of experience to industry, the Government consider that industry must clearly take a hand in the question. We think that this is a problem which is common to most industrialised countries, and in connection with an inquiry which is to be conducted by the International Labour Organisation at Geneva, it is proposed to consult employers' and workers' organisations.

The position in the younger age group—and here I would agree entirely with the most reverend Primate—is one that must give rise to general dismay, but it has recently been announced that the Government are giving very close attention to the possibility of utilising the present defence measures as a means of finding employment for them. In connection with the scheme for school camps, which has been referred to by several noble Lords, proposals are now being made by which the Unemployment Assistance Board will be empowered to make arrangements with recognised companies for the employment of unemployed on the construction of these camps. The most reverend Primate also referred to the demoralising effect which came upon these young men when, having left instructional centres, they were unable to obtain work. I fully agree with him there, but I should say in connection with these camps that preference will be given to those who have passed through instructional centres when the constructional work of making these camps begins.

The noble Lord, Lord Addison, criticised the Government's policy of contracting for cheapness. He went on to ask that special public works should be instituted to absorb the unemployed. In contracting, as your Lordships know, it has always been the Government's policy to take advantage of the technical knowledge and business experience of those engaged in industry, and to allocate the contracts by fair competition according to recognised business methods. The Government believe that this method both ensures efficient service at a reasonable price and secures that Government work will be carried out with the minimum of disturbance to the ordinary trade and industry of the country.

If the Government were themselves to enter the industrial field and to engage men for every type of work, it would surely be necessary to build up an expensive and elaborate organisation of supervision and administration, duplicating the facilities which are provided by industry, and it would involve neglecting the skill of men already in business; and though it might be possible to give a preference under this system to deserving cases among the unemployed, this preference might very well be exercised at the expense of craftsmen who are already in industry. The disorganisation of business, which, in our opinion, would undoubtedly follow the introduction of the direct labour system on a large scale in Government contracts, would undoubtedly affect our industrial efficiency and our ability to compete in the export trades. While I do not think that it is in the public interest to allocate contracts other than by fair competition, the Government fully realise that the contractors have special responsibilities towards the nation and that cheapness alone is not a criterion.

I would agree with what was said by my noble friend Lord Methyr, when he was discussing the question of the public works which the noble Lord, Lord Addison, proposed in his speech, and I do not think that I need go more closely into the considerations that have convinced us that the institution of public works solely as a relief measure is not a policy which His Majesty's Government would think it desirable to pursue. It is enough, I think, to say that works of this character have generally proved expensive in the past in relation to the employment which they have given, and that by putting an unnecessary burden upon productive industry they may in the end increase unemployment rather than re duce it. It will, therefore, remain the policy of the Government that any system of public works must be judged first on its economic and on its practical advantages rather than upon the employment which it may afford.

I would very much have liked to deal with all the points that were raised by my noble friend, but I think, in the interest of brevity, I will say a few words only about what I consider to be perhaps the most important and most interesting of the suggestions which he made. I refer to his proposal for increased agricultural development work. The Government are well aware that there is a considerable amount of agricultural development work in the form of land drainage, to which the noble Lord particularly referred, which can productively be carried out, and the Ministry of Agriculture has power to assist approved land drainage schemes. It is necessary to remember, however, that the amount of work in connection with land reclamation schemes of different sorts that can be carried out upon an economic basis must not be overrated or exaggerated, and in so far as it would require a disproportionate expenditure of labour to bring waste or swampy land back into cultivation, I conceive that the usual objections to unproductive public works would apply. I concede quite frankly that there is great attraction in the idea of combining idle land and idle labour, but I think it is essential that the problem should be regarded in due proportion.

The bringing of new land into cultivation also would, of course, increase agricultural production, and any schemes of land development must therefore he undertaken in conjunction with, and with reference to, any general agricultural policy. It has been recently stated on behalf of the Government that the questions of improving the quality of our home production and of the processing and marketing of that home production, and of land drainage and credit facilities, are all important factors bound to play a part in any permanent scheme which might be devised for agriculture, and in the review that the Government are undertaking I can assure the noble Lord none of those points will be overlooked.

I have detained your Lordships at somewhat undue length, but this is a great problem. I think in some ways it resembles another cognate problem upon which my noble friend and I have been engaged for nearly a year, that of trying to find some solution for the problem of deaths and injuries on the roads, and in both cases I would invite him to agree that there can be no simple or sovereign remedy. I would also ask him to believe that the Government are no less eager than the members of His Majesty's Opposition to grapple with and master this problem. They are not less aware of the great extent of their responsibility, nor are they unmindful that the Government which first decisively combats unemployment will have rendered the greatest service that can possibly be performed for the social welfare of the English people.

6.44 p.m.

LORD ADDISON

My Lords, I am sure it will not be in accordance with your Lordships' wishes that I should make a second speech, and I am equally certain that you will agree with me in expressing sincere appreciation of the clarity and fairness of the reply which the noble Earl has given. With those remarks I will ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

House adjourned at a quarter before seven o'clock.