§ MR. RAMSAY MACDONALDI beg to ask the Prime Minister whether he has, in answer to a communication, from the Women's Labour League, informed that body that the women's workrooms, conducted by the Central (Unemployed) Body for London, are now finding it impossible to dispose of the goods made in them; whether, before making the statement, he ascertained the impediments placed by the Local Government Board in the way of these workrooms trying to dispose of their goods; whether he is aware of the correspondence that has been going on during the summer between the workrooms' committee and the President of the 2151 Local Government Board, complaining of the action of that Board in declining to give any indication as to what they might or might not do to dispose of their products; and whether, in view of the statement made by him that the Unemployed Workmen Act was this winter to be administered with more sympathy and elasticity, and to the fact that numbers of women have been registered in London for whom no assistance has been forthcoming, he will reconsider his decision not to encourage any extension in the workroom scheme now carried on in London.
§ MR. ASQUITHYes, Sir, I have seen the correspondence to which the hon. Member refers, and I am not prepared to admit that the Local Government Board (without whose assistance the workrooms could not have been carried on) have unduly hampered the management of these workrooms by any indication or lack of indication of the policy to be pursued in disposing of their productions. I may add that there is no question of the discontinuance of these workrooms, and that a larger percentage of the registered and approved cases of unemployed women have been afforded work than in the case of the men who come within the same category.