LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Class 2).

HC Deb 03 August 1911 vol 29 cc579-657

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That a sum, not exceeding £167,951, be granted to His Majesty to complete the sum necessary to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1012, for the salaries and expenses of the Local Government Board."—(NOTE.— £110,000 has been voted on account.]

Mr. PETO

I beg to move to reduce, Sub-head (A) [Salary of the President of the Local Government Board] by £100.

I rise with a great deal of diffidence to move the Motion. The hon. Member for Hoxton (Dr. Addison) and the hon. Member for Kingswinford (Mr. Staveley-Hill) were to have moved a similar Motion, but both of them are, unfortunately, unable to be here to-day. Therefore I would ask the Committee to give me their indulgence to enable me, as well as I can, to put before them the case of the vaccination officers. I am asked to bring this matter to the attention of the Committee by the National Poor Law Officers' Association. Before I say anything else I desire, on their behalf, to assure the Committee—and I am quite sure it is unnecessary to make this assurance to the President of the Local Government Board—that there is nothing whatever antagonistic or of a party nature in bringing this matter before the Committee. The President of the Local Government Board is well aware that the grievance to which I am going to refer is one of pretty long standing, and that certainly for two or three years it has agitated the whole of the vaccination officers. Certainly in many cases, and in other countries, perhaps, it might have led to the less thorough and honourable fulfilment of their duties by a body of men who have been labouring so long under such a real and trying grievance. I desire to say whatever may be the outcome of this discussion, it is to be distinctly understood that always in the future, as in the past, it is their determination to carry out all the instructions of the Board. This is a question of principle, and it is a question simply of the basis on which they receive remuneration. They certainly take no part or side in the question whether the bulk of the people of the country do or do not believe in vaccination. The whole basis on which they have received their remuneration, although appropriate to the time when the basis was fixed, is not only in amount, but also in method, wholly unsuited to the present condition of affairs. Last year, when the right hon. Member for Wimbledon (Mr. Chaplin) raised the question, the President of the Local Government Board pointed out that one of the reasons why it was difficult for him to take any direct action in the mailer was the fact that out of 1,420 vaccination officers, only 400 gave their whole time to the work. He further pointed out that the officers were the servants of the local authorities, and that he could do no more than make representations to those authorities to meet the grievance by the grant of a special gratuity or by an alteration in the scale of fees. As a matter of fact, neither of these methods would effectively meet the grievance.

An hon. Member pointed out at Question time that a fee for the registration of birth and a fee three times as large for each successful vaccination was not an equitable basis of remuneration, because it operated differently in various parts of the country. The right hon. Gentleman replied that those conditions only obtained locally. Quite so. I want the Committee to realise what this basis of remuneration means. We do not want pressure brought to bear on the public to have their children vaccinated or to abstain from so doing. That is the position created by Act of Parliament. But I can conceive that in a locality where the grievance of the vaccination officer was well known, people might feel every time they objected to having a child vaccinated and availed themselves of the fight to exemption that they were doing the unfortunate vaccination officer out of a part of his already very much reduced income. I hold that it is undoubtedly a case in which the Local Government Board should lay down some new principle on which these officers should be remunerated. They do not mind how they are remunerated, provided it is on an equitable basis, favouring neither one course nor the other on the part of the parents. They could, for example, be given a fee for making the necessary inquiries as to whether parents wished their child to be vaccinated; there could be a fee for the registration of birth, another for each successful vaccination, and another for the registration of every child whose parents do not wish it to be vaccinated. I think that if such a scale were properly graduated in order to bring the income up to something approaching what the officers received in the years 1903–7 the grievance would be in a large measure met on businesslike grounds.

What is the position with regard to the Vaccination Act and the Vaccination Order of 1907? I do not know whether the Committee are aware of the extent to which exemptions have increased. We make no complaint as to the increase, the only point in the figures is that it will become impossible for these officers to live. If people do not want their children vaccinated, and if at the same time, it is necessary that we should have the means of ascertaining whether they do or do not, and that those who believe in vaccination should have an opportunity of having their children vaccinated, it is absolutely necessary that some new scale of fees and a new basis should be settled at once. In the year 1907 there were 57,000 exemptions from vaccination; in 1910 the number had increased to 100,000, or by 160 per cent.. That increase is still going on, because the number is over 110,000 for the first half of 1911. At that rate the entire remunera- tion of these people will go. In fact, it will become a minus quantity, because they are called upon to perform certain duties not only for which they receive no remuneration, but which cost them money, which money in most cases they have to pay out of their own pocket. It is their duty to call on parents with Form Q; in many cases they have to post Form Q and pay the postage. It seems to me that this is asking a man not only to hang himself, but to buy the rope with which to perform the operation. It is going beyond anything I should have thought possible in a public department in this country. Last year the President of the Local Government Board said he was prepared to receive from vaccination officers and boards of guardians statements with regard to cases in which loss of income had been sustained, and to meet them as fairly as he could in the interests of the public. I am instructed that the right hon. Gentleman has carried out that promise as far as he could, operating within the narrow limits of what he conceives to be the duty of his Department, Representations have been made to local authorities, and in some cases gratuities have been paid, but: I would like to point out what in some instances those gratuities have amounted to. In one case an officer lost in fees owing to exemptions £80 16s. 9d.; he received a gratuity of £7 18s. In another case the loss was £140 3s. 8d., and the gratuity £20. There are many more cases of that sort.

The grievance is due to the fact that the whole basis of remuneration does not fit in with the existing condition of things. The Act of 1898 gave the conscientious objector the opportunity to avoid having his children vaccinated, but it laid upon him the somewhat onerous duty of going before two magistrates and setting forth the grounds of his objection. In consequence of that additional duties were undoubtedly thrown on, the vaccination, officers. That was fully recognised at the time, because a circular letter of the Local Government Board stated that under the Order additional duties would devolve on the vaccination officers, and provision had been made as to the mode of remunerating them. Before that time vaccination officers were not paid a fee for each birth registered, and in fixing the remuneration for the future the Local Government Board said that the fee for a certificate of successful vaccination should be three times the fee for the registration of birth. They laid down a fresh method by which the vaccination officers should be remunerated. Therefore, we have an excellent precedent for dealing with the new state of affairs. It was then contemplated that that would be quite sufficient, because nobody had any idea at that time that the exemptions would be anything approaching what they have amounted to under the later Act. At that time it was thought that 90 per cent. of the children would be vaccinated.

The Act of 1907 imposes a fresh lot of duties upon the vaccination officers, and hitherto, except such pressure as the President of the Local Government Board has brought to bear upon individual local bodies, no method whatever has been arranged for additional remuneration, or remuneration, to meet these additional duties. The Association of Poor Law Unions, and the National Poor Law Officers' Association have, I am aware, on several occasions brought these grievances to the notice of the President of the Local Government Board. The view of the officers shortly is this: that their loss is real and acute and in some cases they are practically altogether without the means of livelihood. But this is more than a question of loss of salary. The pensions of the officers depend upon the five years' average income prior to their retirement. Therefore they are not only being deprived of their salary, given more duties to perform for less remuneration, but the whole basis of their pensions is entirely altered. You have men who have served the local authority for eighteen or twenty years who are now within eighteen months or so of retirement, and yet who will retire, unless something happens, upon a pension calculated on a salary that has sunk to zero. That is a perfectly intolerable state of affairs. No letters of the right hon. Gentleman to the local authorities of Farnham or Croydon or anywhere else, asking them to deal with the question on the narrow lines of increase of fee for successful vaccination—which I think under the circumstances is probably an injurious method of dealing with the question, because it is invidious and does not fit the circumstances, or else a gratuity— are sufficient. I have already pointed out; to the House that such gratuities as have been paid after pressure exercised by the right hon. Gentleman in some cases, only have been one-tenth of the amount of the loss.

There is another point the President of the Local Government Board made last year. I remember it perfectly. He said in some cases of the rural districts there had positively been an increase in the fees received by the vaccination officers. I simply cannot understand that argument. If the right hon. Gentleman means anything it cuts this way. It only proves my case up to the hilt that the present basis of remuneration is entirely wrong, because the vaccination officers do not want put forward exceptional cases, where the population is increasing and, because there is no strong anti-vaccination feeling in the district, the fee receivable under the old system is inadequate. Such cases are practically untouched altogether by recent legislation, and should not be held to be a set-off. If a few people are still receiving adequate and reasonable remuneration under exceptional circumstances, that should not be held to be a reason that the question does not need to be gone into, especially when vaccination officers generally are losing their income all the time.

Let me remind the Committee, in slightly more detail, as to what are the new duties that the vaccination officers have to perform. They have now to send out Form Q, reminding the parents when the child is four months and seven days old. If there is no exemption asked for the vaccination officer has to interview the parent. Before 1907 the vaccination officers were not allowed to communicate with the parents until the time of the exemption had expired. Now it is their duty to call the attention of the parents to the fact that they can take a course recommended which will deprive the officer of his fees. I need only point out that under present circumstances 90 per cent. of the statutory declarations of conscientious objection are made after the receipt of Form Q— therefore in every case the vaccination officer is positively required, under our present rules, to send out notices which in effect says, "Please do not allow me to receive any fee whatever for the vaccination of your child, no matter how little I am receiving at present." When the child has arrived at the age of four months the vaccination officer must call and inquire whether or not it has been vaccinated. That is no light duty. As I have already indicated, many vaccination officers are not paid their postages in these cases.

Last year the President of the Local Government Board gave another reason why he could not act otherwise than he had. He said that many of these vaccination officers acted in a dual capacity, and that therefore their remuneration for vaccination was very likely set off by the remuneration for their other duties performed for the local authorities. Again, I point out, that the salary for the other duties was in most cases settled at a time when the salary they received in respect of vaccination was wholly different from what it is to-day. Therefore that is no reason for saying the question should not be gone into, because if you assume that in certain cases two-thirds of the officer's salary is in respect of other duties than vaccination, that two-thirds was settled on the basis of the other third being something very much different to what it is to-day.

We can go a little further than this, because when the guardians have asked the Local Government Board for permission to pay their officers a fixed salary or fee I am told that in several cases their application has been refused. So that it appears that the Local Government Board feel that they can, and have, interfered in this matter of the remuneration of officers when a local authority has asked for leave to pay on a reasonable basis, or a fixed fee, or fees other than those usually paid for a successful vaccination or registration, or both. I think, if there was no other reason, that is reason amply sufficient to show that the right hon. Gentleman can, and ought, to interfere in this matter. Of course there are several Boards that have refused to act upon the suggestion of the President of the Local Government, Board. They say that is wholly illogical.

Farnham local authority say that they do not consider it a reasonable thing to be asked to increase the fees on a basis which would only be more inequitable than the present basis. So long as it was bound to be a steadily diminishing income, no matter what fee was settled, they would not take any action in the matter whatever until the President of the Local Government Board authorised them to pay their officer on a reasonable business basis. I think the position of these officers is a perfectly impossible one. They do not know where to go. They come to the President of the Local Government Board, and he tells them that he will write to the local authorities. They are being played "battledore and shuttlecock" with. They are told they are the servants of the local authorities, and a letter will be written. In cases where the local authority is not satisfied with the advice given by the right hon. Gentleman, they are between the devil and the deep sea, and get nothing at all. Now there was a report by a Departmental Committee which was appointed in 1905, when there was a very great outcry at the enormous cost of vaccination, and the Local Government Board appointed a Departmental Committee to go into the matter. The committee consisted of four gentlemen, two officials of the Local Government Board, one was a Member of this House and one was an ex-clerk to guardians. In their report they stated:— that although 189 boards of guardians forwarded memorials or resolutions to the Local Government Board urging a reduction in the minimum fees payable both to public vaccinators and to vaccination officers, no evidence was put before them in support of the reduction of the fees of the vaccination officers. On the other hand, witnesses did appear on behalf of the National Poor law Officers' Association. Incorporated, and the National Vaccination Officers' Association, and represented that the minimum fees at present payable to vaccination officers should be increased. Their attention had also been specially directed to the fact that the fees assigned to the vaccination officer are practically only payable in relation to the primary vaccination of children whose births are registered in his district, and that much of the work of the vaccination officer such as that of the registration of certificates of postponement, insusceptibility and exemption, deaths of children and the vaccination of persons over fourteen years of age, has no remuneration assigned to it. The evidence snowed that the duties of the vaccination officer were materially affected by the attitude assumed by the public and by the officer's board of guardians in relation to vaccination. Hence, whilst in a district where there is no serious opposition to the enforcement of the Vaccination Acts, the minimum lees prescribed by the Order in relation to vaccination officers may be adequate, they may be quite inadequate if he had, in the discharge of his responsibilities, to meet the hostility of the public and of his Board. The reason I read that extract is that that report was made in 1905, before the Act of 1907, and that it is the report of a committee appointed to consider this question, and if these remarks were justified in 1905, I say now six years later they are further justified, and that every one of these things is true and a great deal more besides. The position of the vaccination officers has very materially depreciated since that date. Beyond that it is pointed out by Article 30 (3) of the Order of 1908 that

"The remuneration of vaccination officers shall be deemed to include any expense in respect of postage incurred by him unless otherwise agreed between him and the guardians."

The officers, however, consider that in all cases postage should be paid by the guardians; that has never been carried out, and it is perfectly obvious that the more efficiently a vaccination officer carries out his duty, the more he will have to pay in postage. The more exemptions, therefore, the less he will receive. I should also like to point out that when that report was made there was no such thing as Form "Q" in existence. The whole of the work in connection with the major part of the complaints was not in existence until after the Act of 1907. I have already given the Committee one or two examples of some very hard cases. I should like to trouble the Committee now with one or two more cases. Last year, when this matter was before the Committee, the President of the Local Government Board stated that he only had his attention called to three cases where the officer had lost a sum exceeding £50. One vaccination officer wrote to me, saying:— I cannot pay my way and have warrants and summonses taken out against me, but my mother has always paid. I do not think it is a satisfactory state of affairs that a vaccination officer's relatives should have to keep him. This officer goes on to say:— I have written two or three letters to the Local Government Board, but I only receive acknowledgments in reply, Taking the average from 1903–1907 I have lost over £400 since the commencement of the new Act, and I am now in the portion that I cannot keep myself without the assistance of my father and mother. Another officer writes, stating that he lost £80 16s. 9d. since the passing of the Act of 1907, and in March last the guardians gave him a gratuity of £7 18s., thus leaving him a loser of £72 18s. 9d. I have got here fourteen or fifteen selected cases, but, of course, I do not intend to trouble the Committee with the whole of them. What I ask is that a general Order should be issued and that the officers should receive just and fair treatment and remuneration, and that the Local Government Board should take the initiative and put this matter right and that they should issue a general direction, and that the amount to be taken in every union should be the earnings not since the 1st January, 1908, but what it was in the years between 1903 and 1907, and I ask that the Order should specially call attention to the question of pensions, so that the matter might be properly adjusted and that the question should be put right in regards to pensions as well. I shall read one more extract from the many documents which have come to me for perusal in this matter. It is a typical example, and it relates especially to the question of pensions:— Only on Friday last I was informed of the case of a brother officer who was appointed eighteen years ago and is now within eighteen months of superannuation age; his loss since the Vaccination Act and Order, 1907, is no less than £207, the total loss last year alone being £77 16s. 8d., or 80s. per week, and his exemptions are rapidly increasing in number and therefore every year his loss will become much greater, but the labour remains, also the same expenses; he has not up to the present received any practical sympathy from the Guardians in reply to his three applications, neither has the Local Government Board actively interested itself in the matter. This officer is in that unfortunate financial position that he has not the money for the postage of the 'Q' Notices required to be sent by the Order of the Local Government Board, and thus being quite helpless he is laying himself open to be called upon to resign on account of neglect of duty, and he has only escaped being served with summonses for ordinary household expenses by sacrificing the surrender value of his life policy. Put in a few words the injustice to this particular officer is, that if the appeal of Vaccination Officers to Parliament is not now granted, when he retires at the end of the next eighteen months his superannuation pay will be calculated, not on the average of his earnings from 1903–1907, but on the average of his actual income for the last five years of his service, that is, 1908–1912, and each of these live years will show a serious loss. 4.0 P.M.

I ask therefore that the President of the Local Government Board should not only intervene but that he should lay down directions that when dealing with the pensions of any officer retiring his pension should be calculated on the rates of income he received between the years of 1903 and 1907, so that his pension may not suffer diminution in consequence of the Act of 1907. As to the remuneration, opinions may differ, but there are many ways. The officers might be given a fixed salary for the work in consideration of the services they have to render to each district. They might be remunerated by an increased fee upon the births registered. When this fee was settled, in the year 1898, 90 per cent. of the cases were vaccinated. I think the fee paid upon birth might be made the fee for vaccination and the present vaccination fee the birth fee. If you reverse the process in this "way you would produce the same income as they had before. The officers might be paid according to the certificates of exemption granted. I think that is a basis of payment that deserves very serious consideration. The method of remuneration should be such that it does not make the slightest difference to the officer whether a child is vaccinated or not, and that is the proper basis upon which he should be remunerated. In addition to that a fee might be given for every notice sent out, and the postage ought to be paid. That could very easily be done, because those notices have counterfoils which could be checked.

The remedy for the grievance of these officers is long overdue. I do not think it is in the public interest that any class of public servants should be allowed to go on suffering under such a grievance as I have pointed out, trusting simply to their honourable sense of duty to get the necessary duties carried out. A grievance such as that I have indicated ought to have been removed certainly two or three years ago, and as it still exists it should not be allowed to continue a single day longer. These officers have lost thousands of pounds annually, and are continuing to lose more. They must perform their duties, and that makes it absolutely necessary for their case to be dealt with. Things are most unsatisfactory as they are. It is not in the interests of the public to go on in this way. I would remind hon. Members opposite that this is not a question of vaccination or anti-vaccination, but simply a question of these officers receiving a fair wage upon a reasonable basis.

Mr. LANSBURY

I wish to join in the appeal which has been made to the President of the Local Government Board with reference to these vaccination officers. I come into contact with them in the administration of the Poor Law in the district which I represent, and there can be no question at all that these men are suffering a real grievance. I wish to point out that in every other case where the public official loses anything through an alteration in the law it has up to now been the rule that Parliament has safeguarded the interests of the person concerned. For instance, if the clerk to the London board of guardians has held, as many of them have held, the appointment of clerk to an asylum district or a school district in addition, and the time arrives when that district is dissolved and the clerk to the guardians would lose the £100 or £150 a year which he has been earning, it has always been the custom, and in fact it is the law, that although the man has another position such a person shall be compensated for the loss of his office. As a matter of fact, in the Poplar Union the clerk of the guardians is in exactly that position, and in addition to his salary today he receives the Grant year by year as compensation for the loss of an office of the kind I have described.

These vaccination officials, it is true, were paid so much for every child that was born and the notifications in connection with them, but there can be no reason because they were not paid a stipulated salary for not compensating them when you take away their means of earning the average amount of money which they have been earning for years. I understand that many of these officers are really in a very bad way, and that this change means actually taking their living away. I think the least the right hon. Gentleman could do, at any rate in the Metropolis, is to let the Common Poor Fund be used either to make up to these men a stated sum each year, or else compel the guardians to place them on a yearly salary for the work they have to do. In any case there is no reason for allowing the matter to remain where it is. The suggestions we have made may not be the best. Gratuities have been suggested, but I want to point out to the Committee that that is the very worst method of paying for public service. A man ought not to be dependent upon the mere goodwill of a board of guardians as to what his salary at the end of the year should be, and I appeal to the right hon. Gentleman not to put either the guardians or the officers in that position, but make some arrangement whereby this work can be remunerated in a different fashion.

I think much of it is a gross waste of public money as it is done even now. There is much red tape about it, and a good deal that need not be done; but if all the regulations are to be carried out the Board must take the responsibility of seeing that the men are paid for carrying them out. We had an instance last night of the way in which the medical profession can take care of themselves, and I do not blame them. We believe in all people who work with their brains or with their hands getting the very best rate of pay they can. I think I can speak for all my colleagues when I say that we have never differentiated between brain workers and manual workers. When the Bill for granting exemptions in the case of vaccination was before Parliament the doctors took good care to safeguard their interests, and the doctor now gets payment upon birth, whether the child is vaccinated or not. It appears to me that the same measure of justice which has been meted out to the medical profession ought to be meted out to these men in a much humbler position, and in some way this loss ought to be made up. That is all I want to say on that question.

There are several other matters to which I wish to call the attention of the Committee. We have discussed the Poor Law on several occasions this Session— once at some length—and the right hon. Gentleman, in answering us, said practically that everything was all right with the Poor Law, that everything possible that could be done was being done, and that all we had to do was to leave this excellent department just where it is. That may be all very well for the right hon. Gentleman and his officials, but I want to bring him back to the actual facts. On the last occasion the right hon. Gentleman did what anyone does when in a tight place, that is, instead of answering the criticism levelled against the administration of the Poor Law, he rode off on something which no one had attacked. For instance, on the question of the children, no one had attacked the children in institutions; no one had said that the Poor Law schools did not turn out excellent men and women, and no one had said that the boys and girls who went to those schools were not very often in a much better position than hundreds and thousands of children in the slums up and down the country. We were all agreed about that, and therefore there was no necessity for us to be answered in the manner in which we were answered a week or two back.

The point I wish to urge is that in the case of children on outdoor relief, the right hon. Gentleman's Department has no part or lot in seeing that those children are adequately relieved and not kept in a state of semi-starvation. At the present moment there are tens of thousands of children on outdoor relief. The Department issues circulars to boards of guardians telling them to do this, that, and the other, but there is no inspection to see that the guardians carry out the instructions contained in the circulars. In most departments when a board issues a circular, inspectors go round periodically to examine the institutions concerned in order to see whether the advice given in the circular has been carried out, but with regard to children on outdoor relief no such inspection is made. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to give the figures of the average amount of outdoor relief given to the children of widows and to children who are living in their own homes. I think if we had these figures the Committee will be thoroughly astonished when they see the miserable amount which is paid to a woman to bring up her children.

The point I wish to urge against the Department in this connection is that the auditor has now taken it into his head to surcharge boards of guardians for giving too much relief to the applicants who come before them, mainly in the case of old people. I know of several cases where there has been a surcharge. I protest against the auditor doing that after the relief has been given, because he cannot be in a position to judge so well as the guardians on the spot. Be that as it may, my point is that if the Local Government Board are going to enquire and attempt to regulate the giving of relief, they must at the same time insist that the woman bringing up her family should have adequate relief to bring her children up decently. The Board cannot claim on the one hand that they shall not give too much, without on the other hand seeing that they give sufficient. At the present time that is not being done, so far as I have been able to gather, and it is certainly not being done in the union which I represent. The only thing that has been done in my Constituency is that sometimes an inspector has been sent down, and I have sat with him at the board meetings. The Local Government Board inspector has sat at the same relief committees which I have attended, and on no single occasion have I known him ask that more relief should be given, and I have never heard him say anything else except that some of the cases which come up are probably cases that ought not to be relieved outside at all. This applies to the case of able-bodied men, but I have never known the inspectors visit the people at their own homes to see under what conditions the relief is being given and to ascertain whether it is enough or too much. I think that ought to be part of their business.

There is another thing in connection with the children. We have just heard that we are all going off in a fortnight's time for our holidays. I want to put it to this House that there are 40,000 children at this moment in London who a week ago last Wednesday were getting meals from the education committees. Those 40,000 children in London are not being fed at this present moment. When this question was raised at the Coronation everybody's, loyalty bubbled up, and the right hon. Gentleman let it be known that the children might be fed. May I remind the Committee that the children need to be fed whether it is Coronation week or holiday week in the middle of the summer, and I think the right hon. Gentleman, who knows as well as I do what the condition of many of these children, at least ought to see—if this House has not got time to pass a tiny Bill which would enable education committees to do this work— that the local authorities should be told that they may, if they wish, feed these children during this period. Some of the local authorities do this— Halifax and West Ham, I believe, are doing it. It may be said that some people are breaking the law, but within the county of London we are afraid to do it without the permission of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board. I want to put it to him quite seriously. Last night I stood in front of nine or ten thousand men in very much the same kind of position, though not with the same authority in which he stood some twenty-five years ago. It was a meeting of the London casual labourers, and I could not help remembering that I was going to raise the question this afternoon of these men's children, and how they were to be fed during the summer holidays, and I want to ask him even now, late as it is, whether he cannot issue some kind of recommendation to the educational authorities throughout the country that they shall feed these children during the next three or four weeks. I do not know how any of us can sit down, as Ruskin says, to our meals with comfort, and take our pleasures, as we shall all try to do, and as I shall do with my children, when we know that there is in this one big City, tens of thousands of children who, to say the very least, have not got enough food. I do not want to be told that this is not the right way to do it. I know it is not the right way; I am not in favour of it. I think it is not the best way, but until society finds a better way, I want it to be done this way. Until somebody can show a better way, until men and women can earn sufficient to bring enough food to their children, and to bring them up wholesomely and decently at home, it rests upon society to see that these children are not made victims in that sort of way.

I am taking this opportunity of calling attention to matters in connection with the Local Government Board which I think ought to be put right, and of trying to convince the Committee that things are not so rosy as the right hon. Gentleman led us to suppose the other day. There are in this Metropolis twenty-eight boards of guardians, I believe, and the other day we had brought to our notice in this House—I do not know how many Members took much notice of it— that the money paid for certifying lunatics in a county area varied from £361 in one union to £3 13s. in another. In the East End of London it was the low figure, and in a union in the North, the higher one. I contend that this is a piece of business that with such a practical President of the Local Government Board as we have got, ought to have been put right long ago. Why in one union is it that the doctors should make very handsome salaries by certifying these people, and in another union men who are doing their work quite as efficiently should only get this tiny fraction. It is not a very big matter compared with the millions of pounds for which this House is responsible, or at any rate that we have to do with, but it is a very considerable sum in connection with the unions themselves, because it is only part of the business of dealing with lunacy. I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman what steps he proposes to take? He told me it was under consideration, and I shall be glad to know what has been the result of that consideration. Then I raised another matter by means of questions in this House, and the hon. and learned Member for the Brentford Division (Mr. Joynson-Hicks) also raised it later on. In one of the unions of London a gentleman pays people to go to his establishment to get vaccinated. I contend that if a person can do that and can afford to do it, he ought not at the same time to receive money out of the public funds. That matter also I was told was going to receive consideration, and as far as I know it has been going on for some time. What really happens is that a doctor runs a school for the purpose of teaching young men how to vaccinate people, and he draws people from all parts of the union to his establishment for the purpose of having sufficient material for these young men to experiment upon. I think it is time that sort of thing was put an end to. When I raised the matter here before, the right hon. Gentleman thought it was not of very great importance, but I want to point out that it is that kind of thing which in my opinion leads to very much of the corruption that we all know does exist in this kind of body.

That brings me to another matter. The right hon. Gentleman and his Department have received a great deal of credit with regard to stopping what are known as scandals in the contract system in and Around the Metropolis. What I want to know is whether he does not think it is time to deal with the existing twenty-eight boards of guardians with their twenty-eight sets of officials and some hundreds of institutions governed by these officials, all with their own individual contracts, and open to every kind of temptation from a big ring of contractors? Has not the time come to adopt the suggestion made to him a long time ago and made to his predecessor by one of the boards that came into a good deal of obloquy, the Poplar Board, that instead of leaving every board an the Metropolis to make its own contracts he should issue an Order, as I believe he has power to do, forming one central store for the whole of London and letting each board of guardians draw from that store. At present the Metropolitan Asylums Board and the London County Council both have magnificent stores, and either body, I am certain, could supply these boards very much more cheaply and with very much less power for people to put their hands into the public purse in a manner that ought not to be done. The whole thing could be done very much better by having one central arrangement through either of those bodies than by leaving it to these twenty-eight different bodies, with their crowds of officials, to have the making of their own contracts. I am only saying what I think the right hon. Gentleman knows as well as I know, that, I will not say corruption, but the scandal in connection with these contracts is not at an end in London, and every one of us who cares anything for the purity of public administration would welcome anything that took the contracts away from the individual boards of guardians. All these boards of guardians have to do with a great variety of contracts and a large number of institutions. You never get to the bottom of these things except by the action of the public. The auditor never finds it out, he never knows anything about it. It is nearly always found out by some one or other discovering that the money is being spent, that the cost of things is going up, and then he comes to the auditor and makes complaint and an inquiry is set on foot, but whichever way you take it, the fact remains that very little of it comes to the top. I am quite certain that the right hon. Gentleman has in the archives of the Local Government Board a mass of evidence which, though it may not be conclusive, must make him slightly uneasy as to what is going on in some parts of London. I do suggest to him, as a practical administrator—that is one thing the House considers him to be— that he could quite easily, if he could make up his mind to do it, do something. He would be opposed; he has been opposed in a good many other things, and he has done them. We have opposed him many times, but that does not deter him and he goes on in his own sweet way, and I think he could tell the boards of guardians that it is time that all these twenty-eight sets of contracts came to an end, and that instead we should have one central store from which all the boards could draw.

There is another matter I wish him to take cognisance of. He and I are members of a certain organisation—I think he is a vice-president, but he is certainly one of the supporters of it—for securing one day's rest in seven. In the Poor Law system there is a great deal of room for bringing in that much-needed reform. I am a staunch believer in it for a variety of reasons, religious, social and physical. Two boards of guardians have appealed to the right hon. Gentleman to allow them to do something—there may be others, but I know of these two. One wants to allow the nurses and another wants the whole staff to have one day's rest in seven. The right hon. Gentleman has not seen his way up to the present to concede either of these demands. I understand that in one case he thought there was no public demand for it, at least the gentleman who wrote the letter thought so; but I venture to say that he and I know perfectly well that there is a public demand for one day's rest in seven, and the society he belongs to has been helping to create that demand, and I suggest to him that he ought not merely to preach this theory, but that he ought to put it into practice whenever he gets an opportunity, and certainly he never ought to hinder other people from putting it into practice as these two boards of guardians are trying to do. I have a letter here in answer to one of them when they asked him for that power. I hope he is going to reconsider the matter and that he will give to Poplar and West Ham the right to give their employés this one day's rest in seven.

There are two other matters in connection with unemployment. We have all heard of Belmont. I put questions to the right hon. Gentleman about it. I do not understand to this day why it is not in the public interest to hold a public inquiry into that outbreak. I do not know why the evidence upon which the right hon. Gentleman says that such inquiry was not needed should be considered to be of a private nature and that this House should have it withheld from them. The fact is that eighty men who were sent there have gone to prison; they were imprisoned because they preferred prison to the workhouse. I know the answer is that these men are only a lot of scallywags and that it therefore does not matter what became of them, but there was an interesting sequel to that outbreak. One of these officers in charge of these men had been dismissed from one union for indecent conduct and had been really punished for it. He got temporary work at this workhouse. After these eighty men had been imprisoned this officer, who was partly responsible, for the control of the men, was dismissed, but before he was dismissed, as I am told for bad conduct, although I have never been able to find out what that bad conduct was, during the week that he was working off his notice he had got drunk and had ill-treated one of the inmates. I think that is pretty good evidence that he was not the kind of man to keep this kind of men in a proper state of discipline, and that there was no wonder at all that there was insubordination and riots, and that finally eighty of these men had to go to prison. I protested at the time against no inquiry being held, and I now say again that these eighty men, even though they be paupers and were in a public institution, have a perfect right to have their case discussed here in the House of Commons, and that we have a right to ask the head of the Department concerned to put on the Table all the evidence that the State officials and the inspectors in his Department collected in regard to this matter. An inquiry was held, but we do not know anything of the evidence, and we do not even know what was the actual nature of their report. The right hon. Gentleman just told us that his inspectors went down and investigated the matter.

I also want to raise the question of the administration of the Unemployment Fund. There is a labour colony called Hollesley Bay, which has cost, roughly, between £130,000 and £150,000. The right hon. Gentleman and his Department have thought fit to say the experiment there should be strictly limited in its scope, with the result that it is, more or less, a glorified workhouse, and has been so since the advent of the right hon. Gentleman to the Front Bench. It is very nearly time the Department made up their minds what they are really going to do with that institution. I hoped against hope, when I was chairman of the committee, that we should, sooner or later, be able definitely to get large numbers of men trained and fit for work on the land. Hollesley Ray has trained a good many men to emigrate across the sea, and I am lunatic enough to believe that if a man can toil the soil in Canada or Australia he can here. I shall still hold that until it is proved to the contrary. I think I can give the right hon. Gentleman the facts about it. It is no use the right hon. Gentleman shaking his head and giving me that gracious smile.

The PRESIDENT of the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. Burns)

The hon. Member must not misinterpret a smile when he does not understand what it is about.

Mr. LANSBURY

I thought it was a gracious smile. I am quite sure the right hon. Gentleman would not scowl at me. I know numbers of these men who are now getting their living, and I shall be glad to gather their names and addresses together for the right hon. Gentleman. We have no right to spend public money on training people merely to send them across the seas when there are miles of our own land wanting to be cultivated. There are some 1,300 acres, and piles of money is being spent there. There would be some real justification for spending the money if we were creating a condition of things which would enable men to make a home market for other men working under other and industrial conditions. There is no justification for keeping the place merely as a workhouse, and I venture to ask the right hon. Gentleman to tell the House what he means to do with it. None of us can tell the future of the Unemployed Workmen's Act. I do not want to be told of the great things we are going to get from the Insurance Bill, from the Labour Exchanges, and from the Development Fund. Everybody knows that in London alone there were last year some 25,000 out of work, and of that number only something like 4,000 got employment. Facts like that take a good deal of getting over. It is all right for me; I have a fairly good living. It is all right for men on the Treasury Bench. It is all right for most of us. We get our meals and our work regularly, such work as it is. We get our salaries anyhow. [An HON. MEMBER: "Not yet. "J Certainly we are going to get them all right; you wait and see. I have here the report for the place I represent. We got something like 374 out of the 4,000 places, leaving us with some 900 men and their wives and families, with whom we did not know what to do. If the President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Sydney Buxton) were here he would have to support the statement that the Distress Committee of that borough has appealed to him and to me and to my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich (Mr. Crooks), who resides in the district, times out of number to do all we possibly can to get the right hon. Gentleman to find us more work.

Every time we raise this matter he tells us he must teach us a more excellent way. We do not want to be taught a more excellent way. We know there is a more excellent way. I am under no delusions, and do not want to be told that relief works are demoralising. Starvation is much more demoralising. We have no right to condemn the methods of the Unemployed Workmen's Act unless we are prepared to do something different and better. The right hon. Gentleman on the last occasion could only tell us to wait for the Insurance Bill, and for this, that, and the other. While we are waiting for those things, these men and their wives and families require to be dealt with. It is no use thinking you can deal with them under economic conditions. I know even the Herne Bay scheme would probably have been economically unsound, but I also know it is no economy to leave men, women, and children to become physically weaker and weaker. It is much better to do an uneconomic thing and to prevent a further evil than to leave them as the right hon. Gentleman and his Department, very often want to leave them. There is only this in connection with the Herne Bay scheme that I want to say. When I spoke on the last occasion, the right hon. Gentleman flattened me out in his usual way by saying he had a much better way of spending the money. The hon. Member for Bow and Bromley wanted him to spend so many thousands of pounds on merely 500, but he had a way to give work to 2,000. I interrupted him in a disorderly manner, but that was no use. I was out of order, and down I had to go. I knew I was right all the same, and that he was wrong. He said the proposition would have meant that 500 men would be continuously away from London for some forty weeks. I knew that was nonsense, because I knew his regulations better than he did himself. His regulations would not allow it to be done. I had no chance of answering him at that time. His own regulations would not allow them to be away more than sixteen weeks.

Mr. BURNS

The hon. Gentleman, being a member of a public body, knows that I have been frequently asked to modify the regulation with regard to the sixteen weeks, and he knows on occasion being shown I have done so.

Mr. LANSBURY

That has been when we wanted to train an individual for other. work in England.

Mr. BURNS

The hon. Member is wrong. I have done it not only in the particular cases to which he now refers, but in general cases where the facts have warranted it.

Mr. LANSBURY

I say no such permission has been given in general cases; it is only in particular and individual cases, t do not want, when I am right, to be told I am wrong. The Committee that had this matter in hand reported thus:— The committee report that their attention has been directed to the fact that the President of the Local Government Hoard, when considering the scheme of works submitted to the Central Body in respect to Herne Bay, was under the impression it was the intention of the body to employ 500 men for forty-three weeks continuously. The committee report it was never their intention to employ men in this way. It was estimated that altogether 2.150 men would be employed for an average period of ten weeks. I think that is a sufficient answer to the statement of the right hon. Gentleman. I hope during the coming winter he will not merely condemn everybody else's scheme. He has an excellent and a highly-paid staff at the Local Government Board. I acknowledge their ability and their public spirit, and I want to suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that he should set some of them to the task of devising a plan to spend the £200,000, or whatever sum Parliament is going to grant, on the treatment of the unemployment problem during the coming winter. I am a little tired of being criticised and being shown I am wrong. I now suggest, the gentlemen whom we pay to do this sort of work should be turned on to do it and that they should tell us what schemes they propose for dealing with the unemployed during the coming winter. I am sure I shall be told, but I shall take no notice of the answer, that relief works are uneconomic and that they have been proved to be wrong. Until the right hon. Gentleman can persuade his colleagues to give up enough time to pass such legislation as will till all the land of this country——

The CHAIRMAN (Mr. Emmott)

We are dealing with the administration of the Local Government Board and not with legislation.

Mr. LANSBURY

I only want to say I do not want to be told the propositions we make for dealing with unemployment are uneconomic, and the rest of it, until the right hon. Gentleman himself has something more than words to give us on this very important subject.

Mr. BUTCHER

I rise to appeal very strongly to the President of the Local Government Board to remedy the grievances of these vaccination officers. The grievances are long standing, serious, and wholly undeserved. The question seems to me to be summed up in one sentence. Is it right that public officials who have faithfully discharged their duties should by reason of legislation, which at any rate is supposed to be passed in the public interest, have more work and less pay? That is the simple issue. After all, the facts are not disputed in this case. Is it denied that in consequence of this legislation they have less pay? I hardly think that can be denied. The larger source of their income comes from vaccinations, and, inasmuch as the number of vaccinations has gone down and the number of exemptions has gone up in consequence of the Act, it is obvious their income must have suffered. My hon. Friend gave the figures of exemptions from last year's return compared with 1907. May I give the figures of vaccinations, showing how they have gone down. In 1907 there were 651,000 successful vaccinations in England and Wales. In 1909 they had gone down to 547,000, so that, on that fact alone, it is obvious that these men are suffering a serious reduction of income. I do not doubt that it varies in different parts of the country. But there are cases which have come under my knowledge where these men have lost very nearly as much as 20 per cent. of their income, and, in many cases, more than that. Ought these men to be made to suffer undeservedly, to this great extent, and in some cases to be placed in serious distress, not through any fault of their own, but simply because certain legislation has been passed. Their hardship is not merely con- fined to loss of income; they will get a smaller pension when their turn comes to retire, because the pension will be calculated on the income of the last five years, and, if you steadily diminish that income during the five years previous to retirement, they will suffer accordingly in the matter of pension.

In this state of things one would imagine that even where the work of a man was not increased the Government should make some provision to see that he is properly paid. There is a Parliamentary obligation lying on the right hon. Gentleman. In 1907, when this Bill was before the House of Lords, an Amendment was proposed with a view to safeguarding the interests of these vaccination officers, and the spokesman for the Government on that occasion said the Amendment seemed to be proposed in the interests of vaccination officers who felt that the Bill might diminish their income. But, said the Noble Lord, it was not anticipated that the number of persons who would obtain exemption certificates on account of conscientious objections would be materially increased. The Noble Lord went on to say that the vaccination officers were paid by fee, and he would remind Lord Camper-down (who moved the Amendment) that if their remuneration was inadequate their fees might be increased either by the guardians with the concurrence of the Local Government Board or by the Local Government Board itself. On the face of that statement the Amendment was withdrawn. It was thought that these vaccination officers were adequately protected by it. We are now asking the right hon. Gentleman to make good that promise, and, seeing that the loss has actually occurred, to put these men into a position in which they will not suffer. If no more work were thrown upon them they would be entitled to consideration;. But does anyone deny that a large amount of additional work has been thrown upon them by the machinery which they have to put in operation, in consequence of the increased number of exemptions. They have a large amount of additional correspondence to carry on. They have to pay visits to men who have not obtained exemptions from vaccination, and for that extra work they do not get one farthing increase of pay. I venture to think it will be admitted that they have a grievance, and that there is a necessity for some remedy.

Indeed, the right hon. Gentleman has admitted it, because he has endeavoured to remedy it. But in my judgment, at any rate, he has gone on the wrong line in asking the board of guardians to grant a gratuity. That is entirely a wrong way of paying men. If they are entitled to this money, if they have done work for it, why give it to them by way of gratuity? They are simply asking for that to which they are entitled. If they are not entitled, then why give them a gratuity? May I, with all deference, suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that the difficulty might be got over in this way. He should make the increased pay in some way commensurate with the increased work. If the officers have lost, owing to the increased number of exemptions, let there be increased pay commensurate with that loss. Why not give a fee for recording each exemption certificate? The loss might be balanced in that way. If the number of exemptions decreases then the officers will get less for vaccination certificates, and more for exemption certificates. If the number of vaccinations increases, they will get more for vaccination certificates and less for exemption certificates. It may be suggested that payment by way of salary would be better. I am not putting one plan forward in preference to any other. If the right hon. Gentleman will apply his mind to the problem I believe he will be able to solve the difficulty. For my part, so long as this undoubted grievance is met in some way from the public purse I shall be perfectly content. But that there is a grievance, that it has gone on a long time, and that it ought to be remedied I think is the general opinion of the Members of this House.

Captain FABER

I am not without hope that my right hon. Friend will see his way to meet this distinct grievance. We all know the right hon. Gentleman is fair, to the best of his ability, in his dealings with these questions. We quite recognise not only his ability but his fairness, and we hope that, on this occasion, he will be able to meet a very great grievance. These men are actually being asked to commit suicide by sending out in the first instance Form Q. They have to send it to everybody concerned as regards vaccination, and it is only human nature that the men who receive, Form Q, when out of work, should claim exemption from vaccination. That being so, the wretched vaccination officers, in trying to do their best, are actually trying to kill themselves by inducing poor men, many of whom are out of work, to claim exemption from vaccination. Not only are they committing suicide, but they are doing so by means of a very slow process, because their income is gradually diminishing. Perhaps quite as difficult as the question of diminishing salaries is the question of their pensions, if they are not starved to death before they become entitled to a pension. It is quite clear that by the time many of these men become entitled to pensions there will be very little pension for them, unless it is to be based on a scale for the years 1903 to 1907. I think the right hon. Gentleman, with his usual fairness, will be prepared to meet them on the question of pension, and that he will agree with us it is absolutely ridiculous to calculate the pension on the falling income of the last few years. The best way, indeed, will be for these officers to receive a salary. It would be much better for them to have a salary for what they actually do. As the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for York (Mr. Butcher) said just now, if a man does not work he should not have a salary. I think hon. Members on both sides of the House will agree that these vaccination officers have a very great grievance against the Local Government Board and the country generally for the way in which they are paid for work which is admirably done, and which they certainly do to the best of their ability. Cannot the right hon. Gentleman meet us in this question? We are prepared to leave it to him to deal with it in the best way he can, and I certainly resume my seat with some hope that our expectation that he may be able to do so will be realised.

5.0.P.M.

Sir ALBERT SPICER

I am glad it does not fall to my lot to-night to propose a reduction of the salary of the right hon. Gentleman. I am intervening on a subject in connection with which I desire to acknowledge the help we have already received from the President of the Local Government Board. It is because he has done something for us in the past that we hope he may be induced to do still more. The question on which I wish to say a few words is that of the removal of children from our workhouses. We desire to acknowledge the services of the President of the Local Government Board in removing the children from a good many workhouses, especially in the Metropolis. Personally, I wish to acknowledge his help and his influence in this direction on many of the inspectors, and I am glad that a good many boards of guardians through- out the country are moving in the same direction in their own workhouses. But a great deal more requires to be done before this evil can be altogether removed. It may be asked, why is it that you want to remove children from the workhouses? Are they not well treated there? Are they not well looked after? My reply is, that these children are not responsible for the position in which they find themselves, and I maintain that the atmosphere of the workhouse is not an atmosphere that will give them in the future the best opportunity for using their powers aright. I know great improvement has been made in recent years by having the children educated in the ordinary schools of the country. That is, of course, all to the good, but those of us who feel strongly on this question feel that the children ought not to be left in the workhouses at all. Institutional training and living is not good for children. In the last century and in the earlier part of this, there were an immense number of philanthropists in this country who seemed to think an institution a sort of Divine arrangement. I think we are learning, slowly it is true, that after all, a poor home is better than even the best institution. Children brought up in an institution do not get a chance of mixing with others. They do not come in contact with the ordinary friction that occurs in daily homo life, and they go into the world far too wooden, if I may say so, and far less able to resist the temptations that come to them in their individual life as contrasted with the same temptations in the institution. They have to go out one by one and take their place in the world, but they do not get as many opportunities as is desirable of leading an individual life. A good many boards of guardians have already utilised this system of boarding out these children where it is possible to do so. Others are making use of small scattered homes which, after all, are more economical than big institutions, and where there are small scattered homes for ten or twelve children, with a wise foster-mother, it is all the better for the children, because it makes their surroundings more like what their surroundings would have been if they had had the advantages of ordinary home life. That is the reason why we want to get the children out of the workhouses and within their special circumstances, for which they are not responsible, we want to give them good opportunities for living their own individual life in future. A great many boards of guardians have already moved in this matter, but a great many are very slow to adopt new methods. I admit readily that these individual methods of treating children mean more work to the individual guardians. They mean more inspection because you can inspect 100 or 200 children in a comparatively short time in one building, but if you have them divided up into homes of ten or twelve, even, if they are in the same neighbourhood, as I can say from experience, it takes a good deal of time.

As the President of the Local Government Board has helped us in the past in connection with this question, I ask that he should, during this coming year, do even more than he has done in the past—and there is need for it. Let me give a few figures in connection with some of what I may call the backward boards. I am informed, for instance, that at Hartlepool they have about 100 children in the workhouse. They have been repeatedly urged by the Local Government Board to remove their children, but at present without avail. Then the Grimsby Board of Guardians have no fewer than 113 children in the workhouse. The guardians have been considering the question since 1905, and they have wished to leave the children where they are. I am glad to know that the Local Government Board have refused to allow this, but at present they have not succeeded in inducing the guardians to-act. Take, again, Kidderminster. There were seventy-seven children of school age in the workhouse, and I am informed the guardians will do nothing. Bury, in Lancashire, has about 100 children, and Ashton-under-Lyne about eighty. I am glad to see that here the guardians are at last seeking some information as to how other unions are bringing up their children, and I sincerely hope that the result of those inquiries will be that they will do what other guardians are doing. I will only give one other case, that of Whitehaven, where there are sixty or seventy children in the workhouse, and the inspector has already addressed the board on the necessity of removal. Then throughout the country there are other similar unions where they have perhaps fifteen to thirty children. If we could only create a greater public opinion in the matter, so as to help the President of the Local Government Board in exercising all the influence he can, I believe it need not be a very long time before we have cleared out the children from the workhouses and given them better opportunities for living, as I say, their own individual life.

Mr. CHAPLIN

As the author of the Vaccination Bill which passed through the House some years ago, and as my anticipation and hopes have not been realised by the subsequent action of the President of the Local Government Board, I wish to say a few words on this question. I interposed in the Debate last year, first, upon the ground of the hardships which have been brought on the vaccination officers by the Act of 1907, and, secondly, on the ground of the administration of this Act and the Vaccination Order, 1907, which tends directly to the discouragement of vaccination. As regards the officers, I wish to support the case which was put forward by the hon. Member (Mr. Peto). Under the present administration, especially since the passing of the second Act, they are constantly confronted with a great deal more work to do than they had before, and they get less remuneration for it. Under the present system they are called upon to send out a document, which is called Notice Q. The burden, either in labour or cost, of distributing that document is thrown upon them. I do not know how much that involves, but as it has got to be sent out to the parents of every child, unquestionably it must be a. very heavy burden; and we might ask the right hon. Gentleman to let the public know exactly what it amounts to. On the one hand, it imposes all this additional labour and cost on them, and at the same time the inevitable tendency is greatly to increase the claims for exemption, and to that extent, of course, to diminish their remuneration. I am told that since 1907 these claims for exemption have increased by 140 per cent. Surely that is a very serious consideration on a whole variety of grounds. It is serious in the interests of the officers themselves, but it is infinitely more serious in the interest of the health of the general public. It was upon that ground that I made an earnest appeal to the right hon. Gentleman last year. However, up to the present time little appears to have been done, though the hardship, I understand, was quite frankly admitted by the right hon. Gentleman himself. He has recommended the local authorities to make additional payments to the officers who have suffered from this great increase of exemption, but I do not understand that these recommendations are always accepted. On the contrary, I am told it can be shown that many of them, in spite of the large loss which they have incurred, have had no substitute whatever. I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman why he cannot do something more directly by some order of his own. The powers of the Local Government Board are very wide. Orders of all sorts and kinds can be made. There are few Ministers who in some respects have more autocratic powers than the President of the Local Government Board. Cannot he take upon himself to do a little more in the interest of these deserving public servants, and also, according to my views, in the interests of public health.

But the other branch of the question is the most serious point that we have to deal with. If the practice of vaccination is right and desirable at all it ought to be thoroughly carried out. There are differences of opinion, and in some quarters there are the greatest possible objections to vaccination, but so long as it is the law it ought to be thoroughly carried out. Can it be so when you have orders like this, which is neither more nor less than a direct encouragement and invitation to people to claim exemption? Orders of that kind are directly in contravention of the whole purpose and spirit of the Acts which have been passed. Of course, the administration of these Acts must be governed by the wishes and desires of the President of the Local Government Board himself. I am the last person willingly to criticise the action of the right hon. Gentleman for whose general policy since he has been a Minister no one has more respect than I have, but it is a very serious thing when year after year you see these claims for exemption increasing to such an extent that if they continue in the present ratio for another ten or fifteen years the exemptions will be the rule, and the vaccinated children will be only the exceptions. If there be any truth at all in the policy of vaccination or of the Acts which have been passed by Parliament that is a consideration which is becoming more and more serious every year, and if there should be in the future terrible outbreaks, which God forbid, of this horrible disease, the whole responsibility must be laid upon the shoulders of those who have the administration of the Act.

Mr. LEWIS HASLAM

I wish to say a few words in reference to a subject than which there is no more important comes under the purview of the Local Government Board. I refer to the treat- ment of Poor Law children. Hon. Members may not be aware how large is the number of children who are boarded out or otherwise relieved under the Poor Law system. There are about 130,000 children receiving outdoor relief, and in addition there are about 30,000 who are under the supervision of parents or guardians who are not capable, or not able properly to look after these children. These children are in many cases under the care of drunken or immoral parents and require close supervision. I wish to urge the President of the Local Government Board to use his authority in endeavouring to ensure better supervision for the children who are receiving outdoor relief. I know that this matter has had his attention, but I think a great deal more could be done in regard to increasing the supervision, and what I desire to suggest more particularly, is that there should be women volunteers, acting under the guardians, who will visit these children regularly, and by means of sympathy and attention to their wants, improve their physical and mental condition, and in that way enable them to be brought up as useful citizens. With regard to this matter, I understand that the Local Government Board have under consideration a boarding-out Order, which has not yet been issued. I wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman when that boarding-out Order will be issued.

While on this point I desire to sympathise with the right hon. Gentleman as to the difficulty of dealing with this particular class of children. He was urged by the hon. Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury) to endeavour to get boards of guardians to increase the amount paid for outdoor relief. No doubt in some cases that is desirable. There are cases in which the relief which is allowed is very much too little. I will mention an instance which was reported to the Poor Law Commission. In that case a widow with seven children, none of them working, received 10s. a week from the Poor Law. The rent of her house was £5 10s., which was defrayed by friends. The visitor said, "I found the home in a. very dirty and filthy condition. I tried to get particulars of the way the money was spent, but found that impossible." He added that it was obvious such persons could not live on 10s. a week. I think the Committee will agree that the outdoor relief in that case was inadequate. There are cases in which money relief has a detrimental instead of a beneficial effect. Therefore I would ask the right hon. Gen- tleman to urge the guardians to investigate those cases more closely and find out where money relief is given with beneficial results, and where it may be desirable that other means of giving relief should be adopted. In the case of the 30,000 children the Royal Commission Report states that the children are being brought up under conditions in which it is impossible for them to become properly educated. In such cases means should be taken by which the children may be separated from their parents, and either boarded out or in some other way taken entirely from their vicious surroundings. I wish to emphasise one point. It is only due to our country to say that great progress has been made during the last fifty years or so. Whereas in 1848 twenty-five per thousand of the children in this country were paupers, in 1908 only seven per thousand were paupers. I believe progress is being made at the present time in that particular. In 1849 sixty-five per thousand of the population were paupers, whereas now the number is about twenty per thousand. While I make that admission, I feel sure that the President of the Local Government Board will agree with me that there is much more to be done. I gladly acknowledge what has been accomplished, and I trust that the right hon. Gentleman will give all the attention he can to this matter.

Lord H. CAVENDISH-BENTINCK

I wish to refer to a question which was very much before this House when the work of the Local Government Board was debated earlier in the Session. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will not consider that I am taking an unduly captious or critical attitude as to his Department. I should regret very much if he did so, for I am a sincere admirer of his work at the Local Government Board, and nobody could be more ready than I am to admit the good work he has done on behalf of children. But there are some curious lapses in his administration, and if Homer sometimes nodded, I believe it is true that the right hon. Gentleman is sometimes not so vigilant as he might be. There is no question on which public opinion is more sensitive than that of the treatment of children in the workhouses. There is no question on which both the Majority and Minority Reports of the Royal Commission are more insistent than on the necessity of getting them out of the workhouses. I cannot help thinking that it is regrettable that the Board should seem to follow the policy of pay- ing lip service to this state of public opinion, while avoiding their undoubted responsibility to the children. What I suggest is that in providing accommodation for these children the guardians might easily arrange for boarding them out, or for hiring houses for them in towns instead of building institutions for them within the precincts of the poorhouses. It is impossible really for the children to escape the atmosphere of pauperism which is about a poorhouse if they are kept in such institutions. One of the places to which I refer is Frome. That is the policy which has been sanctioned there. At Redruth the Local Government Board went so far as to recommend the guardians to house their children in a separate portion of the workhouse. I do not know on what principle the Board acts in these matters, because at Hartlepool that policy has been vetoed by the Board, while at other places it has been allowed. At Doncaster for a long time the guardians refused altogether to take the children out of the workhouse, but lately they have agreed to build an institution within the precincts of the workhouse. I cannot say whether that proposal has been sanctioned by the Board or not, but if it has not, I hope the right hon. Gentleman will most decidedly veto it. When a Debate took place in the spring, I gathered from the tone of the right hon. Gentleman's speech that he resented very much being regarded as a bureaucratic dictator, and that he has no objection to being regarded as a benevolent despot. I wish to lay stress upon the benevolent part of his administration and to express the hope that he will take this matter into his serious consideration.

Mr. CROOKS

I am rather sorry that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wimbledon (Mr. Chaplin) has left the House, for I think there is a good opportunity this afternoon of bearing testimony to the pioneer work which he did when President of the Local Government Board. I do not know whether the House is aware of an admirable Report which was issued by the Secretary to the Admiralty (Dr. Macnamara) when he was assistant to the President of the Local Government Board with reference to schools for pauper children. There are some observations in that Report which would have enabled the right hon. Gentleman to realise what is being done in this matter. I honestly say that it does seem to me an extraordinary thing that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wimbledon, so far as I have been able to gather—and I have been associated with the Poor Law ever since I can remember anything at all—should have been the first to realise what the duty of the Local Government Board was. Officialism, as we knew it in the old days, was not what we know it to be to-day. It may be bending to public opinion, and it may be becoming more sympathetic. I remember the enormously human Order issued by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wimbledon in which it was urged that when relief was given it should be sufficient and adequate. I remember also the protest which was raised against that Order on the ground that it was likely to make paupers. The right hon. Gentleman's reply to that was that it is not the duty of the Local Government Board to make paupers, but to relieve pauperism. That seems, somehow or other, to be forgotten. He was the first man to say so.

I do hope that the President of the Local Government Board will pay some attention to the need for a central establishment for the supply of stores. I know that the little tin gods in the shape of guardians will die hard in regard to this matter. After all, the contract system is open to very grave and serious scandals. Everybody is perfectly honest until they are found out. I know the amount of canvassing that goes on, and I think it might be limited to one instead of being practised by twenty-eight or more. About the unemployed I know perfectly well that the Act says, "Such schemes as may be approved by the Local Government Board." My hon. Friend the Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury) has been saying that since nearly all the schemes have failed that have been submitted, it is not unreasonable to let us try our prentice hands and see how much better we can do But there are a few people who think that a little more might be done, and that the time wasted in Parliament might be easily spent on organisation with better results. Then the right hon. Gentleman is asked that he should use his autocratic power. If he uses it benevolently I do-not mind. I am not going to argue about vaccination, though I think the way out of it is to have salaries for these men, and not fees. You have sufficient control over them owing to the method of legislation. Coming to the children, everybody in the House will agree that there are fewer degenerates in the country than there used to be, but very few people realise to what this change is due. I wish the House had a little longer memory about children. We live only for to-day; all our evils and troubles are just at this moment, and it is said that such things never happened before.

Reference has been made to the boarding out system, and I might interject that Oliver Twist was boarded out, and though I will not say anything about Oliver Twist, yet the method was not a success. But, in spite of all that had gone on before, it is only within the last twelve years that you have a really better system. When you had the Poor Law Schools Committee of Inquiry, the Children's Committee, everyone had gone mad about scattered homes. Everyone thought that what you wanted were scattered homes with mothers; that you could get mothers just as you would take on dock labourers, and that you had only to go to the street corner to get a woman to take charge of twelve or fourteen children. In one Poor Law union I visited a scattered home with sixteen children. I said, "I do not think any workman has got sixteen children under fourteen years of age." They said I was a captious critic, and that I did not understand. I pointed out to the young woman that the children were perfectly clean, so clean that you could pick them out from anybody else's children. I said that did not seem quite like home, and that you could not get clean boys on a Friday afternoon in an ordinary working man's home. When you have learned social reform out of a book it is such a difficult thing for you to have to clean and dress kids after doing a hard day's washing. These little homes have become a kind of institution, with sixteen children for one woman. That is a great deal too much. I think four children, is about enough. But as lately as twelve years ago a conference was held in London on this very point, and a representative of the people got up and said: "It is no part of our duty to be discussing the education of these children. The law says you may not send them to work before they are eight years of age, and therefore it presupposes that you may send them to work when they are eight years of age."

Less than twelve years ago that was said in this great city that you had no right to educate those children. Public opinion has gone a long way since then, owing to the terrible row that was made on that particular occasion—I will not say it was quite so bad as the scene here last Monday week, but it was something like that— when we shouted out, "We are not here to listen to any one who is going to advocate child slavery." Then we pleaded that these children should have the same facilities to acquire technical and higher education as were given to children in ordinary elementary schools. They said that these were the children of drunken, thriftless, worthless parents. I have heard that said here. It seems to me a kind of high falutin, rhetoric which will carry people away who do not understand. I said "your higher and technical education are now paid for out of the wine and spirit duties. If there are any children in the world who deserve to have their share of it is these particular children." They never heard such a wild, revolutionary proposal in their lives.

The end was that a resolution was carried by which these children were entitled to a share of the technical education of the country; and it is strange after what we have heard this afternoon about children being neglected in some places that one of the first county scholarships was won by a Poor Law child. I will undertake to say, as regards some of these schools, that I know that both for swimming, singing, and physical exercise the children will compete with any children in the country, and it has been said that they could even compare in buildings and equipments with Eton and Harrow, which is very shocking when you come to think of it. But, after all, these children of the State have the right to be looked after properly, and I am glad that these youngsters have got the advantage and that it is going to be kept up. The Poor Law child of to-day is not the Poor Law child of twelve or fourteen years ago. Certainly no comparison is possible. He is a bright intelligent child, and just as well able to take care of himself in any society or any company as any other child; and in physique and mental capacity he can fully hold his own. I want that to go on. But if there is any real desire in what has been said as to removing children from the care of the Poor Law I say that the day has now come when every child should be taken away entirely from the Poor Law and put under the education authority. They should have no association with the Poor Law.

My mind always goes back to the day when I went with my mother to a board of Poor Law guardians, holding on to her skirt, and heard a homily read by the chairman, who sat in a big chair and pointed at me, a giant figure of eight years old, and said, "It is time that that boy was getting his own living." I like to think of these things. I know how my little heart was terrified in those days, and I remember when my mother came out of the room big tears were rolling down her cheeks. I hate that board of guardians to this very day. Why should they have associated with it children in their misfortune? There was no question of drunkenness in that family? Why should we have gone there at all? Why should little children be asked to carry domestic burdens that belong to the man and the woman and not to the child? So I and my colleague on my right absolutely declined to allow children to go to boards of guardians at all. Since those days we have removed the control of education from the guardians. The examination of the education of these children is now under the Board of Education. The teachers are certified. Why not go a step further and say that all the children should be removed. A stroke of the pen could do it. But I do fear that these little tin gods, the guardians, will say once more, "Have not we looked after these children efficiently? Cannot we be allowed to control them?" I say, "No, their very association with you is detrimental to the interests of the children, and they should be transferred to the care of the State."

You cannot say that cannot be done now, because every class of child is now under the Education Department. You have got even little criminals in reformatory schools under the education committees of some towns, and you have got industrial schools under an education authority. Surely the children who are in these places only because they are poor, or their parents are poor, are as much entitled to consideration as the other children. They are more entitled, because to me a child is the biggest thing in the world, and nothing else matters. As long as I see the children doing well and getting a fair chance I do not worry about anything else. I am not one of these men who talk about the children of to-day being the men and women of to-morrow. I realise that the children of to-day are going to be the citizens and the great administrators of a great Empire tomorrow. Therefore, it is all the more important that they should be trained with a strong, independent spirit. We may have to talk a year or two longer to get this done, but when I see what has happened within the last fifteen years, and the enormous strides made and the better facilities given to Poor Law children, I do hope and believe that the day is not far distant when the State will realise its obligations to these children and see that they are not given to the Poor Law guardian at all, but that as they are the children of the State they shall be put under the educational authority of the State and have a square chance. It is not a wild dream to me to think that the boys who at this moment are in charge of the Poor Law authorities at Poplar may be playing some of these days at Lords against Eton, and I "will undertake to say that they will beat them too.

Mr. WILLIAM BOYLE

In addition to the many grievances which have already been brought before the Committee, I regret to say that I have still another grievance. My object in rising to support the reduction of the right hon. Gentleman's salary is in order to enable me to bring before the attention of the Committee a case which affects very grievously one of my Constituents. Locally I may say that there is very great indignation owing to the harsh treatment that has been meted out by the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board. To give the Committee an idea how strong is the feeling in this particular locality I may mention that at a meeting of the board of guardians held two days ago it was decided, by twenty votes to thirteen, that until they got some satisfactory explanation of the conduct of the President of the Local Government Board they would refuse to attend any more meetings of the board of guardians. I will endeavour as briefly as possible to call the attention of the Committee to what has taken place. Last January, a certain unfortunate labourer living in a village named Whissonsett, attempted to commit suicide by cutting his throat, at about seven or eight o'clock in the evening. A doctor was called in, and at two o'clock in the morning this unfortunate man arrived at the workhouse situated at Gressenhall, in the Mitford and Launditch Union, and admission was demanded for him by two policemen in whose charge he was, and who were armed with the following certificates, which they presented to the master of the workhouse: I have seen the man Barker, who is suffering from cut throat, but no vessel has been injured, etc., and us he cannot be looked after at home, I have given him this order for admission. That is signed. In addition there was presented to the workhouse master the following:— Please admit Robert Barker, a parishioner of Whissonsett, to the union infirmary. When the policemen arrived at the workhouse, they had a personal interview with the workhouse master, who for reasons which I will explain, refused to admit this unfortunate individual. The workhouse master was at that time aware that in December, 1900, the board of guardians found the very gravest fault with the admittance into the workhouse of a certain lunatic, and inasmuch as the workhouse is not in any way suitable to receive lunatics, on 24th December they adopted the following resolutions:— Resolved, that the relieving officer be instructed not to bring lunatics to the workhouse, as there is no proper accommodation for them. On the 6th June, 1904, the question was again brought up, and the following resolution was passed:— Resolved, that the clerk write to the Superintendent of Police at East Dereham, informing him that there is no proper accommodation at the workhouse for the reception of lunatics, and that if the police have to deal with lunatics they should be sent direct to the asylum. There may have been a want of judgment on the part of the workhouse master; that I am perfectly willing to admit. He possibly erred in judgment in not admitting this unfortunate person at two o'clock in the morning; nevertheless, you must bear in mind, before you come to a definite decision as to whether this workhouse master erred or not, that he is an officer of the board of guardians, and the permanency of his position more or less depended upon his having the goodwill of the masters whom ho served. Recollecting these two resolutions that were passed, and remembering that a man who has attempted to commit suicide in nine cases out of ten, if death ensue, is pronounced by the coroner's jury to have committed the act while insane, it could not be said that he did anything more than err in judgment when he refused to admit this man at that early hour of the morning. The result was that the man was driven back to his own home, a distance of five miles. No harm resulted from his having been brought to the workhouse and having been returned to his home, because within a week he was perfectly well and was about again. I want especially to draw the attention of the Committee to the certificate of the doctor, in which he distinctly stated that although the man had cut his throat, no vessel, etc., was injured. We should have heard prob- ably nothing more about this case, and it would have been passed over, had it not been that the rector of the village, Whissonsett, wrote a letter to the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board on the 9th January.

I must be perfectly candid with the Committee by stating that had I received the letter I should certainly have taken the view which the right hon. Gentleman took. But the statements in this letter are absolutely inaccurate, and what we complain of is that those statements have never been properly looked into and endorsed by the right hon. Gentleman. He has taken the word of the parson of Whissonsett, who wrote to the right hon. Gentleman immediately after the event took place. We all know that it is very often best before sending off a letter to sleep over it; but this gentleman refused to give himself a few hours' consideration, but at once wrote a most indignant letter to the right hon. Gentleman. I can perfectly well understand myself, if the right hon. Gentleman believed the statements this letter contained, that he considered he was justified in taking the action which he eventually took. I will not read the whole of the letter, though I am prepared to do so if any member of the Committee desires it; but among the various passages which this letter contains is a statement that the doctor wrote a strongly-worded memorandum as to the gravity of the case. Here is the certificate which he wrote, and which I have read to the Committee, and it shows that there was no urgency. On the contrary, it distinctly states that there is no vessel injured. From the certificate itself we can infer that there was no immediate danger to the man as the result of the attempt to cut his throat. Of course, when the right hon. Gentleman received a letter of that sort, stating that the workhouse master in my Division absolutely ignored the endorsement on the doctor's certificate marking the case as urgent, there appeared to be some reason for the very harsh treatment that the right hon. Gentleman meted out to one of my Constituents. But it was not so, and as far as that particular point goes, the certificate I have read is in itself proof that it was not urgent.

The next paragraph of the letter complained that the workhouse master had not come downstairs to interview the policemen. We deny that. It is absolutely untrue. I myself have had an interview with the workhouse master, and I have seen members of the board of guardians, and they all absolutely deny the statement. On the contrary, the workhouse master came downstairs, and had a personal interview with the policeman, and told them why it was he was unable to admit this unfortunate man into the workhouse. Then again, further down in the letter, the rector complained that in an interview with the workhouse master he was treated in an uncivil way. I do not want, however, to labour the question of the letter, but there is no doubt that a certain amount of ill-feeling existed between the workhouse master and this gentleman, the rector of this village of Whissonsett; and the result was that the rector went home and wrote this letter, which is the cause of the whole of the trouble and which has resulted in very great harm having been done to one of my Constituents. There followed various letters backwards and forwards between the board of guardians and the Local Government Board. With these I will not trouble the Committee. The right hon. Gentleman first sent a copy of the rector's letter to the board of guardians, and, to be as brief as possible, I will now turn to the letter which was written by the Local Government Board on the 21st March of this year. This is what the Assistant-Secretary of the Local Government Board wrote:— The Board have caused further inquiry to be made into the circumstances by their inspector, Mr. Hervey, and have given the matter their careful consideration. It appears to them that Mr. Neville was most seriously to blame in refusing to admit Robert Barker, and they regard his conduct in the case as so unsatisfactory, that they would not feel justified in permitting him to retain the responsible position of muster of the workhouse. The Board have accordingly this day addressed to in. Neville a letter, a copy of which is enclosed, requiring him forthwith to place his resignation of the above-mentioned office in the hands of the guardians. 6.0.P.M.

What we complain of is that we have never been informed as to what this inspector, Captain Hervey, who is referred to in this letter, reported to the Local Government Board. We do not really know, and it is one of the grievances which we have against the Local Government Board that we have never been told, nor has it ever been in any way intimated to us, whether there is anything we do not know of that has been brought against this workhouse master, and marked against him at the Local Government Board. On 14th April, in spite of that letter, the board of guardians passed the following resolution:— Resolved, that the guardians have heard with much surprise of the decision of the Local Government Board calling on the master to resign. They regret the Local Government Board have taken such action, and are unanimous in asking the Local Government Board to reconsider the case. The guardians maintain that they themselves were equally responsible, and in the meantime the guardians do not advise the master to tender his resignation. The clerk, in forwarding that to the Local Government Board, pointed out that it was passed unanimously by the guardians at a meeting at which forty-three members were present out of a total of sixty-three. On the strength of that resolution I think the Committee would naturally infer that an investigation should have taken place. The inspector has not made a proper investigation. He has never attempted to interview the board of guardians. He has, on one or two occasions, had interviews, separately and privately, with one or two of the members of the board, but nothing official has ever been brought before the board of guardians, and altogether they have been ignored. The case does not end here. While all this correspondence was going on one can imagine that the workhouse master was feeling very much annoyed, and his wife was in very much the same condition. In May, his wife, through ill-health, broke down, and the doctor informed the unfortunate woman that she was no longer capable of carrying on her work in the workhouse, and, in consequence, the doctor recommended her to resign. Automatically, under certain rules, when a matron resigns the master has to go, and, consequently, the resignation which had been called for by the Local Government Board was ignored, because the resignation of the matron automatically completed the question as to whether the master should resign or not.

I have not risen this evening to ask that resignation to be in any way considered, or to ask the Local Government Board to reappoint this man in the position of master of the workhouse. What I have risen to ask the President of the Local Government Board is this: Here is an unfortunate man who, possibly, I will allow, may have erred in his judgment in not admitting the man to the workhouse after he had attempted to commit suicide. But is it right that a man who has served the Local Government Board for no less than twenty years without a single mark against him should, because he has made one mistake, be dismissed without being told what he is dismissed for. This man has got a future before him; he is yet a young man, and to-day there is a sort of slur upon his character. He resigned because his wife became ill, but when he goes to find new employment he will be told he has been dismissed by the Local Government Board or that his resignation was demanded by the Local Government Board, and naturally a new employer will ask what is the trouble. What we ask the right hon. Gentleman to do is this, to have a public inquiry. We do not say that we are right, but what we do say is that this action of the Local Government Board has been taken upon a letter written by the rector of the parish and that the information of that letter is absolutely incorrect. I appeal to the right hon. Gentleman, and very strongly, to consider whether the man is not entitled to a public inquiry in order that he may know and that the whole community may know, what there is against him. I cannot believe that the right hon. Gentleman, whose reputation for fair play is well known, both inside and outside the House, can possibly say that a man with twenty years' service, without a bad mark against him, should, because he makes one mistake, be forced to resign. It is incredible. We have all made mistakes. Is there a single man in this House who can get up and say that he has never made a mistake? If the workhouse master made a mistake, I say by all means reprimand him and tell him he is wrong. But for one single mistake to call for his resignation appears to me to be incredible. I cannot believe the right hon. Gentleman himself can be a party to such treatment.

Local feeling on this matter in my Division is running excessively high. Nobody has any idea of the indignation that exists over the harsh treatment that has been meted out to this unfortunate Constituent of mine. I am bound to say I feel very strongly myself on the subject, and unless fair play is given to this individual the effigy of the right hon. Gentleman will be burned in the market place. [Laughter.] It is no laughing matter for the right hon. Gentleman. This man has never been allowed to hear what is against him, and if there is anything against him and if he has done wrong, then he must accept his punishment. We do not know what grievance there is against the man. We simply know that he made one mistake, and if he is to be punished in this way I think it is the most unheard of and cruel case that has ever been brought to the attention of a Committee of this honourable House. The board of guardians feel that they have been completely ignored; they have never been allowed to express an opinion, and they have gone so far as to say that until they receive a copy of the Local Government inspector's report they will refuse any longer to attend meetings of the board. Consequently, the Poor Law will not be properly administered. I read the letter of the rector of Whissonsett on which the right hon. Gentleman acted. I am quite willing to say that I can understand his having probably jumped to the conclusion that, inasmuch as that letter was accurate, that he was justified in taking the step he took. Let him take my word for it that the statements I have made, as far as I believe, are absolutely correct and accurate. Let me beg of the right hon. Gentleman to see fair play carried out and to see that a public investigation is held at which both sides may be heard. If the result is such as that taken by the right hon. Gentleman then let this workhouse master take his punishment. If not give him a good clean conduct sheet in order that he may start his new life as every man has the right to do.

Mr. ESSEX

I do not rise to invite the right hon. Gentleman to make provision for the burning of his effigy, but rather for the raising of a statue to him in some rural parishes. I am going to ask him to give his attention to an action of rural justices, which is extremely common, and which, I think, could be remedied at a very small cost indeed. I desire to call the attention of the Committee to the law dealing with the filial liability for maintenance of parents. The law at present allows the justices to decide whether or not an order shall be made on a son or daughter to contribute to the cost of the maintenance of their dependent parent or parents. The law is laid down in a statute dating back to the forty-third year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The justices in petty sessions may make an order for the relief of the parent on the child being of sufficient ability to do so. In Stone's Justices Manual there is the following comment:— The meaning of these words is left to the absolute discretion of the justices in Petty Sessions The condition of the labouring class was such in A.D. 1601 that it cannot be considered labourers were included or were intended to be included as of 'sufficient ability' in the statute of Elizabeth which imposed a penalty of one pound a month (the equivalent of five pounds a month of our present money) in case of failure to perform the order. We doubt whether persons of that class, earning the ordinary weekly wages of thirteen shillings or fourteen shillings a week, are within these statutes which ought to be strictly interpreted. On 5th July, 1906, I put a question to the right hon. Gentleman:— Whether, in view of the fact that in many Poor-Law districts, sons, whose weekly wages are thirteen shillings or less per week, are compelled to contribute to the cost of Poor-Law relief to their indigent parents, he will issue recommendations to such Poor-Law authorities discouraging such demands? or whether he proposes to presently introduce legislation fixing a minimum scale of income below which a son or daughter may not legally he called upon to contribute to parental support? The reply of the right hon. Gentleman was:— Children are only liable to contribute to the maintenance of their parents when, being of sufficient ability to make a contribution, they are required by an order of the justices to do so. Any question of the ability of a son or daughter to contribute is at the decision of the justices. He finished up his reply by saying that the question of the ability of a son or daughter to contribute was in the decision of the justices. That I felt was by no means satisfactory, and I set to work to provide the right hon. Gentleman with cases of what I considered serious hardship which might fortify him in giving expression to the sympathy for the cause of struggling and oppressed labour which he has entertained through a long and honourable career.

I have a case here which is only one of many. I quote it as a typical case, neither better nor worse than many such cases which have come under my observation. It is that of an old Gloucestershire carter, seventy-four years of age. He brings up a family, while never earning more than about 13s. or 14s. a week; he lives respectably until seventy years of age, and at last, his body giving out, becomes hopelessly infirm, goes to the parish, and asks for relief. After the manner common until the present Government came into power, there was nothing for it but for him to get the charity of the Poor Law authorities, who decided that in his case they would give 2s. 6d. and a loaf of bread per week. This they did. The Poor Law authorities, having let themselves go in this wild and extravagant generosity, sorted out the poor man's children, and found that one was a wealthy person in receipt of 16s. per week, out of which he had to provide for himself and his family. They naturally went for him. A man with such a large income ought to be taxed fairly heavily for the extravagant outlay which the authorities were incurring. They went for him to the tune of 1s. a week. He got hopelessly into arrears, and a summons has been issued against him in respect of them. There was another son with a large income, though not so large as that of his more fortunate brother, but he had a larger family—two children—to provide for out of it. He received 12s. a week net for his labour, and this capitalist, the Poor Law authorities thought, should make some contribution towards the support of his aged parent. They went for him at petty sessions, and compelled him to pay 1s a week. In the meantime the old man, unable to live on 2s. 6d. and a loaf per week, seems to have been bandied about from pillar to post, getting lodging where he could, sometimes with a daughter, sometimes with a son. When it was with a son, the 2s. 6d. went down to 1s. 6d., and the son was expected to make up the other shilling.

In 1910 the arrears accumulated, and these two wealthy men had arrears amounting to £2 12s. against them. The relieving officer was on their track at once, and these iniquitous persons were brought up before petty sessions. I and others are ready to speak of the shortcomings of the petty sessional business of the country, but on this occasion the common sense and justice of the magistrates forbade their laying this iniquitous burden upon these poor men, and the case was sent back to the guardians for further consideration. A little while after, the relieving officer returned to the charge, and in November got a verdict for 10s. to be paid out of the £2 12s. A distress warrant was issued, but conscience seems to have been at work, and it was not executed until the following March. The wife had to go up and down the village borrowing a shilling here and 2s. 6d. there as best she could from her poor neighbours. Twelve shillings were scraped together to satisfy the order and costs, and the man thought he was free, but he forgot that there had been arrears of a shilling a week accumulating in the interval between August, when the distress warrant was applied for, and March, when it was executed, and the relieving officer turned up for these further accumulated arrears. The whole sorry story need not be lengthened. It is a typical case, which can be paralleled by scores and scores up and down the country. What I plead for is that there should be fixed a limit below which it should not be possible for any bench of magistrates or other authority to say that a man or woman shall be liable to make any contribution whatsoever toward the support of their parents. I do not want to weaken that proper sense of liability and obligation which in the moral state in which most of us are does not need to be insisted upon. But you ought not to allow it any longer to be possible for a body of gentlemen to be able to put the screw on a poor man to contribute to the support of his parents simply on the information that he is earning 12s. or 14s. a week. The old man to whom I have referred, like many another, had lived a useful hardworking life for a long stretch of years.

The CHAIRMAN

Does the hon. Member suggest that the alteration he desires can be made by order of the Local Government Board?

Mr. ESSEX

I was going to show how that could be done. In July, 1906, I asked the right hon. Gentleman whether he would be able to issue instructions to the various local authorities under his control impressing upon them the desirability of taking a modern interpretation of the words of this old-fashioned Act, and, if necessary, to bring in a short Act modifying the older enactment. The late Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman said that something would doubtless be done, but nothing has been done. It is my duty, on behalf of the labouring class, who, under a wrongful interpretation of that Act, are constantly persecuted, to bring forward this typical case and to appeal to the undoubted good heart of the right hon. Gentleman to do what he can, and—if you suggest that the law at present is the stronger—to set to work, with the general support of the Committee, to make the law more humane.

Mr. RUPERT GWYNNE

It is possible —indeed, probable—that when the right hon. Gentleman gets up to reply to the various and varied criticisms which have been levelled against him, he may claim that the scanty attendance shows that there is a very general feeling of satisfaction on both sides with his administration of the Local Government Board. That may, or may not, be the case. At any rate, in regard to certain criticisms which have been made this afternoon, it would be difficult to lay the blame directly at the door of the President himself or of his Department. My object in rising is to support my hon. Friend (Mr. Peto) in calling attention to the grievance of the vaccination officers. In reply to the appeal last year that something should be done to remove the hardship under which these officers are suffering, the right hon. Gentleman said that there were very few cases of real hardship. I think he said that he knew of only three cases where officers had lost more than £50 a year. But I submit that it is impossible for the Local Government Board or for the right hon. Gentleman to know where these cases of hard- ship arise, because out of 1,420 vaccination officers no fewer than 1,020 hold other offices, and it is perfectly obvious that a man holding another office under a board of guardians would be hardly likely to bring forward a grievance against that board in regard to his services as vaccination officer, knowing full well that he might incur the displeasure of the board in regard to his other office. It is perfectly true that during the last year or two the right hon. Gentleman has expressed sympathy with these officers, but he has failed to put on, in regard to this matter, the pressure which the Local Government Board are so well able to use when they want to. I cannot help feeling that if these officers had been more in number and had been able to exert greater influence their grievance would perhaps have been dealt with earlier. The right hon. Gentleman, in reply to a supplementary question not long ago, told me that he was doing what he could to bring about a better state of affairs, and to remedy the grievance by urging boards of guardians to meet the case by gratituties. But he added that it was impossible always to have an adequate salary. I suggest that the right hon. Gentleman himself, at any rate, should be in sympathy with the idea of giving all men an adequate salary for similar work. It was a matter with which the House dealt in regard to himself, and certainly on that occasion he agreed that it was right that if a man was doing similar work he should be given a similar salary to that paid to his colleagues. I trust that this matter will be dealt with, and that when the right hon. Gentleman replies he will give us an assurance that adequate steps will be taken to deal with these cases of undoubted hardship.

Mr. MORRELL

I rise not for the purpose of criticising the President of the Local Government Board, but really to invite him, when he comes to make his reply, to give us some information on a question which has not yet been touched upon—a very important question—the administration of the Housing Acts, especially the Housing and Town Planning Act passed in 1909. In making that request my mind goes back to an afternoon in May, 1908, when the right hon. Gentleman was engaged in introducing the Second Reading of this Bill to the House. I remember he was then in what we may describe as one of his most exuberant moods. He drew a very rosy and attractive picture of what this Bill, when it became an Act, was going to do to improve the housing conditions of the people of this country. Its object was, as he said, to secure for the working classes more homes, better houses, prettier streets. He told us how he was going to provide "the house beautiful, the town dignified, the city magnificent, and the suburb salubrious." I listened with great interest, and in great hope, to the very eloquent speech of the right hon. Gentleman. In all seriousness I say that on that occasion I was particularly glad that he stated frankly that it was his intention most of all, in producing that Act, to remedy the condition of housing in the rural districts.

I therefore want him to tell us how far the hopes which he then held out to this House as to the improvement of housing have been realised during the two years In which that Act has been in operation. I remember he justified the introduction of the Bill by giving us some figures as to the state of rural housing in 1908. He told us that seventy-eight villages contained over 4,000 cottages, and of these latter 25 per cent. were "bad" or "extremely bad." In 240 more villages, with 10,000 dwellings, 50 per cent. of the cottages were in a "bad" condition. In thirty villages into which they had inquired there was gross overcrowding. He told us that everywhere there was great deficiency in these matters, and he quoted the "Estates Gazette," which, as he rightly said, was not inclined to exaggerate in a matter of this sort. The "Gazette" said:— There is not a spare cottage to-day in England. This was quoted as illustrating the shortness of houses in the rural districts. I do not suppose that everything has been put right in the short time that has elapsed since then, but I would like him to be able to tell us what has been done, at any rate, in that direction. Of course, it is not necessary for me to point out to the Committee that the rural side of this question especially is of enormous importance; it is to all, to those who are engaged in the towns, to the artisans, to the agricultural classes. Everyone knows the state of things that is due to the fact that people simply cannot get cottages to live in in these villages.

I know a case that occurred only the other day in the village in which I live. A man earning good wages as a carpenter was obliged to give up the cottage for which he was content to pay 3s. 6d. a week and to drift into the town of Reading to pursue his living there in order to make way for the week-ender who was going down to take his cottage. It is quite impossible in the present state of things to persuade the rural district councils, or the local landlords, to do anything to provide more cottages for this sort of man. More especially would I call the attention of the right hon. Gentleman to this case, for sometimes when we draw attention to these facts, he says: "I wish hon. Members, instead of endeavouring to stimulate me would stimulate the local authorities." I think he said that at the beginning of the Session. I am sure he will agree with me that he is in a better position than I am to stimulate the local authorities when they fail in their duty under this Act. We all recognise that in these rural districts the public opinion is necessarily very weak. The population is so scattered that it is very difficult to get men to serve on these local authorities. On the presumption, therefore, that these Acts are to be carried out we must depend a great deal upon the action of the Local Government Board. Therefore, I would like to ask the right hon. Gentleman to tell us whether the Board have received any complaint under Section 10 either from a local authority or from four inhabited householders. With regard to Part II. or III, I would ask whether any orders have yet been made either upon a rural district council or a county council with regard to carrying out of this Housing Act? I would like to know whether the Local Government Board have yet found that any local authority has failed in its district in inspection under this Act; failed, that is, to inspect the houses which is one of the most important parts of its duties, and one which is, in my experience, easily neglected by local authorities?

With regard to the question of town planning, I hope also that the right hon. Gentleman will be able to give us some information. Again I would recall his speech and the pictures which he drew of the excellent arrangements that were being made at Bournville and Hampstead, which he contrasted with the suburbs which are going up all around our great towns. I have got his words here. He called it:— The intolerable meanness and squalor which comes from the unregulated plans for building around our towns. The right hon. Gentleman went so far as to express the belief that when the Bill had been in operation for two or three years we might hope for better results. I would like to ask, after two years, how many local authorities have already applied for orders for town planning schemes? How many schemes are in process of being carried out? And altogether what information he can give us as to the working of this part of the Act? I agree it is a very difficult and experimental piece of legislation. One cannot hope to have very quick results. But I am sure the House will welcome, both with regard to housing and town planning, any information which the right hon. Gentleman is able to give us of the efforts which have been made to the Local Government Board to carry out this great measure.

Mr. CASSEL

I also rise to call the attention of the Committee to a matter under the Housing Acts, but it is of a very different character from that raised by the hon. Member who has just sat down. The point I wish to raise is the question of appeals to the Local Government Board against closing and demolition orders. I claim to be second to none in regarding it as a most serious offence for houses tenanted by the working classes to be in such a condition as to be dangerous to health or to be uninhabitable. I think it is a serious offence, and one which does, and ought to, entail serious consequences. It is just because I consider it a serious offence and because I consider that it ought to involve serious consequences that I also think that a man ought to have a fair trial before he is convicted of that offence. That trial ought to take place under judicial conditions. I do not wish in the least to accuse the right hon. Gentleman personally of any unfairness. Nothing is further from my mind. What I do want to attack is the arbitrary system of administration under which these appeals are working. The right hon. Gentleman has been called this afternoon a "bureaucrat" and a "benevolent despot." It may be that in matters of administration a benevolent despotism may be the best form of government, but in matters judicial neither a benevolent despot nor a bureaucrat is in the right place. Let me mention two actual cases which have arisen.

The first was in Camberwell. The borough council had made a closing order in respect of certain premises. When a closing order has been in operation for three months it is followed by a demolition order involving the destruction, in this case of premises of considerable value. There is a right of appeal to the Local Government Board. The owner in question did appeal, and was successful in his appeal. But it was a Pyrrhic victory in the method under which this Act is administered. The first thing that happened was that notices, such as are posted up at the police stations, were placarded on the door of every church and on the town hall doors, stating that an order had been made against this owner as having premises which were in an uninhabitable condition. In fact, it was subsequently found that they were not so! Anything more serious both for the man personally and for the value of his property can hardly be conceived. The three days' trial took place before the inspector. It was a most expensive affair. Fortunately, this man was a well-to-do owner. If he had been a poor man he could never have stood the racket of the inquiry. Being a well-to-do owner, and a fighter, he fought the Local Government Board and the local authority, and the Local Government Board was forced to come to the conclusion on the report of their inspector that they could not confirm the closing order. What did the Board do in regard to the question of costs? They ordered the borough council to pay the costs of the Local Government Board, but they let the owner whistle for his costs, or pay them himself.

Though he won the case it was almost more than the property was worth. For in the first place he was placarded as a man who had property unfit for human habitation, and having won his case he has lost more money than his properly is worth. He has had no opportunity whatever to go to any judicial tribunal. Moreover, the party who decides this question ultimately is the Local Government Board, and he never had an opportunity of going before that tribunal at all. He went before the inspector, and the inspector made his report to the Local Government Board. That report was treated as a confidential document, and though he asked to see it he was not allowed to see it, so that he does not know what was the evidence or what were the facts placed before the tribunal which ultimately decided his case. I will give another case in which the owner was unsuccessful. It was the same owner, but in this case the property was situated at Hampstead. An order was made in this case also. Having had the Camberwell experience before him, the owner said, "I would sooner not go before the local inquiry at all: if I win, they will not pay my costs." He wrote to the Local Government Board, saying he would not go to the inquiry, but he sent reports of experts of very high standing. He sent a report from the president of the Sanitary Institute (Dr. Wynter Blythe). That report said:— I unhesitatingly state that the houses at the present time are fit for occupation, and the action of the sanitary authority is inexplicable. He sent in also the report of Messrs. Potter, surveyors, who stated: "We are astounded to find that the council think it worth their while to pay an inspector to set out specifications containing such trivial complaints." Some of the complaints related to the papering of the houses and to the window sills and matters of that kind. As I said, this man will not agree to incur further expenditure in coming before the inquiry, so he sent these reports to the President of the Local Government Board and asked him to give him an opportunity of being heard. He said: "I am not going to incur again the cost of going before an inquiry and of being mulcted in costs, even if I win and therefore as the Local Government Board is the tribunal I asked to be heard by the Board, and I send you evidence which I had and which, therefore, you will be able to examine as well as if I went before the inquiry." His letter, asking for that right, was merely acknowledged, and the next communication he got—he did not attend the inquiry, and therefore I am not in a position to tell the Committee what occurred at the inquiry—was a letter intimating that an order was to be issued confirming the decision of the local authority, and the result would be that the premises would have to be closed, and would be subject to demolition. Whatever the rights or wrongs of the case may be is not the point. The point is whether a man ought not to have an opportunity of at least stating his case before the tribunal by whom he is to be judged. The inspector reports to the Board and, therefore, I submit, the man has a right to go before that tribunal, which is before the President of the Local Government Board, and state his case to him.

Upon these fact I asked the right hon. Gentleman on the 17th of July "whether he would give this owner the right of stating his case to the Local Government Board?" I stated the facts that he had refused to attend the inquiry, and I asked the right hon. Gentleman whether in spite of that he would not give the man an opportunity of being heard. What the right hon. Gentleman said in reply was this: "If the hon. and learned Gentleman himself knew all the special circumstances applying to this very special litigant I do not think he would press me to do what he asks me to do." I cannot conceive any special circumstances which would not entitle this man to be heard. The right hon. Gentleman suggested that there were circumstances in this case of which I was ignorant, and which if I knew I would not press that this man should get a hearing. I asked to-day what the special circumstances are, and the answer I received simply contained the facts which I stated in my own question. The right hon. Gentleman assents to that. Then why did he in his answer say that "if the hon. Gentleman himself knew the special circumstances," when he was alluding to special circumstances, which from the nature of my question at that time he was aware I did know. I now ask the right hon. Gentleman this. The owner in this case feels that the answer of the right hon. Gentleman was capable of being interpreted in some way as a personal reflection upon himself. I am quite sure the right hon. Gentleman did not intend it in that sense, and I ask him in his reply this afternoon to give expression to that view publicly, as the question and the answer have been published, and in addition I press the right hon. Gentleman to give an opportunity to this gentleman of stating his case to him in view of the fact that in the first case, notwithstanding his victory, he was mulcted in costs.

With regard to this procedure, which is an appeal to the Local Government Board and not to a judicial tribunal, may I point out that there have been thirteen borough councils in London and thirty-nine local authorities in the Provinces who have passed resolutions strongly disapproving of that form of procedure. Of course on this occasion it is impossible for me to discuss any legislative proposal, but I do certainly think that where it is shown that there is a case where there are really questions of a judicial nature relating to property and involving serious questions to property owners to be considered, that the time has come when it would be useful to bring forward some amending Act. This particular owner is a well-to-do man, and is not afraid to fight the right hon. Gentleman or the local authority. He has a great deal of property in something like twenty or twenty- one boroughs in London, and there have been a good many cases in which he fought the local authorities and has nearly always won. But I ask the right hon. Gentleman to remember how many cases there must be of men who cannot afford to fight, and that is the serious matter. I put it again to the right hon. Gentleman that as a result of the expression of opinion from the local authorities upon this matter whether the time has not come when there ought to be an appeal to a tribunal which is a judicial tribunal and which could hear the facts and decide upon them. As to the right hon. Gentleman himself, I would accept him as the most fair-minded man in the world, and I will assume that the President of the Local Government Board for the time being is as fair-minded a man as could be found, but I do not think it right that he should have the final decision upon a report which is a confidential document and prepared for him by his own inspector.

Mr. LEACH

Unlike most of those who spoke to-day upon both sides of the House, I have neither a grievance to air nor a complaint to make. I want rather to speak a few words of earnest commendation of the right hon. Gentleman who presides over the Department whose affairs we are discussing, assisted by his excellent staff. For a long time in the past the Local Government Board was not very popular, and outside this House, as well as inside it, it was always easy to get a cheer if you made an attack upon that Department. I am not quite sure that I did not often do that myself, but under the rule of the present President there has been introduced into the Department of the Local Government Board a more humane spirit than characterised it for a long time previous. I think the Department has softened the rigours of the life of the poor, and is teaching guardians to regard themselves as guardians of the poor rather than merely as guardians of the rates. And if only for what the Local Government Board has done on behalf of the children I should be very willing to give them commendation. They have made great efforts and are still making great efforts to keep the children who come under the care of the poor system, apart from the taint of the workhouses. That is a most excellent thing. In my judgment the Poor Law children ought to be kept entirely separate from the workhouse.

If I may say a few more words—I never speak for very long, and I think in that way I am an example to Gentlemen on both sides of the House—I would refer to the complaints that have been made about vaccination officers. I am in favour of good wages for good work. I have for a great many years past, and am still, of opinion that men who do good work should be well paid for it, and I hope the President of the Local Government Boar3 will approve that sentiment. But I cannot bring my mind to think it is right to pay out of the rates money for work that is not done, and it seems to me that the appeal on behalf of those officers is to pay them for work they do not do. It is admitted that the work they have been accustomed to do has declined owing to the operation of certain Acts of Parliament with which I am quite at variance, because I do not believe in exemption from these Vaccination Acts. I have experience in that direction, and anything that would help, as I believe these Acts do, to save men from small-pox would have my hearty support. I do not understand why such a strong appeal should be made on behalf of using the ratepayers' money to pay big stipends for work which it is well known has declined.

In the early hours of this morning, before the House rose, we had a most eloquent and impassioned appeal from the other side not to put burdens upon the rates, when we were asked to delete Sub-section (4) from the Clause of the Insurance Bill then under discussion. Now almost before the echoes of these eloquent speeches have died away we have Gentlemen opposite appealing to put burdens upon the rates. It seems to me the conversion is very sudden, and I cannot understand it. I am very sorry for any man whose business has declined and whose income is not equal to enabling him to live comfortably. May I call attention now to another matter which the right hon. Gentleman may expect me to be interested in, that is the moral and spiritual provision which is made for inmates of workhouses. I am very glad that there are clergymen of the Church of England to administer to the spiritual welfare of members of their flock who are inmates of workhouses, and that where there are many Roman Catholics there are Catholic priests to perform similar duties. That is very proper, but I should like to say from actual knowledge that the inmates of workhouses ore not all members of the Church of England or Roman Catholics. There are large numbers who are Nonconformists, and they equally should have the right of religious instruction, and of having religious instructors appointed, to administer to their welfare just as much as the Churchman or the Roman Catholic. I should like to ask my right hon. Friend to encourage the guardians in different parts of the kingdom to appoint religious instructors for Nonconformists when it is known that considerable numbers of them are inmates so that they also should have the benefit of such ministrations as they were used to having. I make no complaint against Churchmen or Roman Catholic priests or Jewish rabbis. I know they are all doing good work. What I plead for is that there should be more generous use of the law which permits religious instructors to be appointed in those large institutions where there are many Nonconformist men and women, so that they may receive such religious instruction as they have been used to all their lives. I am very glad to have this opportunity of expressing my hearty approval of the great improvements introduced into the working of the Poor Law system in the last few years, and I hope that the new spirit will be further greatly extended.

7.0 P.M.

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE

I do not in any way desire to censure the President of the Local Government Board. On the contrary, I recognise to the full the great work he has done for the nation since he has occupied the high office he now fills. But, as he is the Minister responsible for the Department which controls assisted emigration, I feel it my duty to press upon him and, through him, upon the Government the urgency of debating the wider policy of emigration within the Empire, a policy in which the Motherland ought to be prepared to take her part. The right hon. Gentleman told the Imperial Conference in 1907 that it was the settled policy of the Government not to vote money for the purposes of emigration. He has repeated that statement to me in this House on many occasions. I do not deny the correctness of the assertion, but I would remind the right hon. Gentleman that on several occasions between 1820 and 1878 money was voted annually by Parliament for the purpose of emigration. At that time our population was very much smaller than it is to-day, and we heard very little about the question of unemployment.

While the continuity of policy has been followed with regard to State grants towards emigration, it has been different with regard to rate-aid—at any rate, as far as powers are concerned. No one can complain that powers are not given in Acts of Parliament to enable money to be spent out of the rates for emigration purposes. In the year 1834 we had an Act of Parliament passed enabling parishes to mortgage their rates to the extent of the sum not exceeding £10 per head of the emigrants. In 1887, when the Local Government Act was before this House in the form of a Bill, a Clause was inserted empowering county councils to advance money for emigration purposes. In the year 1905 we had the Unemployed Workmen's Act, in which powers were inserted to give to distress committees opportunities of using the funds collected from the rates and also from voluntary sources for the purpose of emigration. Except as regards the powers given under the Unemployed Workmen's Act of 1905, I do not think that rate-aid has been very much used for the purpose of emigration except perhaps in the case of those orphans and deserted children who come under the Poor Law—at any rate, the powers of the county council in that respect have never been put into force.

During the last twenty-one years we have been told by the President of the Local Government Board that some 9,300 State children have been sent to Canada by boards of guardians. The right hon. Gentleman seems very proud of this result, but I would like to ask him whether it would not have been quite as easy during that period to have sent to Canada 50,000 of that class of children, a course which would have benefited the children themselves as well as our Dominions oversea. These children were not directly emigrated by the State. They were handed over by the boards of guardians to various philanthropic societies who undertake emigration, and who undertake to send returns to the boards of guardians. I noticed the other day that the President of the Local Government Board said he had nothing but praise for the Dominion Government of Canada for the kindly care they take of the child emigrants who come directly from the right hon. Gentleman's own Department. I join with the President in this praise, but I would remind him that the work done by the Dominion of Canada is not paid for out of Canadian money, but out of funds supplied from this side and sanctioned by his own Department.

Again we learn from the President that 120 distress committees during the last five years have sent 16,000 people to the Dominions. I think that is a mere bagatelle when you consider that in this country we have a population of over 45,000,000 persons. But my object is not so much to deal with proportions as to bring home to the right hon. Gentleman that, if the Government can sanction the use of the ratepayers' money for purposes of emigration, why should they not sanction grants for this purpose from the Exchequer. Emigration, after all, is a national and not a local movement, and as such, if the principle of assistance is conceded as it is, then assistance should come, not so much from the rates as from the Exchequer. The Commonwealth representative, who moved the amended resolution on emigration at the recent Imperial Conference, asked whether any action had been taken by the President of the Local Government Board to carry out the resolution passed at the last conference. To this question the right hon. Gentleman vouchsafed no reply, and naturally so, seeing that the statement he made in 1907 about the Emigrant Information Office—which he said was about to be reconstructed—appear, from answers given to me in this House, to have been made without due consultation with his colleagues. At any rate, he will admit that nothing has been done as regards that office, and he held out no hopes to the Dominion Premiers that anything was going to be done in the future. No one will deny that the President of the Local Government Board made a very important and encouraging statement at the Imperial Conference with regard to emigration, but he entirely avoided the question of assistance. He said:— State aid was not asked for at the last conference and I do not think the members of this conference desire it. I do not quite know what the President of the Local Government Board meant by this, seeing that Mr. Deakin, who proposed the original resolution in 1907, certainly suggested some pecuniary contribution from this side, while Sir Wilfrid Laurier said:— Of course, it goes without saying, that if the Imperial Government were prepared to help and assist us financially, we would only be too glad, to co-operate with them. By a very ingenious method of special pleading, the President of the Local Government Board induced the Premiers to believe that when they asked for assistance they did not want it. These gentlemen fell an easy prey to the persuasion of the right hon. Gentleman and his able colleague the Colonial Secretary, who himself suggested the deletion of the word "assistance" from the resolution before the conference. This the Premiers accepted, and after the word "assistance'' was left out there was not very much left in the resolution itself. If I understand the President of the Local Government Board aright he considers that the Government are doing all they possibly can to help immigration to the Dominions by means of the present machinery. Indeed, it would almost seem that the President is desirous that this House and the public at large should consider that the great increase which has taken place in immigration to the Dominions during the last two years is the direct result of his own handiwork, and that of the Government, whereas the actual facts do not admit of that interpretation. The rise is mainly due to the executive work carried on by the Dominions themselves in this country, and the voluntary agencies who spend large sumsannually in assisting persons to emigrate. Both systems are good, but the withholding of State Grants by the Motherland is unsound from the standpoint of Imperial economy, and unsafe from the standpoint of Imperial defence. What we require is an Imperial system of immigration, fostered and financed by all the Governments directly interested.

What is the position at home which the right hon. Gentleman has to meet? All the while that he is refusing to give State-Grants to emigration and refusing to stimulate rate aid, the population is increasing and the pauper bill is higher than ever. Competition has become so keen in every walk of life that it is no uncommon thing to see two hundred or three hundred persons applying for a post which if it fell vacant in the Colonies no person would be found to take up for the money offered and the hours of work required. There is unrest in the labour world, as hon. Members below the Gangway know. There is not enough work to go round. Boys are entering into competition with their fathers and their grandfathers, and the expectant mother is often asked to provide food for her husband and children. It is not to be wondered at that in the struggle for existence the weakest has to go to the wall. What remedy do the Government offer? They place on the Statute Book laws which, in my opinion, only pauperise the people and destroy individualism. By this kind of legislation they hope to preserve the virility of our race and bring about what we all desire, the greatest good for the greatest number.

I join issue with that, and I ask the President of the Local Government Board to remember that the British Empire is the natural birthright of every British citizen, whether domiciled in the Homeland or the Dominions oversea. And if he would devise some Imperial system of emigration and immigration he would be doing a real national work, as to which he might be able to say the public money has been well expended. Instead of that we find the Government spending millions of money annually assisting able-bodied men and women to eke out a miserable existence without a chance of employment for themselves or their families, and without an opportunity of being able to live comfortably in their old age. The only boon they have to look forward to is an old age pension of a few shillings per week, and under the Bill now before Parliament certain sick and unemployed benefits, which under other conditions of domicile would never be required. In conclusion, I would like to point out that the Report of the Departmental Committee on Emigration recommended that Grants should be given by the Government towards emigration, and that those Grants should be given through the Emigrants Information Office to the voluntary societies. I would like to point out that, the cost of emigrating children on the right hon. Gentleman's own statement is only £11 per head and that the cost of emigrating those persons who have been emigrated through the Distress Committees averaged only £8 per head. In these circumstances I venture to think the right hon. Gentleman cannot deny that it would be far better to spend more public money on emigration than to spend it on manufacturing paupers and destroying individualism.

Mr. JOHN BURNS

I am very much obliged to the hon. Gentleman for enabling me to comply with the undoubted request that I should reply at this moment to the various speeches which have been made. If he will allow me to say so, I will be rather brief in reply to him, not on account of any discourtesy, but because only a month ago at the Imperial Conference I submitted, on behalf of the Government, our views with regard to emigration, State-aided or otherwise. The hon. Gentleman must realise that there are many schools of thought in this country with regard to emigration. There are many people who think that the total number of people whom we are now sending mainly to the Dominions beyond the Seas is sufficiently large already, and that to stimulate that exodus by State funds and by grants now indirectly given would not only be financially wrong but a mistake from the social and political point of view. I ventured to give the facts to the Conference, and it is just as well that some of the facts have been recalled to the mind of the House-by the hon. Member who has just sat down. I may roughly say this on the matter. This year we expect some 300,000 men, women and children to leave the United Kingdom for countries outside Great Britain and Ireland. Whereas ten years ago from 20 to 30 per cent. of them went to the Dominions, this year there will be nearly 80 per cent. So that from the point of view of the volume of emigration it has reached a number nearly large enough, and from the point of going to the proper destination, as expressed by the figure I have given, it is everything that we could regard as satisfactory. The hon. Member went further than that, and said that now that pauperism and its bill was getting higher and higher there was greater need for emigration than there was previously. In view of the birthrate, and other circumstances, to which I need not allude, particularly one, this State has made up its mind for fifty years that State-assisted emigration should not take place. When you have 300,000 people who are leaving the country this year and 80 per cent. are going to the Dominions, and the Dominions themselves are spending a tremendous lot of money in getting people from this country whom they want and whom primarily they have a right to pay for by grants, it seems to me there is no call or justification for State-aided emigration. The hon. Member should have said with regard to the children that the 650 boards of guardians had done something. The 130 distress committees have sent 16,000, at a cost of £8 per head, in the last six years. The Labour Exchanges are increasingly becoming, as opportunities offer, a means of providing correct information. When we take into consideration that some fifty private and semi-private associations, all of which are engaged in this particular work, the Government think, as I expressed it for them at the Conference, that there is no cause proved or need justified for further State or rate money to be expended in sending our people away. My hon. Friend also wanted to know in what sense the Emigration Office is working to-day better than it had previously done. My answer, as expressed by the letters, is that in 1907 our Emigration Office had a total number of letters sent out in connection with this subject of 86,777, and in 1910 it had grown to 132,000.

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE

That is not due to the Emigration Office.

Mr. BURNS

If not, who was it due to? The Emigration Office has improved its methods, extended its organisation, and, as I have just said, its letters have nearly doubled in the last three years. That is evidence that its machinery, so far as is necessary, has kept pace with what is required in the circumstances. I am very glad to say that the War Office has consented that the Army reservists, who serve in His Majesty's Dominions beyond the seas, should be allowed to draw their reserve pay there, a thing they could not do until three or four years ago. That was a wise and good thing to do. It gave great relief to the reservists themselves and enabled sons to join their family, and it has not in any sense interfered with Imperial defence or the patriotism of the reservists who have gone there. On the contrary, in my judgment the reservist is more likely to respond to the call, if unfortunately it should ever come, if he is in good work and getting good food in our own Dominions than if, perhaps, he is out of work or in a casual ward at home, or in damaged health. We all know that in the last war 90 to 98 per cent. of the reservists who got the call responded to the colours, and there is not the least fear that if there was a similar need, the reservists abroad, small in number as they are, would respond equally as well as they did ten or twelve years ago. I must not allow the hon. Member to ride off in his appeal for State-aided emigration, for that is what it amounted to, on the ground that pauperism is getting higher and higher. That is not true. At this moment we have 130,000 fewer paupers in England, that is to say, in June, 1911, than in June, 1910.

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE

What about the bill?

Mr. J. BURNS

That does not at all dispose of the fact. He said that both the paupers and the bill were getting higher and higher. But the bill is getting higher because wealth is increasing, our humanities are expanding, we are treating the smaller number of paupers, as we have a right to do, better than we did. That is one of the reasons why the bill is increasing although the total number of paupers is going down.

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE

Was I not right when I said that the pauper bill was increasing?

Mr. J. BURNS

That is not due to the reason which the hon. Member alleged. It is not due to poverty, misery and pauperism increasing. It is due to the increasing wealth of the community, which allows it to be increasingly generous to the children and the old people who come under its care. If the hon. Member wanted a local instance, I should be able to tell him that in London during the last five years outdoor pauperism diminished by 37 per cent., and in an East End parish it diminished by as much as 56 per cent. Therefore this charge that pauperism is increasing hardly holds good. I come from that to another point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Essex). He brought forward for the attention of the Local Government Board the question of men who have low wages in rural areas being compelled to contribute towards the support of their parents when their wages were not sufficient to justify that deduction. I agree that the particular case made out is a very serious one, but my hands are tied in this matter. The justices have the discretion either to enforce the deduction or not as the facts of the case warrant, and the local justices are very often in a better position to know the local facts than is the President of the Local Government Board at the centre. Where their discretion does not come in, and I am glad it has come in increasingly, when we find a hard case the discretion of the guardians can be exercised. I am glad to say these hard cases are diminishing. My hon. Friend suggested that it would be possible for me to alter this by an order of the Local Government Board. The only way in which I could intervene, and I have before expressed my readiness to do so, is to consider the question of a circular from the Local Government Board to the guardians about these particularly hard cases. If that can be done, I repeat, I shall be willing to do it.

The next point submitted to me was the question of vaccination officers, which seemed to me to be the chief point of the discussion. The hon. Member for Wilts (Mr. Peto) made a speech in which he set out the facts from his point" of view. As Robert Burns, the poet, said: "Facts are chiels that winna ding." And my facts do not correspond with the facts as submitted by the hon. Member. My Department is responsible for this, and it is so easy for a Minister's statement to be challenged at any time, at the very moment he makes it and afterwards, that I hope the House will pardon me if I state what I consider to be the facts with regard to vaccination officers. There were last year 1,420 vaccination officers. Only 400 of them gave their whole time to the work. The other 1,020 hold other appointments such as relieving officers or assistant registrars, or are engaged beyond their vaccination work in clerical work of many descriptions. It has been said we have done nothing to justify our promise last year to see whether in the hard cases that have been brought before us we could mitigate by some assistance the loss of income of some of these officers, not all, by any means, through the increase of exemptions. What have we done since the Act was passed enabling exemptions to be more consistently, and I think more easily and honourably, obtained?

Between 1907 and 1911, a period during which we have been told little has been done, mainly at the instigation of the Local Government Board, gratuities have been sanctioned to 331 vaccination officers, increased fees have been given to 279, and in thirteen other cases compensation in some form or another has been given. The Local Government Board, instead of looking at the vaccination officer's grievances with a cold eye and a lack of generosity, has helped them, either through gratuities, increased fees, or in some other form of compensation, in 623 cases out of 1,420 cases.

Mr. PETO

Would the right hon. Gentleman tell the Committee quite clearly whether in every case whore gratuities and extra fees have been given they have been given to a different officer.

Mr. BURNS

Certainly, I am giving the cases. Six hundred and twenty-three out of 1,420 is not bad in a little over three years. The total number of vaccination officers who have complained to the Local Government Board is only fifty, and in forty-three cases the Local Government Board urged the guardians to give com- pensation in some form or another. In seven cases the Local Government Board itself thought compensation was unnecessary. In nineteen out of the forty-three cases the guardians yielded to the suggestion of the Local Government Board, and in twenty-four cases only the guardians refused. I venture to say these facts put an entirely different light upon the statement made by the hon. Member for Wilts, and it disposes, first, of the indisposition of the Local Government Board to look at this thing fairly and generously, and, secondly, of the suggestion that we have done nothing to persuade the guardians to undertake what some hon. Members in this House want. I have been advised by the Mover of this Motion not to pledge myself as to precise reforms, particular suggestions, or particular forms of compensation, but to deal with individual cases.

Mr. PETO

I asked, particularly, for a general principle to be laid down.

Mr. BURNS

That is not quite so easy as the hon. Member imagines, as I shall be able to demonstrate. He asks that one general principle should be laid down. It is impossible. The fact that 400 out of 1,420 give their whole time to the duties indicates that one general principle, uniform in its application, is impossible. It is also impossible, because a large number of the remaining 1,020 have not had their total remuneration reduced. Any general alteration of the forms of compensation would have to apply to those who have not had their remuneration reduced, as well as to those who have, and to those whose loss or gain is small. The matter could not be dealt with as the hon. Member suggests. I would like to point out another thing. Hon. Members speak as if these vaccination officers were, like the clerks of the Local Government Board, directly the servants of the Board itself. They are not. I have no more direct or absolute power to order and direct different forms of remuneration for vaccination officers than I have to order town councils to vary the form of remuneration of their engineers, their surveyors, their town clerks, or the Parliamentary counsel whom they employ by fee. I do say, however, that my peculiar relationship to the guardians indicates that perhaps there is something that must be done in the light of the remarkable increase of exemptions that has occurred in the last year or two, and I am going to say, without defining the actual steps to be taken, that if further persuasion of the guardians is not productive of fair treatment in these twenty-four cases and some others, then we will consider what other steps are necessary to secure reasonable treatment for the vaccination officers. You cannot dispose of the matter in the way suggested by the hon. Member. Payment of their postage would be ample compensation for one set of vaccination officers; in other cases payment for their offices would perhaps be the best form of compensation; and in some cases where the reduction is only temporary, I gather some of the officers are inclined to agree that a gratuity would suit them better than one or two of the other suggestions that have been made.

There are at least a dozen ways in which with fairness and with due regard to the public purse the Local Government Board would be able to do something, and, if the House will not pin me to one or two definite ways, I shall be only too pleased to give my mind immediately to the consideration of the case that has been brought before me. Although I have not absolutely statutory power to direct the guardians to do this, that, or the other quite so easily as some hon. Members suggest, I am willing to go into this thing again in a fair and, I hope, reasonably generous spirit, to meet the cases that have been submitted to me this afternoon. The hon. Member for York (Mr. Butcher) said that owing to the pension being based on the average of five years before retirement, the officers lose superannuation by reduction of increment. That is not absolutely true. The Local Government Board are willing and have been willing to allow gratuities to be included in the estimate for superannuation, and beyond that, the Board can allow years to be added to actual service. I only mention the latter point to show it may be advantageous to compensate these men in the meal in one case and in the malt in the other. It would probably do more harm to the vaccination officers than good to pin us down this afternoon to one precise method. It has been lightly suggested that it would settle this difficulty to pay all the vaccination officers an inclusive yearly salary. Ideally, I am in favour of that. Theoretically, it looks very well; but the House would not sanction, and I am sure the ratepayers would not allow, the guardians to give a fixed salary for a very small amount of work in certain instances.

Mr. LANSBURY

I think the right hon. Gentleman has made a mistake. I claim for them compensation for loss of income.

Mr. BURNS

One hon. Member said abolish the fees and pay by regular salary. If I were to adopt that the present districts of vaccination officers, owing to the increased number of exemptions, would have to be made larger for the ratepayers to get value for their money, and it would be very unjust to 600 or 800 existing officers who have this intermittent work with other local duties if their salaries were taken from them, and if their districts were added to larger areas, and men at regular salaries were appointed to supersede them. That is another reason why this thing should be looked at from a broad and generous point of view. It has also been suggested that the fee for vaccination should be the same as for birth, and that in other ways the officers should be saved some amount of time and some amount of expense. May I say that I am keeping to my promise in this matter, and the figures I have given are a proof of that. Perhaps these officers are exaggerating their grievances at this moment, and it may be that on further investigation some compromise consistent with what is fair and just as between them and the ratepayers may be possible, and, if the House will be content, my officers and I will look into this in a fair and broad spirit, with a view to remedying the gross grievances from which a few suffer, and with a view of adopting a standard of remuneration which is fair and reasonable, and to which these public officers are entitled. I am glad that is generally endorsed, and I ask the House on this particular subject to adopt my advice.

Mr. BUTCHER

When does the right hon. Gentleman anticipate he will be able to make a statement as to his recommendations, with a view of removing this grievance?

Mr. BURNS

The hon. Member is a skilled Parliamentarian, and he never loses an opportunity of pinning an opponent, and especially a Minister, to a point. My answer is I had better go into this again. I had better look at it from the point of view of 25 per cent. of the births having exemption certificates. My officers and I will look into it as soon as we can, and I think with our usual promptitude. I think hon. Members, in the interests of the officers themselves, had better let me look into their case from the broad point of view.

Mr. PETO

Do not the exemptions amount to 35 per cent.?

Mr. BURNS

No, 25 per cent. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wimbledon (Mr. Chaplin) endorsed some of the criticisms made by some of the previous speakers, and he complained very strongly about the Act of 1907, which only carried his Act of 1898 a stage further. The right hon. Gentleman by his Act allowed the conscientious objector to open the door, and I went through it. The hon. Member for Central Hackney (Sir A. Spicer) never loses an opportunity of referring to the condition of the children in and out of the workhouses. It is only fair, I should inform the House, that so far as London is concerned this problem is rapidly approaching a solution. I am glad to say that in London we have got 23,000 children in institutions, and we have 13,000 on outdoor relief, or a total of 36,000 children under the jurisdiction of the guardians and the Local Government Board. Out of those 36,348 children, I am glad to say there are only 1,000 within workhouse walls at this moment, and of that 1,000, 749 are under three years of age, and in many cases are better with their mothers than they would be outside the workhouse, because a child of less than three years is not susceptible to workhouse taint or influences.

What is more, the mother is considerably a better mother, a better woman, and a better citizen, in that she has not been deprived of her child at that tender age, and both mother and child are better together in wards separated from the worst of the workhouse population. Sixty-eight were in receiving wards for one night only and that leaves me roughly in London with only 183 children over three years of age in ordinary workhouse walls. These are in three unions. One is making arrangements for the transfer of its children. Another has put its children temporarily into a cottage in the workhouse grounds away from the workhouse, and, with regard to the third union, I am doing my best to stimulate it to follow the example of the other unions in London, and to remove all children over three years of age from within the workhouse walls. Not to the same extent, but to an increasing extent, a similar thing is happening in England and Wales, and I propose to enjoy part of my holidays by issuing a new Boarding-out Order that will stimulate this being done in England and Wales, so that the rest of the country will next year be up to the high level of London in this particular. I come to another question that is not quite so satisfactory, in the opinion, at least, of one Member of this House, as the statement I have made with regard to Poor Law children, and that is the case raised by the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Boyle), which is known as the Launditch workhouse master's case. I am not influenced by the statement made by the hon. Member, in perfect good temper, I am glad to say, and as such as I received it, that my effigy is going to be burnt in East Dereham market place for my conduct in this particular instance.

Mr. BOYLE

The right hon. Gentleman misunderstood me. What I said was that if nothing happened, such a thing might take place.

Mr. BURNS

That is making a statement and suggesting intimidation, which rather worsens the hon. Member's position. If there is one thing I do not yield to it is intimidation. If there is one thing I am ready to listen to it is persuasion. Whether the facts warrant the burning of my effigy and whether, bearing the name I do, that would be an appropriate exhibition I will leave the Committee to judge. I will simply state the facts. They are these. This is a very serious case. Two police constables found an old man—he was seventy-two years of age—with his throat cut, and in a destitute condition, in a poor cottage. One policeman administered first aid; the other policeman went for the doctor. When the doctor came he gave an order to the overseer and to the policeman for this old man who had attempted to cut his throat at eight o'clock at night, in a remote country district, to be taken to the workhouse infirmary. The overseer gave the policeman an order for admission to the workhouse and an order for a carriage. The local clergyman, the vicar, happened to be near, and I presume that the doctor, the overseer, the policeman and the clergyman were all agreed, as their conduct proved, that this was a case which should be removed to the infirmary of the workhouse, seven miles away. The policemen got the carriage, and, with the son of the old man, who was so seriously injured that he had to have ten stitches put in the wound in his throat by the doctor, reached the workhouse infirmary at two o'clock in the morning.

Mr. BOYLE

It was only a distance of five miles.

Mr. BURNS

I should be sorry to see the hon. Member with ten stitches in a wound in his throat arriving at a workhouse at two o'clock in the morning, five miles away from the place where the injury was inflicted.

Mr. BOYLE

Will the right hon. Gentleman——

Mr. BURNS

I decline to give way. I listened to the hon. Member with patience and attention. It is important that these facts should be known. Two police constables found this man at eight o'clock at night with a wound in his throat which required ten stitches, and, with the approval of the doctor and the clergyman, they took him, with his son, in a carriage to the workhouse infirmary, reaching there at two o'clock in the morning. When they arrived at the workhouse they knocked up the porter, and when he opened the door the constable said, "We have a case for you." The porter replied, "I do not think he will be admitted." The kindly policeman, not content with that, said, "I want to see the master." The porter went for the master, who was upstairs in bed and at first did not come down. The kindly policeman, to his credit, insisted on seeing the master, and when the latter did come down, he told the constable that he was not going to admit the man because he was a lunatic, and he sheltered himself behind that very technical defence by saying that six months before the guardians had decided not to admit lunatics. In passing, I may say this man was subsequently decided not to be a lunatic. It was a Poor Law case. The man was brought before the magistrates and charged with attempting to commit suicide, but he was acquitted and released and sent back to his house. The fact remains, the master would not admit him. He did not even go to the gate to see the man, the result was that the kindly policeman, at 2 o'clock in the morning, took the old fellow back to his cottage. The conduct of the police was most exemplary. They gave the old fellow some beef tea and bread and butter which they had provided for themselves. The man was seen to subsequently by the guardians and the relieving officer in the usual way.

The hon. Gentleman himself admitted that this was a serious error of judgment. Of course it was, and how can I, who have nearly 800,000 men, women and children to look after, or how can the guardians and the kindly hearted people who administer the law on behalf of the general public, allow things of this kind to happen? This sort of conduct has been too frequent in the past, and I put it to hon. Members, supposing a man seventy-two years of age had fallen down outside their country house or their town residence, is there a single one of them who would not at once have taken him in, rendered first aid to him, sent for his own doctor, and done everything within his power to see that a man, nearly in extremis, was properly looked after? If it is true that this would have been done had the thing happened outside any hon. Member's door, it ought to be doubly the duty of one who is proxy for the community, who is paid a salary and is well looked after to do this precise thing. The clergyman wrote me that the police did their work admirably. The doctor did his duty and so did everybody concerned, except the man who should have done it. I thought that this official must either be too stupid for his post or, if not too stupid, he was too callous to have this kind of case within his jurisdiction. I therefore sent an inspector down. Everybody knows that Local Government inspectors invariably are kind men, rather too prone, perhaps, to take the side of the workhouse master and matron. He inquired into the circumstances, and made his report to me, and, as one responsible for the humane and kindly treatment of the very young and the very old particularly, and indeed of everyone, whether they be young, middle-aged, or old, I deemed it my duty, in the interests of the public, to give this man the punishment which I think he deserved for his serious error of judgment, as an example to others, and as a warning that such conduct must not be repeated. I called upon him for his resignation. He will have to go. His wife has rendered that absolutely necessary by resigning on account of ill-health, only a month or so ago. They both will get their pensions, and, under the circumstances, I consider I was more than justified in taking the action I did. I have nothing to extenuate or explain away. I simply lay the facts before the House, and I believe hon. Members will say I should have been unworthy of my post if I had not discharged my duty in that particular way.

I come to another aspect of our work which has been referred to this afternoon by my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Mr. Morrell) who has asked me to deal at length with what has been done under the Housing and Town Plan- ning Act. I find, upon looking at my notes, that very substantial progress has been made, and it seems to me that, instead of occupying the time of the House by giving the facts and figures connected with that progress, I had better select some other opportunity for dealing with the subject, putting it in the form of a White Paper, so that hon. Members during their holidays may have an opportunity of seeing the way in which the Act has worked. I pass from housing in general to a case raised by the hon. Member for one of the Divisions of St. Pancras. He asked that the jurisdiction of the Local Government Board in the matter of housing appeals should be transferred from the Local Government Board to the Courts of Justice. I can only say we had that out ad nauseam when the Housing and Town Planning Bill was under discussion here. We cannot comply with the suggestion underlying the hon. Member's remarks. We think he has not made out any case in support of the views he expressed, or of the allegations that his informant conveyed to him. We consider that both the Hampstead case, in which the local authority won, and the Camberwell case, in which the local authority lost, have been dealt with by the Local Government Board in an inexpensive, just, and almost generous way, when all the facts are taken into consideration.

8.0 P.M.

The hon. Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury) raised the question of lunacy fees. On the surface there appears to be something to justify what he wishes, and if it is possible for a step to be taken in that direction, and if I have an opportunity, I can assure him that, in the matter of lunacy fees, I am not indisposed to adopt the suggestion that he has put forward. But, as he knows, it cannot be brought in at once. It will have to be done gradually. The guardians and medical officers can only agree to forego the existing fees authorised by the Lunacy Acts by special agreement. Secondly, the justices are not bound to call in (he guardians' medical officer, whether he is paid by salary or fee. Some justices resent their discretion being interfered with, but, speaking broadly and generally, I am not indisposed to adopt this system of paying for the certification of lunacy by salary, making it one of the many inclusive duties of medical officers, and as soon as an opportunity pre- sents itself I shall be only too pleased to work that way. Then the hon. Member also dealt with Poor Law children, on which I believe I have satisfied him by my previous observations, though if I have not we will do our best between now and next year so to do. With regard to out-relief, I can only say that the guardians, through their relieving officers, are increasingly attending to out-relief cases. My hon. Friend did not do justice to the Local Government Board inspectors nor to the spirit of the guardians and relieving officers, all of whom, I am very glad to say, have been stimulated by the controversies which have waged over the Poor Law problem during the last three or four years, and if we could still further extend the attention given to the children on out-relief, and if we could carry out what is practicable and reasonable, I can promise him that we will do what we can.

My hon. Friend made a suggestion with which I have been very sympathetic for some time. I am very glad to say that in co-operation with the Metropolitan Asylums Board we have been able to centralise the stores and co-ordinate their distribution from a common centre. It has been of advantage to public policy and to the officers, and I think there is no complaint to be made against it. If I could see my way to do it with regard to the boards of guardians in London I should welcome any opportunity which would enable me to do it. As regards out-relief to children, I would ask the hon. Member's attention to a circular I issued in March, 1910, specially directing boards of guardians to do this particular work, and see that the relief was adequate. If I were to take the boards of guardians by the throat the hon. Member himself would be the first to complain. When I took action in one particular case just short of grasping them by the throat, there was no one who complained more loudly on behalf of the guardians than my hon. Friend.

Mr. LANSBURY

Give the other lot a turn.

Mr. BURNS

I have jailed or dismissed some sixty-three members and officers of local authorities, and if there are any others who want it, I shall be prepared. I am glad to welcome my hon. Friend as an apostle of reform. There is more joy in Heaven over one sinner who repenteth than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance. The hon. Member asked me something about Hollesley Bay. He wanted to know what was going to be done with it. Considering that Hollesley Bay will have at least another year of life, I think it is premature for me to determine what is going to be done in regard to it. On that, others beside myself have to be consulted, but nearly six thousand men have passed through this colony, and they cost about 30s. 7d. per week.

Mr. LANSBURY

Wives and children.

Mr. BURNS

I know. An agricultural labourer earns 14s. or 15s. for his work and keeps his wife and children with him. The hon. Member said Hollesley Bay was worth having, if only to prepare men for work on the land. Hollesley Bay all told has had spent upon it in six years £143,000. The sale receipts have been £32,000, and the net cost has been £110,000. As a school for training men to get work on the land, it has not been a distinct success, because I find in the six years only nineteen men from the colony have obtained work on the land in this country, and of the nineteen only four were between the year 1908 and December, 1910, and it cannot be said that the Local Government Board has been inconsiderate as to the period of training, because the average of the nineteen men who got work on the land was twelve months and not eight, fourteen, or sixteen weeks, therefore the less we think of Hollesley Bay as a training school for making town labourers fit for land occupation at that cost the better.

The next point with which I have to deal is the arrangement to be made under the Unemployed Workmen Act for next winter. My hon. Friend said I sometimes criticise schemes submitted by the Central (Unemployed) Body. Perfectly true. I am employed to criticise, I am paid to supervise and I exist to correct certain people who are not always pursuing the straight and narrow path. I should not be worth my salt if I did not do it. But the hon. Member asks what I am going to do next year with regard to the unemployed workmen. I have conducted preliminary negotiations with the Central (Unemployed) Body, and I have seen my officers with a view to providing the greatest amount of work for the sum I have to spend upon it. I have answered his point upon Herne Bay. I think I was justified and he was not. I thought money could be better spent. I thank the House for the way in which they have heard only a portion of the work undertaken by my officers and myself, and I thank them for their kindly consideration and great attention. I think we have defended ourselves against the charges which have been brought, and I think I am justified in appealing to the hon. Member to withdraw his Motion to reduce my salary on the broad and simple ground that I have done my best to earn it.

Mr. FORSTER

I wish to confine my remarks to the question of the vaccination officers. I was rather surprised to find that an hon. Gentleman like the hon. Member (Mr. Leach), who expressed warm sympathy for the grievances of these officers, should have had such imperfect appreciation of the facts of the case as to allow himself to speak of their being paid for work which they do not do. He drew a picture of the enormity of calling upon the ratepayers to provide remuneration for these officers for work that they do not perform. The whole grievance of these men is that they are not paid for work that they do perform. I think I can put the case in a nutshell. Fees are paid for vaccination. In respect of those cases where the parents conscientiously object the work that these men do is doubled, and they get no pay for it at all. That is a considerable part of the grievance that these officers feel. The effect of the policy of the President of the Local Government Board is to diminish vaccination. The effect of the Bill which he carried has been largely to increase exemption, and he has called upon these vaccination officers to assist him in the policy which he is carrying out. They have to assist him at their own expense. The position is almost grotesque. If you take the position of the vaccination officer who in pursuit of his duty issues Form Q, what is the effect of issuing Form Q? It is very much as if the vaccination officer said to the people to whom he sent it, "In pursuance of my duty, I have to send you a notice, and if you act upon it you will not have to pay me a fee," and, in taking steps to deprive himself of his fee, he has to pay his own postage. The grievance under which these men suffer has been admitted by, I think, everyone except the hon. Member (Mr. Leach). Even the right hon. Gentleman himself admitted it. He told us he had approached the local authorities and done everything he could by persuasion to get them to attend properly to the grievances of the men they employed, but we want him to do something more than merely to endeavour to persuade these local authorities. When we bear in mind that it is not only the pay but the pensions which these men get that are reduced owing to the effect of an Act of Parliament, Parliament ought to take into consideration the grievances under which they labour and we ought to see to it that they are not injuriously affected by Acts which we have passed.

The President of the Local Government Board said if we leave it to him he will give his mind to it, and direct his energies to remedying this grievance. These men have been waiting a considerable time. Some of them, no doubt, have had their grievances to a certain extent considered and redressed. When he says, the Local Government Board have been approached by only fifty out of this great number we

are entitled to ask whether he expects every public officer throughout the country to bear his grievances direct to the Local Government Board. No one would think that a practicable suggestion. It is time a remedy for that grievance was found. It is time that Parliament should settle, and the Local Government Board should secure that public servants should no longer be penalised by an Act of Parliament, and we press the right hon. Gentle man very strongly that no further time should be lost in finding a remedy.

Question put, "That a sum, not exceeding £167,851 be granted for the said Service."

The Committee divided: Ayes, 42; Noes, 139.

Division No. 304.]	AYES.	[8.15 p.m.
Agg-Gardner, James Tynte	Chaloner, Colonel R. G. W.	McNeill, Ronald (Kent, St. Augustine)
Amery, L. C. M. S.	Chambers, James	Mills, Hon. Charles Thomas
Balcarres, Lord	Eyres-Monsell, Bolton M.	Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)
Barlow, Montague (Salford, South)	Fetherstonhaugh, Godfrey	Pollock, Ernest Murray
Bathurst, Charles (Wilts., Wilton)	Flannery, Sir J. Fortescue	Pryce-Jones, Col. E.
Bigland, Alfred	Gibbs, George Abraham	Salter, Arthur Clavell
Boyle, W. Lewis (Norfolk, Mid)	Gordon, John (Londonderry, South)	Sanders, Robert A.
Boyton, James	Gordon, Hon. John Edward (Brighton)	Spear, Sir John Ward
Bridgeman, W. Clive	Hills, John Waller	Tobin, Alfred Aspinall
Bull, Sir William James	Hope, Harry (Bute)	Touche, George Alexander
Burn, Colonel C. R.	Houston, Robert Paterson	White, Major G. D. (Lancs, Southport)
Campbell, Rt. Hon. J. H. M.	Larmor, Sir J.	Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.)
Campion, W. R.	Lonsdale, Sir John Brownlee
Carlile, Sir Edward Hildred	Lyttelton, Hon. J. C. (Droitwich)	TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. Peto and Mr. Kohler.
Cave, George	M'Mordie, Robert
NOES.
Abraham, William (Dublin Harbour)	Dillon, John	King, Joseph (Somerset, North)
Adamson, William	Donelan, Anthony Charles	Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade)
Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C. R.	Doris, William	Lansbury, George
Allen, A. A. (Dumbartonshire)	Duffy, William J.	Lawson, Sir W. (Cumb'rld., Cockerm'th)
Allen, Charles Peter (Stroud)	Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness)	Leach, Charles
Baker, Joseph Allen (Finsbury, E.)	Edwards, Enoch (Hanley)	Levy, Sir Maurice
Balfour, Sir Robert (Lanark)	Edwards, John Hugh (Glamorgan, Mid.)	Lewis, John Herbert
Barry, Redmond John (Tyrone, N.)	Elibank, Rt. Hon. Master of	Logan, John William
Beauchamp, Sir Edward	Ffrench, Peter	Lundon, Thomas
Benn, W. (Tower Hamlets, St. Geo.)	Flavin, Michael Joseph	Lynch, Arthur Alfred
Bentham, G. J.	Fletcher, John Samuel (Hampstead)	Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)
Bethell, Sir John Henry	Gill, A. H.	Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)
Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine	Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford	Maclean, Donald
Booth, Frederick Handel	Goldstone, Frank	Macpherson, James Ian
Bowerman, C. W.	Greenwood, Granville G. (Peterborough)	MacVeagh, Jeremiah
Boyle, Daniel (Mayo, North)	Griffith, Ellis J.	M'Laren, Walter S. B. (Ches., Crewe)
Brigg, Sir John	Hackett, John	Marks, Sir George Croydon
Brunner, John F. L.	Hancock, J. G.	Marshall, Arthur Harold
Bryce, J. Annan	Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N.E.)	Meagher, Michael
Burke, E. Haviland-	Haslam, James (Derbyshire)	Millar, James Duncan
Burns, Rt. Hon. John	Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)	Molloy, Michael
Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Havelock-Allan, Sir Henry	Molteno, Percy Alport
Byles, Sir William Pollard	Haworth, Sir Arthur A.	Mond, Sir Alfred Moritz
Carr-Gomm, H. W.	Henderson, Arthur (Durham)	Mooney, John J.
Cawley, H. T. (Lancs., Heywood)	Henderson, J. M. (Aberdeen, W.)	Morton, Alpheus Cleophas
Clough, William	Herbert, Colonel Sir Ivor	Muldoon, John
Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)	Howard, Hon. Geoffrey	Nicholson, Charles N. (Doncaster)
Compton-Rickett, Rt. Hon. Sir J.	Hudson, Walter	Nolan, Joseph
Condon, Thomas Joseph	Hughes, Spencer Leigh	Nuttall, Harry
Cotton, William Francis	Jones, Leif Stratten (Notts, Rushcliffe)	O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)
Crooks, William	Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)	O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)
Crumley, Patrick	Joyce, Michael	O'Donnell, Thomas
Dalziel, Sir James H. (Kirkcaldy)	Keating, Matthew	O'Dowd, John
De Forest, Baron	Kelly, Edward	O'Shaughnessy, P. J.
Delany, William	Kennedy, Vincent Paul	O'Sullivan, Timothy
Devlin, Joseph	Kilbride, Denis	Parker, James (Halifax)
Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)	Roberts, George H. (Norwich)	Thompson, Robert (Belfast, North)
Phillips, John (Longford, S.)	Roche, Augustine (Louth)	Wadsworth, John
Pointer, Joseph	Rowlands, James	Walton, Sir Joseph
Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central)	Samuel, J. (Stockton-on-Tees)	Ward, John (Stoke-upon-Trent)
Pringle, William M. R.	Scott, A. MacCallum (Glas., Bridgeton)	Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P.
Radford, George Heynes	Sheehy, David	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Rainy, Adam Holland	Shortt, Edward	Young, William (Perth, East)
Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (S. Shields)	Simon, Sir John Allsebrook	Yoxall, Sir James Henry
Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)	Smith, Albert (Lancs., Clitheroe)
Reddy, Michael	Strauss, Edward A. (Southwark, West)	TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. Gulland and Mr. Dudley Ward.
Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)	Summers, James Woolley

And, it being a Quarter past Eight of the Clock, and there being Private Business set down by direction of the Chairman of Ways and Means, under Standing Order No. 8, further proceedings were postponed without Question put.