Commons Sitting of 4 May 1911

Preamble
The House met at a Quarter before Three of the clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
Private Bills [Lords] (Standing Orders not previously inquired into, complied with),—Mr. Speaker laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, that, in the case of the following Bill, originating in the Lords, and referred on the First Reading thereof, the Standing Orders not previously inquired into, and which are applicable thereto, have been complied with, namely:—
Sidmouth Gas and Electricity Bill [Lords].
Ordered, That the Bill be read a second time.
Provisional Order Bills (No Standing Orders applicable),—Mr. Speaker laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills that, in the case of the following Bill, referred on the First Reading thereof, no Standing Orders are applicable, namely:—
Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Orders (No. 1) Bill.
Ordered, That the Bill be read a second time To-morrow.
Provisional Order Bills (Standing Orders applicable thereto, complied with)—Mr. Speaker laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bills, referred on the First Reading thereof, the Standing Orders which are applicable thereto have been complied with, namely:—
Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Orders (No. 2) Bill.
Local Government Provisional Orders (Gas) Bill.
Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 3) Bill.
Ordered, That the Bills be read a second time To-morrow.
Coventry Corporation Bill,
Felixstowe and Walton Water Bill,
Warrington Corporation Bill,
Lords Amendments considered, and agreed to.
Severn Fisheries Provisional Order Bill (by Order),
Read a second time, and committed.

ULTIMUS ILERES (SCOTLAND) (ACCOUNT AND LIST OF ESTATES).
Return ordered, "of abstract account of the receipts and payments of the King's and Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer in Scotland, in the year ended the 31st day of December, 1910, in the administration of estates and treasure trove on behalf of the Crown:
"And of Alphabetical List of Estates which fell to the Crown as Ultimus Hæres in Scotland, administered by the King's and Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer, in the same year."—[Mr. Hobhouse.]

ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN.
Mr. BARTONpresented a petition signed by 1,826 women municipal voters of Oldham, praying the House without delay to pass into law the Bill to enfranchise women householders.
COAL MINES [EXPENSES].
Committee to consider of authorising the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any salaries and remuneration and other expenses incurred under any Act of the present Session to consolidate and amend the Law relating to Coal Mines and certain other mines (King's recommendation signified), To-morrow.—[Mr. Gulland.]
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.

  Canada and United States.
  Mr. HUNTasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, in defiance of an existing treaty, the United States were now maintaining warships on the Great Lakes in a position from which they might sever the internal communications of Canada and isolate the Prairie Provinces; and, if so, what action he proposes to take in the matter?
  The SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir Edward Grey): The whole question is one in which His Majesty's Government act in the closest touch with the Canadian Government, who are intimately concerned in the question, and I am not prepared to make any further statement about it.
  Mr. HUNT: Is it true that the United States are maintaining warships there against treaty rights; and, if so, is the Government unwilling or unable to maintain the just rights of the British Empire?
  Sir E. GREYWe are in the closest touch with the Canadian Government, who are the Government most intimately concerned, and I am not prepared to add to my answer.
  Mr. HUNTWhat is the meaning of being in touch with the Canadian Government? Are these just rights or not?
  Sir E. GREYBeing in touch with the Canadian Government means co-operating with them to do what they think is best in their interests.
  Mr. ALLEN BAKERIs it not the fact that the agreement in 1817 was not a treaty at all, but simply an agreement terminable on six months' notice on either side, and that that agreement has been kept for nearly a century without gunboats on the lakes?
  Sir E. GREYI am not prepared to add to the answer I have already given.

  United States and Great Britain.
  Mr. HUNTasked whether, in view of the statement of the Prime Minister that as between the United States and the United Kingdom, whatever the gravity of the issue or the magnitude of the interests involved might be, the matters in dispute would be settled by arbitration, the Foreign Secretary could now say whether President Taft has agreed to submit the Monroe doctrine and the fortification and neutralisation of the Panama Canal to arbitration, if necessary; and whether President Taft has given any intimation that the American Senate must in the future retain the power of deciding whether any question shall go to arbitration or not?
  Sir E. GREY: I must ask the hon. Member not to raise hypothetical questions of this kind till the terms of an Arbitration Treaty are known, when he will be in a position to judge of its effect.
  Mr. HUNT: In view of that very unsatisfactory answer, I beg to give notice that I shall at the end of questions move the Adjournment of the House in order to call attention to a matter of urgent National importance.
  Mr. KING: Can the Foreign-Secretary state whether the newspaper reports as to the draft agreement which has been published this day can be viewed as authentic?
  Sir E. GREY: It would be much better to wait until both Governments are in a position to make a definite statement in regard to the Treaty, rather than to make partial statements.
  Mr. E. JARDINE: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether the United States Government has notified the British Government that in their opinion the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty has been voided?
  Sir E. GREY: I am not prepared to add question of that kind.

  Chinese Rising (Security of British Residents).
  Mr. BYLESasked whether the Foreign Secretary can give the House any information as to the rising in Southern China, and particularly as to the security, or otherwise, of the lives and property of British residents?
  Sir E. GREY: His Majesty's Consul-General at Canton reported on May 3rd, on the authority of the Viceroy, that order had been completely restored in the city and throughout the Province. The Consul-General had previously reported that all Europeans were safe. On the same date, His Majesty's Consul-General at Hankow reported that, so far as he was aware, all was quiet in that neighbourhood, and that there had been no talk of a revolutionary movement.
  Major ANSTRUTHER-GRAYasked whether the Foreign Secretary had received any further reports of the Chinese rising at Canton; whether the lives and property of British subjects were adequately protected; and which of His Majesty's ships were now stationed in the river there?
  Sir E. GREY: In answer to the first part of the question, I would refer the hon. Member to the reply which I have just returned to the hon. Member for Salford, As regards the last part of the question, the desired information was

  573
  given yesterday in the answer by the First Lord of the Admiralty to the hon. Member for the West Toxteth Division of Liverpool.
  Mr. FELLasked what British men-of-war are now at Hong-Kong; if any others are on the way there; and if these are considered to be sufficient for any needs for the protection of British interests and the lives of Europeans at Canton and the South of China?
  Mr. McKENNA: I must refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave yesterday to the question put by the hon. Member for the West Toxteth Division of Liverpool.

  Persia.
  Mr. DILLONasked the Foreign Secretary when he would lay upon the Table the further Papers on the affairs of Persia promised by Lord Morley; and up to what date these Papers would come?
  Sir E. GREY: I hope to lay the further Papers on the affairs of Persia within a week or ten days: they will include correspondence up to the end of 1910.
  EARL of RONALDSHAY: Will the right hon. Gentleman's answer also apply to the Papers in regard to the Baghdad Railway.
  Sir E. GREY: Those Papers are not included in the Persian Papers. It did not occur to me that the inclusion of them would arise on this question. I will make inquiry. I have no doubt they will be prepared.
  Mr. DILLONasked whether the British Government has applied for a concession for a railway in Southern Persia; and whether the Foreign Secretary will lay upon the Table the terms of the application made by the British Government, and the reply of the Persian Government?
  Sir E. GREY: His Majesty's Government have applied to the Persian Government for an option to construct a railway in south-western Persia with British capital; but I am not in a position, in the present stage of the negotiations, to make any statement regarding the terms of the application or the nature of the reply.
  EARL of RONALDSHAYasked if the British Government have applied to the Persian Government for a railway concession in the Karun Valley; and, if so, has the Foreign Secretary any information which he can give the House with regard to the matter?
  Sir E. GREY: I beg to refer the Noble-Earl to the reply just returned to the question asked on this subject by the hon. Member for East Mayo.
  EARL of RONALDSHAY: May I ask whether the application for the concession was on behalf of a syndicate?
  Sir E. GREY: The request was for an option for a railway that is being constructed with British capital.

  Morocco.
  Mr. DILLONasked whether the Foreign Secretary will lay upon the Table the text of the French Note communicating the intention of the French Government to send troops to Fez, and the reply of the British Government?
  Sir E. GREY: The communication was a verbal one, and there is no Note to be laid.
  Mr. KEIR HARDIE: Is it not the fact that Fez was relieved by the Sultan's, troops a week ago, and, if so, is there need for French intervention?
  Sir E. GREY: The latest information t have is that the Sultan's mehalla has returned to Fez and that things are quiet in Fez, but that there is a complete state of disorder outside Fez.
  Mr. DILLONasked whether at the time of the receipt of the French Note in relation to Morocco the British Government had received any reports from the British agents in Morocco giving grounds for the belief that Europeans in Fez were in danger or were unable to escape from Fez if they desired to do so; and had the British Government any information to the effect that the Emperor of Morocco had sanctioned the advance of European troops on Fez?
  Sir E. GREY: As I explained in reply to the last question, there was no Note, but the French Government informed us that it was at the urgent request of the Sultan that the French were co-operating in the formation of a mehalla for the relief of Fez. We had, at that time, no reports of imminent danger to Europeans; but since then we have received reports that communication between Fez and the coast has been interrupted for some time past, and the situation is obviously one which gives rise to anxiety.
  Mr. DILLON: May I ask whether the communication from the French Govern-

  575
  ment was to the effect that the Sultan had approved of the advance of the European troops on Fez?
  Sir E. GREY: The communication was that they were gathering for the formation of a mehalla for the relief of Fez, at the urgent request of the Sultan.
  Mr. KEIR HARDIE: Is it not the fact that an international syndicate is endeavouring to exploit the mineral wealth of Morocco?
  Sir EDWARD GREY: It is quite obvious that when you have a state of disorder outside a town, with the communications not open, and starvation inside the walls, there must be cause for anxiety.
  Mr. KEIR HARDIE: By what right does France or this country interfere in the internal affairs of Morocco?
  Sir E. GREY: I would refer the hon. Member to the Algeciras Act and the Anglo-French Agreement of 1904.

  Land Purchase (Ireland).
  Mr. LARDNERasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland when the tenants on the estate of the late Miss Gertrude Rose, situate in the county of Monaghan, Record No. 6,362, signed agreements to purchase their holdings under the Land Purchase Acts; when the same were lodged with the Estates Commissioners; whether the estate has as yet been inspected; and, if not, what is the cause of the delay, and when is the inspection likely to be carried out and the sale to the tenants likely to be completed?
  The ATTORNEY-GENERAL for IRELAND (Mr. Redmond Barry): This estate is being sold direct by the vendor to the tenants. The purchase agreements are dated 1st February, 1908, and were lodged with the Estates Commissioners on 30th April, 1908. The estate will be dealt with in order of priority, but, having regard to the prior claims of other estates, the Commissioners are not at present in a position to say when it will be reached.
  Mr. CRUMLEYasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether he can state the circumstances under which the estate of Mrs. Adams, Artonagh, county Fermanagh, was sold; and why the tenancy of John Maguire, of Artonagh, was not included in the sale?
  Mr. REDMOND BARRY: This estate was sold by the landlord direct to the tenants, who signed purchase agreements under the Act of 1903. Maguire was offered the same terms as the other tenants by the landlord, but the tenant did not sign a purchase agreement, and the holding could not therefore be included in the sale.
  Mr. PATRICK WHITEasked the Chief Secretary whether, having regard to the congested nature of the district, the uneconomic size of the holdings on the Nicholson estate, Balrath, county Meath, for which purchase agreements have been lodged, the Estates Commissioners will regard the matter as one of urgency, and send an inspector to make a report; and whether he is aware that, owing to lack of employment, a number of people will he compelled to emigrate unless immediate relief is afforded by enlargement of holdings by the acquisition of land available on the estate?
  Mr. REDMOND BARRY: This estate is being sold direct by the vendors to the tenants under Section 1 of the Irish Land Act, 1903, and the Estates Commissioners have no power to proceed with it out of its order of priority. I have no information as to the concluding paragraph of the question.
  Mr. KELLYasked whether the inspector of the Congested Districts Board inspected some county Donegal estates about two months ago; whether the Board have fixed upon any sums to he offered to the owners of such estates; and, if so, have such offers been communicated to the owners yet?
  Mr. REDMOND BARRY: The Congested Districts Board are unable to identify the estates referred to. If the hon. Member will supply the names of the estates the Board will make inquiries.
  Mr. KELLY: Can the Congested Districts Board not state whether they have inspected any estates in the county or not?
  Mr. JOHN ROCHEasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether, at an interview before the Estates Commissioners, on 6th November, 1907, an agreement was come to between Mr. John J. Cheevers, of county Galway, and his tenants, the principal condition being the sale of 126 acres of grass land; whether he is aware that there were 128 tenants upon this estate,

  577
  ninety of whose holdings do not exceed £7 valuation, and that the Estates Commissioners offered a price for the said grass land and was accepted by the vendor; whether the estate has been handed over to the Congested Districts Board; and, if so, is the latter body now disposed to hand back to Mr. Cheevers eighty-nine of the 126 acres which he sold to the Estates Commissioners, and thereby leaving only 37 to be distributed between ninety uneconomic holdings?
  Mr. REDMOND BARRY: At the interview referred to an agreement was come to between Mr. Cheevers and his tenants as stated. This estate is being dealt with by the Congested Districts Board, and it has been arranged that 89 acres which formed a planted portion of the demesne be restored to Mr. Cheevers. The tenants have been more than amply compensated, as 500 acres of suitable land have been offered to them elsewhere. Fifteen of the tenants have already accepted new farms, leaving their old farms for division amongst the tenants who remain.
  Mr. KILBRIDE: May I ask whether it is not the fact, as stated in the question, that at an interview at the office of the Estates Commissioners it was agreed by Mr. Cheevers that the 126 acres of grass land should be sold to the Estates Commissioners, and when the Estates Commissioners handed the estate over to the Congested Districts Board, by what right and what authority had the Congested Districts Board to hand 89 acres back to Mr. Cheevers?
  Mr. REDMOND BARRY: The only information I have of the interview is that contained in the reply to the question.
  Mr. KILBRIDE: May I ask whether the Congested Districts Board think 500 acres sufficient for 126 tenants to create economic holdings for them?

  Local Taxation Committee.
  Mr. JOHN O'CONNORasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether he is aware that there is dissatisfaction in Ireland at the appointment of but one member, a Government official, to represent Ireland on the Local Taxation Committee; and, having regard to the important Irish interests affected by the inquiry, he will advise the Government to increase the number of members on the said committee and that they should be of a representative character?
  Mr. REDMOND BARRY: The hon. Member is under a misapprehension in thinking that there is only one Irishman, who is also a Government official, on the Local Taxation Committee. The name of Mr. P. J. O'Neill, Chairman of the Dublin County Council, and Chairman of the General Council of Irish County Councils was added to the committee several days ago.

  Evicted Tenants (Queen's County).
  Mr. PATRICK MEEHANasked the Chief Secretary how many evicted tenants and representatives of evicted tenants in Queen's County have lodged application for reinstatement in their former or equivalent holdings; how many have been approved by the Estates Commissioners as entitled to, and suitable for, reinstatement; how many evicted tenants have been reinstated in Queen's County by the landlords and by the Estates Commissioners; how many applications have been respectively refused; and how many approved applicants are still unprovided with a suitable holding?
  Mr. REDMOND BARRY: Up to 31st March last, 393 applications were received from persons seeking reinstatement as tenants, or representatives of tenants, evicted from holdings in Queen's County. After inquiry the Estates Commissioners decided in 186 cases to take no action. Ninety-four applicants have been reinstated in their former holdings or provided with others. Twenty-four applications have been noted for consideration in the allotment of any untenanted land which the Commissioners may acquire, and seven will be further considered when the estates come before the Commissioners for sale under the Land Purchase Acts. The remaining applications were not received within the time limited by the Evicted Tenants Act, 1907, and cannot be dealt with under that Act.

  Royal Commission on Canals and Waterways (River Barrow).
  Mr. JOHN O'CONNORasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Royal Commission on Canals and Waterways in the United Kingdom have yet issued their final report; if so, whether they make any reference to the River Barrow in Ireland; if so, what is their opinion as to its capacity for navigation purposes as combined with its purposes of drainage, and as to the cost of carrying out such works as may

  579
  be necessary; and will the Government propose a measure to carry out a scheme of improvement of that river at an early date?
  Mr. REDMOND BARRY: My right hon. Friend has seen the final Report of the Royal Commission on the Canals and Inland Navigations of the United Kingdom. It contains several references to the River Barrow, and the Commissioners express the opinion that the river can be made effective for drainage and navigation alike. They refer to the estimate of £360,000 for the works contemplated under the Barrow Drainage Bill of 1889, but do not appear to have formed any estimate of their own of the cost of improving the river. It is obviously impossible to hold out any hope of legislation on the subject this Session.
  Mr. J. O'CONNOR: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Commission to which I refer in my question did report that much good could be done by the expenditure of about £50,000, and that work could be, done that might make part of a larger scheme in the future?
  Mr. REDMOND BARRY: I was not aware.

  Magherafelt (County Derry) Magistracy.
  Mr. LUNDONasked whether the local district inspector of police at Magherafelt has recommended a certain gentleman for the commission of the peace in that district; and, if so, by what authority this policeman has done so; whether his recommendation has been or will be acted upon; and, if this policeman is acting contrary to the police regulations, whether any, and what, steps will be taken to call him to account for his conduct in this matter?
  Mr. REDMOND BARRY: No such recommendation has been made by the district inspector of police at Magherafelt.
  Mr. REMNANT: Can the right hon. Gentleman tell me when the Chief Secretary will be in a position to answer my question, postponed some weeks ago, asking whether it is intended to hold an inquiry into the condition of the police?

  Licensing Prosecutions (Magherafelt, County Derry).
  Mr. LUNDONasked whether, in his report on the results of licensing prosecu-
  580
  tions in the district, the local inspector of police in Magherafelt had charged the local magistrates with bias and refusal to convict; and, if so, whether his report would be laid upon the Table of the House?
  Mr. REDMOND BARRY: Police reports are confidential documents, and I am therefore unable to answer the hon. Member's question. It is not proposed to lay the report upon the Table of the House.

  Party Assaults (Dungannon, County Tyrone).
  Mr. LUNDONasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether his attention has been called to the dissatisfaction which exists in Dungannon in consequence of the failure of the police to protect the persons and property of Catholics from the attacks of Orange rowdies in the town; whether he is aware that the police have failed to take any action in a number of cases recently in which Catholics were assaulted, although the facts were within the knowledge of the police; and whether he will have inquiries made with a view to the prevention of such attacks in future?
  Mr. REDMOND BARRY: I am not aware that dissatisfaction exists in Dungannon, as stated in the question. The police are not aware of any cases in which the property of Catholics has been injured except during the last Parliamentary election, when a few panes of glass were broken in the houses of Catholics. Only two recent cases of assault due to party feeling are known to the police, and in one of these two men were prosecuted for the offence. In the other case the injured party was unable to identify his assailants. Party assaults will occasionally occur, notwithstanding the vigilance of the police. Proceedings will be instituted in such cases if sufficient evidence is available.
  Mr. LUNDONasked the Chief Secretary whether he can furnish any particulars as to the circumstances under which a young man named Donnelly was assaulted on Saturday, 18th March last, and badly beaten by an Orange mob, in Perry Street, Dungannon; whether any arrests have been made in connection with the outrage; and what action, if any, the police have taken to bring the assailants of Donnelly to justice?
  Mr. REDMOND BARRY: On the night of the 18th March Daniel Donnelly

  581
  reported to the police that he had been assaulted in Dungannon by a man whom he did not know. His assailant was accompanied by two others also unknown, but who did not interfere. Donnelly was struck by his assailant, but was not marked or cut. Every effort was made by the police to identify the man, but without success.

  British Mails to South Africa.
  Sir GILBERT PARKERasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the guarantees offered by the Postmaster-General of the South African Union that, though tenders for the carriage of British mails to South Africa are thrown open to Foreign shipping companies, the contracts will always be given to British companies were considered satisfactory by this Government, which is responsible for the carriage of His Majesty's mails; and what was the reason for including Foreign companies in the tenders?
  The SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Mr. Harcourt): His Majesty's Government have no reason to be dissatisfied with the statement of the Postmaster-General of the Union on this point.. It is not considered desirable, as a general principle, to limit the area of competition when calling for tenders.

  Imperial Conference.
  Mr. HUNTasked whether, in accordance with Resolutions I. and VI. of the Imperial Conference, 1907, the secretariat had caused to be circulated to the Governments represented in the Conference information respecting the effect on British trade of the preferences granted by the Governments of Canada, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand, or any of them, and particularly the testimony of the British Trade Commissioners in regard to the effect of such preferences; and, if not, why this has not been done?
  Mr. HARCOURT: The Resolutions referred to contain no specific instruction on the matter, and no special memoranda have been communicated to the Dominion Governments since the Conference of 1907. The report of His Majesty's Trade Commissioner for Canada is the only published report which deals with the matter, and that has been circulated to the Dominion Governments in the usual manner.
  Mr. HUNTasked whether, seeing that the majority of the Imperial Conference
  582
  by Resolution VI. of 1907, reaffirming a resolution of 1902, declared that the principle of preferential trade between the United Kingdom and His Majesty's Dominions beyond the seas would stimulate and facilitate mutual commercial intercourse, a similar proposal was to be made at the approaching Conference; and whether due consideration would be given to these resolutions?
  Mr. HARCOURT: I think probably not.
  Mr. HUNTasked whether the secretariat of the Imperial Conference, as defined by Resolution I of 1907, was intended to furnish a system by which the several governments represented should be kept informed during the periods between the conferences in regard to matters which had been or might be subjects for discussion; and, if so, how far this intention had been carried out?
  Mr. HARCOURT: Yes, Sir; the intention is common knowledge, and its fulfilment, so far as it was not confidential, will be found in Cd. 5273.

  Tristan da Cunha.
  Major ANSTRUTHER-GRAYasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he would state the date of the latest news from Tristan da Cunha; whether it was of a satisfactory nature; and whether he was taking any steps with a view to communication with that island?
  Mr. HARCOURT: The latest report which has reached the Colonial Office from Tristan da Cunha was dated 29th January, when all was well. It is not proposed to take any special steps with regard to communicating with the island.

  Jamaica (Steamship Communication).
  Mr. MITCHELL-THOMSONasked whether, in view of the fact that the Legislature of Jamaica had passed a resolution asking the Governor to take steps to secure the re-establishment of direct steamship communication between that island and Great Britain, and had offered to contribute a reasonable subsidy for such a service, and that Bermuda had also offered to contribute a subsidy in the event of being included in the arrangements, what action His Majesty's Government were prepared to take in the matter?
  Mr. HARCOURT: His Majesty's Government are awaiting the arrival of further information and of the Governor of Jamaica in this country.
  Mr. MITCHELL-THOMSON: When is the Governor expected to be in this country?
  Mr. HARCOURT: Very shortly.

  Straits Settlements (Municipal Administration).
  Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALDasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether his attention had been drawn to the report of the Commission, appointed by His Excellency the Governor to inquire into municipalities in the Straits Settlements, which was laid before the legislative council last autumn; whether he was aware that the Commission reported that grave irregularities in the assessment of houses and the collection of rates existed in Singapore and elsewhere, and stated that very great blame lay with the chief officers in the secretariat of the municipality; that the public health administration was lax and the work of the health officer was inadequately supported by the public authorities; that in matters of public contract the highest officials were in receipt of commissions from contractors, that on account of the high positions they held they could not be attacked, and that there was evidence that corruption was general; and whether, in view of the nature of this report, the Colonial Office was insisting upon steps being taken to remedy the abuses?
  Mr. HARCOURT: Yes, Sir, my attention has been drawn to the report. The Governor of the Straits Settlements has informed me that a complete revision of the Municipal Ordinance is now in hand and will be laid before the Legislature at an early date. The Colonial Government may be trusted to take the steps which are necessary to place municipal administration on a satisfactory footing.

  Workmen's Compensation Act (Medical Referees).
  Mr. GILLasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he could state how many cases of injury were referred to the medical referees for examination and decision under the Workmen's Compensation Act in 1910; how many medical referees there are, and the total amount of fees paid to them in connection with their offices during the same period, in the United Kingdom; whether the whole of them are also engaged in private practice; whether any, and, if so, how many, also act for insurance companies;
  584
  and whether he could give the number of such referees in Lancashire, the number of cases referred to them, and the amount of fees paid to them during the same year?
  The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. Masterman): The number of cases in which referees were employed in 1910 was 1,667; the number of referees was 349; and the total amount of the fees paid to them was £4,177 1s. 6d. The corresponding figures for Lancashire were 319 cases, twenty-nine referees, and amount of fees £726 17s. None of the referees are whole-time officers. It is one of the conditions of appointment of a referee that he shall not hold any regular employment by or on behalf of an insurance company in connection with cases under the Act, and they are also instructed that, apart from quite exceptional circumstances, they should not act on behalf of the employer or insurance company or workman in any case in which weekly payments are being made to a workman under the Act.

  Sunday Overtime.
  Lord HENRY CAVENDISH-BENTINCKasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he was aware that overtime was worked extensively on Sunday in the branch of the coachbuilding trade connected with the motor industry; and whether he could state to what extent this practice existed in that and other industries?
  Mr. MASTERMAN: The Secretary of State has no precise information as to the extent of Sunday employment in different industries, and there has been no time since the question appeared on the Paper to make inquiries, but he is informed by the Factory Department that there is some Sunday employment in the motor trade for the purpose of completing pressing orders and in garages for the purpose of repairs of public motor conveyances, and as regards other industries, in printing works, railways, electric generating stations, bakehouses, and occasionally in docks. The hon. Member is, of course, aware that the Factory Act prohibits, with certain exceptions, the employment on Sunday of women, young persons, and children in factories or workshops.

  Irish Tobacco Cultivation.
  Mr. WILLIAM REDMONDasked whether any application as to the encouragement of Irish tobacco cultivation

  585
  had been placed before the Development Commission; and, if so, when the Commission were likely to deal with the matter?
  Mr. ILLINGWORTH (a Lord of the Treasury): I am informed that the Development Commissioners have had some correspondence with the Irish Tobacco-Growers Association; but no formal application for an advance from the Development Fund for the encouragement of tobacco-growing in Ireland has reached the Commissioners. If such formal application is made, I have no doubt it will be carefully considered by the Development Commissioners.
  Mr. WILLIAM REDMOND: Will it be sufficient to forward to the Commission the application from the tobacco-growers, or must it be sent through the Department of Agriculture in Ireland?
  Mr. ILLINGWORTH: I think it must be sent direct.

  Assistant-Comptroller of National Debt Office (Sir E. Soares' Appointment).
  Mr. SNOWDENasked the Secretary to the Treasury if, before the appointment of Sir Ernest Soares to the post of Assistant Comptroller of the National Debt Office was made, the advice of the Comp-trolled was sought; and whether this official informed the Treasury that there was no person in the office qualified for the position; and whether he recommended that a man with legal qualifications should be brought into the office?
  Mr. STEEL-MAITLANDasked the First Lord of the Treasury whether the Comptroller of the National Debt Office made any recommendations or suggestions to him to the effect that any member of the Civil Service staff was qualified to be appointed or should be appointed to the post of Assistant Comptroller?
  Mr. NORMAN CRAIGasked whether the Comptroller-General of the National Debt Office, pending the vacancy in the post of Assistant Comptroller now filled by the appointment of Sir Ernest Soares, recommended some member of the staff of the National Debt Office as qualified to fill that vacancy?
  Mr. BOOTH: Before the right hon. Gentleman replies, is it not the case that under both Governments the higher positions in Government Departments have been strengthened by the introduction of
  586
  officials from outside; and is it not the case that the Unionist Government appointed Sir Schoenberg McDonnell, Mr. Ellison-Macartney, and a Unionist Whip, Mr. Henry Anstruther, to appointments of similar importance to that to which Sir Ernest Soares has recently been gazetted?
  Mr. PEEL: Is it not a fact that the post to which Mr. Anstruther was promoted was not in the Civil Service at all?
  The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Asquith): I have no information on those matters. With reference to the questions on the Paper, it is contrary to the practice of the public service that confidential communications between the heads of Departments and Ministers should be disclosed.
  Mr. FELLasked if the appointment of Sir Ernest Soares was made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 11th April at a meeting of the. Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt, at which he alone was present, whilst the Act under which the appointment was made provided that not less than three Commissioners must be present to form a quorum for the appointment of any officers?
  The PRIME MINISTER: The minute appointing Sir E. Soares was signed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 11th April. The Acts regulating the duties of the Commissioners did not necessitate an actual meeting of the Commissioners provided that the appointment was signed by three of them.
  Mr. FELL: Has the provision of the Acts requiring three to form a quorum been carried out in this case?
  The PRIME MINISTER: I do not know if the hon. Member listened to my answer. The answer was that the Acts regulating the duties of the Commissioners did not necessitate an actual meeting of the Commissioners.
  Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: Was the appointment signed by three Commissioners?
  The PRIME MINISTER: That does not arise, but I assume it was. In fact, I believe it was.
  Mr. STEE L-MAITLANDasked what was the position of greater emolument that Sir Ernest Soares had vacated in order to take up the duties of Assistant Comptroller of the National Debt Office; and for how long he had held that position of greater emolument?
  The PRIME MINISTER: Sir Ernest Soares held the position of a Junior Lord of the Treasury, with salary, from January 16th until April 10th.
  Mr. STEEL-MAITLANDasked whether there was any medical examination, which should be passed by Sir Ernest Soares, before appointment to a Civil Service post; and whether, in fact, he passed any such examination?
  Mr. SNOWDENasked if Sir Ernest Soares was medically examined on his appointment to a Civil Service post carrying with it a claim to superannuation; and, if so, was the certificate satisfactory to the Treasury?
  The PRIME MINISTER: I am informed that Sir Ernest Soares will undergo the usual examination by a doctor selected by the Civil Service Commissioners.
  Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: If the result of the medical inspection is not satisfactory, may we assume that the appointment will be cancelled?
  Mr. KEBTY-FLETCHER: As the present Government appointed the Viceroy of India from the Civil Service, do they still think there is no person in the office qualified for this appointment?
  The PRIME MINISTER: This is a question of medical examination.
  Mr. NORMAN CRAIGasked whether Sir Ernest Soares retired from practice as a solicitor in order to take up his appointment as Assistant Comptroller of the National Debt Office; whether he had already retired some considerable time from practice as a solicitor before such appointment; whether the position of Sir Ernest Soares as a Junior Civil Lord of the Treasury was paid or unpaid; and what income, and what income in excess of the emoluments of his office as Assistant Comptroller, Sir Ernest Soares gave up by accepting that office?
  The PRIME MINISTER: As already stated, his position was a paid one, and the last paragraph I have already answered.
  Mr. NORMAN CRAIG: On a point of Order, I am asking question No. 53.
  The PRIME MINISTER: I have answered it.
  Mr. NORMAN CRAIG: The first part of the question has not been answered at
  588
  all as to whether Sir Ernest Soares retired from practice as a solicitor in order to take up his appointment., or whether he had retired some time before?
  Mr. WILLIAM REDMOND: Leave Soares alone.
  The PRIME MINISTER: I beg my hon. Friend's pardon; I thought I had answered the first part of the question. Sir Ernest Soares had retired some time before.
  Mr. NORMAN CRAIG: Will the right hon. Gentleman answer the last part of the question. What income in excess of the emoluments of his office as Assistant-Comptroller Sir Ernest Soares gave up by accepting office?
  The PRIME MINISTER: The salary of Sir Ernest Soares as a Junior Lord of the Treasury was £1,000 per annum; as Assistant-Comptroller it is £800, rising to £1,000.
  Mr. W. PEEL: Is it not a fact that Sir Ernest Soares practised as a solicitor eleven years ago?
  The PRIME MINISTER: I really do not know.
  Mr. W. PEEL: And has it not been stated by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, in reply to a question—
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member will see that in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
  Mr. NORMAN CRAIGasked whether the importance of the possession of a legal training as a qualification for the post has, in any case before the appointment of Sir Ernest Soares, led to the appointment of a solicitor or barrister to the office of Assistant-Comptroller of the National Debt Office; and, if so, in what instance or instances?
  The PRIME MINISTER: The answer is in the negative.
  Mr. NORMAN CRAIGasked the First Lord of the Treasury whether he is aware that a Treasury Minute was issued in 1899 making actuarial knowledge a condition precedent to promotion amongst the permanent staff of the National Debt Office; and whether that minute continued in force at the time of the appointment of Sir Ernest Soares as Assistant-Comptroller?
  The PRIME MINISTER: The hon. Member is misinformed. This Minute applies to promotions of the staff of the

  589
  office to the posts of principal and assistant-principal clerks, but not to the heads of the Department.
  Mr. NORMAN CRAIGasked the First Lord of the Treasury if he would state when the Comptroller and Auditor-General is due to retire; whether any extension of his appointment was contemplated; if not, whether in the event of the Assistant-Comptroller and Auditor being promoted to fill the vacancy so created there was anyone in the Exchequer and Audit Department qualified for the office of Assistant-Comptroller and Auditor; and whether he would see that any vacancy or vacancies occasioned by such retirement or promotion shall be filled by a member or members of the Civil Service?
  The PRIME MINISTER: Sir John Kempe has intimated to me his intention to retire shortly from his position as Comptroller and Auditor-General. I am not yet in a position to state what advice I shall tender to the King for filling the approaching vacancy.
  Mr. W. REDMOND: Give it to a Tory Whip.
  Mr. NORMAN CRAIGasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether, having regard to the importance of the possession of legal as well as actuarial knowledge in the permanent staff of the National Debt Office, he will consider the advisability of issuing a fresh Minute setting forth more clearly the qualifications included amongst the conditions for promotion in that office?
  The PRIME MINISTER: The reply is in the negative.
  Mr. NEWMANasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether the management of Irish land purchase funds is a part of the duties of the Assistant Comptroller, National Debt Office; and, if so, whether, in view of the fact that the gentleman recently appointed to that office is without previous experience of Irish land purchase finance, he will transfer the management of such funds to a Civil Servant acquainted with the Land Purchase Acts, 1891, 1903, and 1909?
  The PRIME MINISTER: The Irish Land Purchase Fund is placed under the control of the National Debt Commissioners by Section 27 of the Irish Land Act, 1903. The Assistant-Comptroller is fully competent to fulfil his duties in connection with the fund.

  Declaration of London.
  Captain FABERasked the Prime Minister whether, seeing that the United States naval authorities had declared that the Declaration of London was thoroughly unfavourable to Britain, he would allow the Bill to be non-controversial when it came before this House?
  The PRIME MINISTER: I have no knowledge of the statement referred to, but I fail to understand why such a statement, if made, should render the Naval Prize Court Bill non-controversial.
  Captain FABER: Has not the right hon. Gentleman seen or heard of the great naval authority in the United States who has issued a pamphlet on this subject?
  The PRIME MINISTER: No, I have not.
  Captain FABER: Will the right hon. Gentleman inquire?

  Census (Scotland).
  Mr. MORTONasked whether, in consequence of the state of affairs revealed by the Census Returns, the Government proposed to do anything to check the depopulation in the rural districts of Scotland?
  The PRIME MINISTER: I can assure my hon. Friend that the Government is fully alive to the gravity of the figures that have been disclosed, but so far as land legislation is concerned I am not in a position to add to the replies I have recently given on the subject.
  Mr. FELL: Will the right hon. Gentleman give the same consideration to the smaller towns of Scotland, where industries are dying out and the population is decreasing?
  Mr. COOPER: Will the Government consider the question of securing the livelihood of the Scottish people by the imposition of a scientific tariff on imports?

  Woman Suffrage.
  Mr. SNOWDENasked the Prime Minister if he had received from the Prime Minister of the Australian Commonwealth a copy of a resolution passed unanimously by the Senate declaring that the extension of the suffrage to the women of Australia for States and Commonwealth Parliaments had had the most beneficial results; that it had led to the more orderly conduct of elections; that at the last federal elec-

  591
  tions the women's vote in the majority of the States showed a greater proportionate increase than that cast by men; and that, because the reform had brought nothing but good, the Senate respectfully urged all nations enjoying representative government to grant votes to women; and if His Majesty's Government had considered this resolution with a view of acting upon the advice given?
  The PRIME MINISTER: I received from the President of the Senate the resolution referred to, which is entitled to and has received attentive consideration. I regret to say, however, that the minds of the Members of His Majesty's Government are still divided as to the expediency of woman suffrage.
  Mr. WILLIAM REDMOND: Has the right hon. Gentleman received from the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth, as well as from the Senate, a Resolution of this character; and would there be any objection to circulating it amongst Members?
  The PRIME MINISTER:I must ask for notice of that.

  Payment of Members of Parliament.
  Mr. FELLasked the Prime Minister when he would make a further statement regarding the proposed payment of salaries to Members; was it proposed to pay salaries to Members of the House of Lords as well as of the House of Commons; and would provision be made for the payment of pensions after long periods of service to the State?
  The PRIME MINISTER: A statement on this subject will be made at an early date.

  Irish Land Stock.
  Mr. PATRICK WHITEasked the Secretary to the Treasury if he will state what quantity of stock has been issued under Section 7 of the Irish Land Act, 1909, the annual liability thereon, and to what account charged; and in what way it is proposed to extinguish liability for the capital sum?
  Mr. ILLINGWORTH: The stock to be made good under Section 7 of the Irish Land Act, 1909, amounts to £1,592,458. The annual liability in respect of this sum is £52,876, of which £8,515 will be met from the Ireland Development Grant, and the balance from moneys provided by Par-
  592
  liament. The annual payment includes a sinking fund of £7,962, which should replace the stock in about sixty-eight years.
  Mr. PATRICK WHITEasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether he will state the amount of stock issued under Section 47 (2) of the Irish Land Act, 1903, and Section 2 (1) of the Irish Land Act, 1909, for the purposes of the land aid purchase fund, and the annual liability for the amount so raised; to what account charged; and if he will state by what process and when the annual liability is proposed to be extinguished?
  Mr. ILLINGWORTH: The total amount of stock issued for the Land Purchase Aid Fund is £5,051,444. This entails an annual liability of £165,672, charged on the Vote for the Irish Land Commission, and includes 225,257 by way of sinking fund, which should replace the capital sum in about sixty-eight years.
  Mr. PATRICK WHITEasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether he will state the total amount of the Exchequer grant to local bodies deducted from the whole of Ireland in consequence of the loss on flotation of Land Stock since the passing of the Land Act of 1903 to the present date; whether the deductions were applied to liquidating the capital loss on the flotation or to meet interest and sinking fund on the amount; and whether he will state the particular grant which suffered loss?
  Mr. ILLINGWORTH: The loss on flotation of Guaranteed 2¾ per cent. Stock or Guaranteed 3 per cent. Stock is made good by means of an annuity which is charged on the Ireland Development Grant portion of the Guarantee Fund, and when that is exhausted, on votes of Parliament. Prior to the Irish Land Act, 1909, the charge for this purpose fell upon the Guarantee Fund, commencing with the Ireland Development Grant item, which alone was sufficient to meet all claims that had accrued. It follows that no deduction has been made from the grants to local bodies for this purpose.

  Public Education (Scotland).
  Mr. PATRICK WHITEasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether he would state the amount of the increased grant for public education in Scotland last year, and also the amount put on the Estimates this year for the ensuing year; if he would state the Exchequer's contribution to the

  593
  teachers' pensions for each of the last ten years; and whether he would state the annual sums payable as pensions to the different classes of public teachers in Scotland?
  The LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. Ure): As may be seen from the published Estimates, the net increase in last year's Vote for Public Education in Scotland on the previous year's was £106,434, including a sum of £33,650 for building grants to training colleges. The amount on the Estimates for this year of £2,336,594, a net increase of £82,869 on last year's vote. The Exchequer contributions towards teachers' pensions in Scotland for each of the last ten years were (commencing with year 1901–02), £8,895, £9,607, £10,324, £11,041, £11,450, £12,378, £13,231, £14,324, £15,698, and £16,879. The information requested in the last part of the hon. Member's question is not available in the form asked for.

  Government Departments (New Posts).
  Mr. WILLIAM PEELasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether the Return of new posts created as a result of legislation passed during the last six years, moved for by the hon. Member for Taunton, has been prepared; and, if so, when will it be laid upon the Table of the House?
  Mr. ILLINGWORTH: I have nothing to add to the reply I gave to the hon Member yesterday.
  Mr. PEEL: As I never asked a question yesterday, may I inquire when the Return will be ready? Is the hon. Gentleman aware that this Return was moved for as long ago as April 10th, and can he say when the Return will be laid?
  Mr. ILLINGWORTH: I replied yesterday, and I understand the reply was in today's newspapers. Replies are being received from the Public Departments which it is necessary to consult; and the Return will be laid as soon as the information is complete.—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 3rd May, 1911, col. 563.]
  Mr. PEEL: Can the hon. Gentleman say when the Return will be ready?
  Mr. ILLINGWORTH: As soon as possible.
  Mr. CHIOZZA MONEY: Will the hon. Gentleman prepare an estimate in the Return of the number of new officials that would be required if we have Tariff Reform?

  Merchant Ships (Conversion into Men-of-War).
  Lord CHARLES BERESFORDasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether, in view of the official statement that the-Government do not admit the right of foreign nations to convert merchant ships into men-of-war on the high seas, he will state to the House what action the Government will take if foreign merchant ships are so converted; and whether, in the event of such ships preying upon our mercantile marine, they will be treated as pirates when caught?
  The FIRST LORD of the ADMIRALTY (Mr. McKenna): The action to be taken will be a matter for the decision of His Majesty's Government when the occasion arises.

  Royal Navy (Officers).
  Lord CHARLES BERESFORDasked the First Lord of the Admiralty if he will inform the House as to the number of engineer officers who will be required when the first batch of sub-lieutenants have completed their course of training under the new scheme; the number of marine officers who will be required for similar duties; whether the requisite number have volunteered for duty under these two departments; if so, what number of these junior officers have been ordered to fill the vacancies required; and. whether it is a fact that if the Admiralty have to nominate sub-lieutenants for duty in the engine-room department it will be against the inclination of the officers se nominated?
  Mr. McKENNA: The first officers entered under the new scheme of entry and training will complete their examinations for the rank of lieutenant next month, and from that date a period of at least two years will elapse before officers-selected will begin to specialise in engine-room duties. It is not possible at the present time to say with precision what the requirements may be two or three years hence. The number of officers required for duty with the Royal Marines cannot at present be stated. Officers have not yet been called upon to volunteer for duty in the two departments. A further circular in connection with the scheme will shortly be published.

  Portsmouth Dockyard (Fair-Wages Clause).
  Mr. TYSON WILSONasked the First Lord of the Admiralty if he is aware that a builder named Mr. G. Davis, of South-

  595
  sea, who has a sub-contract under the firm of Morrison and Mason for the carpenters' and joiners' work at the pumping-station in course of erection at Portsmouth dockyard, is not paying overtime rate to his workmen for overtime worked during the evenings and on Saturday afternoons; and whether he will at once take steps to compel the observance of the Fair-Wages Clause by this sub-contractor?
  Mr. McKENNA: Mr. G. Davis, of South-sea, is executing the carpenters' and joiners' work of the pumping-house for Messrs. Morrison and Mason, the contractors for the new lock at Portsmouth. I am given to understand that the actual re-'quest for overtime to be worked did not emanate from the employer, and therefore overtime rate is not being paid. The men have expressed themselves as being quite satisfied with the arrangement.
  Mr. TYSON WILSON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that two men who objected to work overtime were discharged for refusing?
  Mr. McKENNA: No, Sir; but I understand the request for overtime came from the men.
  Mr. TYSON WILSON: Will the right hon. Gentleman make inquiry?
  Mr. McKENNA: Certainly.

  Royal Navy (Pensions and Gratuities).
  Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKEasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he is aware that while the time of service in the Royal Navy for pension has been increased from twenty to twenty-two years, the good conduct gratuity for chief petty officers has been reduced from £20 to £15, which is the same as for petty officers; whether he can explain the reason for this reduction; and whether he will consider the advisability of reverting to the former position?
  Mr. McKENNA: I have nothing to add to the answer I gave in reply to a similar question by the Noble Lord the Member for Portsmouth on 31st March, 1910.
  Sir CLEMENT KINLOCH-COOKEasked whether the foundation of a man's pension in the Royal Navy is still limited to 10d. per day, apparently based on the scale of per day for each year's service; that, although the period of service to obtain the pension has been increased
  596
  from twenty to twenty-two years, no corresponding increase in amount has been granted for the additional time required to be served; and whether he will consider the possibility of making some additional allowance for the two extra years' service?
  Mr. McKENNA: I have nothing to add to the answer I gave in reply to a similar question by the Noble Lord the Member for Portsmouth, on the 31st March, 1910.

  Naval Writers.
  Sir CLEMENT KINLOCH-COOKEasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he is aware that naval writers are granted, and in the case of writers below the rank of chief writer are obliged to wear, good-conduct badges under the same conditions as to award and deprivation as all other naval ratings, with the exception that pay for the same is not granted; and whether, in view of the fact that the good conduct of naval writers is as much an asset to the service as is the good conduct of other ratings who do get pay for their badges, he will consider the question of granting pay for badges to naval writers?
  Mr. McKENNA: The answer to the first part of the hon. Member's question is in the affirmative. With regard to the second part, I must refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave in reply to a similar question by the Noble Lord the Member for Portsmouth on 31st March, 1910.

  Devonport Dockyard (Shipwrights).
  Sir CLEMENT KINLOCH - COOKEasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he is aware that when Admiralty Order Dpt. L.N. 9265, C.N. 2, 7792/12643, 3rd December, 1906, was issued, the total number of chargemen of shipwrights at Devonport dockyard was forty-five, and according to the regulation twenty-five or 55.5 per cent. of that number were to receive an increase of pay to the extent of 3s. a week; that the number of chargemen of shipwrights at Devonport dockyard is now eighty-two, and of this number only 30.4 per cent., as compared with 55.5 per cent. in 1906, are in receipt of the increased pay; and whether he will consider the advisability of increasing the number of promotions to meet the extra number of chargemen?
  Mr. McKENNA: The figures are approximately correct. The question raised

  597
  by the hon. Member is one of several that are now under consideration in connection with the petitions.
  Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: May we know when these petitions will be answered?
  Mr. McKENNA: I hope shortly. I am pushing them forward as fast as I can.

  Transfer of Telephone System (Position of Employés).
  Mr. COTTONasked the Postmaster-General what provisions, if any, in reference to employæs, have been made by the Government to come into operation on the transfer of the telephone system; and if the officers' services would count from the time they entered the service of the company, and be entitled to pensions, seniority, and all other conditions as Government officers?
  The POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. Herbert Samuel): The general conditions under which employés of the National Telephone Company will be transferred to the Post Office are stated in the memorandum read in this House on 9th August, 1905, by the then Postmaster-General. The Bill which I hope shortly to introduce will contain provisions respecting pensions. The question of the value to be attached to service under the company for purposes of seniority and for other purposes is still under consideration, and I am not yet in a position to make any statement on the subject.
  Mr. COTTON: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman for a copy of the memorandum?
  Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: Yes. I will send the hon. Member a copy.
  Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: Has the right hon. Gentleman's attention been called to the terms of the recommendations made by his predecessors about three years ago in regard to these men; and, if not, will he refer to it?
  Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: Yes, Sir. There were a good many statements, but all subsequent to the memorandum made out by Lord Stanley when he was Postmaster-General in 1905 were in accordance with the terms of that memorandum, and there is to be no change, and my policy will follow that announced by my predecessors.

  Discharge of Cargoes from Foreign Ships (Wages).
  Mr. WARDLEasked the President of the Board of Trade whether, when a foreign ship, the owner of which has no domicile or registered office in England discharges its cargo, the workman employed to perform this operation have no means of enforcing wages or claims for compensation in an English court; and, if so, what steps he proposes to take to deal with the matter?
  The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Buxton): It does not appear that difficulty of recovering wages for discharge of cargoes from foreign ships mentioned in the question is as great as in the case of the stowing of cargo thereon; nut, at the same time, if the hon. Member will satisfy me that there are real cases of hardship, I will consider whether it is possible to extend the provisions of the Merchant Shipping (Stevedores' and Trimmers' Remedies) Bill so as to include persons engaged in discharging cargoes. Claims for compensation are dealt with by the Shipowners' Negligence (Remedies) Act, 1905, and the Workmen's Compensation Act, 1906.
  Mr. HOUSTON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in some countries the agent of the ship by which the shipping is consigned is responsible, and will he introduce similar legislation into this country?

  Great Britain and Australian Tariffs.
  Mr. HUNTasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he has any statistics showing whether Great Britain under the free sections of the Australian tariff has lost ground; whether on items on which she has preference she has gained; whether on the total trade she has gained because the amount gained under the preference items of the tariff has been sufficient to counteract the loss under the free and general tariff; and whether, if so, he is prepared to advocate preferential trade with Australia at the coming Colonial Conference?
  Mr. BUXTON: The Australian Preference dates from 1907 and detailed figures with regard to Australian trade are only available for the complete years 1908 and 1909. Comparing the figuress for those two years, the imports from the United Kingdom increased by £767,000; the in-

  599
  crease in goods which secured preferential treatment was £435,000, and in other goods £332,000.

  Cost of Feeding Seamen (British and Chinese).
  Mr. HOUSTONasked whether the cost of feeding Chinese seamen and firemen is only about one-half of the cost of feeding British seamen and firemen according to the Board of Trade scale; that the wages paid to Chinese seamen and firemen entered on the articles of a vessel in Chinese ports are about one-third of the wages paid to British seamen and firemen shipped in British ports, and that the wages paid to Chinese seamen and firemen shipped in British ports are considerably lower than the wages paid to British seamen and firemen shipped at the same ports; and whether he can state what wages are paid to Chinese seamen and firemen shipped in British ports and the wages paid to British seamen and firemen shipped at the same ports for the same voyages?
  Mr. BUXTON: I am unable to give any reliable estimate of the relative costs of feeding British and Chinese seamen, but I am advised that the difference in cost is not so great as the hon. Member suggests. I am informed that the usual rates of money wages paid to Chinese sailors and firemen engaged in the United Kingdom are £3 10s. per month. The Report on Standard Time Rates of Wages in the United Kingdom at 1st October, 1910 (pp. 114, 115), shows that the money wages for A.B.'s varies from £3 per month for voyages from Liverpool to the West Coast of Africa to £4 10s. per month, and for firemen from £4 to £5 10s. per month.
  Mr. HOUSTON: Has the right hon. Gentleman received the communication I sent him showing the cost of feeding British and Chinese seamen respectively calculated on the British Board of Trade scale for British seamen, and also on articles of consumption which were sold as recently as Saturday last for Chinese?
  Mr. BUXTON: I am very much obliged to the hon. Member for the information. I have sent it on to the Department for examination.

  Housing Conditions (Swansea Valley).
  Mr. JOHN WILLIAMSasked the President of the Local Government Board whether he has now received any com-
  600
  munication from the Pontardawe public health authority concerning housing conditions in the Swansea Valley; and, if so, whether he is in a position to state what steps he proposes to take to move the said authority to immediate action?
  Whether he will urge upon the Pontardawe district council the necessity and advisability of adopting a town-planning scheme, and of constructing any cottages proposed to be erected in such a manner as to fit in with the requirements of such a scheme; and also whether he is aware that, according to the medical officer of health's report for 1910 for the Pontardawe district, there were fifty basements occupied in the district, and, according to his report for 1905, there were twenty-eight houses condemned as being unfit for habitation, but that, notwithstanding the condemnation in the said report, those houses were still inhabited; that, according to the same report, there were then nineteen young married couples waiting for houses; and that since that time the number has more than doubled; and whether he will undertake to see that the provisions proposed to be made by the said council are adequate to meet the pressing and urgent needs of the district at the present moment?
  The PRESIDENT of the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. Burns): I am aware from the report of the medical officer of health of the Pontardawe Rural District for the year 1910 that there are about fifty basements in use, for human habitation in Ystalyfera, in the district. Having been in communication with the rural district council in regard to housing conditions in their area, I have been informed by them that they have practically agreed to acquire land in the portion of the district named sufficient for the erection of about 120 houses, and that at the present time they are considering plans for the erection of fifty houses. Until the provision of further houses is accomplished the council feel unable to deal effectively with some of the existing insanitary houses. I have impressed upon the council the necessity for prompt and energetic action on their part, and I shall not lose sight of the matter. I am not in a position to express an opinion on the desirability of a town-planning scheme for the rural district, but I will bring the matter to the notice of the council, and will bear it in mind when dealing with any proposal from them for the erection of houses.

  Vaccination (Dewsbury Guardians).
  Mr. SNOWDENasked whether the Order of the Local Government Board to the Dewsbury Town Council in October, 1904, empowering them to provide facilities for vaccination, was only issued after the Dewsbury Guardians had refused to carry out the instructions of the Board with reference to the suggested opening of vaccination stations; whether similar circumstances prevail at Stalybridge at the present time; and, if so, what action he proposes to take in connection with the provision of vaccination by the Stalybridge Council in view of the fact that the Board has not issued an Order to them, nor has any such Order been published in the "London Gazette," as called for by the Public Health Act, 1875?
  Mr. BURNS: On the occurrence of a severe outbreak of smallpox in Dewsbury in 1904 the Board informed the guardians that they thought it very desirable that the guardians should arrange for the opening of a vaccination station, and it was on the guardians' refusal to do this that the Board issued the Order referred to. The Board have had no correspondence with the Ashton-under-Lyne guardians with regard to the cases of smallpox which have recently occurred in Stalybridge. As I stated, in reply to the hon. Member on 20th March, no action on my part seems to be called for at the present time.
  Mr. SNOWDEN: Is it not a fact that the Town Council of Dewsbury is at the present time providing vaccination in violation of the provisions of the Public Health Act, and the notices have not been published?
  Mr. BURNS: I believe they are supplying vaccination, but not as the hon. Member suggests.

  Belmont Workhouse.
  Mr. LANSBURYasked if any of the officers now engaged at Belmont workhouse in responsible positions, such as labour masters, are engaged in a temporary capacity; and whether, in each case, certificates of character and last employment have been obtained?
  Mr. BURNS: I am informed that there are no temporary officers at Belmont workhouse at the present time of the description referred to in the question.
  Mr. LANSBURYasked if, in view of the fact that one of the principal witnesses in the case against the inmates at Belmont in respect of the recent riots has been proved to be guilty of unworthy conduct in one position and of being under the influence of drink while engaged in the responsible work of supervising and controlling men, he will reconsider his previous decision and lay upon the Table of the House the evidence given by the inmates before his inspector and also the report made to him by the inspector who held the inquiry?
  Mr. BURNS: The information I have received in relation to this matter, and which I have already given to the House, does not in my opinion make it necessary to adopt the suggestion of the hon. Member.
  Mr. LANSBURY: May I ask whether it is not a fact that several of the men sent petitions to him protesting against their conviction on the evidence given by this particular man, and asking that an inquiry should be held into the statements against him in regard to his evidence?
  Mr. BURNS: The evidence given by this man was considered so unimportant that no reference was made to it in the local newspapers. No one was convicted upon the statement of this man, who was only a temporary officer, and the offence for which he was dismissed from Belmont was that he celebrated the dismissal of himself by getting drunk after that event.

  Certificates of Lunacy and Imbecility.
  Mr. LANSBURYasked if, in view of the fact that certificates in cases of lunacy and imbecility vary in cost from £3 13s. 6d. in St. George's-in-the-East to £36 14s. in St. Pancras per annum, he will consider 'the advisability of recommending some more uniform and economical method for dealing with these cases?
  Mr. BURNS: The payments are made under statutory authority, but I am considering whether it is possible to take any action in the direction suggested.

  Public Vaccinators (Fees).
  Mr. LANSBURYasked if the fees paid to Public Vaccinators are paid subject to the approval of the Local Government Board; and whether, in view of the fact that a Public Vaccinator in Bermondsey can afford to pay 2s. to the parent of each child taken to him to be vaccinated and

  603
  also receives fees for instructing students in the art of vaccination, he will recommend the Bermondsey guardians to reduce their scale to 2s. 6d., and at the same time advise their officer to stop the practice of paying parents to take their children for vaccination?
  Mr. BURNS: The fees paid to public vaccinators are subject to the approval of the Local Government Board. The fact that a Public Vaccinator acts also as an Instructor in Vaccination, and in that capacity receives fees from students and incurs certain charges in respect of the instruction he gives, does not, in my opinion, affect the question of the fee which should be paid to him as Public Vaccinator, and I am not prepared to take the action suggested by the hon. Member.
  Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: The right hon. Gentleman has not answered the last part of the question, whether it is a fact that the Public Vaccinator at Bermondsey can afford to pay 2s. for each child vaccinated?
  Mr. LANSBURY: May I ask whether it is a fact, as stated in the question, that the Public Vaccinator does pay 2s. to the parents or persons who bring a child to him to be vaccinated?
  Mr. BURNS: My hon. Friend, if he will allow me to say so, misunderstands. What is done is this. Whenever a parent definitely decides to have a child vaccinated, the Public Vaccinator gives ls. or 2s., as the case may be, for out-of-pocket expenses. The fee is not given to the parent to induce her to have the child vaccinated.
  Mr. LANSBURY: Is it not a matter of common knowledge throughout Bermondsey Union that this particular doctor pays 2s. to every parent who takes a child to' him to be vaccinated, and consequently gets people to go to him in preference to anybody else?
  Mr. BURNS: The facts are not as suggested by the hon. Member.

  British Sailors and Firemen.
  Mr. HOUSTONasked whether the right hon. Gentleman's attention has been called to the allegation that the present standard of British sailors and firemen will not compare with foreigners, more especially Chinese; that foreigners are more sober and steady, and do their work more efficiently than Britishers; and whether,
  604
  if these allegations are correct, he will introduce legislation to enforce more sobriety, efficiency, and discipline amongst British seamen, thereby producing a better class of British seamen?
  Mr. BUXTON: The allegation to which the hon. Member refers is at least a debatable one. Perhaps I may refer him to paragraph 19 of the Report of the Boy Seamen Committee of 1907 (Cd. 3722), which is as follows:—
  19. Nor do we think that there is any force in the contention that the foreigner is preferred because he is more sober and better conducted. We have had much evidence to show that, while the foreigner on first entering the British Mercantile Marine may be easier to deal with, he is, as soon as the unfamiliarity of his surroundings has worn off, no better and no worse in this respect than the British seaman, who, it is generally admitted, is more to be relied upon in times of emergency.
  The Merchant Shipping Acts provide severe penalties for breaches of discipline, and I am not prepared to introduce further legislation of the nature indicated by the hon. Member.
  Mr. HOUSTON: In consequence of my question having been altered since I handed it in at the Table, may I ask is it possible for the right hon. Gentleman, as an act of justice to British seamen, to officially contradict the damaging allegations which have been so widely circulated?
  Mr. BUXTON: My answer was in that sense. I quoted from a Report of the Boy Seamen Committee of 1907, which denies these allegations in toto.

  Merchant Shipping Act (Contravention).
  Mr. HOUSTONasked whether the right hon. Gentleman is aware that the steamship "Coomassie," of British register and flying the British flag, sailed from Hamburg on or about 10th March last, in contravention of the Merchant Shipping Act, without a single officer who held a British certificate of competency on board; whether he is aware that, with the exception of four British sailors, the whole of the officers and crew were foreigners; whether he is aware that the four British sailors left the ship at an Italian port to which the steamer proceeded, and that consequently this vessel, with a British register and flying the British flag, had

  605
  not a single British member of the crew aboard; whether he will introduce further legislation to remedy this evil; and whether he will introduce an Act requiring that at least 75 per cent. of the officers, engineers, and crew of any British vessel shall be British subjects?
  Mr. BUXTON: The case of the "Coomassie," to which the hon. Member refers, is engaging my serious attention; and, pending the result of inquiries I am making, I am not prepared to make any statement with regard to it. Perhaps the hon. Member would kindly repeat his question later.

  Foreign Merchandise (Marks of Origin).
  Mr. NORMAN CRAIGasked whether under the existing law goods of foreign manufacture may be imported into the United Kingdom without any statement or indication of their foreign origin, provided that they have no marks upon the goods themselves or on the coverings containing them; and whether, having regard to the opportunity for fraud so occasioned, he will consider the advisability of amending the law so as to remove that opportunity?
  Mr. BUXTON: I understand that the Commissioners of Customs who administer Section 16 of the Merchandise Marks Act, hold that where imported goods bear no marks whatever, the addition of marks indicating their country of origin is not required. I am not prepared to introduce legislation requiring all imported goods to he marked with an indication of their foreign origin.

  Connaught Winter Assizes.
  Mr. O'DOWDasked the Attorney-General for Ireland whether he is aware that it has been the practice in recent years to hold the Connaught winter assizes in another province, to the inconvenience and expense to poor witnesses and others from the different counties of Connaught whose atttendance at these assizes may be required; and, if so, whether, in view of the fact that there are towns in Connaught possessing some of the finest and most commodious court houses in Ireland, with the best hotel accommodation as well, he will consider the advisability of having these assizes held in the province of Connaught in future?
  Mr. REDMOND BARRY: The Connaught Winter Assizes have been held in the city of Limerick for the past four
  606
  years. Every Winter Assize Order contains provisions for the payment of witnesses' expenses, and, having regard to the railway facilities for reaching Limerick, I do not think any real inconvenience has been caused by the holding there of the Winter Assizes. Many considerations, including the convenience of jurors, have to be taken into account in fixing the place of assizes, and it would not be possible to, give any general assurance of the kind suggested by the hon. Gentleman.

  Coronation Week (School Children's Holidays).
  Mr. ALDENasked the President of the Board of Education if he can state what arrangements have been made with regard to the granting of holidays to school children during the Coronation week; and whether it is the intention to follow the-precedent at the Coronation of the late-King Edward?
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD. (Mr. Herbert Lewis, for Mr. Runciman): No general arrangement has been made, but the Board of Education will be prepared to consider, on its merits, any application for a special allowance in respect of the number of school meetings required by Article 45 of the Code in the event of any public elementary school failing to-complete the 400 meetings required by the. Article as a result of special holidays being given at the Coronation I think that this, procedure follows, in effect, the precedent of the year 1902.

  Royal Arsenal (Sick Pay).
  Mr. NEWMANasked whether, in the case of a man being re-employed at the Royal Arsenal, a difference will be made between the rates for sickness or for injury that he would have received had he been transferred from the torpedo factory to another department and the rates he will now be paid in the event of sickness or of injury; and, if so, the amount of the difference; and whether the qualifying period for a gratuity under the regulations of the Ordnance Factories counts from the-date of first entry or from the date of reentry?
  Colonel SEELY: There will be no difference in the rates of sick or injury pay except in the case of a man who had been continuously employed to the date of his discharge from before 1st August, 1900. Such a man on being re-employed comes under the revised terms, which have effect

  607
  for all men entered or re-entered in the Ordnance Factories on or after that date. The main differences between these revised terms and the earlier terms are:—Sick pay after ten years' service, half pay at day work rating instead of three-quarters pay at day work rating. Injury pay, half average weekly earnings instead of full pay at day work rating. The period for gratuity counts from the date of first entry, provided, of course, that no gratuity has already been paid.

  Enfield and Waltham Abbey Factories.
  Mr. BOWERMANasked the Under-Secretary for War if it is intended that the workmen employed at the Enfield and Waltham Abbey factories shall be paid their wages for the two days' holiday during Coronation week?
  Colonel SEELY: Since Enfield and Waltham Abbey are very near to London, And in this and many other respects are in a similar position to Woolwich, it has been decided to grant both holidays on full pay.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
Mr. BALFOUR: Perhaps the Prime Minister will now tell us what the business will be for next week?
The PRIME MINISTER: On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday we shall proceed with and, I hope, complete, the remaining stages of the Parliament Bill.
On Monday next I propose to submit, at the commencement of business, a Motion 'for the allocation of time on the Parliament Bill. As I stated yesterday, the Chancellor of the Exchequer will introduce the Budget on Monday, the 15th inst.
Mr. BALFOUR: It would be out of order to argue this matter at question time, because we shall have an opportunity of discussing it on Monday, but I wish to point out the extreme inconvenience of taking the different stages of the Parliament Bill so close together, quite apart from the amount of time given to them. I will not argue now the amount of time given, but I do say that it is extremely inconvenient that we should end the Committee Stage upon the Wednesday in one week and do all the remaining stages on the first four days of the next week.
Mr. JAMES HOPE: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether, in the event of the Motion allocating the time on the Parliament Bill being passed on Monday, he proposes to proceed with the Report stage the same night?
The PRIME MINISTER: Certainly.
Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD: When does the right hon. Gentleman propose to take the Trade Union Law Amendment Bill?
The PRIME MINISTER: I am afraid I cannot name a date now.
Ordered, "That the Proceedings on the Motion for leave to bring in the National Insurance Bill have precedence this day of the Business of Supply."—[The Prime Minister.]

UNITED STATES ARBITRATION TREATY.
Mr. HUNT: I beg to ask your leave to move the Adjournment of the House, on a definite matter of urgent national importance, namely:—
"That as, under the arbitration treaty now being arranged between the United Kingdom and the United States, the United Kingdom will be bound to submit every question to arbitration, whilst the United States will be able to exclude from arbitration certain great questions, that this will Lid most unfair and disadvantageous to the United Kingdom, that Mr. Bryce be instructed to refuse to continue with the arbitration proposals unless the United States, as well as the United Kingdom, agrees to refer all questions between the two countries to arbitration with no limitation whatever."
Mr. SPEAKER: I am afraid that the Motion of the hon. Member is really neither urgent nor definite. He assumes that certain things are going to happen. I do not think he has any authority from any answer given in this House to assume that those things will happen, but he will have an opportunity of discussing the Treaty if and whenever it is made.
NEW MEMBER SWORN.—Leopold Charles Maurice Stennett Amery, esquire, for the Parliamentary Borough of Birmingham (South Division).

NATIONAL INSURANCE.
The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Lloyd George): I ask leave to introduce a Bill "To provide for insurance against loss of health, and for the prevention and cure of sickness, and for insurance against unemployment, and for purposes incidental thereto."
In moving for leave to bring in the Bill of which I have given notice, I must thank the House for the great indulgence it has extended to me during the past two or three months. I am afraid I must plead for a little further indulgence during the time I am endeavouring to explain the provisions of this Bill. I shall do my best to make myself heard in all parts of the House, but I am sure I shall not appeal in vain to the kindness of my friends. I think it must be a relief to the Members of the House of Commons to turn from controversial questions for a moment to a question which, at any rate, has never been the subject of controversy between the parties in the State. I believe there is a general agreement as to the evil which has to be remedied. There is a general agreement as to its urgency, and I think I can go beyond that and say there is a general agreement as to the main proposals upon which the remedy ought to be based. In this country, as my right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Burns) said in his speech last week, 30 per cent. of the pauperism is attributable to sickness. A considerable percentage would probably have to be added to that for unemployment. The administration of the Old Age Pensions Act has revealed the fact there is a mass of poverty and destitution in this country which is too proud to wear the badge of pauperism, and which declines to pin that badge to its children. They would rather suffer from deprivation than do so. I am perfectly certain if this is the fact with regard to persons of seventy years of age, there must be a multitude of people of that kind before they reach that age.
The efforts made by the working classes to insure against the troubles of life indicate they are fully alive to the need of some provision being made. There are three contingencies against which they insure—death, sickness, and unemployment. Taking them in the order of urgency which the working classes attach to them, death would come first. There are 42,000,000 industrial policies of insurance against death issued in this country of small amounts where the
610
payments are either weekly, monthly, or occasionally quarterly. The friendly societies, without exception, have funeral benefits, and that accounts for about 6,000,000. The collecting societies are about 7,000,000, and those are also death benefits. Then the great industrial insurance companies have something like 30,000,000 policies. There is hardly a household in this country where there is not a policy of insurance against death. I will not stop to account for it. After all, the oldest friendly societies in the world are burial societies. All that I would say here is we do not propose to deal with insurance against death. It is no part of our scheme at all, partly because the ground has been very thoroughly covered, although not very satisfactorily covered, and also because this, at any rate, is the easiest part of the problem and is a part of the problem which is not beset with the difficulties of vested interests. Fortunately, all the vested interests which deal with sickness and unemployment are of a thoroughly unselfish and beneficent character, and we shall be able, I think, to assist them, not merely without interfering with their rights and privileges, but by encouraging them to do the excellent work they have commenced and which they are doing so well.
Sickness comes in the next order of urgency in the working-class mind. -There are over 6,000,000 policies—that is hardly the word, perhaps, for friendly societies—but there is provision made by 6,000,000 people against sickness. Most of it includes a provision for medical aid. There are, I think, about 300,000 or 400,000 members who have insured for medical aid alone, but I think, almost without except ion, the friendly societies include medical relief in the provision which they make. That is not, I think, the case with the trade unions. There are 700,000 members in the trade unions insured for sick benefits, but I do not think that includes medical relief. In addition to those, there are a good many unregistered assurances at works, where a man leaves a shilling a month at the office for the purpose of paying the works' doctor. I should say, therefore, that between 6,000,000 and 7,000,000 people in this country have made some provision against sickness, not all of it adequate, and a good deal of it defective. Then comes the third class, the insurance against unemployment. Here not a tenth of the working classes have made any provision at all. You have only got 1,400,000

611
workmen who have insured against unemployment. It is true that perhaps about half of the employment of this country is not affected by the fluctuations of trade. I do not think agricultural laoburers or railway servants are affected quite to the same extent. Then there is provision for short time in some of the trades. Taking the precarious trades affected by unemployment, I do not believe more than one-third or one-quarter of the people engaged in them are insured against unemployment. That is the provision which is made at the present moment by the working-classes: 42,000,000 policies against death, about 6,100,000 who have made some kind of provision against sickness, and 1,400,000 who have made some provision against unemployment.
4.0 P.M.
Now comes the question, which leads up to the decision of the Government to take action. What is the explanation that only a portion of the working-classes have made provision against sickness and against unemployment? Is it they consider it not, necessary? Quite the reverse, as I shall prove by figures. In fact, those who stand most in need of it make up the bulk of the uninsured. Why? Because very few can afford to pay the premiums, and pay them continuously, which enable a man to provide against those three contingencies. As a matter of fact, you could not provide against all those three contingencies anything which would be worth a workman's while, without paying at any rate 1s. 6d. or 2s. per week at the very lowest. There are a multitude of the working classes who cannot spare that, and ought not to he asked to spare it, because it involves the deprivation of children of the necessaries of life. Therefore they are compelled to elect, and the vast majority Choose to insure against death alone. Those who can afford to take up two policies insure against death and sickness, and those who can afford to take up all three insure against death, sickness and unemployment, but only in that order. What are the explanations why they do not insure against all three? The first is that their wages are too low. I am talking now about the uninsured portion. Their wages are too low to enable them to insure against all three without some assistance: The second difficulty, and it is the greatest of all, is that during a period of sickness or unemployment, when they are `earning nothing, they cannot keep up the
612
premiums. They may be able to do it for a fortnight or three weeks, but when times of very bad trade come, when a man is out of work for weeks and weeks at a time, arrears run up with the friendly societies, and when the man gets work, it may be at the end of two or three months, those are not the first arrears which have to be met. There are arrears of rent, arrears of the grocery bill, and arrears for the necessaries of life. At any rate he cannot consider his friendly society only. The result is that a very considerable number of workmen find themselves quite unable to keep up the premiums when they have a family to look after.
Undoubtedly there is another reason. It is no use shirking the fact that a proportion of workmen with good wages spend them in other ways, and therefore have nothing to spare with which to pay premiums to friendly societies. It has come to my notice, in many of these cases, that the women of the family make most heroic efforts to keep up the premiums to the friendly societies, and the officers of friendly societies, whom I have seen, have amazed me by telling the proportion of premiums of this kind paid by women out of the very wretched allowance given them to keep the household together. I think it is well we should look all the facts in the face before we come to consider the remedy. What does it mean in the way of lapses? I have inquired of friendly Societies, and, as near as I can get at it, there are 250,000 lapses in a year. That is a very considerable proportion of the 6,000,000 policies. The expectation of life at twenty is, I think, a little over forty years, and it means that in twenty years' time there are 5,000,000 lapses: that is, people who supported and joined friendly societies, and who have gone on paying the premiums for weeks, months, and even years, struggling along, at last, when a very bad time of unemployment comes, drop out and the premium lapses. It runs to millions in the course of a generation. What does that mean? It means that the vast majority of the working men of this country at one time or other have been members of friendly societies, have felt the need for provision of this kind, and it is only because they have been driven, sometimes by their own habits, but in the majority of cases by circumstances over which they have no control—to abandon their policies. That is the reason why, at the present moment, not one half of the workmen of this country have made

613
any provision for sickness, and not one-tenth for unemployment. I think it necessary to state these facts in order to show that there is a real need for some system which would aid the workmen over these difficulties. I do not think there is any better method, or one more practicable at the present moment, than a system of national insurance which would invoke the aid of the State and the aid of the employer to enable the workman to get, over all these difficulties and make provision for himself for sickness, and, as far as the most precarious trades are concerned, against unemployment.
I come at once to the plan of the Government. The measure of the Government will be divided into two parts. The first will deal with sickness, and the second with unemployment. The sickness branch of the Bill will also be in two sections; one will be compulsory and the other voluntary. The compulsory part of the Bill involves a compulsory deduction from the wages of all the employed classes who earn weekly wages, or whose earnings are under the Income Tax limit. There will be a contribution from the employer and a further contribution from the State. There are exceptions from the compulsory clause. The first will he in the Army and Navy. We are making special provision for soldiers and sailors. It, is a crying scandal, I think, that at the present moment there are so many soldiers and sailors who have placed their lives at the disposal of the country, and are quite ready to sacrifice them, as we know from past experience, not merely that they should he liable to but, that as a matter of fact, hundreds and thousands do actually leave the Army and the Navy broken through ill-health. I am talking now of ill-health not due to misconduct. These men leave the Army without any provision from either public or private charity, and they are broken men for the rest of their lives. I think it is a crying scandal that that should occur in a country like this, and I hope that this scheme will put an end to it. There will be special provision made for that. But these men will not be regarded as in the employed class for the purposes I am about to explain. The same thing applies to the teachers, and I hope to be able, with the assistance of my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Education, to largely strengthen their present position. I think their provision is very inadequate, and, compared with the provision made in
614
other countries, I think a very paltry allowance is made for their superannuation.
Mr. JOHN REDMOND: Does that apply to Ireland?
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Certainly, I think the Irish case is a very bad case. I have had a number of Irish teachers before me, and some of them told me that they were getting about £1 a week. There are about 300 of them in the workhouses. They are doing their work for the Empire under very trying conditions, and I shall certainly consider it the duty of the Government, in any scheme of superannuation, to include the Irish teachers as well.
Mr. JOHN REDMOND: When?
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I hope it will be possible this year. We propose excepting all people employed under the Crown or under municipalities where, at the present moment, there is no deduction from their wages when they are ill, and where there is some superannuation allowance. There is no need to make provision for them because provision is already made. The same thing will apply to commission agents employed by more than one person. There is also an exception in the case of casual labour employed otherwise than for the purpose of the employer's trade or business. We think it is vital that casual labour should be included. Otherwise the same thing may happen here as I am told happens in Germany, where the exclusion of casual labour is rather encouraging its growth. That is a very bad thing in itself, and there is really no class which it is more important to include than casual labour.
Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: Does that include casual labour in. dockyards?
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Casual labour at docks and in warehouses will be included. I think, too, that casual labour such as that of golf caddies should be brought in. I am making special provision for labour of that kind. Hotel waiters will be another difficulty. They are not paid salaries. I am told they very often pay for the privilege of waiting, and we have to make special provision for them. Cab drivers are another class we propose to include. All casual labour of this kind will be included, as well as casual labour of the kind referred to by the hon. Member opposite. The man who offers to carry your bag for sixpence you can never draw

615
in, but it is our intention to attract all casual labour possible within the ambit of our Bill.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Are we to understand that all the classes which the right hon. Gentleman has enumerated are exceptions to the compulsory provisions which he is about to describe?
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Certainly, they can come in the voluntary part if they like, so long as they answer to the definition which I have given. I think that is rather anticipating, but the right hon. Gentleman will later on find what class of persons will come in. I come to the amount of contribution. The workman now pays to his friendly society 6d. or 1s. The usual contribution to a friendly society is something between 6d. and 9d., as far as I have been able to discover, and anything under that produces benefits which are benefits I do not think it would be worth our while to include in an Act of Parliament. The House will be interested to know what German workmen have to pay, because that was the first great scientific experiment in insurance on a national scale. It has been enormously successful. That is the testimony borne by all classes of Germans. I have taken some trouble to inquire, and the German Government have been exceedingly kind and helpful in placing information at our disposal. They have shown every disposition to be helpful throughout, and their testimony is that all classes of the community are very much benefited by it. In Germany the payment is in proportion to wages, but the benefits are also in proportion to wages, so that the higher class of workman, who pays a very high contribution, gets a very substantial benefit. There are in Germany, I think, five classes of invalidity contributors, and for sickness every man pays according to his income. They divide their insurance into two separate branches of sickness and invalidity. There are two separate branches, but we propose to include them in one branch. In Germany a man who earns 30s. pays 10¾d. weekly for sickness and invalidity. There are not many of those. The man who is paid 24s. a week, which I think is about the average wage in this country, if you were to strike an average, which it is a difficult thing to do—the man who is paid 24s. a week pays 9d. a week. For that 9d. the benefits he gets will not be equal to the benefits we shall be able to give under our Bill twenty years hence.
616
The 20s. a week man pays 7½d., the 18s. man6¾d., the 15s. man 5¾ the 12s. man 4¾d., and the 9s. man 3¾d.
That is what the workman pays in Germany, and when you come down to these lower classes the benefits are so small that the workmen in Germany say they prefer to resort to parish relief as the benefits are much too inadequate. For that reason we have decided in favour of one class, because if you have a scale which is proportionate it would be very difficult to give benefits to the lower class except by making special conditions which it would not be worth our while to make. It would certainly not give them a minimum allowance to keep their families from want. So we have decided to have one scale for all classes, with a provision for the lowest wages. Therefore, we have decided to propose a deduction, of 4d. for men and 3d. for women. That is about a halfpenny a day and a penny on Saturday, or, as somebody told me, about the price of two pints of the cheapest beer per week, or the price of an ounce of tobacco. Now comes the difficulty of the man who is earning 15s. a week and under, and who finds it rather difficult to pay 4d. a week. We meet that case by saying that a man or woman who earns 2s. 6d. a day or less shall pay 3d., 2s. a day or less 2d., and is. 6d. a day or less ld. a week. Let me make a very important exception. That would not include the cases where there is board and lodging in addition to the wage. These cases are excluded altogether. This is purely the case where the wage represents the whole payment. Who will pay the difference? If you make the State pay the difference, then it means that the employers who pay high wages to their workmen will be taxed for the purpose of making up the diminished charge for workmen of other employers who are paying less, and I do not think that would be fair. We have come to the conclusion that the difference ought to be made up by the employer who profits by cheap labour, and therefore in the lowest case (in the case of 15s. a week and downwards) the employer will pay more. I hope I have made it clear that our scale of deduction for the workmen is a uniform one, with the exception of that descending scale when you come to the very lowest wages and where you really cannot expect a man to pay 4d. a week. There is another difficulty. Are we going to include in the benefits of the scheme men of all ages at the present moment? If we are, on what scale? Are

617
we going to charge the man of fifty more than the man of twenty-five? That is a question which, of course, presents itself the moment you begin to consider the actuarial position, because, after all, sickness doubles, trebles, and quadruples as you get along in life until when you get between sixty-five and seventy the average sickness in five years is fifty-two weeks. It begins with three or four days, then on to a week, then to a fortnight, and a man as he gets on in life becomes a heavier charge upon his friendly society and no society can possibly take a man at fifty or forty-five on the same terms as if he were only sixteen or twenty unless they make special provision.
Of course, we are now starting a new scheme, and the Government have decided to do this: to charge. a perfectly uniform rate throughout, calculating the loss on older lives—because there will be a heavy initial loss as the result of that operation—calculating that loss, anticipating it, and making provision to wipe it out in so many years. We have made provision to wipe the whole of that loss out, charging a perfectly uniform rate in fifteen-and-a half years. At the end of that time, of course, there will be a considerable sum that will have been realised for the purpose of increasing the benefits, and those who will come in early will then get the benefit of their thrift by having a considerable sum of money added to the sum which is available for increasing the benefits. The only difference we make is with regard to men over fifty. We then propose to pay them reduced benefits. Men who are over sixty-five at the present moment we do not propose should join the scheme at all, because that is an impossible undertaking; the burden would be much too heavy, and, after all, we must be fair to the man who comes in young with his money. He must be encouraged, he must get his reward for it, and if we take over too heavy a burden in the way of those who are at present very old, the young people will suffer. I am told that is the criticism in Germany that the young people do not get full value for their own money and the money of their employers. We propose to admit everyone up to sixty-five to insurance so long as it is done within twelve months after the passing of the Act. We are going to give twelve months' grace. If they come in after twelve months they will come in on the terms either of paying a rate appropriate to their age or of taking reduced
618
benefits, which comes to practically the same thing.
Mr. BALFOUR: Would not they come in at sixteen?
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: A man may only start work at twenty-five, and if he comes in after the first twelve months he has to pay a rate appropriate to his age or to take reduced benefits for his life. There will not be very many such cases. The right hon. Gentleman is perfectly right the rule would be that everybody would come in at sixteen, but there may be people who come in after sixteen. In that case they will pay according to age or take reduced benefits. We make a certain exception about sixteen, because if a man has been training at a technical college, for instance, or in some other way, he is usefully employed in training himself for life, then we do not insist upon sixteen as a rigid limit. So much for the contribution by the employé. Now we come to the contribution of the employer. What interest has the employer in the matter? His interest is the efficiency of his workmen, and there is no doubt at all that a great insurance scheme of this kind removes a great strain of pressing burden and anxiety from the shoulders of the working classes, and increases the efficiency of the workmen enormously. The working men whom I met during the trades-union movement told me that many a time they used to go on working at their business because they dared not give it up, as they could not afford to, and it would have been better for them to have been in the doctor's hands. This procedure generally brings about a very bad breakdown, and not only that, when a man is below par neither the quantity nor the quality of his work is very good. I have taken the trouble to make some inquiry from the German employers as to their experience of insurance from this point of view, and I have got a number of answers which, perhaps, later on the House would be interested in having circulated. Here is one instance I had out of many. It is the opinion of an employer engaged in the steel industry. He said:—
"There can be no doubt that the Insurance Laws, together with the increase of wages, have exercised an enormously beneficial influence upon the health, standard of living, and the efficiency of workers."
Another great employer of labour says:—
"That from the employers' standpoint these laws pay, since the efficiency of the workman is increased."
And now there is this very curious position in Germany that the employers, and the

619
largest employers, are voluntarily offering to increase their contributions to national insurance for increased benefits. That is the view taken by the employer in Germany. What does he pay for sickness and invalidity insurance? He pays for a 30s. a week man 7¼d. For a 24s. a week man the employer would pay 5¾d. and for an 18s. a week man he pays 4¼d., then when it goes down below that the contribution is very much lower, and the benefits are very poor. We propose that the employer should pay 3d. a week, the workman will pay 4d., or 3d. for a woman, and the employer will pay 3d. for man and woman alike. That is our proposal.
I come to the contribution of the State. The advantage of the scheme to the State is, of course, in a happy, contented, and prosperous people. The German contribution is not a very large one. I believe it is about £2,500,000 and that includes Old Age Pensions. We have already got a burden of £13,000,000 a year for Old Ago Pensions. But let me point this out to the House, that payment is equivalent to something like 5d. a week for employer and labourer under this scheme, and it makes matters very much easier. We certainly could not have offered the benefits which we are offering in this measure, 4d. for a workman and 3d. for an employer, had it, not been that the whole burden of pensions over seventy years of age had been taken over by the State. That is the first actuarial fact which was borne in upon me the moment I came in contact with the actualities, what an enormous difference that made in the scheme, and how it eased matters. Had it not been for that I should have proposed very much dearer and sterner terms both for the employer and the employed. We do not propose that the State contribution should end with that £13,000,000. We propose that the State contribution shall be the equivalent—I will explain what I mean when I come to the finance of the scheme— of 2d. a member—4d. from a workman, 3d. from an employer, and 2d. from the State. I should like to point out to the House here how we are meeting the three difficulties experienced by contributaries in making provision for sickness. The first difficulty is the lowness of the wages. We are meeting that by a State contribution and a contribution from the employer which enables us to depress all round the amount of contribution demanded from the
620
workman. More than that we have a special scale for those whose wages are lower. That is how we meet the case of low wages. I want to point out how we meet the case of the man who is unable to pay because of sickness and of unemployment, because really this is the most serious difficulty that the workman has to encounter, so therefore we propose special provisions for him. In the friendly societies, as everyone knows who is acquainted with their working, during sickness, whether you are sick or whether you are unemployed, you have to go on paying steadily. It is true that, not being societies working for profit, and being really quite worthy of their name of friendly societies, with a great sense of brotherhood, they make special efforts to spare their men the last dire necessity of expulsion, but still they have to get their money, and what they do is this. When a man is sick he may get a nominal allowance of 10s. a week, but his 6d. or his 9d. will be deducted from it, so that where he is nominally getting 10s. he is really getting 9s. 6d. That is the time when 6d. is worth more than 2s. 6d. when a man is in full wage. We propose to make no deduction at all from benefits, but where a man is receiving sick pay we do not propose that that should be counted against him at all. With regard to unemployment, there will be no deduction, and the mere fact that he has failed to pay from that time will not be reckoned against him when we come afterwards to compute the number of payments he has made.
Mr. BALFOUR: It will count exactly as if he had paid.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: That is a better way to put it. Now I come to unemployment. What is the workman to do when he is out of work? How is he to pay his contributions? We propose allowing a 6 per cent. margin for unemployment; that means three weeks a year. As long as a man is employed you deduct 4d., but we allow a margin of three weeks a year for unemployment. That means in a cycle, say of four years—bad times may come once every four years let us say—a margin of twelve weeks of unemployment. We propose to do more than that. After he has exhausted his twelve weeks, if he is still unemployed, then up to 25 per cent., that means thirteen weeks a year, we still allow him, but at reduced benefits. Up to three weeks there is no reduction in his

621
benefit at all. He is allowed that free margin for unemployment. Beyond that, up to thirteen weeks a year, he is allowed, without expulsion or without his policy lapsing rather, to go on; but then there is a corresponding reduction in the benefits.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The right hon. Gentleman has suddenly moved from sickness to unemployment.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: No, no.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I beg pardon. I understood it. I am trying very hard to understand the right hon. Gentleman's statement. I thought he was now talking of unemployment.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I am sorry if I have not made my point clear. I am still dealing with the difficulty of a man paying his contribution during sickness and unemployment, and I am just showing how the Government make special provision for the payment of contributions in these periods. I hope that is clear to the House. Later on I will point out that it is also proposed that what is called a Distress Fund in friendly societies should be set up which will help the workman to pay arrears of contribution for unemployment or for some other reason. That is the compulsory Clause as far as contributions are concerned. I now come to the voluntary contributors. There are two classes of voluntary contributors. There are persons who, whilst not working for an employer, are engaged in some regular occupation and are mainly dependent on their earnings for their livelihood. Take the village blacksmith who is not working for any employer, but is depending on his earnings for his livelihood. The same thing will apply to the small tradesman. I find looking through the lists of the friendly societies, in some of them there is a very high percentage of men who do not belong to the employed class in the ordinary sense of the term. For instance, in rural districts, you will find that all the publicans, all the tradesmen, the schoolmaster, the village blacksmith, and the man who is joinering on his own, who is not anybody's man, are members of friendly societies. We propose that they should be allowed to be members of this insurance scheme. They are really a great source of strength to the friendly societies. They help them in the management, and their business knowledge is of infinite value. It would be a great accession of strength to any scheme of this kind
622
that we should still retain in it men of that type. Then there is the other class of men, those who have been employed working for others and have ceased to do so, and are working on their own account. So long as they have been contributors for five years we allow them still to join. With regard to this class, there is a difficulty in allowing them to come in at any age and at all ages. With an employed class, you have always the test of employment for wages, but with this class, if a man is a trader, or is working on his own account, doing as little or as much as he likes, there is no test of that kind, and unless there is some sort of check you might have a rush of people who are fairly old coming in at the last moment to get benefits which are quite out of proportion to the contribution which they pay. Therefore, as far as the voluntary class is concerned, we are bound to put a limit to the age at which they can be allowed to join at the uniform rate. Therefore, we propose that all those of that class who wish to join within six months, and who are forty-five years of age and under, can join at a rate which covers the 4d. or 3d. as the case may be, whether they are men or women, they themselves paying the employers' contribution. That would mean that they would pay 7d. for men and 6d. for women, and they, of course, get the benefit of the State contribution. Those over forty-five join at rates appropriate to their ages, but they also get the benefit of the State contribution for what it is' worth to them, and, of course, it is worth a good deal.
Another exception we are bound to make to this class of voluntary contributors. I do not think it would be advisable to allow married women who are not workers to join. It would be very difficult to check malingering—almost impossible, I am told by those who are working friendly societies and insurance work. There is no real test except the medical certificate, and that is not always conclusive. It is very difficult, doctors tell me, in these cases, and it would be very dangerous to allow them to come in unless you have something like the test of work. You have, I think, about 700,000 married women who are workers and come into the compulsory scheme as workers, but I do not think we can possibly agree to married women unless they are workers. I will give the numbers which, of course, must be approximate numbers, for we have not the latest Census returns, and there fore we have only to guess at what these

623
figures should be. The estimate of population has been falsified in the case of Scotland, and we cannot tell at present how the estimates will be falsified both in England and Ireland. I have, therefore, to state the figures which have been arrived at by the actuaries, who have given a great deal of thought to the subject. We have had very able actuaries at our command, but the figures must, of course, be estimated according to the details which they have had at their disposal, and if it is found subsequently that the figures are wrong because the Census returns do not substantiate them, it will not be their fault. First of all, as to employed contributors, we anticipate that 9,200,000 men will be in the compulsory class, and there will be 3,900,000 women, making a total of 13,100,000 in that class. Then the voluntary contributors will number 600,000 men, and 200,000 women, making a total of 800,000. Of course, here again I have to say that we can only guess at the number of people likely to come in.
Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: Are young persons included?
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Certainly; everybody who is employed in this country on wages of whatever age will come in. There will be a deduction in the case of young persons. I will state later on how we are going to deal with the deduction, but they will all come in. Otherwise there would be a premium on boy labour to that extent. If an employer got off without paying in respect of a boy of fifteen it would be an advantage to have boy labour, and therefore we propose that everybody should come in. With the 800,000 voluntary contributors, the total will be 9,800,000 men, 4,100,000 women, making 13,900,000 altogether. But to that has got to be added 800,000 persons under sixteen years of age, consisting of 500,000 boys and 300,000 girls. That makes a grand total of 14,700,000 persons who shall, we hope, enjoy the Insurance scheme.
Now I come to benefits. These will be distributed under three or four different heads. There will be medical relief. There will be the curing side of the benefit, and there will also be allowance for the maintenance of a man and his family during the time of his sickness. I will deal first of all with the medical side of relief. There is no doubt that there is great reluctance on the part of workmen to resort to the Poor Law medical officer. That is
624
admitted on all hands. It was stated both in the Majority and the Minority Reports of the Commission. He has to prove destitution, and although there is a liberal interpretation placed on that by boards of guardians, still it is a humiliation which a man does not care to bear among his neighbours. What generally happens is this. When a workman falls ill, if he has no provision made for him, he hangs on as long as he can and until he gets very much worse. Then he goes to another doctor and runs up a bill, and when he gets well he does his very best to pay that and the other bills. He very often fails to do so. I have met many doctors who have told me that they have hundreds of pounds of bad debts of this kind which they could not think of pressing for payment of, and what really is done now is that hundreds of thousands—I am not sure that I am not right in saying that millions—of men, women, and children get the services of such doctors. The heads of families get those services at the expense of the food of their children, or at the expense of good-natured doctors. Doctors are very great sufferers indeed. One of them said to me: "A man fell ill and wanted my attendance. Well, I asked myself, What am I to do in this case? Here is this poor fellow, who owes me already £9 or £10,. which he can never pay, but how can I refuse to go?" He could not refuse, and he went. I do not think it right that we should do our charity at the expense of the medical profession. What we propose to-do is this. If one of the 14,700,000 persons, who practically include all the industrial population of this country, falls ill, he can command the service of a competent doctor, and command it with the knowledge that he can pay. But not only that, the doctor whose service he commands will know also that he will be paid. That is going to make a very great difference in the doctoring of these people.
I come now to a rather delicate task, because the doctors and the friendly societies are at variance on the subject. The doctors say that they are underpaid. Well, we all say we are underpaid. On the other hand, the friendly societies say, "No, it is just your greed." That is really the quarrel that is going on at the present time, and it has become very acute. In some districts—they are rural districts—the doctor is paid half a crown per head per annum for members of friendly societies. In other districts the amount runs up to 6s. per head per annum, but on the average the doctoring for

625
members of friendly societies is done at 4s. per head per annum. The doctors say, "We cannot do it," and I am inclined to agree with them. This is not the opinion of the friendly societies that I am putting before the House. I have information from independent inquiries I have made of men who have really no interest in the matter—men who have passed through the stage of doing friendly societies' work, and who are very good judges. They say that no doctor can possibly afford to give expensive drugs, and some of these are essential to the cure of certain diseases. These drugs cannot be purchased at the price paid to the doctor if he is to get pnything for his professional services. I am on the whole inclined to agree that the doctors have got a case for increased payment, not as much as they ask, something far short of that, but at the same time something very substantial, and the first thing which I think should be done is to separate the, drugs from the doctors, because a patient, so long as he gets something discoloured and really nasty, is perfectly convinced that it must be a very good medicine. Therefore there ought to be no inducement for underpaid doctors to take it out in drug s. I am not sure but that the Majority Report of the Commission recommended that change.
I suggest that there should be a separation of drugs from the doctor whose business should be confined to prescribing. It should be for the chemist to dispense. At any rate, there should be a compulsory separation of the two. I believe in Scotland that is the practice at the present moment. There are only a few exceptions on the West coast where there are no chemists available, and where the doctor has to do the whole thing. There may he cases of that kind now, for you cannot expect a man to start a chemist's shop in a Highland glen. There the doctor would have to do both the doctoring and the supplying of the drugs he prescribes. Therefore we propose to make provision that, if there is no chemist available, the doctor should be allowed to go on as at the present moment, but wherever there is a chemist available there should be separation. In addition to that, I think there ought to be provision for an improvement in the standard of payment to the doctors. Sometimes, no doubt, they are quite adequately paid, but sometimes they certainly are not, and I think financial provision ought to be made in the scheme for raising the level to 4s. I have done so, and I hope
626
that will meet the views of the House. So much for doctoring. There will be free doctoring for everybody who is a contributor to the scheme.
The second branch of medical attention will be in cases of maternity. There are only one or two friendly societies at the present moment which allow any maternity benefit, but they are all alive to the necessity for it, and they are gradually going on to establish branches for maternity benefit. Undoubtedly there is no more urgent need. Women of the working classes in critical cases are neglected sadly, sometimes through carelessness, but oftener through poverty, and that is an injury not only to the woman herself, but to the children who are born. A good deal of infant mortality and a good deal of anæmic and rickety disease among the poorer class of children is very often due to the neglect in motherhood. We propose to take the maternity benefit of the Hearts of Oak Society which, I think, has established a most successful benefit scheme in this respect. We propose that there should be a 30s. benefit in those cases which would cover the doctoring and the nursing, but only conditional upon those who are women workers not returning to work for four weeks, for I am told that in the mills you have very often cases where the women work up to the last moment and the maternity is over in a comparatively few days. I believe we ought to make some provision in the interests of humanity to prevent that from taking place.
5.0 P.M.
I have now to refer to another branch of medical benefit. We propose to do something to deal with the terrible scourge of consumption. There are, I believe, in this country about four or five hundred thousand persons who are suffering from tubercular disease. From the friendly societies point of view that is a very serious item, because of the dragging length of the illness. The average illness of patients of the Foresters, I think, was fifty-eight weeks. They received fifty-eight weeks' allowance on an average. Out of the total sick pay of the Foresters about 25 per cent. was due to tuberculosis. There are 75,000 deaths every year in Great Britain and Ireland from tuberculosis and, a much more serious matter, if you take the ages between fourteen and fifty-five among males, one out of three dies of tuberculosis between those ages in what should be the very period of greatest strength and vigour and service. It is a

627
very sinister fact that at the very period which is responsible for the continued life of the race one out of three between those ages is stricken down by tuberculosis. It kills as many in this kingdom in a single year as all the zymotic diseases put together, and a very terrible fact in connection with it is that the moment a man is attacked and compromised he becomes a recruit in the destructive army, and proceeds to injure mortally even those to whom he is most attached and to scatter infection and death in his own household.
There are forty-three counties and towns in Great Britain, with a population of 75,000, and there are 75,000 deaths each year from this disease. If a single one of those counties or towns were devasted by plague so that everybody, man, woman and child, were destroyed there and the place were left desolate, and the same thing happened a second year, I do not think we would wait a single Session to take action. All the resources of this country would be placed at the disposal of science to crush out this disease. I do not say that they can cure it, but doctors think they can cure it. They are confident they can. Men who have devoted a great deal of attention to the subject, and are the most confident of all those who have engaged in experiments, are full of bright hopes that they can stamp it out. But they can only do it if they have the means, and I propose to ask the House to give them. In Germany they have done great things in this respect. They have established a chain of sanatoria all over the country, and the results are amazing. The number of cures that are effected is very large. In this country there are practically only 2,000 beds in sanatoria for tubercular patients. There are only 4,000 beds in sanatoria altogether and half of those are occupied by other patients, so that there are only 2,000 beds when there are four or five hundred thousand people suffering from the disease. I really think it is about time that the nation as a whole, that the State, should take the matter in hand, because the State has suffered. The proposal of the Government is that we should first of all assist local charities and local authorities to build sanatoria throughout the country. We propose to set aside £1,500,000 of a capital sum for the purpose of aiding local people in building sanatoria throughout the country.
628
We have already, through the munificence and zeal of my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomery (Mr. David Davies), raised a very considerable sum of money, which enabled us to build a succession of them right across Wales. If the same thing were done throughout England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland, I believe we would soon stamp out the most heartrending and painful disease that ever afflicted the human race. We have got to provide maintenance for that. This is our proposal: that we should take a contribution of 1s. per member per annum for the whole of those who are insured compulsorily and voluntarily, and that in addition to that the State should find fourpence, so that there would be 1s. 4d. per member for the purpose of raising a fund for the maintenance of these institutions. This is not an additional contribution. I am done with contributions. There are no more contributions—not for management or anything. This is purely a benefit. What we propose is that out of that fund a shilling should he taken for each member, and that the State should add fourpence. That will mean a fund of a million a year for the purpose of maintaining these institutions, and I am assured by those who have taken the matter carefully into consideration, including the President of the Local Government Board and his very able staff, that that sum will enable us at any rate to do something for the purpose of stamping out this terrible scourge.
I come next to the sick allowance for the purpose of maintaining the families of the sick persons who are insured. In the friendly societies I think the allowance is six months, then it is dropped again to half. In some societies it is still further dropped, generally at twelve months. I propose that the first stage should be a three months' grant, because the real reason why six months' allowance is given is because of tubercular patients. They are the people who take over three months on the fund. Outside of them a man is generally either cured or off the fund before that period. I propose that in the first three months there should be an allowance of 10s. per week. Power will be given to the society to extend that to twenty-six weeks if they think it necessary. I point out later on that there are funds for that purpose, but, perhaps, at any rate, a start should be made with three months at 10s. Afterwards the allowance will be reduced to 5s. for another three months. After that, at the end of

629
the six months, if a man is broken down altogether, there is a permanent disablement allowance of 5s. as long as he is unable to earn his living in any way. That is for men. For women the contribution is lower, and as we are keeping the accounts separate the actuaries say we would not be justified in giving more than 7s. 6d. per week for the first three months, and then 5s. We do not propose to make the allowance less in that case.
There will be a waiting period of six months in the case of sickness. No man will be allowed to get his sickness allowance within six months after he has joined the society. No man is entitled to claim for a disablement allowance unless he has paid for two years. In Germany that has been extended to five years. The allowance is conditional in every case on the patient obeying the doctor's orders—a very difficult thing to do. But at any rate you cannot allow a man artificially to perpetuate his sickness at the expense of the community by defying every rule that is laid down for his cure by the professional gentleman who is in charge of him. In Germany they have this power. They give instructions as to what a man is to do, and if he does not obey them his allowance is docked and I think it is a very salutary rule. I have no doubt it will be very liberally interpreted, but still it is a very necessary rule. There is another rule. The friendly societies do not admit sick allowance to any man whose illness is due to his own misconduct. What we have done in that case is this. If a man's illness is due to his own misconduct we do not allow him sick pay, but he is entitled to a doctor, not merely for his own sake, but for the sake of the community, and because eventually he will come back again, and he will fall on the sick fund and the burden will be much heavier. Now I come to the exceptions. In the case of persons over fifty years of age at the date of insurance the men will only be entitled to 7s. a week and the women to 6s. a week, unless they have paid 500 contributions. Men and women over sixty years of age will only be entitled to 5s. Persons under twenty-one years of age, if unmarried, males will be entitled to 5s., and, if females, to 4s.
There is another very important exception from the point of view of checking malingering. When you come to the lower rate of wages you must not give a sick allowance which would make it more profitable for a man to be sick than to be working. Therefore, we propose that
630
thirds of the wages the amount shall be reduced. But seeing that with the low wages, the insured person is either, through himself or through the employer, paying exactly the same contribution, we propose that in that case there should be an alternative scheme of benefit which would be the exact equivalent in actuarial value. For instance, you might give a pension at sixty-five or sixty-six, as the case may be, but they must submit our scheme, which will be the actuarial equivalent of the amount by which their benefits are reduced. Now I come to the person under sixteen, and with regard to him we propose that he should get no sick pay allowances, but that he should get medical attendance and the benefit of the sanatorium, and that the rest of the money should be invested, in order to accelerate the period of his getting increased benefits. That is to pay off the loss which is due to your taking on men of older ages, and the money will be applied for the purpose of wiping off that loss. The sooner you do that the sooner will the young person come to increased benefit, so that you are really investing it for his own future advantatge.
An HON. MEMBER: Is that for girls also?
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Oh, yes. After paying for the doctor, after paying for the sanatorium, after paying maternity benefit, after paying 10s. a week and 5s. sick allowance, and 7s. 6d. for women, there will be left a balance of £1,750,000 in the hands of those who administer the funds. That is the actuarial calculation. We do not propose now to distribute those benefits, because we want to give an interest to those who are administering the funds, to administer them economically, and to declare alternative benefits, if they save the amounts which we anticipate they can save. We propose, therefore, to have a list of alternative benefits, optional benefits, and additional benefits. The first benefits, as I have indicated, will be the compulsory minimum benefits. They will be in every scheme. I now come to the additional benefits from which the society may choose, with this surplus at their disposal. This surplus will be £1,750,000 immediately the scheme begins to work, but at the end of fifteen years and a-half, when the loss on the older persons has been wiped out, you will then have an. addition of something like £5,500,000 to the fund, and, of course, that will involve a

631
further contribution from the State of £1,500,000 per annum. That means £7,000,000, which will be added to the income of the scheme after this initial deficit has been wiped out—a surplus now of nearly £2,000,000 for additional benefits; a further surplus of £7,000,000 after declaring those benefits which I have mentioned, and which will be available for the declaration of additional benefits. What is the kind of additional benefit we have in mind'? The first is medical treatment, not merely for the working man himself, but for his family. If the societies who administer the funds like to pay for that they have the money at their disposal. An increase of the sickness and disablement benefit and convalescent homes are other additional benefits. I have a long list of additional benefits of that kind from which they can choose, but I think the most interesting of all would be that, when the fifteen years and a-half have elapsed, when the loss has been paid off, and when you have released a fund of £7,000,000 between the State and the contributors, we shall then be within sight of declaring either a pension at sixty-five, or, what I think would be better still—and I propose this as an alternative—if a man does not choose to take his pension at sixty-five, but prefers to go on working, he shall increase his pension at a later stage in proportion to each additional year he goes on working. So much for the benefits.
I now come to the machinery of the Bill we have got to work. Collection is the first thing. We shall collect our funds by means of stamps. That is purely the German system. A card is given to a workman; he takes it to his employer at the end of the week, the employer puts on the workman's 4d. stamp and his own 3d. stamp; he deducts the 4d. out of the wages of the man, and he pays the 3d. himself; the card is in the possession of the man, who takes it to the post office, whence it is transmitted to the central office. The employer does not necessarily know—there is nothing on the face of the card to say—what society the man belongs to. It is entirely a matter for himself. The card is sent along to the central office, and the whole of the money is paid to the central office. Then comes the question, who is to dispense the benefits. In this country we have fortunately a number of very well-organised, well-managed, well-conducted benefit societies who have a great tradition behind them, and an accumulation of
632
experience which is very valuable when you come to deal with questions like malingering.
We propose, as far as we possibly can, to work through those societies. We propose that all the benefits shall be dispensed through what the Bill would call "approved societies." What are the conditions attaching to an approved society? It must be a society with at least 10,000 members; otherwise, it becomes a matter of very great complication which is much more difficult to manage from the actuarial and financial point of view. It must be precluded by its constitution from distributing any of its funds otherwise than by way of benefits, whether benefits under this Act or not, amongst its members. It must not be a dividing society; it must be a benefit society which provides for sickness and for old age. Therefore it cannot be a society that divides its profits at the end of each year. It cannot be a society that allows anybody to make a profit out of this branch of its business, and it must be mutual so far as this branch of its business is concerned. Its affairs must be subject to the absolute control of its own members; it must be self-governing, and its constitution must provide for the election of its committees and representatives and officers. There are other conditions. It must provide a reasonable security that the funds will be dispensed in the way the Act provides. It must have local committees. There are several societies, as hon. Members know very well, which have branches. There are other societies which are purely central. Both are very excellent societies in their way. The Hearts of Oak, I believe, is a centralised society. The Foresters, I believe, is a society with branches, and the Odd-fellows the same. But the societies which have central control and no branches must have some sort of local committees and management; otherwise it will be quite impossible to distribute the benefits, and it will be very difficult to arrange about doctoring and other matters.
There are other things about keeping books and so forth, and there must be a valuation. We do not propose to interfere in the slightest degree with the funds of these friendly societies, funds which they have voluntarily collected, except to this extent: The moment you have a scheme which brings in 3d. from an employer and 3d. from the State for purposes which are identical with the purposes for which these other funds have been accumulated, you

633
release enormous funds for other purposes. You cannot allow those sums to be distributed in cash amongst the members; they must be used for kindred purposes; and we propose that the friendly societies should submit schemes for the purpose, with additional benefits, but of a kindred character. That is the only interference we propose with the present funds of the friendly societies. We propose to allow them to have the most absolute right to admit members or to refuse them. It is a matter I considered for a very long time, whether you should compel them to take members, and I came to the conclusion that it is far better to leave it to ordinary free competition amongst them.
A good many more societies, I have no doubt, will spring up the moment we have a scheme of this character, and it is far better to leave it to competition amongst them. They pride themselves a good deal upon the right to choose their own associates, as most people do, and there are some people they would not care to have forced upon those societies, and I think they have a right to say, "We do not want them." Not only that, some of these societies have purposes which are sectarian, or let us say religious, and some of them are political. Gloucestershire, I find, is split up into Conservative friendly societies and Liberal friendly societies, both of them more or less actuarially sound. I need hardly say that if there are any sectarian or political societies anywhere you cannot exclude them from Ireland. I think there are one or two there which have purposes which are not either actuarial or altogether financial, but which I think are partly, perhaps, political. Then, of course, there are the trades unions. Their purpose is not altogether that of friendly societies. We propose—I will say later on how there shall be no abuse of the power—to give them absolute freedom. It would be quite impossible for the State to administer some of their rules. Take the Hearts of Oak. The Hearts of Oak take power to exclude men of a quarrelsome disposition. I have been watching events in Parlialiament from the solitude of Kent for some time, and I have wondered how many of my comrades and colleagues would survive the Hearts of Oak test if it were rigidly imposed on them. Then there are rules with regard to exclusion on grounds of conduct, and they interpret rules of that kind, I think, very largely according to the regularity with which a man pays his subscriptions. After all, they are
634
clubs, and they want to have the right to prevent a man who is objectionable to them entering their club. I do not propose to interfere with that at all. I will come later on to deal with persons who are not fortunate enough to get admission to any of those clubs. They have got to be dealt with by themselves. We propose that the societies should administer and manage their business in this respect exactly as they are doing at the present moment.
You come, then, to the question of age, and that is a difficult question. You are now allowing men to enter those societies who are giving benefits at all ages, and you must not give any sort of inducement to any society to depress its age limits. Otherwise you might have, say, the Hearts of Oak with an average age of forty years, and you might have the Foresters with an average of thirty, and unless you make special provision to equalise that matter by a system of credits, you will find that those societies whose ages are very young will gain an enormous advantage over those whose members are of all ages. We have got an adjustment, which is rather a complicated one. I think, for t he moment, I had better let it wait until the Bill comes on. We propose to equalise the ages by a system of credits, so that there shall be no inducements for any society to exclude any man, nominally on the ground of a quarrelsome disposition, but really because he is sixty years of age. We come now to valuation. How do we propose that they shall administer the fund, and what is our check? We propose a valuation for so many years of their funds. Then we have credit for their account in the centre of all money paid in by their members, and paid in by the employers in respect of their members, and, of course, they will have the credit of the 2d. contributed by the State. I propose that there should be a valuation of their assets upon this basis. If there is a surplus then they will have power to declare additional benefits, and so that surplus will be an inducement to them to manage economically and carefully, because a society that manages carefully and economically can declare larger benefits for its Members, and therefore will attract larger custom, and will have a larger number of Members than a society that manages its affairs badly and uneconomically.
For valuation it is very simple to take the Hearts of Oak, as you there simply reckon up the whole of the value of their assets—but take a society with branches,

635
the branches you value separately which is more or less what is done now. If there is a surplus you cannot allow that branch to take the whole of the surplus, otherwise you would find a very healthy neighbourhood in one district declaring enormous benefits; while other neighbourhoods not so healthy would be very badly off indeed, and people would not bear each others burdens, as I think they ought to do in a system of this kind. At the same time there must be an inducement for the branch to be administered economically, and I propose they should get half of their surplus and pay the other half to the centre, because, on the other hand, when there is a deficiency, as I shall point out later, the centre must come to their rescue. Suppose there is a deficiency, what happens If the insurance office finds there is a deficiency, and that they are not in an actuarial position to pay even minimum benefits, then the central insurance office will have power to do one of two things, either to compel them to reduce their benefits or to increase their levy, to make a special levy. That is the real check on malingering. You cannot check malingering by doctors' certificates. There is no doctor but will tell you that there are certain diseases in which it is quite impossible to say whether a man is shamming or not. Therefore you must depend really upon each member being almost a detective to spy on his associates. That is really the only way to do it. If a society has such a number of malingerers that it becomes insolvent or bankrupt, what happens is that there is an additional levy, or the benefits are depressed. Then the members would say: "Why is this? It is because 'So-and-so' is always sick. He is no more sick than I am." There is no more effective method for suppressing vice than to make it unpopular amongst the man's associates, and the same thing applies to malingering. In a very short time you would soon get a real stop put to the malingerer, because the workmen themselves would not stand it, and would begin to report on those they considered malingerers.
Now comes the question, what are we to do with the residue? You will get men who have been either rejected by the societies or who have left their societies through their carelessness. You may find men who say, "we will not join any society." You cannot compel a man to join a society. If he chooses to remain outside he can do so, but he does it at his
636
own cost. Every inducement is offered to a man in this scheme to join a society, and I will show how that works. We propose that all the men in a county who have not joined a society should be collected together in a body called Post Office Contributors. You will form a fund of those people. Most of the people who remain outside will be uninsurable lives, men who would be rejected by all sorts of societies, because really they are ill at the time, or display symptoms of illness, and they are therefore quite uninsurable, or they may be drunkards. Those are the sort of reasons for which a society now excludes them. That must necessarily make it impossible for us to pay the same benefits to the Post Office Contributors as would be paid to men who are in the friendly societies, because they contain pretty well all the bad lives. It will be largely a temporary t difficulty and a dwindling one, for the simple reason that in future men will be "taken on at the age of sixteen, and at that age the vast majority of people have not developed any kind of fatal disease. Therefore it will dwindle almost to nothing t in the future, and this difficulty is purely temporary. It will be a body of people who are not a very good insurable proposition.
What shall we do with them? We shall distribute the funds first of all in medical needs. They have paid their own contribution, and there is the contribution from the State, and the contribution of the employer. You will make a deduction for medical relief, and for sanitoria, and you will distribute the balance on purely deposit principles. There are societies in this country which do this thing now, and which is really a kind of banking transaction. You pay an amount in and you draw to the extent you paid in. With this condition in these cases you will get a number of lives that will drop, and still a balance who will not withdraw the whole of their deposits. I propose that that should go to swell the fund. Therefore those who are inside the Post Office Society will be able to draw to that extent upon the fund, and will get that additional advantage. It is quite clear there is no inducement to join the Post Office contribution, and we do not want that there should be. We want to give all inducements we can to the societies to govern themselves and take responsibility, and as they have taken the whole of the responsibility the government must be left in the hands of the societies. If you put on a State representative, or if you

637
put on an employers' representative, you are dividing responsibility, and they will always come back to you and say the employer or the State ought to pay an extra penny as the whole responsibility is cast on them.
The only other thing I will say about the Post Office contributors is this. We propose that they should have to wait for fifty-two weeks after paying contributions before they get any relief at all. That is by way of having some kind of test, at any rate, when they enter into the Post Office Society that they are fit for labour. How are you to administer this fund. The Post Office cannot administer it because they certainly cannot go on appointing doctors, and checking malingering, and managing the funds generally. We propose therefore to set up Committees that we will call county health committees. There will be a membership between nine and eighteen, chosen in three batches, a third by the county councils, a third by the approved societies in the districts and failing agreement amongst them by the Insurance office, and a third by the Post Office insurers. We propose that the State should also have a fourth of the whole body to represent its interests in the county health committee. This county health committee we propose shall administer the whole of the sanatorium fund. We do not propose that the sanatorium funds should be left to the societies, because, after all, that has got to be done in the districts where there are no societies. We propose that the whole of the shilling, or, rather, 1s. 4d. per member, which goes to create the fund to establish sanatoria shall be entirely in the hands of the county health committee. Instead of a sanatorium for each county we propose that there should be grouping for the purpose of sanatoria. We propose that the whole of the funds of the Post Office insurers, including medical relief, shall also be administered by the county committee. We are also putting forward another proposition. If any approved society chooses to come to terms with the county health committee to do its medical work for it we propose that they shall have the power to do so, and to make arrangements for that purpose. But if they agree the county health committees can take over the medical part of the work of approved societies if they choose to do so. It is purely a matter of arrangement on both sides. There will he a further power. If a county health
638
committee are anxious to spend more money than they have funds at their disposal upon either the medical side or the sanatoria side, the county councils have power to agree to sanction further expenditure, provided the Treasury also agree. One-half the additional expenditure will come out of the rates, and the other half out of the Treasury. I want to make it quite clear that the county health committees have no right to incur expenditure and then pass it on to the ratepayer. They must submit the expenditure before it is incurred both to the Treasury and to the county council. If both those bodies approve the expenditure, then the county health committees may, if they choose, incur that extra expenditure.
There are one or two other functions, to which I attach great importance, which the county health committees will have to discharge. They will have to consider generally the needs of the county and borough with regard to all questions of public health, and to make such reports and recommendations in regard thereto as they may deem fit. I shall point out later on that they have power beyond that of merely making reports and recommendations; otherwise those reports and recommendations would be thrown into the wastepaper basket. There is already a plethora of reports and recommendations, and there must be some power of that kind. They will have power also to make provision for the giving of lectures and the publication of information on questions relating to health. This has been a very important power in Germany, because there is appalling ignorance of the most elementary conditions of health—diet, air, and fresh air especially, light, and the danger of the excessive use of alcohol and narcotics. All those questions affect the health of the community. It has been of enormous advantage in Germany to have lectures of this kind and other means of disseminating information upon these points. We also hope that the doctors will assist by imposing conditions which will improve the health of the community.
What are the further powers of the county health committees? The societies, as I have pointed out, are responsible for their own sickness. It is not fair to make them responsible for the cost of sickness that is due to somebody else's fault. Sometimes there is excessive sickness in a district, due to bad sanitation, to bad housing conditions, and generally to the neglect on the part of the local authorities to enforce such powers as they have got, either

639
through ignorance, through incapacity, or very often through a combination of interests. What we propose is that the county health committee shall have power to go to the Local Government Board whenever there is excessive sickness coming on the funds of the society, and apply for an inquiry into the cause of that sickness. Wherever the Commissioners of the Local Government Board find that it is due to neglect by the authority to discharge functions imposed by an Act of Parliament for the housing of the people, or for improved sanitation, they shall have the power of imposing that excess, not on the societies who are not at fault, but upon the local authorities who are at fault. That will be a much more effective check than the old obsolete form of mandamus.
I come now to the finance of the scheme. In the first year the sums paid by all classes of contributors will amount to nearly £20,000,000, of which employers will contribute nearly £9,000,000, and the employés £11,000,000. The expenditure on benefits and administration will, in consequence of the waiting periods, be only £7,000,000 in 1912–13, but will have risen to £20,000,000 in 1915–16, when the additional benefits begin to be granted. By 1922–3 the State contribution will also have risen. In the first year there will be no charge, because the Act does not come into operation until 1st May next year. There must be time to make arrangements. There will be only a charge for the necessary expenses of making preparation. But in 1912–13 the charge on the State will be £1,742,000; in 1913–14, £3,359,000; and in 1915–16—a full year—£4,563,000. That is the expense as far as the State and the contributors are concerned of that part of the scheme.
I will now briefly outline the unemployment insurance. My explanation will be considerably curtailed, owing to the fact that the Home Secretary very fully explained to the House the year before last the principles upon which the Government intended to proceed. The scheme only applies to one-sixth of the industrial population. We propose to apply it only to the precarious trades, which are liable to very considerable fluctuations. The benefit will be of a very simple character; it is purely a weekly allowance. The machinery is already set up, therefore it will not be necessary to explain that. The machinery will be
640
the Labour Exchanges and the existing unions which deal with unemployment. I will not say anything about the suffering caused by unemployment. All I will say is that, whoever is to blame for these great fluctuations in trade, the workman is the least to blame. He does not guide or gear the machine of commerce and industry; the direction and speed is left almost entirely to others. Therefore he is not responsible, although he bears almost all the real privation. I think it is about time we did something in this matter, because it is not something which has happened once or twice, but something that comes regularly every so many years. We know it, will come, and we know that distress will come with it; therefore we ought to take some means to alleviate the misery caused by phenomena which we can reckon on almost with certainty to within a year or two of its advent.
No real effort has been made except by the trades unions. That, of course, is a purely voluntary matter, and the burden is a very heavy one. It only applies, in their case, to very few trades, and I think to only about 1,400,000 workmen altogether. The others cannot afford it. Other trades have attempted it, but have laid it down because they could not afford the expense. On the Continent many efforts have been made, mostly failures, because they were all on the voluntary principle. In Cologne there was a great effort. It ended in about 1,800 people being insured out of a population of 200,000 or 300,000. There it meant people who knew they would be out of work, and who insured against almost certain unemployment in the winter. That is very little good. I came back, after examining some of these schemes, with the conviction that you must have, at any rate, three or four conditions. You must have a trade basis, to begin with. A municipal basis will not do; it must be a trade basis, because the fluctuations are according to trades. You must start with the more precarious trades. The scheme must be compulsory. I also came to the conclusion that the workmen's unsupported efforts are quite useless. These are the principles that we have incorporated in our Bill. We have started, first of all, by taking two groups of trades, and we propose to organise them individually—the engineering group and the building group. They include building, construction of works, shipbuilding, mechanical engineering and the construction of vehicles. These are the trades in which you have the most serious

641
fluctuations—I think for a very good reason. The depression seems to fall more heavily on these trades; it seems to concentrate upon them, because they produce the permanent instruments of industry. We propose that in these trades a fund shall be raised for the purpose of paying an unemployment distress allowance. I ought to say here that you have not the same basis for actuarial calculation that you have in reference to sickness. It is very necessary to warn, not merely the House, but rather more especially the workmen upon this point. You cannot say with the almost certainty that you can in sickness that a certain fund will produce such and such benefits. In the case of sickness you have nearly 100 years' experience behind you, and you have the facts with regard to sickness and death. You have not got the facts with regard to unemployment, and the question is very difficult. All we know is that in certain branches of trade unemployment is prevalent and appalling. Some trades meet it by short time, but in other trades you cannot do that. As a matter of fact, in the building trade you may get men working overtime in one place at the very time when 20 per cent. of the workmen are out of work in another.
6.0 P.M.
We propose that the workman should pay 2½d. per week and the employer 2½., and that the State should take upon itself one-fourth of the total income. We propose that there should be an abatement to those employers who choose to pay for their workman by the year. I will show the extent of that abatement; it is very considerable. If you take the two contributions of employers and workmen at 2½d., they come to 21s. 8d. per annum; we propose that the employer who will undertake to insure a workman for the whole of a year can do so for 35s. He will get the whole benefit of the reduction. It is proposed that the workman shall pay the full 2½d. but that the employer should get the whole benefit of the abatement. It seems a very serious abatement. It is practically telling him that he can take one-half if he undertakes to insure the workman for a year at a time. It is an inducement to him to give regular employment; it is a discouragement of casual labour; it is a reward to the employer who keeps his workmen for a whole year. It is a very heavy one, but I think it worth while. That is the only exception made by the employer. We propose, by way of benefits, to give, in
642
the engineering trade, 7s. per week unemployed pay, and in the building trade 6s. for a maximum of fifteen weeks. The number of weeks is limited to fifteen, because, I again say here, there is no basis of actuarial calculation, and you will have to watch the thing. Now, you will have a huge distress fund, to which the employers will contribute very nearly £1,000,000 and the State £700,000 or £800,000 for the purpose of relieving the distress, and to enable the workmen to insure where otherwise they could not do it. But you cannot guarantee that it will work out at these figures. All we can say, having consulted the very best actuaries at our disposal, is that we are firmly convinced that the fund will work out in this way. What will happen? The workman who is out of work will go to the Labour Exchange. We want someone there to check him, so that you will not have a man who is not genuinely unemployed getting unemployed pay. Therefore you have to do this through the Labour Exchanges. The man will take his card and they will offer him a job. If he refuses a job, then comes the question who will decide whether he is unemployed or not? We have appointed an impartial court of referees to decide this; we cannot leave it to the Labour Exchanges entirely, or to the workmen, to decide whether the man is to take a job or the 7s. unemployed benefit. There will be no payment for a workman dismissed through his own misconduct. There will be no payment under-this scheme where there is unemployment by reason of strikes or lock-outs, because this scheme has absolutely nothing to do with them. It is purely a relief scheme for unemployment which is due to fluctuations of trade.
I now take the trade unions which insure-themselves against unemployment. We propose that in that case that they should reap the benefit, but we cannot possibly hand over State funds—certainly not employers' funds—to an organisation, the object of which, in the main, is to fight out questions of wages and conditions of labour with the employers. What we propose is this that the trade union shall pay its unemployed -benefit to the men and claim from the fund repayment in respect of the amount which the men would have been entitled to draw had they gone direct to the Labour Exchanges. The State in effect allows trade unions to spend this money, and at the same time it protects against the unfairness of subsidising what after all is a war-chest—as the trade unions admit. There is no payment for the first.

643
week of unemployment. In addition to that no man can draw more than one week's employ for five weeks of contribution, so that the real loafer soon drops out. The meshes of the Labour Exchange net might not catch him at first, but eventually and automatically he will work himself out, owing to the fact that he is not a regular contributor, and therefore he will come to an end of his right to obtain benefits. We also propose that where there is a society established on the Ghent model for the purpose of providing unemployed pay generally for the people, say, in the neighbourhood, to give a contribution of one-sixth to that fund for the purpose of enabling them to dispense unemployed pay. If any other trade wishes to come in they are to have, what I think they call in the Court of Chancery, "liberty to apply." If they make out their case and are prepared to make their contribution it will be possible to include them in our scheme. But for the moment we propose to begin to work the experiment with these trades, which are the very worst trades from the point of view of unemployment. This scheme will apply to over 2,400,000 workmen. The contributions of the workmen will be £1,100,000. The contributions of the employers will be £900,000. The cost to the State—
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: But you said the contribution from the workmen and the employers are to be the same.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I thought I had made it quite clear that there is a very considerable abatement to the employer. It is equivalent to £200,000 on the whole scheme—to the employers if they undertake the responsibility of insuring the whole of their workmen by the year. The cost to the State will be approximately £750,000 a year. The expenditure will undoubtedly fluctuate with the state of trade, and a fund will therefore have to be created for the purpose of dealing with times of very great distress. That is the position as far as both of these branches are concerned. The total sum to be raised in the first year is 224,500,000, of which the State will contribute £2,500,000. By the fourth year the State's contribution will have risen to nearly £5,500,000. That is the finance of the scheme.
I have explained to the House as best I could this great matter, and I thank Members for the courtesy with which they
644
have listened to me. I have explained as best I could the details of our scheme—the system of contributions and of benefits and the machinery whereby something like 15,000,000 of people will be insured, at any rate against the acute distress which now darkens the homes of the workmen wherever there is sickness and unemployment. I do not pretend that this is a complete remedy. Before you get a complete remedy for these social evils you will have to cut in deeper. But I think it is partly a remedy. I think it does more. It lays bare a good many of those social evils, and forces the State, as a State, to pay attention to them. It does more than that. Meantime, till the advent of a complete remedy, this scheme does alleviate an immense mass of human suffering, and I am going to appeal, not merely to those who support the Government in this House, but to the House as a whole, to the men of all parties, to assist us. I can honestly say that I have endeavoured to eliminate from the scheme any matter which would cause legitimate offence to the reasonable susceptibilities of any party in the House. I feel that otherwise I would have no right to appeal, not only for support, but for co-operation. I appeal to the House of Commons to help the Government not merely to carry this Bill through but to fashion it; to strengthen it where it is weak, to improve it where it is faulty. I am sure if this is done we shall have achieved something which will be worthy of our labours. Here we are in the year of the crowning of the King. We have got men from all parts of this great Empire coming not merely to celebrate the present splendour of the Empire, but also to take counsel together as to the best means of promoting its future welfare. I think that now would be a very opportune moment for us in the Homeland to carry through a measure that will relieve untold misery in myriads of homes—misery that is undeserved; that will help to prevent a good deal of wretchedness, and which will arm the nation to fight until it conquers "the pestilence that walketh in darkness, and the destruction that wasteth at noonday."
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The right hon. Gentleman is quite assured of a cordial welcome back to-day. We have missed him from our Debates, and we have sympathised with him in the cause that has kept him absent. We are glad to see him here to-day, and are glad that he has

645
been equal to so sustained an effort as that which he has just made. On these purely personal grounds the right hon. Gentleman would have been quite certain of a warm and cordial welcome from all quarters of the House. But he is doubly assured of it on this occasion, because he came to set the foundation-stone of a work which every party desires to see carried to a successful conclusion. This is one of the occasions when for all too brief a moment the housebreakers among his colleagues are silent, and the right hon. Gentleman is allowed to turn to constructive work, and to invite the House to return to constructive work instead. I venture to say that he will not appeal in vain to any section of the House, or to any Member of the House, to give him such help as they can afford, in not merely further consideration, but in the ultimate fashioning of this measure. So it may be a credit not to one side or the other—we are never very anxious to work for each other's credit—but to the credit of the House as a whole, and for the real benefit of the country. I think the best way I can show my respect for the right hon. Gentleman's statement to-day is—although it may seem paradoxical—by not attempting to follow him. I think anybody who has tried, as I have done, as we have all been doing, to follow the statement of the right hon. Gentleman, would feel it was quite impossible for him, for any man, to express, without having known beforehand what the Chancellor was going to say, an opinion of real value upon this scheme as a whole, if he had to rise, as I do the moment the Chancellor sat down. Accordingly, beyond assuring him of the cordial welcome which we give to this, and of our desire to be allowed to co-operate with him, I do not propose to do much more on the present occasion than to ask for a little further explanation on the points which, either because the Chancellor of the Exchequer had not the time to deal with, or because I failed exactly to follow what he said, are not clear. Let me say in the first place that I regret that the Government has introduced these measures in one Bill. I quite understand that if the measures were to be received in any controversial spirit, the Government would desire the excuse to save every Parliamentary stage they possibly could, but the Government really had not that to fear in regard to either of these measures, and I think the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself feels that it is too much to expect from any
646
Minister that he should deal fully with what is in fact two Bills within the compass of a single scheme. And here let me remark, that what he was able to tell us about his unemployment scheme was very small, and the details were very meagre. I think there ought to have been two Bills dealing with these two different schemes. They have to be administered by entirely different bodies, and they are admitted to be dealing with entirely different problems. There is, in reality, no connection between the two, and while a good many efforts have been made to deal with insurance against invalidity and sickness, as the right hon. Gentleman has said, we have nothing to guide us when we come to deal with insurance against unemployment, and not only are bases of acturial calculations wanted, but such experiments as have been made have been made upon so small a scale that you can draw little or no inference from them. I think that is most serious, and I hope the right hon. Gentleman will not think when I say that that I begin with a criticism which is at all unfriendly. This is all the more important because nobody supposes you can finish this question with this Bill, or leave the experiment where it is placed by this Bill.
The right hon. Gentleman is anxious to explain to the House that when he chose certain trades he chose them because they were the most subject to fluctuations of employment. I am not at all certain that they are. I think they exclude a great number of individuals that suffer most. They are trades which are highly organised, and whatever be the suffering in them, the suffering in trades which are largely dependent upon casual employment is infinitely greater, and I think the difficulties of dealing with them are very much greater. The right hon. Gentleman observed that whereas in the case of sickness and invalidity insurance everybody within limits receives benefit for the contribution he makes in the case of unemployment benefit, every taxpayer will have to contribute his quota to a limited and select body of taxpayers who alone will benefit, and amongst those who pay but do not get the benefit would be a great many with at least as much right to be included. I am not, at all events, certain if the right hon. Gentleman considered the necessity of trying to carry the experiment still further that he would not have varied a little the

647
principles upon which he is proceeding. I think it is possible to apply a flat rate benefit as well as contribution to the particular trades chosen, but if he tries when the time comes to extend his experiments to other trades I doubt very much whether the same flat rate can be maintained and the same contribution, and if it cannot be maintained for contribution it obviously cannot be maintained for the benefit.
In regard to the question of unemployment, I quite agree with the right hon. Gentleman that whatever the rate may be, if the scheme is to be successful, it must be compulsory as far as it extends, and I think it is right it should be on a trade basis, and I think a fair case is made out for contribution alike from the employers, workmen and the State. I do not wish at all to commit myself to the exact proportions which the right hon. Gentleman has chosen. That is a matter for further consideration, but I do think that so long as our trade conditions practically require a certain amount of unemployment in connection with the organisation of industry you cannot treat people so unemployed as not having some claim upon the industry, and expect individuals to bear the whole burden, which is not theirs alone, but merely trade interests, from which the employer and other workmen alike draw benefit. I think it is very often the case, and perhaps it is a matter which the right hon. Gentleman will have to consider with regard to the benefits he is giving, that in no trade whatever is the average of unemployment among the workmen of that trade, the proportion which affects any individual workman, the average of unemployment in the trade, and I think he will find in a great many cases the tendency is for unemployment always to fall upon the same rate. Take a trade in which the average of unemployment is serious. A great many of the workmen will work the whole year through without any unemployment at all. Others will work, but will be out three weeks or six or nine through unemployment. I am not sure how this position will be affected or how the average will be arrived at in such cases as that. I understood him to say that the unemployment benefit was to be at the rate of 7s. a week.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Seven shillings in the engineering trade.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I did not hear him say for how many weeks.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: For fifteen weeks.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: After the fifteen weeks without abatement it will stop altogether. I understood the right hon. Gentleman to say that this benefit would be paid largely through the trade society to their own members, so that their members would not be required to go to the Labour Exchanges. A man who is a member of a trade society would get his benefit from a trade society, and the trade society would recover from the State what was the proper proportion of contribution by the State for those men out of work. I presume precaution will be taken to see that the amount is given to the man who is entitled to it in addition to anything he insured for in his society, and that the society would not be allowed to divert the State contribution for any other purpose other than that for which it was intended. I understand that whatever sum becomes due in any given year the State is to pay one-fourth of it.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: For unemployment.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The State contribution, therefore, is a very problematic one. I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman one or two questions about sickness and invalidity insurance which is the most extensive part of the scheme and the more complete part, and the part which the House and country are Lest equipped to deal with. Let me say that nothing gave me more pleasure than the right hon. Gentleman's claim that the relief given in cases of invalidity and sickness should be as far as possible curative and permanent in its results. I think that is of the very greatest importance, and I think the right hon. Gentleman may be driven to go even further than he has gone hitherto in the way of providing sanatoria not for consumption only, but for other cases, in order that by spending a little money immediately you may keep a man away until he is really strong, and in order that you may make a man really strong and healthy for the future instead of building him up merely for the moment. I think we are limited to a certain amount of money, but do not let us grudge the proportion which goes for curative measures and in really preventative measures for the future. May I ask the right hon. Gentleman about insurances in case of maternity? How is that to be expended? I agree again that this is a most important

649
matter, and I doubt whether we could possibly spend money in securing greater good.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Maternity insurance is to be paid to the wives of all insured persons and to the women workers who insure themselves.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: That is an answer I hoped to get. I did not understand the right hon. Gentleman as insisting that it was for women workers only in certain conditions, and that the wives of the insured and the mothers who are not workers were going to be excluded. Let me say I assume that the advantage will also apply to workers in factories. I was extremely glad to hear from the right hon. Gentleman that he proposes to make special provision for soldiers and sailors. I was surprised to hear him speak of so many sailors being in distressful circumstances. But whether they be many or few, soldiers and sailors are most deserving people, and I hope the right hon. Gentleman or one of his colleagues will tell us if soldiers and sailors who are excluded from the compulsory provision are to be excluded altogether.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: What the Government propose doing in that case is this: A soldier or a sailor may be a member of a Friendly Society before he joins the Army or Navy. He can continue. We deduct 2d. in this case instead of 4d., and the State will pay whatever is necessary in order to make it worth while for the friendly society to keep him when he leaves the Army or the Navy. We propose to pay what is absolutely necessary to induce them to take a soldier or a sailor on the same terms when he leaves the Army or the Navy as if he were a civilian paying his 4d. right throughout. Consequently he gets exactly the same benefit as a civilian. If he leaves the Army or the Navy a broken man he would get his 10s. a week sickness and his 5s. invalidity pay. He will get every benefit which the civilian gets if he leaves the Army a broken man and unable to pay anything. In those circumstances we treat him as if he were an ordinary civilian member of one of those insurance societies.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Would that be addition to any military or naval pension allowance?
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Some of those will be excluded.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I think the solution is primâ facie satisfactory, and will put the soldier and the sailor in a position of independence in these matters. I heartily congratulate the right hon. Gentleman upon taking steps in this direction. I think for these purposes you may fairly ask for a contribution from the employer as well as from the employed and the State. I am not certain that in all cases the Government are quite right in the amount of contribution which they take, and I would like time to turn the question over in my mind. The point which puzzles me is the case of the employer employing people at small wages. Where the wages are 15s. per week or under the contribution of the workman is to be lowered, and by the amount which it is lowered the contribution of the employer will be raised. The right hon. Gentleman says this proposal will have the effect of causing those who get the benefit of low wages to pay that which the workman is unable to pay on account of those low wages. That presupposes that low wages are a benefit to employers. But are they? There may be particular cases where wages are improperly low, where somebody may make extravagant profits by sweating working men and working women; but if you take tradesmen generally who pay low wages they are not people who are making very large profits. Take the case of agricultural labourers. Are the employers of agricultural labourers getting an undue advantage as compared with the rest of the community by the payment of low wages? I do not think they are, and I do not think that proposition is generally true.
It often happens that a particular trade cannot afford to pay high wages. It does not follow that where you find wages are low that the profits of the employers are high in proportion. The right hon. Gentleman appears to have gone on the assumption that where a man pays low wages he derives a greater profit for himself, something more than the average, and therefore he can afford to pay more than the average contribution. I think the contrary is the case, and I believe it will be found that the basis of the calculations made by the right hon. Gentleman is not sound. The Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke of people who would derive benefits immediately. I understand that the Government have made arrangements under rather an elaborate scheme, which we shall see in the Bill, for admitting people at all ages.

651
In the first instance, hereafter the temporary provisions will in the main lapse, and persons will be admitted at all ages up to 65. What will happen to people that are between sixty-five and seventy. You start your old age pensions at seventy without any contribution, but you leave a gap for the people between sixty-five and seventy. A very large proportion of these people would necessarily be entitled to an invalidity pension. I quite conceive that financially this is a very serious matter for the Chancellor of the Exchequer but I venture to say to him without knowing the figures or having any actuarial advice to guide me that he ought not at this stage to close his mind on this matter. After all, if he has calculated for an immediate surplus to wipe off all the extra debt incurred by taking on people above the normal age within the fifteen years, he has got something he can play with there without increasing the expenditure he has put forward. He might give part of his surplus to this particular subject. He might consider whether instead of making the period fifteen years in which to clear off the obligations incurred by the old people, he cannot extend the period to twenty years.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: We could not do it. Nothing like it.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will tell us more about it. I think these people will feel even a greater sense of hardship, and will feel it is very hard that nothing can be done to bridge them over the intervening five years. I think that is about all I wish to say upon this occasion. Speaking for my hon. Friends as well as for myself, we shall respond to the appeal made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the spirit in which it was made. We are delighted to see the attention of Parliament turned to this matter, and we feel that a subject so vast, so difficult, and touching such complicated matters requires the goodwill and assistance of all sections without regard to party, and this ought not to be made the subject of party strife.
Mr. JOHN REDMOND: I would like to commence my remarks by offering on behalf of my colleagues congratulations to the Chancellor of the Exchequer upon his return to this House. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that there is no quarter of the House where his return—
652
evidently restored to vigour and strength—is more welcome than on these benches. I would like to say a word upon the courage and enthusiasm with which he is pursuing this work of social reform of which it might be said the old age pensions scheme was the opening chapter. I would like to say that there are no men in this House who for the last thirty years have more consistently supported every effort which has been made by any party in this House to redress the balance which for so long has been against the poor in our modern civilisation. No hon. Members have more consistently supported all measures of that kind than the Irish Members. I entirely agree with the opening words of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcestershire. I think it would be impossible, and, indeed, it would be a bad compliment to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for anyone to attempt to deliver anything like a considered opinion with reference to this measure at the present moment. All one can do is to take a view of the general aspect of it. It is, on the face of it, a great and comprehensive measure, and it must be judged very largely after an examination of its details. With the objects the right hon. Gentleman has in view every portion of the House must sympathise. So far as we in Ireland are concerned, we have special reason to sympathise with objects of this kind. Ireland is a poor country. In Ireland there are more of the poor and of the very poor than in any other portion of the United Kingdom. Therefore Ireland stands in a special degree to benefit by measures of this kind if only they are so constructed and adapted as to suit the peculiar circumstances and conditions of Ireland.
I have risen merely for the purpose of entering a caveat. We in Ireland are in this position. It does not necessarily always follow that a great measure of social reform demanded by public opinion in England and suited to the needs of England is also suitable for the peculiar conditions and circumstances of Ireland. Our needs very often are different; our social circumstances very often are different, and our national resources, unfortunately, are very different from those of this country. Indeed, one of the grievances from which Ireland has suffered as a penalty for being tied up in one Government and as one financial unit with a great and prosperous country like this is that measures which have been called for in England and needed in England and suit-

653
able for England have been very often imposed, or bestowed, if you like, upon Ireland without any adequate consideration whether the circumstances demanded precisely the same measures which were imposed. That might be said with some truth even of your most beneficent old age pension scheme. It certainly is true of every Budget proposed in this country in my belief for the last fifty years, every Budget from whichever side of the House it has come. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has always framed his Budget, naturally, from the consideration of the rich country, the country from which he was going to get most money. Constantly Budgets have been passed which, while admirable from the point of view of British interests, have not been suitable to the peculiar needs of Ireland. This, as I have said, is a great and comprehensive and complicated measure, and I would not dream—it would be presumptuous on my part—to discuss its details until I thoroughly understand them. While saying the Chancellor's speech was undoubtedly a most magnificent effort—as great an effort as I ever heard to explain a complicated measure—yet at the same time he will not misunderstand me when I say, even after listening to his most lucid explanation, I do not think any man ought rashly to criticise the terms of this Bill. I do not think one ought to criticise it, not only until he has seen, but until he has carefully studied every one of its details. Beyond, therefore, entering the caveat I have entered on behalf of Ireland, I will say little more than this: whether this Bill is suitable to Ireland will largely depend upon the details and machinery, and I for my part hope, when the Bill is printed, it will he taken into consideration and carefully studied by every public body in Ireland. We, for our part, would like fully and completely to consult public opinion in Ireland with reference to all its detail, and I hope, therefore, immediate steps will be taken by the public bodies in Ireland to consider its provisions.
I will only say this in conclusion. Speaking of it generally, it seems to me a noble and magnificent effort of the right hon. Gentleman to deal with the very worst of our social grievances. If there were nothing in this Bill at all except the medical provisions, except the health provisions, I would say the right hon. Gentleman, if he carries it will deserve the eternal gratitude of the poor people of this country. The provision for maternity is
654
one of the most magnificent and merciful provisions ever proposed in any scheme in any country. The provision with reference to the terrible scourge of consumption, the provision of £1,500,000 capital to build sanatoria and the provision of £1,000,000 a year for the maintenance of these sanatoria are magnificent provisions, and, if they stood alone in the Bill, they would compel any man to say it was a great and noble measure. All I desired in rising at all was to enter my caveat as to the details relating to Ireland, and to say we cannot at this stage, and until we have carefully considered them, say whether these details, suitable though they may be to you, are suitable in every case to the different needs in Ireland. I was delighted to hear the reception given to the Bill by the late Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Austen Chamberlain). I was delighted to hear from him the assurance that all parties in this House would co-operate in endeavouring to make this Bill a really successful measure and to place it on the Statute Book. In that spirit we will address ourselves to the consideration of this measure, and we will co-operate with the right hon. Gentleman, as I am sure he would co-operate with us in endeavouring to make it as suitable to the needs of Ireland as it is noble in its conception.
Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD: I desire first of all to join with the right hon. Gentleman who spoke from the Front Bench opposite (Mr. Austen Chamberlain) and with my hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Irish party (Mr. John Redmond) in congratulating the Chancellor of the Exchequer upon his return to this House. Our congratulations are all the more hearty because, from the point of view of its length and of its vigour, his speech, to which we listened with so much delight, and which opened out so much hope, shows the Chancellor has not only returned, but has returned in a most excellent state of health. So far as the statement itself is concerned, I shall also follow their very good example. However one may have studied these subjects before, the presentation the Chancellor of the Exchequer has made of them is to a very large extent novel. We have had no inkling of his intentions and desires and proposals, and in one or two respects he has approached the problem from a new point of view, and down new avenues, and I think those who know the complexity of the problem best would be those who would be the very last to criticise the

655
details of his speech. I therefore only desire to rise and say, that so far as the Labour party is concerned, we shall certainly co-operate with the Chancellor of the Exchequer in every way we can to make his scheme effective, and to make it productive of the good results which he himself desires. It is a very big thing, a very big thing indeed, not only big from the point of view of finance, but big from the point of view of consequences. It is only when one sits down and considers the enormous readjustment of our social relationships involved in the proposals to which we have listened, that one can visualise how big the whole thing is. It is very gratifying indeed to find the Chancellor of the Exchequer so bold and so hopeful and so energetic as to tackle this question, not in a small and niggling way, but in a large way. We may have to disagree with some of his details—we probably shall—but nevertheless we shall not disagree with him on this point. He has viewed the problem largely and as a whole, and has produced a scheme which touches it very generally all along its lines.
I would like to say the whole question of contributions ought to be very carefully considered, as I am sure it will be, when we see the scheme and have studied it, and when we shall have an opportunity of taking part in the Second Reading Debate. My impression I am bound to say—it is only an impression, and I certainly would not commit myself to it—is that the premiums are rather high, and that in particular the distribution between the workman, the employer, and the State should be a little more fairly adjusted. I may change my opinion when I see the scheme, but that is my impression, and I hope my right hon. Friend will very seriously consider whether the proposal he made to-day is the final proposal he is prepared to make when the Bill comes to Committee. Just let us take one point. I do not know whether my right hon. Friend had it in his mind, and, as his sickness and invalidity insurance comes into full operation, the burdens that are now imposed upon employers in respect of workmen's compensation would be very much diminished. The insurance premiums which they now have to pay in respect to employers' liability on the one hand and to workmen's compensation on the other will, if I am not mistaken, be very much diminished.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Why?
Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD: Because accidents are sickness. I quite admit what I have said with reference to employers' liability—
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Accidents certainly will not be treated as sickness. Accidents are specially excluded. If I were to mention all the details of the Bill I should detain the House for hours. That is one of the details.
Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD: The fault I have made only shows how very futile it is for us to go into details to-day. I think no indication was given by my right hon. Friend in his speech that accidents were to be treated separately. I assumed the German experience was going to apply in this country. I am glad to hear it is not. That is the sort of general impression I have got at the present moment. I should like also to say this in respect to the trade unions. The trade unions want no privileges and no benefits under this scheme. I know perfectly well they have discussed it and have expressed opinions on the subject. They would be delighted to co-operate, but their character and nature as voluntary organisations, non-party organisations, as organisations that are defined by the Act of 1886, must not be modified and must not be changed by anything that is done by any relation between them and the State under this scheme. I feel certain my right hon. Friend has no intention of changing that relationship, but I think we had better understand it right away. The trade unions would be prepared to put at the disposal of the State all their experience and all their machinery. Those who have studied the German system know perfectly well one of the best securities, from the financial point of view, for good administration and from the point of view of getting exactly the kind of men you want to benefit is the machinery of the trade union movement. The German experiments have proved that over and over again, and, so far as the trade unions can help the Chancellor of the Exchequer in this country, I am sure they will be very delighted to do it, but the condition must be that in no respect is what is known as the voluntary and non-party character going to be influenced or changed by any proposals made. So far as the friendly societies are concerned, I think the statement is a perfect statement, but I just wanted to make it quite clear regarding the trade unions.

657
7.0 P.M.
Just one final word of a general character with reference to unemployment. The proposal that we once made about maintenance in connection with the Right to Work Bill can undoubtedly be met to a large extent by insurance, and so far we accept it, but I hope the Chancellor of the Exchequer will impose certain conditions upon these unemployment benefits. He has, I think, gone on the right lines, if I might say so respectfully, in differentiating trade from trade, or group of trades from group of trades. Within a trade the incidence of unemployment is heavier on certain tails of the working-class army than on the others, and if that particular part of the working-class forces which is more subject to unemployment than the other part is going to be insured at the same rate—and I think it ought to be—as the other portion, then I think the State is entitled to lay down certain conditions under which the unemployment benefits are going to be paid. I do not see why a condition of training, why some educational condition should not be imposed as a condition of receiving this benefit. It is a very interesting subject which might be worked out in very considerable details, and we may have something to say about it later on when we have seen the scheme. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer has not thought about it—he seems to have thought about so much in connection with this scheme that I hardly venture to suggest he has not thought about it—I think it would be worth his while to keep an open mind. After all, it would be an enormous gain to the State, and to these people themselves, if the period of unemployment, particularly if it is going to be a substantial and appreciable period, can be utilised, and, not merely that they should be paid a certain sum of money, but that they should report themselves twice a day to the Labour Exchanges or the trade unions. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer will turn his attention to that problem I think he will find it well worth notice. Taking the intention of the scheme and the ideas in the mind of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, so far as my colleagues are concerned we are very grateful indeed for its production, and we will do everything we can to make it efficient and complete.
Mr. WORTHINGTON-EVANS: Being the first to rise from below the Gangway, may I, on behalf of those who habitually sit here, add my welcome to the Chan-
658
cellor of the Exchequer, and congratulate him on the vigour and strength which he has been enabled to expend this afternoon in describing his very interesting scheme. Each hon. Member who has followed that speech must feel, as I do, oppressed by the mass of detail in the scheme and by the immense and far-reaching effects of the scheme itself. There is a natural tendency, therefore, to keep off any criticism of detail. It is not my intention in the least to criticise the details, or even to raise any point which is a detailed point. I wish to consider whether the scheme of insurance is good or bad. I am going to ask the House to bear with me for a few moments while I try and get further information from the Chancellor of the Exchequer on matters which may be matters of detail, but which are, to my mind, absolutely important matters, and form the very backbone of the scheme.
I think I may express general welcome to a State-aided form of insurance, always provided, of course, that there is I no interference with the beneficent work done by the friendly societies. The hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. Ramsay Macdonald) has expressed himself satisfied with the manner in which trades unions are being treated, but with regard to friendly societies I am not so sure that that approval is so readily forthcoming. There are so many complicated provisions that, until one sees the Bill, it would be rash to say if the Chancellor of the Exchequer has managed to bring all these into line. The scheme is a compulsory scheme, and I am going to discuss it from that standpoint. I am not going to argue whether a compulsory or voluntary scheme would be better. I realise you cannot form an insurance fund which rests on the contribution of employers and workmen without such a scheme being compulsory. If you are going to have a general contributory scheme it is necessary it should be compulsory. The only compulsory scheme of which we have any experience is that tried at St. Gall, in Switzerland. It failed for two main reasons, first, because equal premiums were charged for unequal risks, and, second, because of the difficulty in collecting premiums from workmen who thought the scheme unjust and who would not pay willingly. An attempt was also made to introduce a compulsory scheme at Zurich, but the people threw it out on a referendum I do not suggest that the failure of the St. Gall scheme foredooms the Chancellor's scheme; the circum-

659
stances are quite different, but we can nevertheless learn lessons from the St. Gall scheme. We have got over the difficulty of payments by the provision for deduction. I presume that applies to unemployment as well as to sickness.
There was one other difficulty, and that was the charging of equal premiums to all classes for unequal risks. If I understand the Chancellor of the Exchequer correctly I do not think he has entirely met that difficulty unless there is something which still remains to be unfolded and of which we have not at present heard a word. The scheme is rightly based on trade groups. It is the only way in which you can approximate risks. The whole scheme will comprise 2,500,000 men who are to be included in one fund. I am not sure if I understand that. What I am going to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to do is to consider whether he cannot give a greater approximation to fairness as between risk and risk by providing it out of more than one fund. We have some statistics not applicable, perhaps, to unskilled trades, but which will go to prove this point. In the engineering and shipbuilding and metal industries the average rate of unemployment in 1897 and 1906 was, say, 5 per cent. The Amalgamated Society of Engineers had an unemployment average of 3.70, the Ironfounders 6.54, and the Iromnoulders in the same group had during the same period an unemployed rate of 10.85 per cent. In other words, their rate of unemployment was two and a-half times as great as that of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, and it seems to me it ought to be possible, instead of having one big fund for dealing with all these cases, to have several smaller funds approximating to the actual risks, and that would avoid the difficulty. That is one of the lessons we learn from the St. Gall compulsory scheme, which broke down because the people would not go on paying equal premiums for unequal risks. If you test this question in another way you will find a very considerable divergence in the risks. There was a report made by the Board of Trade embodied in a report of the Poor Law Commission which shows the different rates of unemployment at different ages in the Amalgamated Societies of Carpenters and Engineers. I dare say the Chancellor of the Exchequer has altered the benefit that is paid to those in the building trade and those in the engineering trade to meet to some extent the
660
difference in the risk absolutely appertaining to those two callings. He may think the mere differentiation of benefit by ls. per week is sufficient to harmonise the difference between the actual risks. I do not agree.
I would like to turn to the contribution especially in regard to the unemployed part of the scheme. I know that in the present position of municipal and Imperial undertakings it is impossible to put any further burden on the municipalities. I hope that this will not be lost sight of. There are many good reasons why the municipalities should be brought into the unemployed scheme. There are reasons both financial and administrative. On the financial side we have this. That if a fund is established there will be a great saving to the poor rate and also a great saving to the municipality in the form of relief works. As the Labour Exchanges will be called upon to administer the Unemployed Fund there ought to be local committees, and if the municipality is directly interested in the management of the fund the municipality should be represented upon that local committee. The municipality can help the fund in many ways, for instance, by the co-operation of its educational authority, in a method which the President of the Board of Trade has set out in a circular recently issued. The education authority can help to give that secondary education, which must be a most useful adjunct in obtaining employment. There is a very excellent precedent for this in Norway. Two-thirds of the State-aid is refunded to the State authority by the municipality. I quite admit it is impossible in the present state of the apportionment of our municipal and Imperial burdens to ask the municipality to contribute, but it would be of much assistance in the administration of the scheme if the municipality did co-operate in the manner which has been suggested. Turning again to what, I am afraid, may be another detail I want to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he has considered carefully the question of a qualifying period and whether such a period is in the scheme-In regard to sickness I understand there is a qualifying period—that is to say, a member has to pay for a considerable period before he is entitled to draw benefit. The Chancellor, in dealing with the unemployment scheme, did not say whether a period of payment had to elapse before benefit was obtained. I do not

661
know whether the President of the Board of Trade can say now whether there is to be a period during which a member must pay contribution to the unemployed fund before he can draw unemployed benefits. If so, perhaps the right hon. Gentleman would tell me whether there is such a provision in the scheme.
The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Buxton): There is a period of six months.
Mr. WORTHINGTON-EVANS: I notice that in addition to that qualifying period there is another provision which operates in rather an extraordinary way. I understand that nobody is entitled to unemployed pay exceeding one-fifth of the contributions that he has made. That is to say, he can only have one week's unemployment pay for every five weeks which he has paid.
Mr. BUXTON: Every five contributions he has paid.
Mr. WORTHINGTON-EVANS: If we are to have a compulsory scheme and the Government have drawn up a scheme upon the lines that there is a necessity for compulsion, then I ask the right hon. Gentleman to consider carefully whether he is not stultifying his whole work by insisting upon this qualifying period. A qualifying period of this sort is in actual conflict with the principle of compulsion. Let me prove that. You are compelling a main to come and pay contributions to your fund. If he falls out of employment within the first few months—five or six months—you give him nothing. On the other hand, if he remains out, I presume his contributions are to be forfeited, and he is to have nothing. He is not protected, and after a time he has no further rights upon the fund. But your whole scheme is intended to compel that man to come in, and what you are in effect doing is to compel him to subscribe under compulsion to the benefits which will be received by others. If I understand rightly, a man has to contribute for seventy-five weeks before he can go on at any rate for his full fifteen weeks of benefit. In other words, he has to contribute for a year and a half before he will get his fifteen weeks' benefit. What happens? Supposing a man pays into your fund for some months and falls out of employment, he cannot come to you for unemployed benefit. You do not seem to make any provision for it, and he goes away, and
662
you retain his contributions, and with these contributions you pay the man who is more fortunate and who survives the qualifying period but subsequently falls upon bad times and unemployment. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to consider that most carefully. I am a real friend of this scheme, and I am sure that a provision of that sort will cause much discontent and such a feeling of injustice that there will be unnecessary opposition to it on the part of those who may not be as friendly towards it as I am. I would therefore ask him to consider whether that qualifying period is not in actual conflict with the whole principle of compulsion.
These points which appear to be points, of detail are, in fact, the whole essence of the scheme. I observe that the right hon. Gentleman has also fixed a waiting period of seven days, that is to say, a workman has to be out of employment for seven days, even if qualified, before he is entitled to obtain any benefit out of the fund. In making a scheme of this sort I would suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that he should take into account the usual practice of trade unions, who are going apparently to pay the benefits in the particular trades affected. In only two of the trade unions, so far as I know, dealing with the workmen in the selected trades, is there a period so long as six days. In most of them the waiting period is for three days, or there is none at all. I can quite understand that it would add considerably to the expense of the scheme if there was no waiting period at all, but, at the same time, the right hon. Gentleman might consider what additional cost would be caused by reducing that waiting period to three days. It would certainly go a long way towards attaining the objects that he has in view of providing an effective insurance against damage done by loss of wages if he would do so. Again, with regard to the benefit, dealing only with the unemployed scheme, the scheme provides for a 7s. benefit, for fifteen weeks in the engineering trade and a 6s. benefit for a similar period in the building trade. Both as to the amount and as to the length of benefit you are falling a very long way below trades union practice. Let me call the right hon. Gentleman's attention to the ironfounders, which is one of those trade unions which has a very large rate of unemployed. The ironfounders pay 10s. a week as against the Government's 7s. for the first thirteen weeks as against

663
fifteen weeks. For the second thirteen weeks 8s., for the third 6s., and for the fourth thirteen weeks 5s. Of course, I quite agree that it would be quite impossible for the Government to emulate the very best benefits given by any trade unions.
Mr. ARTHUR HENDERSON: Will the hon. Gentleman tell us what the premium is in that same trade?
Mr. WORTHINGTON-EVANS: I do not know.
Mr. ARTHUR HENDERSON: May I say that in that society they have been paying 2s. 6d. a week, and they have been for two years.
Mr. WORTHINGTON-EVANS: I do not suggest for a moment that the Government scheme could imitate the best benefits of the trade unions. I realise that as well as the hon. Member does; but what I want to do is to explain the benefits which the people in the trade unions have. You have to get them to come in and to induce them to accept the Government aid which is going to be given, and I am quite aware that the bigger the benefit the more they have to pay. But what we have to consider is whether we can give a sufficiency, because it is no good having an insurance scheme at all unless you enable a man to tide over. It is no good giving him such a small sum that he is unable to go on until he gets into work. Such a scheme as that is a sham, and it is unnecessary to go to all the trouble and expense of setting it up. It is therefore necessary that the benefit should be of such a size that it should have some sort of relation to the average benefit given by well-conducted trade unions whose rates are not too high. I am sure the hon. Gentleman will be content with that limitation. The right hon. Gentleman was very candid in saying that the financial cost of this operation could not, in fact, be estimated, and unless he has later information than that which has been published one realises that it must be extremely difficult even to make a guess at the cost.
The Poor Law Commission referred the question to three actuaries, upon a different basis it is true, but upon a basis which did require precisely the same class of information as is required now in order to get any reliable estimate of the cost of the present scheme. Two of those actuaries, Mr. Acland and Mr. Neilson, reported frankly that there were no data,
664
or no sufficient data, to enable them to make an estimate. Mr. King, another of the actuaries, was more enterprising, but he found that the data were very scanty, and that he could not make a real valuation of the risks, but he did give some indication upon various assumptions of fact which he, of course, very properly pointed out were not in fact proved. If the right hon. Gentleman's estimate of the cost is based upon that data, he did not overstate it when he said that it was impossible to make any reliable estimate, but he did seem to suggest that he had saved himself in that by saying that there will be provision made for reduction of benefit or an increase of the levy in the event of the scheme not proving itself financially possible. I want to ask him how it is possible for a Government which has taken money from various workmen upon a statement that they will get such and such benefits for such and such periods at a later date to go to those workmen and say, "We cannot give you those benefits; either your contributions have to be increased or the benefits have got to be reduced." It is impossible to do that, and I think when we are entering on this scheme it is better to look the matter frankly in the face, and admit that once you have started it you cannot reduce the benefit or increase the premiums.
You could not reduce the benefit any more than any Government could suggest the reduction of any benefit which they had conferred, such as old age pensions. There is one other point I would like to deal with, and that arises out of something the hon. Member for Leicester said. He appeared to think that the employer was going to be relieved of some portion of the expense of accident insurance, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that accident insurance was not touched at all. I want to know whether any provisions have been made, or whether he proposes any provisions for the case of the workman who has suffered an accident and who has obtained compensation under the Workmen's Compensation Act. Is any provision going to be made for him so that the fund which is handed over at that time is used providently and so as to prevent it being spent improvidently and badly, thus causing that workman to make an invalidity claim upon the Government. There are similarly great possibilities of overlapping between cases of sickness and unemployment. If you have a limited period of benefit there is a great tempta-

665
tion to claim from the Sickness and Unemployment Fund for a certain period within the period of benefit. With regard to premiums, I understand that the subscription to the sick fund is to be suspended for three weeks if the workman is out of employment.
I understood the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say that during the time a workman insured in the fund was sick his premium was to be suspended, and he was not to pay, but during the time he was out of employment he was only to have it suspended for three weeks. It seems to me that that is quite an inadequate period, because it may easily happen that he would lose the whole of the contributions that he had paid to the Sick Fund by reason of his being out of employment for a very little over three or four weeks. We are about to take a really great step forward in social reform, a step which all of us want to see taken; but whether we succeed in extending the benefits which are now given by the voluntary institutions to a larger class or whether we stifle, or at least weaken, their efforts depends in my view, not upon our willingness, but upon the actual details of the scheme which is ultimately adopted. In my view, no care, no trouble, no time is too great to give to seeing that those details are carefully and thoughtfully regulated. We shall get, of course, other opportunities, and there are many points of this scheme which cannot be considered except with regard to the actual details of the Bill, and I feel sure the Chancellor can rely upon all help from those of us who have been endeavouring to study this matter.
Mr. BOOTH: I rejoice to hear the hon. Member as the spokesman for the Conservative Socialists of the House express unqualified approval of the Bill. But, as one might have expected, he suggested that the benefits should be extended, and that some of the safeguards should be withdrawn. It is one of the spectacles with which we are becoming more and more familiar in this House that the Socialists among the party opposite come forward and invariably wish to pose as the friends of the recipients of public benefit. I regret that some of the leaders of the different groups who have spoken seem to think that no one is able to discuss the question on this day. I entirely demur to that suggestion. I do not know for what the Chancellor of the Exchequer introduced it today unless we were to discuss it freely. I say with regret, as one of the deepest
666
admirers of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the House, that in some particulars he was wrong in his facts, and in some others the outline he gave of the machinery was entirely unsuitable to the object he has in view. I do not know that I should be playing the part of a friend to the scheme, or a friend of the Government, if I did not at once utter a note or two of warning. It is all very well for hon. Members to think we are a happy family party, and that from all parts they are going to support this scheme. Hon. Members in a few weeks will see the bands begin to play. There will be great consternation in the country, and it is a quite erroneous view to think that for very long hon. Members opposite will allow this to be treated as a non-party question. I only hope they will, and that they will preserve the attitude they have shown to-day, but I have very little faith in it. This Bill ought to have a considerable amount of careful thought and scrutiny. That cannot be given if it is hurried. To my mind it consists of two Bills, and I think the Chancellor of the Exchequer would have been better advised if he had divided it, or would consent at a later stage to divide it, into two parts. For the life of me I cannot see the necessary connection between the part dealing with unemployment, and that dealing with sickness and invalidity. One is universal and the other is partial. One has to be administered in one way, and the other in an entirely different way, and I fail to see how Members of this House can do justice to this subject unless for our own convenience there is a division of that kind made. I will in due course put my view in the form of a notice upon the Paper. When I take that action, and make this criticism, I do not make it in a hostile spirit, or as one who has any desire to see the scheme fall through. I want to make it strong where it is weak, and I want some corrections to he made where necessary.
To begin with, I do not think it distinguishes sufficiently between town and country. The amount of 5s. a week in rural districts, where things are very cheap, is one matter, but it is a totally different thing in the city of London. There are some aspects of this Bill where' that will have to be taken into account. Money has not all the same relative value. In fact, the whole position is so complex, and has so many sides, that I sincerely hope no one in his wildest dreams will ever propose that a Bill of

667
this kind should be submitted in a Referendum to the country. I cannot conceive a greater condemnation of that idea than that hon. Members opposite should dare to suggest that a measure of this kind should be settled by a public vote. This is the most important measure that probably any one of us will see introduced into the House. Hon. Members all agree with that, but they repudiate the idea that this most important Bill, all the effects of which will penetrate into every house and almost into every room, should be subject to the new fangled idea of the Refendum. The unemployment portion was dealt with rather briefly by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but there was one pitfall against which I must warn him. He stated that this Bill would not apply in the case of strikes and lockouts. But I want to ask whether those workmen who indirectly suffer through a strike or a lockout are to come under the provisions of the Bill?
You very often find that when there is a strike or a lockout in one trade, that throws a number of innocent workmen out of employment. I should like to know whether the Bill is to apply to them. It seems to me that a very great injustice will be done unless it does, and therefore in looking at the scope and the expense of the Bill it will be a false view to take that it was not influenced at all by strikes and lockouts. One of the main factors which would influence expenditure under this provision would be the indirect or innocent sufferers from a particular strike or lockout. Nowadays men hesitate to go out on strike because others in a different trade entirely would lose their occupation if they did. Again and again we see unions who believe they have a perfectly right cause restraining their men from a strike or urging them to go to work on terms which they think scarcely suitable, because it will throw large numbers of men out of employment through no fault of their own who have not taken part in the dispute. But in future, if these men who are hit and are perfectly innocent are to be kept by the State under the Unemployment Insurance Scheme the unions will be a little more vigorous in their strikes or the masters will be a little less scrupulous when they lock out the men. I put these considerations before those in charge of the Bill.
I further foresee, unless an Amendment is made in some of these provisions, great
668
conflicts between trade unions and the Government. The suggestion is that the trade unions should pay to their own members an amount when they are unemployed and afterwards they are to look to the Government to reimburse it. That is the scheme as put before us to-day. But it may easily be that the trade unions will have a little difficulty in recovering the payment from the Exchequer, and if the Chancellor criticises the payment I see there is a prospect of endless conflict. I submit that, the machinery there will want very careful adjustment, otherwise we shall have industrial struggles and strikes of a character that we have not had up to the present time. I am sure the last thing one would wish to be the outcome of the Bill is an increase in troubles of that kind. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his speech, went over a certain amount of round that I feel it my duty to cover.
We must recognise the vast difference between our position and that of Germany. In Germany everyone looks to the State for relief. The people are taught to look to the Central Office for guidance. They worship the bureaucratic system in a way that we do not and in many ways an attempt to engraft upon the English people who are full of individuality and who have a great deal of character and personal oddity, if you like, will not succeed. We in this country like to break rules and to go our own way, and I am not at all sure that under the scheme of this Bill the Government will find that sort of universal acceptance of the rules and the conditions, or that obedience to all the orders which come down from Whitehall into the country places. In Germany the position was clear. You had a very iron-handed Bismarck, a man of blood and iron. He cared nothing for the people's liberty, nor for any philosophy or theory of any kind. In fact, when he was establishing this scheme he invoked the great name of Christianity and pretended that that was his initial motive. Anything more hypocritical there could not possibly be. What was there Christian about the character or the career of Bismarck? While he was mouthing phrases of that kind and putting them in the shape of a message from the Emperor to the German Parliament he was conducting his manœuvres with the reptile Press, as he called it. He introduced the German scheme in order that he might put practical Christianity through the German nation as a protection against the Socialists. That was his clear and avowed object.

669
In this country the ground is covered. There are industrial insurance companies which retail insurance throughout the country, delivering it from door to door. There are also friendly societies who have a great variety of posts for their men to fill. There was nothing in the opening statement to-day that convinced the House that in every way, wherever the Bill proposes to go, it is the right province of the State. I have no doubt the Noble Lord (Lord Hugh Cecil) will enlighten the House upon this particlar point. If any one knows exactly where the State ought to stop it is the Noble Lord: I am a little afraid that in one or two aspects of this Bill the State is going a little needlessly into the domain of private enterprise. Our ground is covered by these agencies, am not convinced that the provisions in the Bill will deal with the question of malingering. I put my finger upon this because it is the greatest problem of the whole situation. The idea was thrown out that if the limit was made two-thirds of the wages there was a security against malingering. I am not able to believe that. My knowledge and experience of the dangers and difficulties of this question tell me that that is not a sufficient safeguard. It is all very well to say that under a system of rewards and bonuses, a half of a certain surplus being given to a local branch and half to a head office, these men will be induced to administer rightly. I am not convinced of that. These men come up for election and are voted upon. The scheme insists that they shall be committee men of all those lodges and elected popularly. You may be perfectly sure that when a certain amount is coming from the State and a certain amount from the employers, they will be sure to select those men to administer the fund who are most liberal in their promises. I am not at all clear that the men appointed to administer the fund will seek the reward of the bonus. When a man has to balance in his mind whether it will pay him to go to work or to stay at home, we reach the danger point. I am afraid some of these proposals reach that danger point. I submit that we ought not to put any working man in the position of pondering whether it will pay him to go to work, or pretend to be ill or unemployed. I do not at all see the safeguards which I wish to see in the Bill. It may be that during the discussion in the House some Member will be able to suggest safeguards and get them inserted.
670
The next point is that these men are to judge upon the valuations so that a certain amount of the funds of the friendly societies will be set free. The existing friendly societies have certain definite objects. Under this Bill it is proposed to meet a great deal of the claim now made upon them and therefore their funds will be to that extent free. The Chancellor of the Exchequer saw that danger and he says they will not be allowed to divide the money or apportion it to any scheme except this. That means an element of State intervention in friendly societies, and I utter a warning note to those connected with friendly societies that if they once submit to State interference and guidance in the way proposed, it is only a question of time when their business will be taken over entirely by the State, and they will cease to be voluntary institutions. It only needs two steps to carry that out. It may be wise to do that. That is not the question I am discussing now. I am pointing out the danger, and those who are interested in friendly societies should examine the proposals very carefully from that point of view. We must be on our guard. It may be that State help will be attractive to their head offices and to their chief men, but if that State help should afterwards be made the stepping-stone to State direction and control, it seems to me that the fabric will fall to the ground.
I am not at all sure that the method for the distribution of benefits under the scheme is the right one. This is a scheme of State socialism. There is no doubt about that. The State is to look after these people as well as it possibly can. I am not saying that the State should not concern itself about the health and the welfare of the poor. I am glad it does. At the same time I want to warn the House that those friendly societies—that fabric which was built up in this country and in no other—are a great heritage, and must not be lightly disturbed. It may be that in State insurance some other way will be found, but I should have thought that this piecemeal method of distributing the funds is not the best. I know the difficulty. The Chancellor of the Exchequer knows it too. If the scheme were hostile to the friendly societies the Government would be doomed. Hon. Members are only too anxious to get the voting power at election times that happens to be in these friendly societies. None of us can afford to do any injury to them, and I hope none of us wish to do any injury to them. At

671
the same time I would ask whether the way proposed is the best way of distributing the fund? The Chancellor of the Exchequer made a mistake in assuming that if a man is not in a friendly society it is because he is a non-insurable life. There are men with what we might call in this House cross-bench minds—men who do not like any friendly society, and who object to be a member of any society. They are outside of these societies. They may be called strange beings, but they exist in. large numbers. Many have to make the choice whether they will go into large societies like the Prudential or into insurance companies, and I say that a large number of those men whom the Chancellor of the Exchequer has described as uninsurable lives, because they are not in friendly societies are men whose lives have all been "passed" for membership of concerns where the examination is stricter. These outsiders are to be dealt with in certain ways. Their contributions are to be collected in one way, and the benefits are to be distributed in some other way.
The men who have to go to the Post Office are in rather an invidious position except in one matter where they have the advantage. They are to be nondescripts. They are men who the friendly societies think quarrelsome. Of course, in an insurance company you never ask whether a man is quarrelsome or not; you ask what kind of life he is. The man who is rather an outsider or a free lance appeals to me, and I do not hesitate to say that the man who does not enter any order or any industrial insurance company at all, but prefers to go his own way is entitled to full consideration. If a man falls out of benefit he gets extra benefit. It is a sort of tontine system, and, so far from being deterred from going into the Post Office system, I think many men will be attracted to it, because occasionally they will get their benefits increased by other men falling out. I am afraid it would be so in this case. That seems to me to be a weakness in the scheme.
Mention was also made of the unregistered societies. Some of these men are excommunicated from societies, and they are in small sick societies or dividing societies which hold their meetings at works or in public houses. They are sometimes called slate clubs, and they exist in great abundance. Many of the men who are not in regular friendly societies choose these other forms to invest their money. There
672
have been all kinds of friendly societies from time immemorial of one kind or another. The Chancellor of the Exchequer thought they commenced with the Roman slaves. They did nothing of the kind. The earliest secret and benefit societies in the world undoubtedly were in China. The Chinese, thousands of years before we called ourselves civilised, were ahead of us in these particulars. I remember a Chinaman explaining to me that they had kinds of insurance when we were entertaining the Druids or going about as naked savages in this country. The Chinaman thought that was why some people in this country thought that under Tariff Reform the foreigner would pay the taxes. There was no other explanation occurred to his mind. Therefore I must remind hon. Members that this question has existed more or less from time immemorial. Why? Because human nature is varied, because it is different in every house, street, and clime. I am afraid that there is not sufficient variety and latitude in the scheme as put before us to-day.
As to the county health committees, the right hon. Gentleman seems there to be setting up a new authority in Local Government. I am not at all sure that it will be welcome, and I feel perfectly certain that it will not work. Do those Members of this House who have had experience in local administration welcome the suggestion of county health committees? What are they to do? Is the county health committee of London to attempt to dictate to the county council? I can imagine the consternation at Spring Gardens if that course is taken. Take Lancashire or the West Riding of Yorkshire. Is dictation to the county council to be possible there on the part of the county health committee, constituted of one-third from the contributors, one-third from the friendly societies, and one-third from the Post Office contingent, to whom a further number are to be added as nominees of the State? I feel certain it will not work at all. It does not seem to me to be an integral part of the scheme. I do not see the necessity for getting into comflict with the men who administer public affairs in the different localities of the country. The Bill does enough in these matters. It deals with matters which have nothing to do with insurance. Insurance is a topic which men of the most distinguished ability in this House can hardly speak upon when they rise to address us. Insurance does not include the provision of sanatoria and the treatment of diseases.

673
8.0 P.M.
There is no reason in the world why the Government should wish to fight disease and death in the way proposed under this scheme. What connection these proposals have with the subject of insurance I fail to see. It may be that the right hon. Gentleman prefers to draw money for these beneficent purposes from these funds, but why? Whether the money is drawn from these funds or the regular Budget does not seem to matter. If he draws these funds from the Budget, I presume the House will vote the money. If he draws the money from these funds, he will have to replace it by a State contribution. It does not seem to me that there is any need for taking such a course. I will wait for the Second Reading of the Bill for more information, but at present I am not convinced that it was necessary to introduce these things into this scheme. It is a mistake to model this upon Germanideas. I do not understand in the least why we should be everlastingly going to Germany. What can Germany teach us? I do not know. It seems to teach hon. Members opposite Tariff Reform. But it cannot teach us anything of insurance. It may teach us what to avoid. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in framing his industrial insurance scheme, has evidently gone to Germany, not so much for example as for the knowledge of what to avoid. The Labour party sent one of its most distinguished Members to examine the State National Insurance scheme. I do not know whether they sent him to criticise it or expected him to come back like one of the spies of old with a favourable report, but the hon. Member came back and made some very pointed remarks, and I understand he is hot prepared to retreat from them now.
I feel it necessary to put before the House the hon. Member's decision upon this point, because it is rather interesting coming from such a source. I believe that the hon. Member for West Ham (Mr. W. Thorne) is an avowed Socialist, and he puts down these very remarkable words: "During my visit to Germany I found the workpeople made general complaints about the administration of the old age and invalidity scheme. It is urged that it lacked uniformity"—though uniformity is what the party of the hon. Member is always asking for—"and that the schemes were too costly, and it was claimed that the schemes carried on by workpeople among themselves can be taken as a model as far as administration was concerned, and were far less costly when in opera-
674
tion." There is an examination by a shrewd Socialist, who goes there and says that if this were done on a voluntary basis it would be done much more cheaply. That is a very remarkable dictum. He also said that there was great dissatisfaction throughout the country at the cost. On that point I will not wait for several weeks until leading articles have appeared in the Press and told exactly what people's views should be. I trust hon. Members as well as myself can form their own judgment, without waiting for the Press to appear to-morrow, or without waiting for the leading articles, and I say with all humility, but with a certain amount of confidence, because of my experience, that the amount set aside in this Bill is not anything like sufficient. As for talking about surpluses being divided in the future I am perfectly certain that we will be face to face with a serious deficit. It is all very well for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say that he has been guided by expert actuaries. I know he has. I know who the gentlemen are, and there are other actuaries in this country, and they will set to work on this Bill soon after it is printed. But neither the actuaries who have assisted the Chancellor of the Exchequer nor the actuaries who will advise the interests concerned can go upon anything except data. It all depends on what are the particulars with which you supply them.
With regard to unemployment you could have no particulars. You can only make a guess. There are no particulars which would justify him in bringing any figures forward in a Bill like this except as a mere guess, and I say with confidence that neither the Board of Trade nor anyone else has published any figures which are at all a guide. It was found that the figures put forward when the Workmen's Compensation Act was passed were entirely illusory, and there was not a company but lost money, as statistics of this kind alter every year. If you begin to give large benefits do you not think that the percentage of unemployment will go up? Do you think that the very fragmentary figures with which the experts have solaced themselves in these calculations will be reliable in the future? I say quite confidently they will not; and time will prove who is right. The statistics upon these questions vary from year to year, and I submit particularly as to unemployment there are not the data to go upon. It is said some figures have been got by

675
these actuaries from certain orders and friendly societies and trade unions who give unemployed benefits, but in every one of these cases there is a selection. You get model people or ideal people into these various organisations, as compared with many of those who stay out. The people who stay out are the erratic individuals who work when they want and play when they want, and who will do so under this Bill; and this has not been provided for. Whether you examine the invalidity and sickness statistics or unemployment statistics I say without any hesitation whatever there are not sufficient data for the figures that have been read out to-day.
Who is there that has had experience It is all very well to talk about statistics being put before actuaries. Where have they been obtained from. I submit that they are not anywhere in the world. Much less are they in the possession of the Gentlemen who sit upon the Front Bench; and I am prepared to make this challenge if they have figures which they say guide and justify them in accepting the estimates on which this Bill is based, then those figures ought to be at the service of the hon. Members of this House. Ever since the House met I have been trying to extract a little information about this scheme. I have been referred from the Treasury to the Board of Trade, and from the Board of Trade to the Treasury, and I raised the matter even on adjournment, but I could not make any progress. Hon. Members of all parties in the House have come to me and sympathised with me in my futile search for information. But when right hon. Gentlemen on the Front Bench indicate that they have got these magical statistics in their possession, then I call for them to be produced. Even the system of very small contributions opened up under this Bill to all trades and all classes of people will produce a state of things which no one can foresee. But what is perfectly certain is that it will cost a great deal of money. There is no use blinking the fact. It may be worth it. The Chancellor of the Exchequer made a noble speech, and if we respond to his appeal we must be prepared to pay.
I am not one of those who will vote for a scheme because I think it is beneficent, and at the same time try to deceive the public and the ratepayers generally into thinking that it will be a very cheap scheme when the scheme will not be cheap. The millions that will be wanted I am afraid are considerably beyond the
676
ideas of those who have framed this measure. I therefore felt it my duty, not as an opponent of this measure or of this Government—I think hon. Members opposite will give me the credit of being able to stand by my party—but in the spirit of the progress and success of this measure when it comes to operate in the country, to make these observations. It will cost a great deal of money. The scheme will need great rearrangement in all its mechanical parts. I say frankly it will not work as it has been put before the House to-day. It could not be expected of the scheme which has been put before the House. The money is not sufficient; the machinery is not clear enough; there is overlapping, and I am afraid it will need very exhaustive examination. That leads me to my concluding appeal, that this Bill ought not to be hurried forward. We ought to be able to consult our constituents about it; the traders of the country, and the workmen of the country ought to meet, and the finest financial and surest experts in the world must have ample time to deal with this. I am anxious to support this measure, but I venture to say that if any attempt is made to rush it, forward without consideration, and not allow a very considerable amount of time for it to be discussed, very reluctantly indeed, and with very great pain and regret, I shall be forced into a position of semi-hostility.
Lord ALEXANDER THYNNE: I may begin the few remarks which I have to make by offering my cordial and unqualified support to the general principle of the Bill. I agree with the hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. Ramsay Macdonald) that it is impossible at the present stage to attempt a detailed criticism of the Bill; but so far as the object which the Bill has in view and the general principles on which it is based are concerned I am sure that, with a few isolated exceptions, the Chancellor of the Exchequer may rely on practical unanimity of support from all quarters of this House. In the first place I would join in the appeal which is made by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Worcestershire (Mr. Austen Chamberlain) that this Bill should be divided into two parts, because, after all it does not require a very deep knowledge of these two great problems to realise that they are absolutely distinct in character and in no sense interdependent. There was a time when economists used to discuss the effect of sickness upon unemployment and the

677
effect of unemployment upon sickness. It was a subject of considerable argument, discussion, and thesis. But recent investigation at the time of the Poor Law Commission revealed the fact from an examination of the registers of friendly societies and distress committees in this country that sickness was, comparatively speaking, not an operative cause of unemployment, and if my memory serves me properly they discovered that of the applicants who came upon the registers of the various distress committees something under 3 per cent., about 2.6 per cent., ascribed their state of unemployment to considerations of sickness and of health. Take the converse proposition—how far unemployment is a cause of sickness in this country.
I think we cannot do better than turn to certain figures which were recently published with regard to the three great friendly societies of this country—the Manchester Unity, the Foresters, and the Hearts of Oak—which show that those three societies paid out more in sick benefit during years of trade prosperity than they did during two years of trade depression. In 1893, which was a year of depression, those three societies paid out a sum of 17s. 0½d. per head in sick benefit. In a year of trade prosperity, 1900, they paid a sum of 18s. 6¾d., and in the year 1903, which was also a year of trade depression, they paid the sum of 18s. 1d. I think that those two sets of figures go to show that there is no practical connection between sickness and unemployment, that they are two distinct matters and that for the convenience of this House they would be better dealt with in two separate Bills.
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 Proceeding was postponed without Question put.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
  LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (GENERAL POWERS) BILL.— [By ORDER.]
  Order for Consideration, as amended, read.

  CLAUSE 18.—(Travelling Expenses of Members of Council and Committees.)
  It shall be lawful for the Council to pay the reasonable travelling expenses incurred by any committee or sub-committee
  678
  of the Council in the performance of duties entrusted to such committee or sub-committee in pursuance of a resolution of the Council. Provided that no expenses shall be paid under this Section in respect of attendance at the County Hall or at other offices of the Council used in connection therewith and expenses paid under this Section shall not exceed in amount the expenses which would have been reasonably incurred if the committee or sub-committee as the case may be had travelled from or to the said County Hall to or from the place visited.
  Mr. LANE-FOX: I beg to move to leave out Clause 18. I need hardly say that the object of my rising to oppose this Bill is not any mere factious one, or simply a desire to oppose the measure. Some members may wonder why I, a Yorkshire member, should interfere with the affairs of London. The reason is a very simple one. This Clause 18, which I move to omit, contains a new principle of a very important character, and I think all members of the House will agree that changes of a momentous nature should not be brought into effect through the agency of a Private Bill Committee, but should come under the consideration of the entire House. This Clause, but for some action of this kind being taken, would have been passed by a Private Bill Committee probably of not more than six members, and those members not all agreeing as to the policy they ought to pursue with respect to this Clause. Though I am quite aware that the Private Bill Legislation Committee have power in cases of exceptional interest, to allow special changes to be made on their own initiative, I think that, unless a very special case is made out, members of this House will agree that matters such as this to which I am calling attention ought at any rate to be thoroughly thrashed out by the House as a whole. This Clause 18 deals with the question of the ordinary travelling expenses of members of the London County Council, and it provides that those expenses shall be paid to them in the course of their ordinary duties. The practice all over the country varies, and in some cases according to the opinion of the Local Government Board auditors. It is generally recognised that ordinary travelling expenses are not allowed by statute, but this difficulty is got round by different methods, in some instances not always of a very straightforward character.

  679
  The proposal is that members of the London County Council shall be paid their ordinary expenses in going about their duties. Motor cars may be employed to take the various members to the places where they want to go; in some cases the railway fares are included as well as other expenses. Of course, if it were the established practice, no opposition would be made by the auditors to do anything in the nature of expenses incurred in an extraordinary way. But this Clause, as I have said, deals with ordinary travelling expenses in the conduct of the ordinary business of the county council, and it is to that point I am addressing myself. Throughout the country, as a whole, there seems to be general satisfaction with existing arrangements. But some counties have complained in regard to this matter. Cornwall has asked for these expenses to be paid; Cumberland agrees with Cornwall, and Glamorgan has made the same request. Other counties have taken a different line, and I believe the matter has been before the County Councils Association, who have decided to take no action. In fact, they have shown that they do not wish to take action, in order that the expenses of ordinary business should be paid by statute. I do not wish to take the extreme view that in no case ought the travelling expenses of members of county councils to be paid; obviously it would be a very great mistake to enact anything which would prevent the poor man from carrying out his public duties. If we made it necessary that only officials should be able to go about to inspect parks, roads, schools, or whatever it may be, you would not only have the salaries of those officials to pay, but you would have their travelling expenses as well. Therefore it is obviously a matter of economy that members should do this work instead of officials. That is all very well no doubt, but nevertheless this is a very great change which is proposed, and, under existing circumstances, I think the House ought to have an opportunity of expressing its opinion upon it.
  It must be admitted that this change, if it be enacted, will be very great, and will cast a very large charge upon the rates. I do not think that ought to be done through the agency of a Private Bill Committee, more especially when the members of that Committee are not all agreed upon the subject. If this matter is to be done at all, it should be done by general legis-
  680
  lation. You are face to face with this position—either you can go on in a more or less satisfactory or unsatisfactory way, according to the view you take of it. Either you may go on under present conditions, with which at any rate a large number of counties are completely satisfied, or else we have a right to demand that there shall be a general system authorised by legislation. Either the thing is wrong or it is right. If it is right then we ought to have a statute dealing with all counties. If it is wrong, then it ought not to be dealt with by a Private Bill Committee. It may be said that London is so large that they have a right to raise a special case. I admit that the problems of local government in London are entirely different from those which have to be dealt with by the majority of other counties. I admit that the volume of work which London has to go through in one day is enormous, I admit that infinitely more time is required of the London County Councillor than in the case of councillors in most other counties. But that is a matter of work, and the time which the county councillors have to devote to it. It is not a matter of expenses, of the distances he has to go, or of the bad conditions under which he has to discharge his public duties. The House may pity the poor country county councillor in a wide county area like that of the West Riding of Yorkshire or the county of Lancashire. The London County Councillor can travel cheaply and comfortably, either by tramcar or railway or motor 'bus, or by the underground, and such are the facilities for travelling in London that he may get to any part of its area for the discharge of his duties in patent leather boots and top hat.
  But just think of the difficulties of travelling in a great county area, of the enormous distances to be traversed and of the difficulties of transit, and then, as I say, you will pity the poor countryman who has to plod through muddy lanes in discharging his duties. In the West Riding there are no less than 912 schools alone, and there are 980 in Lancashire. How many are there in London? [An HON. MEMBER: "Over a thousand."] How can you compare London, with its well-paved streets and the various, and very much cheaper, methods of conveyance with those which you find in a great county area. Besides that, you have all the main roads in the counties and all the bridges and all the asylums long distances from each other. There is also the problem of small

  681
  holdings, which the county council has not to consider at all and which involves an enormous amount of work on many members of the other county councils, in investigations before they can discover what is most suitable. I think it must be obvious that the difficulties of travelling, whether in the matter of distance conveyance or whether in the matter of weather, must be infinitely greater in any county area than in London. When I say that I think I have disposed of the question whether London has a special case. The large amount of work which the London County Council has to perform does not mean that it is more difficult to get about, and I think everybody must admit that in that respect the London County Council occupy a more favourable position than any other county council in the country. The Clause, as I read it, and I daresay I read it wrong, states that the whole expenses of the whole Committee are to be allowed by resolution and are to be paid. In the various cases which I have described where the difficulty is got over, only those members who require the expenditure put their names down, and only those are paid. If this means that you have to pay the expenses of the whole Committee with very many rich men on it, then it seems to me there is a very considerable waste of money.
  There is no provision in case a quorum does not turn up and the duties are not performed. But it is quite possible that the Chairman and one or two members may have had a long journey and may get no expenses for it. It seems to me that the main point, and really the important and serious point, is that this does involve a very great change of principle, and if action is taken on this Bill it is perfectly evident that a very considerable charge on the rates may be involved in the future. Therefore, whatever the views of hon. Gentlemen of this House may be as to whether they wish this system to be supported or stopped, they can but have but one view on this point—that it ought not to be passed through a private Bill brought down from a private Bill Committee, and practically not known by the whole of the rest of the House. I certainly think it ought not to be passed by this very thin House at the dinner-hour, when the great majority are not even aware of the contents of the Clause. The right hon. Gentleman has two courses to recommend. He can either recommend that we can have a general Bill for the whole country or he can recommend by administration, which,
  682
  although not strictly legal, I daresay could be done. I mean the system of allowing a certain latitude to his own auditors, and thus to leave the councils to work out their own salvation by the common sense which they have hitherto shown where this question has come up. I think I am justified in having brought forward this Motion in order simply to bring the facts before this House. Everybody, whichever view they may take can without any breach of conscience vote against this Clause being included in a private Bill. All who want general legislation on the subject will naturally vote to exclude the matter being dealt with in a private Bill. All who desire to sec no legislation on the matter will vote against the Clause. Whether hon. Gentlemen agree with me or not I hope they will realise that it was worth while bringing the subject before the House.
  Mr. HICKS BEACH: The course we are taking in asking the deletion of this Clause is simply and solely because we think this is not a proper way in which to bring about what is, after all, a considerable change in the administration of local affairs. It may be a very arguable point as to whether county councils in London should be paid their expenses in coming to Committees inspecting various problems, or even possibly their travelling expenses to county council meetings. But that is not the point of this Motion. The sole point is as to whether it is desirable that the London County Council alone should confer this right on itself of taking out of the rates out-of-pocket expenses incurred in travelling in certain county council problems. The general bodies of the county councils throughout the country are not in favour of any change of this kind. They approved of a Bill which would enable them to pay the expenses of officials in going about to inspect various county council undertakings. They declined by a considerable majority to approve of a Bill to enable payment of the expenditure of the county councillors themselves. Therefore, I think it may be presumed that the county councils in the whole country would be opposed to this very considerable change.
  Our main objection to this Clause is that the London County Council are taking power by a private Bill for authority to pay the travelling expenses of the members of the county council. As my hon. Friend pointed out, it is very hard to see why any particular case could be made

  683
  out for London, because London is very well provided for in the way of travelling. Not only have you taxi-cabs and tramways, but you have as well a very complete system of underground railways. We unfortunately who live in the country have to travel long distances, such as, in one case, nine miles by road in my county before coming to the railway station, and then hours by train before getting to the county council. I cannot see that any good case could be made out for the London County Council alone to derive these particular advantages. It is for the Local Government Board or the House to give their consent to this very drastic change in the conditions under which county councils have so freely offered their services so gratuitously for the benefit of the people in the past. I support my hon. Friend in asking that this particular Clause be deleted.
  Question proposed. "That Clause 18 stand part of the Bill."
  Mr. GOLDSMITH: As Chairman of the Select Committee when this particular portion of the Bill was discussed, I desire to state very briefly the reasons which induced the Committee to pass the Clause. Even those Members who voted for the Clause were of the opinion that, as a great change and an important principle were involved, the matter should receive adequate discussion on the floor of the House. The hon. Member for Barkston Ash said that the present system was a very satisfactory one. Let me inform the House what the present system really is. At the present time the county council has power to pay the travelling expenses of members outside the county, and for the twenty-one years from 1888 to 1909 it paid the travelling expenses of members within the county. But a short time ago the district auditor made certain remarks which induced the county council to abandon that practice, and for the last two years it has not paid the travelling expenses of members within its own area. Under this Clause it is not proposed to pay the expenses of individual members. What is proposed is to pay the expenses of committees or sub-committees when they are actually doing the work of the council.
  The hon. Member says that this ought to be done by a general law, and not by a private Bill. I am not at all certain that that is so. Each case ought to be decided on its merits. It would evidently
  684
  be unnecessary and even absurd to pay the expenses of members of the council of a small borough, or of members of a district council. The London County Council is in an entirely different position from that of any other municipal authority in the country. As a county authority it has all the powers of a county council, including the whole of the educational work of the Metropolis, and, in addition, it has to perform duties which are performed in other parts of the country by the ordinary municipal corporation. It has an area of 120 square miles, with a population of nearly 5,000,000, and while the ordinary county councils meet once a quarter and its committees probably once or twice a month, the London County Council meets once a week, and I believe there are something like ten or twelve meetings of committees or sub-committees every day. I point this out merely to show that the work of the London County Council is infinitely greater than that of any municipal body in the country.
  We had evidence before us that the Parks Committee has to look after 114 parks, comprising 5,000 acres. We were told that it was absolutely essential that that committee should pay personal visits to the parks and open spaces, and that if it did not do so it would lose all control over the expenditure upon them. During the time the travelling expenses were paid the Parks Committee used to pay frequent visits to all the parks and open spaces. But now the committee can only pay those visits at the expense of the rates, when the county council certifies the object for which the visit of the committee has to be paid to be an extraordinary one. The expenses cannot be paid for the ordinary work of the committee. The annual cost of the London parks is £125,000. The expenses of the visits of the committee, while they were paid out of the rates, was between £60 and £80 a year. That is not a very serious matter as far as the ratepayers are concerned. But it is absolutely absurd to say that the members of the committee should not only devote all their time to the work of London, but also pay the cost of going to these various parks when they go, not as individual members of the council, but as a Parks Committee performing duties under the special instructions of the council. The same applies to other committees of the council, more especially the Education Committee.
  The Education Committee has a large number of special, industrial, and secondary schools both within and without the

  685
  county. When the committee visits a school outside the county, say at Woolwich, eight miles from the county hill, the members have to pay their own expenses. In a large area like London it is impossible to make a distinction between travelling expenses incurred outside the county and travelling expenses incurred inside the county. I believe there is in this House a majority in favour of the payment of Members of Parliament. I do not agree with those Members; but if a case can be made out for the payment of Members of Parliament, an equally good, if not a much better, case can be made for this Clause. We are not proposing to pay salaries to London County Councillors, but merely that their expenses, when doing the work of a committee, should be paid. They ought not to be out of pocket by doing the work of the London ratepayer. The Mover of the Amendment said that if no quorum turned up the cost would fall on the rates.
  Mr. LANE-FOX: No; on the members.
  Mr. GOLDSMITH: In any case, that is a very small point, and probably would not often arise. We, on the Committee upstairs, very carefully considered the evidence placed before us. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will support the action of the Committee, and that the House will pass this Clause.
  Mr. PICKERSGILL: I understand that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Barkston Ash does not object to what this Clause proposes to do, but he objects to it being done in a private Bill, and in a particular instance. I desire respectfully to point out, to the hon. Gentleman as an interesting fact of Parliamentary history and local government that nearly all the improvements in local government have been initiated by clauses in private Bills. The course has been that the Clauses have come into a series of private Bills, and subsequently have been embodied in a public Bill. It is well known that that has been the ordinary and usual course. Further, I understand that the hon. Gentleman himself is the author of a private Bill to enact generally what this Clause proposes to do in the one case of London.
  Mr. LANE-FOX: The Bill which I have brought in, and which I hope the hon. Member will help me to pass, is to pay the expenses of members of the county councils for attending conferences outside their area. It is a difficulty which has
  686
  occurred very frequently, and means an unusual and extraordinary expense. It has very often prevented them from coming to useful congresses in London. It is a very different matter.
  Mr. PICKERSGILL: It is on the general lines of this proposal, and I was merely going to suggest to the hon. Member that, as a matter of policy, it would be wise of him to allow this Clause to pass to-day. If it is passed, then he will have a chance of securing what he desires.
  Mr. SANDERS: I really think the defence of this Clause which was made by the hon. Member behind me makes it almost worse than it appears on the Paper. His defence was that the members of the London County Council had acted illegally for nearly twenty years. At the end of twenty years they were cut out, and so they wish to pass a special Act of Parliament in order to enable them to act in the same way in the future. I do not wish to discuss the question of whether it is right or wrong that the payment of travelling expenses for members of county councils should be made out of the rates. But I do think it must be admitted that if there is a case for London there is even a stronger case for the county councils all over the country. Where men spend pennies for travelling in London they have to spend pounds on travelling in the country. The expenses of a single committee, or the whole of a committee, have been quoted as being in London £60 and £80 a year. I will undertake to say that in some large counties the expenses of a single member of some of the committees, like the Education Committee or the Small Holdings Committee, will amount to pretty well half that sum. So I say that if this is passed for London, a fortiori it ought to be passed for the county councils in our large counties. It is said that the distance of eight miles in London is the extreme distance. Why, we go forty miles without winking an eye in some of the counties on county business, and very often there is no railway to take us there. There are places where one can only get to on a hack.
  You will find that the same thing occurs over and over again in connection with county council business in our larger counties. If this principle is right—and that I do not think it is relevant to discuss—does the right hon. Gentleman opposite propose that it shall be passed by this Private Bill for London, and then that

  687
  other county councils in the country, when once the principle is adopted, shall introduce separate Bills in order that the travelling expenses of their members shall be paid? I really see no reason why London should be dealt with in this exceptional way. I also do think we ought to protest against the attempt that has been made by the London County Council to smuggle this important principle through. Here is a Bill brought in—a General Powers Bill for the London County Council. The title of the Bill is, "To make Provision with respect to the Superannuation of certain members of the staff of the London County Council; to Extend the Time Limited for the construction of Certain Authorised Works; to make Further Provisions with respect to Matters of Local Government; and for other purposes." The Bill comes before the House. No one knows anything about it. Save for the sharpness of my hon. Friend, this matter might have passed without discussion; this important principle might have been smuggled through without anyone being a bit the wiser, until perhaps it was discovered by the Press. I do not think that is the way that an important principle like this should be brought before the House of Commons, and it is for that reason if for no other that I support my hon. Friend in the Motion that he has made.
  Mr. ARTHUR ALLEN: I should not like it thought that in this matter the members of the London County Council think that this principle should apply only to members of that county council. We quite recognise there may be a very good case indeed for other county councils to ask that a similar measure should be passed. We have been told that the County Councils Association, which represents the county councils generally, is not in favour of this, and therefore it is for them to change their mind and come to the House of Commons and ask for a general Bill. From our experience we on the London County Council have found that it is extremely advisable that the members of the committees should attend as often as possible at the outside institutions which the council has to manage. We have, as the House has been told, a large number of parks and open spaces. We have a vast number of schools and educational institutions of all kinds, widely separated, and in order to manage all these different institutions it is necessary
  688
  that we who attend should have committees not merely composed of members of the London County Council, but composed of outside people to help the members of the county council. It is patently impossible to get the proper class of people, or indeed to get a sufficient number of people to look after these different institutions if, besides making a tax upon their time, we also make a tax upon their pockets. We do not want, and I am quite sure this House will not desire that we should want, to draw these members of committees from one class of the community only. We want to make service on these committees possible for every class of the community. We want to get people of moderate means as well as people of considerable means.
  Everybody knows, it is a matter of common knowledge, that outside London the men elected on the county councils are almost entirely drawn from one particular Class. [HON. MEMBERS: "No, no."] Well, as regards one half they are men of a class which can well afford to pay its own travelling expenses. But it is quite impossible to carry on business in London efficiently if we are going to draw members of the committee and sub-committees to manage institutions from one class of the community only. We have found from experience that it is absolutely necessary to pay these expenses. We thought we were legally entitled to pay these expenses. We found out by the action of the district auditor we were not. We therefore took the straightforward course of coming to the House and asking them to legalise the course we have taken, and the course found to be necessary. I do appeal to the House to relieve those of us who serve the London County Council, to say that this course of action is absolutely necessary, and to allow this Clause to stand part of the Bill.
  Mr. GUINNESS: The hon. Gentleman the Member for Somerset casts aspersions on the London County Council for having behaved illegally, and now seeking to whitewash themselves. I think the same might be said of every county council. They equally have behaved illegally on the admission of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Barkston Ash, who in his speech pointed out that it is quite a common course for county councils to adopt subterfuges to enable them to pay these expenses without appearing to do so. I believe it is quite usual all over England, and I do not think that the London

  689
  County Council will be blamed for trying to regularise it. Certainly we would prefer general legislation, but as we feel this Session that is impossible, we hope that a Clause in a private Bill will give us what we want, and make it easier after for county councils throughout the country to get the same advantage once the principle has been adopted. The hon. Member for Somerset said that certainly rural county councillors—if I may make that distinction—often travel so much that an individual member might spend £40 in doing committee work. That would be impossible for many members in London, and that clearly establishes a distinction between rural county councils and the London County Council. It is explained by the fact that in rural county councils they do not have Labour members, and therefore members are in a position to pay their expenses. [An HON. MEMBER: "We have Labour members in Yorkshire."] Well, if you have Labour members in Yorkshire County Council, I cannot understand how they can afford to pay £40 expenses travelling through the country, and I do not think it is a reasonable burden. [An HON. MEMBER: "It is not reasonable."] My hon. Friend seems to adopt a dog-in-the-manger policy. He tells us it is not a reasonable burden, but because he cannot get the advantage for rural councils he will not allow it to the London County Council. I hope the House will pass this Clause.
  9.0 P.M.
  I in no way complain of the hon. Member for Barkston Ash bringing the matter before the House. The majority of the House was probably not aware of this provision, and did not know that it was to be discussed, but if they take the trouble to read the circular sent out this morning they will see the Clause, set out, and could easily discover for themselves in two minutes what are its bearings. If other county councils do not want these powers they need not have them, and the Clause has not the same interest for them that it has for London. I do not think the hon. Member for Barkston Ash quite appreciates what the procedure in the London County Council is. I understood him to say it was rather unreasonable to pay the expenses of everybody whether they wanted it or not, and that it would not be fair to pay the expenses of rich men, but he does not seem to understand that the real procedure that existed in the past, and contemplated in the future is, that those who engage in inspections of parks, schools, fire brigade stations and so on, starting from the County Council Hall,
  690
  should travel in motor cars to the places to be inspected. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh."] Well, how is it possible to get round to twenty open spaces otherwise? I think members of the London County Council give far more time to their business than Members in this House, and if members of-the London County Council are to go round in hansoms it would be impossible to carry out the visits.
  Sir F. BANBURY: Why not in motor-omnibuses?
  Mr. GUINNESS: That would be as satisfactory, but probably it would be more expensive to hire motor omnibuses, because I do not think that omnibuses for that purpose can be obtained. I do not think that a sum of £60—£80 for viewing. and inspecting parks is at all an unreasonable figure, when you consider the fact that there are 1,000 employés, and that there is spent, upon maintenance alone, £125,000 a year. I do not attempt to argue the question of distances in London as. differentiated from distances in the country. I think there is a difference between London and the rural county councils, owing to the great volume of work and the greater pressure upon the time of members, and for that reason it would be impossible to get round by trans or to get round at all if members were to find their-own way, and to meet at the various parks. To my mind, the administrative work of the London County Council cannot be carried out successfully unless members see the work upon the spot. It is impossible to supervise the work if it is to be left simply to officials.
  The only result of not giving the power sought in this Clause by the London County Council will be to leave matters: entirely dependent upon the reports of their officials. It is not a new principle to allow this. The Port of London Authority, the Thames Conservancy, the Metropolitan Asylums Board, and the Metropolitan Water Board have the expenses of their members paid. The expenses of members of the board of guardians are paid outside their areas, and when they travel outside their areas they do not generally have to go half as far as the London County Councillors have to travel inside. Members of the boards of guardians, get not only their travelling expenses, but grants for refreshments also; there is no such idea in the minds of members of the London County Council. They

  691
  only want their travelling expenses for viewing parks, schools, fire - brigade stations, and so on. I quite agree it would he more satisfactory if the matter could be dealt with by general legislation, but that is impossible this year, and I ask the House to allow the Council to have this clause, which is absolutely necessary for the efficient discharge of its work.
  Sir F. BANBURY: My hon. Friend who has just sat down has opened up an appalling vista. Here I see my hon. Friend in a fur coat with a cigar in a luxurious motor-car, accompanied by the hon. Member for Woolwich going round on a fine summer's day inspecting the parks at the expense of a humble individual like myself. I do not see why I should be called upon to contribute to the hon. Member enjoying himself in a motor-car. When I interrupted and ventured to suggest a motor omnibus, I did not mean that the hon. Member should have a whole omnibus to himself. I meant that he should pay 2d. with other people, and go as far towards the parks as he should desire, and if the omnibus did not take him to the actual gate of the park, then he should walk the zest of the distance. I think that would be an economical mode of progression. I am inclined to think if my hon. Friend bases this Clause upon the efficacy of the simple revision of the parks, it would be far better if the various members of the park committees did not assemble together at the County Hall and go in processions to the park, but went quietly from their own Homes, and they would see much better than if it was announced beforehand that they were going to arrive in procession on a certain hour of a certain day. My experience of human life, which is perhaps greater than that of my hon. Friend, has led me to the conclusion that these specified visits of supervision amount to nothing at all, because everything is prepared for, and the result is always satisfactory. If there is really a desire to exercise supervision it would be much better exercised if the hon. Member opposite and others walked down to a particular park on a particular afternoon and unexpectedly saw what was going on. I am very much opposed to this Clause, and my opposition has not been modified by the speeches made in favour of it. The hon. Member for Dumbartonshire (Mr. A. A. Allen) said he was in favour of extending this principle to other places, and another hon. Member spoke about a dog-in-the-manger
  692
  policy, and suggested a policy of logrolling. Of course, we do not approve of that policy on this side of the House.
  Mr. GUINNESS: I did not advocate logrolling. Log-rolling implies that a party supports a thing which is bad in order to get something else. My hon. Friend admitted that there was a strong case for this Clause, and that it was good, and, therefore, we are asking the House to support something which is good, and that is not log-rolling.
  Sir F. BANBURY: I do not know what my hon. Friend admitted, but I know he moved the rejection of this Clause. Another hon. Member said if you will support this Clause I will support a Motion to give your council money out of the pockets of the ratepayers. That is what I call log-rolling. I object to this proposal because it will create a precedent for extending the principle to other places. We have been told that it is necessary for the Committee to visit the parks and open spaces, and that the cost will only be about £60 or £80. I do not know what the cost is. My objection is to the principle and not to the cost. If you once admit that the members of the London County Council are entitled to these expenses you will have to admit the same principle in the case of other county councils, district councils, and every municipality all over the country. When you begin with that principle I do not know where you are going to stop. The hon. Member for Stowmarket (Mr. Goldsmith) said this Clause is necessary and it does not amount to much. Although it is only a little amount I think it is a most dangerous principle to bring forward. Why should you declare that members of these committees who have to visit certain places should have their expenses paid any more than the men who attend to the business on the council. I do not say that the present members of the London County Council are not everything that you could wish for, but, at any rate, by this Clause you are putting temptation in their way. Instead of making these visits a duty on their part you are going to say to them, "If you have not much to do you shall have a pleasant excursion on a fine summer's afternoon and see what is going on in certain places under your control." The hon. Member for Stowmarket talked about payment of Members, and he said, after all, if payment of Members is good this is also good. I think payment of Members is bad.
  Mr. GOLDSMITH: What I said was that there is a much better case for this proposal than for payment of Members.
  Sir F. BANBURY: I do not think there is a case for either. If we adopt this Clause when payment of Members conies to be discussed it will be argued that we have done this in the case of the London County Council and lay should we not do it in the case of Members of Parliament. Let us consider for a moment the position of the London County Council. The members of that body do a very great deal of hard work, and I think everybody ought to be grateful to them for the work they do and have done. I am not opposing this Clause in any spirit of contradiction to the London County Council, but I cannot see that there is any argument for it at all. The officers of the London County Council are situated in Spring Gardens, and it is proposed that these expenses should be paid to and from the County Hall in Spring Gardens. May I point out to the hon. Member for Stow-market that certain philanthropic railway directors have provided very excellent means of travelling by the District Railway, the tube railways, and others, which practically cover every portion of London, and by which you can travel at a very inadequate price from the point of view of the shareholders. I travel in that way myself, and why should the members of the London County Council not do the same? Is it supposed that members of that council occupy a superior position, and when they go on an official visit they must go in state? I think they ought to go like anybody else in the ordinary way in the ordinary carriage provided for the London public. If my hon. Friend behind me had suggested something of this sort for Yorkshire, where the distances to be covered are very great and the facilities for travelling are not very good, I could have understood it. It is quite a different thing to come here where there is every facility for locomotion that the human mind or ingenuity can imagine, and say you cannot afford 2d. 'bus or a tube fare, and you must take it out of the pockets of the ratepayer. That is absolutely ridiculous. I am afraid if his sort of thing once begins we shall never know where to stop.
  The hon. Member for Bethnal Green (Mr. Pickersgill) I admit has a great knowledge of procedure, but I must say that on this matter I cannot agree with him. I did not know until yesterday that this
  694
  Clause was in the Bill. I admit I had an opportunity of finding it out, but I should have had to go through every private Bill. The hon. and learned Member knows as well as I do the vast majority of Members do not expect to find a Clause of this sort in a private Bill, and they do not take the trouble of looking at them. My hon. Friend behind me has brought forward his Bill, which is a very different one, because it only provides two members shall be paid in the event of their going to certain conferences of the whole of the county councils of England, as a public Bill, and it would be a bad precedent if a Clause of this sort were allowed to slip through in a private Bill. If the London County Council desire to have a Clause of this sort, they had better withdraw it from this private Bill and bring it forward as a public Bill. I would appeal to the Noble Lord the Member for Bath (Lord A. Thynne) if that is not fair. I look upon it as being the fault of the officials of the county council. They are too fond of having long Bills filled with all sorts of Clauses, which they generally have to withdraw after a certain time. I do not believe this originated with my hon. Friend, but from the oversee of an official, who probably put it in thinking it would not do any harm, and would please certain members of the county council.
  I do think a Clause of this sort ought not to be put into a private Bill. It necessitates looking up every private Bill by every Member to see that something of this sort is not put in. I should like to congratulate my hon. Friend on his public spirit in bringing forward this Amendment. It is not everybody who is prepared to get up and speak or vote against a Clause which will put money into somebody's pocket. A very vital principle is at stake. We are now fortunately living under institutions which are managed by public - spirited men, who give their labours free. That I think is a very great advantage to this country. The moment you begin to say in one direction or another, or for one reason or another, they shall be paid, you strike a blow at that system of giving labour free in a public-spirited manner for the interests of your country, and you will convert not only this House, but all other public bodies into paid assemblies. If you do that it will be to the detriment not only of those assemblies, but of the electorate who returns them. Therefore I shall have much pleasure in supporting the Amendment of my hon. Friend.
  The PRESIDENT of the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. Burns): The hon. Member who has just sat down has diverted the House, but he has not convinced it to his line of argument. It seems to me his last statement was, perhaps, the best argument against everything he had said before, because he said the people in this country were in the habit of being governed by people who gave free the whole of their services in the management of our large municipalities. This does not alter that condition of things. It enables them to give their services, as hitherto, free; but in circumstances where it is now impossible for them to continue those services by virtue of lack of means it gives them facilities to continue the very public-spirited work which the hon. Baronet so much eulogised. A subcommittee of the county council can meet at Spring Gardens and go thence—three or four or five together, as is generally the case—and visit some place outside the county and have their conveyance paid for, but they cannot visit places inside the county and receive expenses for the vehicle in which they ride. It seems to me that to give it in one case and deny it in the other is inconsistent and against the public interest.
  The hon. Baronet said it was an appalling vista which the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Guinness) had conjured up. The hon. Baronet drew a picture of the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds and the hon. Member for Woolwich (Mr. Crooks) riding in a motor car, say to Hainault Forest or to Hither Green, at his expense. I have listened to hear the hon. Baronet deprecate similar expenditure on a more extravagant scale by the Thames Conservancy Board, the Metropolitan Asylums Board, the Port of London Authority, and, last but not least in the matter of generous provision for all its servants and members, the City Corporation. Is it fair for the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds that he should be denied the practical and, as I know from experience, the genial company of the hon. Member for Woolwich? I suppose the hon. Member for Woolwich, after probably having given four days' service for the county council inside the county, travelling at his own expense from Woolwich to Spring Gardens, when he meets the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds under the disabling conditions which now prevail, is to say, "I can pay my expenses for four or five days per week, but
  696
  I cannot stand the five or ten shillings necessary for a motor-car." The hon. Baronet said he could go in a tram. You cannot go in a tram from Spring Gardens to everywhere, and if he were a member of the county council the hon. Baronet would be converted to this proposition. The best and most essential portion of the work of the members of the London County Council is on the cross routes over vast and open spaces to fire-brigade stations and elsewhere in isolated districts, where no motor-omnibus nor railway can be secured as cheaply or conveniently, especially from the point of view of time, as a motor-car carrying four or five members of a subcommittee and their officials. The hon. Baronet had really no case against this Clause other than that upon the principle "there was nothing like leather." He saw in this proposal something that would interfere with the railway directors, of which he is one of the most distinguished representatives we have ever had in the House of Commons.
  May I deal with one aspect of this matter which has not been referred to. We have a right to be guided by experience in this matter. What are the facts? For over twenty-one years we have had the experience of this great and public-spirited body the county council. It rarely happened, when they were allowed to do what this Clause seeks to legalise, that they spent more than from £60 to £100 per annum. Can anyone say that that is an extravagant amount for essential work which is being done on behalf of a great public authority by men of public spirit, but sometimes of slender resources. As to the suggestion of extravagance or abuse, I am convinced, by my eighteen years' membership of that body, that they are most economical; they rarely spend anything beyond what is absolutely necessary and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred they defray all the minor expenses of going to and from the sub-committee meetings. Even although they were able to charge the expense, it may be said, to the great credit of the bulk of the members, they rarely did it. The hon. Member for Barkston Ash thought this might be done in a more excellent way. He suggested that the auditors might be persuaded to countenance certain expenses. But that would involve a subterfuge which might lead to abuse, and I could not countenance anything in that direction. The hon. Member further said that this was a new principle. I do not think it is a new

  697
  principle. It is an application of what for similar purposes dissimilar bodies have done in different parts of the country, and when the hon. Member who now opposes this Clause is actually presenting to Parliament this Session a Bill to enable county councils to pay very similar expenses—
  Mr. LANE-FOX: No, no.
  Mr. BURNS: Yes. The hon. Member proposes to allow expenditure for conferences, which, as a rule, mean talk, although for practical purposes he proposes to deny these expenses. He was fair enough to state that the work done in London is exceptional, involving an enormous amount of time and labour. I think a city as large and wealthy as London can afford £200 or £300 a year for its public-spirited members to enable them to do this work. We are asked for precedents. There is something in the nature of a precedent in the schemes under the Welsh Intermediate Education Act which grant some of the members third-class travelling expenses when engaged on certain duties. I do think that if this is to be countenanced, as I hope it may be, it should be tried as an experiment by such a public body in a private Bill. It can be watched by the central authority, and if a disposition is shown—which I do not believe would be the case—to abuse the power, then it will be possible for us to draw from this experiment certain deductions. If, on the other hand, the results are satisfactory, it may lead us to support the hon. Member's Bill when it comes before the House. On that, however, I make no pledge at this moment. But I do suggest that this is the best way by which the paying of members for public work can be introduced and extended. I want to point out one disability which obtains in London at the present moment.
  The surveyors, architects, and engineers of the county council have their expenses paid. I want the members of the council to be in the same position, because I believe that if they could visit different places with those officials much good would result. I would ask the House to remember that the London County Council has now ten asylums outside the county, and they have also a large number of institutions and pumping stations on the verge of the county. I am not blaming the council because these outward institutions are not visited as often as they would be if they were more centrally situated, but I do
  698
  think it is inadvisable that asylums and pumping stations, costing an enormous amount of money and in the permanent charge of officials, should not be visited as often as they would be if these facilities were granted to members of the county council. So far as the question of abuse creeping in is concerned, or so far as the suggestion of the introduction of the thin end of the wedge arises, I can only say that the Local Government Board will watch this experiment with the closest attention. But public-spirited Englishmen who to their honour and credit are engaged in doing this useful work are, I am sure, not going to abuse these extended facilities and additional advantages. I believe they will only be used in exceptional cases, and that they will tend at the same time to economy. It will confer on the London County Council, a body now overworked, additional facilities and more extended opportunities for devoting time to the public service, and without the least hesitation I appeal to the House to allow this Clause to pass.
  Mr. HOARE: I have had some experience in visiting institutions of the county council in various parts of London, and I was very much struck by the remarks of the hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London. Why should an hon. Member who can still travel in a coach advise county councillors to go on foot to view the parks, for instance, in different parts of London. I was also somewhat surprised that he of all people should have advised us to make use of the trams. No doubt the trams go to Peckham, but they do not go to every part of London, and it would be extremely difficult for members of the council to visit institutions in those parts where there are no trams. The hon. Member who moved the deletion of this Clause based his argument on two principles. In the first place he said the case of London was not peculiar, and, therefore it was wrong we should go to work to pass special legislation for it. In the second place he said the principle of this payment was wrong in itself. I am certain, as far as London is concerned, that this Clause, supposing it is passed, will, so far from increasing the expenditure that falls on the London rates, diminish it. In my experience of several committees of the council I have found that the more the members of committees have been able to visit particular institutions the more it has conduced to economy. I go further and say that it does not

  699
  matter how much this experiment, if it is an experiment., which I do not believe, involves. The important point is that you are making it in every way convenient to members of committees to view particular sites, and if you tell them that they have to find the money out of their own pockets quite apart from the actual amount they will think that proper conveniences have not been put in their way, and they will not be inclined to view the sites as they did before. As to the question of principle, whether these expenses should be paid or not, I venture to say that it is very much a case of "much ado about nothing." There is no such principle at stake at all, as was acknowledged by the hon. Member for Barkston Ash (Mr. Lane Fox). These expenses have been allowed, and they are still allowed even in his own county. In view of that fact, I venture to think that there is no reason whatever for going back upon a system which has worked well for twenty years. The only reason that the county council have inserted this Clause in this Bill is that objection has for the first time been made during the last few years, and therefore they took the natural action and brought the matter before this House and sought to obtain statutory authority. In view of the two facts that members of local authorities should have everything done to induce them to visit the particular sites and institutions, and that there is no principle at stake at all, I hope the House will agree to the recommendation that has been made by the President of the Local Government Board.
  Mr. BOOTH: This is one of those instances where a Clause is introduced which seeks to relieve a local authority, and I shall leave it to the members of the London County Council to decide after they have listened to hon. Members on both sides of the House. I do not like the way the Clause is drawn, and I should not like to see it become general, but I think they know their own business best, and therefore I appeal to my hon. Friend and colleague to admit that this is peculiarly a case in which we ought to leave it to those gentlemen who are elected by the ratepayers to settle. They have to answer to the ratepayers of London, and if they make a mistake the result will be upon their own heads.
  Mr. LANE-FOX: May I ask leave to withdraw the Amendment. The object of
  700
  bringing this discussion on was to bring the matter before this House. We have had a very interesting discussion upon it, and I do not wish to oppose the principle of the proposal, but I wish it should be extended to other places besides London.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  Bill to be read the third time.

  NATIONAL INSURANCE.
  Postponed proceeding on Question, "That leave be given to bring in a Bill 'to provide for insurance against loss of health and for the prevention and cure of sickness, and for insurance against unemployment, and for purposes incidental thereto.'"—[Mr. Lloyd George.]
  Debate resumed.
  Lord A. THYNNE: I cannot help feeling that there is a certain irony in the fact that after all the months and years of labour that I have devoted to the London County Council that I should be interrupted in the first speech that I have made in a Debate of this character by a Bill of the London County Council with the provisions of which I do not happen to be in agreement. I was saying when the Debate was interrupted for private business, that I believed that this is a great measure, and we on this side of the House heartily welcome the Bill which has been sketched this afternoon by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in rough outline. We welcome it for two reasons. In the first place we recognise that the uncertainty with regard to the future is one of the great evils of our present industrial system, and we believe that any measure which may tend to decrease and mitigate that uncertainty will open a new chapter—a new volume—in the history of the country. In the second place, we welcome this measure because we believe that it will simplify very considerably indeed the reform of our present Poor Law system. Because if you relieve the Poor Law of a very large number of unemployed who are technically known as deserving unemployed, you facilitate and increase your power of dealing under the Poor Law with those who are grouped under the term of unemployable. The same argument applies in the domain of sickness with equal force. I might say that some form of State insurance in both these respects is a condition precedent to the proper reform of our Poor Law System. The hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Booth), while recognizing

  701
  that uncertainty which besets a large portion of the wage-earning population of the country both with regard to sickness and with regard to unemployment, suggested that that danger was being adequately met, or very largely met, by voluntary agencies at the present moment.
  Mr. BOOTH: I did not touch that point.
  Lord A. THYNNE: Then I misunderstood the hon. Member. But I would submit to the House that although friendly societies and trade unions are doing a very valuable work in this respect, and I should be the last person to disparage their work, we have to recognise that they labour under two great disadvantages. First of all, the necessity of conducting their operations on a successful actuarial basis compels them to impose a test as to character and as to health—in all cases as to health and in a great many cases as to character—and the result is that the friendly societies take within their net what I may call the good risks and they leave outside probably the had risks, which are probably the risks with regard to individuals who are in the most need of being dealt with under insurance. In the second place, we have to recognise that no voluntary agency has or could have the power of compulsion, which is an essential feature of this system. It is a feature which I personally welcome because it brings in within the scope of insurance the class who have been the most reluctant to take advantage of voluntary agencies and are the class which is most in need of being insured. I was glad to see that the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not propose to place any test as regards the solvency of the friendly societies in the Bill, because I believe such a test would not only be invidious but also very difficult to impose. He laid down three conditions that there should be no distribution of the funds, that their operations should be mutual, and, in the third place, that they should have branches. Everyone will admit that even the big dividing societies could not, owing to the nature of their constitution, be included in the scheme. But there are certain societies which, I hope, will receive some consideration at a subsequent stage, societies like the National Provident and the National Mutual Provident, which do not divide their funds in the ordinary sense of the word, but which at regular intervals distribute a bonus. I understand that the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed to deal with those who were not at present
  702
  members of friendly societies or trade unions, and he hoped they would ultimately be dealt with by the large inducements which would be held out to them to, join those bodies. Of course, everyone hopes that one of the results of this system will be to increase largely the sphere of operations of the great friendly societies. But we must also recognise that if they are to maintain that state of solvency, that satisfactory actuarial state which has been, both their pride and the cause of their efficiency up to the present time, they must continue to impose tests as to character. The result of that will be that you will be leaving your friendly societies and trade unions to deal with the better risks. You will be leaving outside the worst risks which will fall on to the other class, the class which he termed the Post Office contributor. Instead of averaging your good risks with your bad you are segregating your bad risks very much to the advantage of your good risks and very much to the advantage of those who are being dealt with inside the friendly societies. But as the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself was compelled to confess, certainly somewhat to the detriment of the general class of Post Office contributors who would be receiving a lower benefit. But I think they are a class who are certainly entitled to equal, if not to a higher benefit.
  I recognise the ingenuity with which the right hon. Gentleman proposes to deal with the various classes of labour, such as the weekly wage earner, the daily wage earner and the independent worker who depends more on profits than on wages. But he omitted one very important class, which is the pieceworker, who is at the same time a home worker. That is a very difficult class to deal with, probably the most difficult of all, more difficult than what is commonly termed the casual labourer, and I should be very much interested to see at a subsequent stage how he proposes to deal with that class. Hon. Members who have studied the proceedings of the recent Royal Commission on the Poor Law will realise that one essential fact in any scheme of insurance, just as in any scheme of Poor Law relief is that the benefit that you give must be adequate to the circumstances of the recipient. It is almost better to give no, benefit and no relief than to give an inadequate benefit.
  I notice that the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposes a benefit of 10s. in the first three months and 5s. for the second

  703
  three months. I suggest that the decreased benefit of 5s. for the second three months, considered as a flat rate benefit dealing with all classes of labour under the Income Tax limit, is neither an adequate nor a satisfactory benefit to give, and I hope at a subsequent stage it will be found possible to rearrange this system of benefit. I cannot help feeling that the Chancellor has overlooked two disadvantages with regard to a flat rate. In the first place, if you have a flat rate in regard to contribution you are not exacting an equality of sacrifice from all contributors. In the second place, if you have a flat rate as regards benefit you are not giving equal benefit for equal standards of comfort in this country. One of the principal objects he ought to bear in mind is that you are not attempting to save this or that class from the operations of the Poor Law, but you are endeavouring by means of State insurance to prevent that standard of comfort in individual wage-earning households from deteriorating and being seriously diminished owing to the accident either of industry or of health.
  I observe that a qualifying period of six months is imposed, during which a workman is compelled to contribute, but during which he will receive no benefit at all in sickness. If you have compulsion with regard to contribution you cannot, even in the interests of your actuarial basis, have a qualifying period of six months. If this system of sick insurance is to be a success it is essential that it should enjoy the approval and goodwill of the medical profession, and if it is to enjoy that goodwill it is essential that you should from the outset, in the interests of the medical service which you are asking it to render, consider the interests of the medical profession. The one thing they do not wish to see established in this country—and I agree with them in this—is a class of official doctors, and I think from all quarters of the House there would be general agreement that it is highly inexpedient from every point of view that you should divide your medical profession into official and unofficial doctors. If you agree to that proposition you have to rule out at once any proposal for an official doctor either for the societies or for the committees which you are setting up under this Bill, and you must adopt one of two alternatives. You must either give a free choice to the patient to choose any doctor he likes in the district, or you must give
  704
  him a choice of what I may term a panel of doctors. Then there is the question of the remuneration of the medical profession, on which the right hon. Gentleman did not touch. Is it proposed that they should be paid by salary or by fixed rates per visit, or, as in the case of most friendly societies at present, at a fixed rate per head of membership, irrespective of the amount of sickness which they are called upon to treat?
  Mr. BOOTH: I think the information was given that it would be 4s. per head.
  Lord A. THYNNE: I understood that with regard to the rate of pay the right hon. Gentleman informed the House that it was to be materially increased, but I do not think he mentioned any definite figure. I understand that the right hon. Gentleman pointed out that it was now 4s. on the average, and that under this Bill it would be more than that—that it would be materially increased. There is a third point in connection with the medical profession which is of great importance. Those of us who have studied the subject with great care realise the difficulties which arose in Leipzic are such as might conceivably be repeated in certain portions of the United Kingdom. We recognise the great value of the medical committee which was set up in Leipzic, and we should be glad to see some similar committee set up in England. In this connection I venture to make a passing criticism of the public health committee which the right hon. Gentleman proposes to set up in each county. I notice that there are to be nominations from approved societies in the district, nominations from the local authority, and nominations from the Post Office. But surely it would be reasonable that as this question affects the medical profession so closely the local medical profession should also be represented on those committees.
  I have only one more point to bring before the House, and that is in connection with the machinery to be set up in connection with the scheme. I have already referred to the public health committee with respect to which I understand the county has been taken as the unit. I hope that special consideration will be given to the larger municipalities, such as London, Liverpool, Manchester, and Glasgow. I hope the Chancellor of the Exchequer will take into consideration the desirability of having special public health committees to deal with the subject in the large municipalities. There is one important

  705
  point in connection with the public committees to which I wish to direct attention. The work will be continuous and arduous. Are we to understand that that work is to be given gratuitously, or is it proposed that there should be payment made to the members of the public health committee out of the general fund? The same question might also be asked about the benefit societies. I wish to know whether or not in addition to the share they receive of the fund, they are going to receive any subsidy to cover the heavy cost of administration. I venture to offer these criticisms not in any spirit of antagonism at all, but more in the hope that I may elicit some statement on the points I have raised from the President of the Board of Trade. I hope he will bear in mind the promise made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his opening statement that he will welcome suggestions from all quarters of the House.
  10.0 P.M.
  Mr. PENRY WILLIAMS: In rising to address the House for the first time, I would ask its indulgence, and I will undertake to be very brief. Speaking as an employer of labour in the North, I believe this scheme of industrial insurance will be received with a great welcome in the constituency which I have the honour to represent. But I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill one question. Is it intended that those benefits which accrue to the assured worker under this Bill shall be immune from seizure for debt? If that is so, then I venture to think that you must extend that a little farther, and that you must look to America for your examples. In most of the States of the United States you have what is called the Homestead Law. I shall take the State of Maryland, which will form a fitting example to mention here to-night. There the money benefit derived from insurance, or for relief in the event of sickness, injury, or death, is exempt from seizure, and also a hundred dollars' worth of personal goods which form the home of the insolvent debtor. That law was passed because it was found that it was not to the advantage of the State that an insolvent debtor should become a burden on the community. If you take the case of England, you will find that the unemployed workman is registered at the Labour Exchange, and by registering that man you admit that he is genuinely an unemployed workman. By allowing his name to continue on the
  706
  books of the Labour Exchange you admit that the State, with all its resources, cannot find him employment, and yet you fail to protect that man's home in his dire necessity. I would venture to appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to insert some provision of that nature in this Bill. It is, I believe, a detraction from the merits of the Labour Exchanges and the Old Age Pensions that such a Clause is not in. I venture to say, in conclusion, that if you guarantee to the workman a place where he could rest free from all his worries and free from all molestation, the very possession even of the remnant of a home, would give him fresh courage to renew the struggle, and perhaps to emerge victorious from it.
  Mr. CLAUDE LOWTHER: I wish to protest as strongly as I possibly can against the procedure of the Government in allowing the County Council Bill to be introduced on this occasion when a measure of the greatest importance comes up for discussion. Surely, when day after day is given to unimportant Amendments on the Parliament Bill, it is extremely incongruous that this day should be chosen for the discussion of a Bill of so little importance that it has to be withdrawn after two hours' debate. There are many friends of the Bill on this side of the House who have much to say, who have studied the question, and who probably would have added very valuable contributions to the Debate. Let me say at once that I am a -friend of this Bill. I do not approach the discussion of it in any party or petty spirit. I look upon it as a great national problem in which the future welfare of probably millions—I am talking the future—is, involved. I wish to express, if I may modestly, my congratulations to the Chancellor of the Exchequer on having introduced a Bill which is clever, human, sound, and statesmanlike, and which I believe will go far to alleviate much of the misery which all of us deplore to-day. Of course there is always a weak part in any Bill. I do not at this late hour wish to discuss details, but if there is one part weaker than another it is the part which I hold to be the most important and to which I have given most study. That is the part which deals with insurance against unemployment.
  Surely the Government have lost sight of their objective. I take it that the objective of any scheme of insurance against

  707
  unemployment must be to prevent destitution among hundreds of thousands of able-bodied working men who find themselves unemployed through no fault of their own. And when I talk of that class I am talking of the unorganised bodies in this country. The Government scheme of insurance against unemployment only touches a tiny fraction of this class. That is admitted by the Chancellor himself, and I hope he will consider whether, even at this late hour it may not be possible to make this scheme not only compulsory, but universal. The hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Booth), who has a marvellous capacity, even at a time of peace, of being somewhat pugnacious, taunted us with being what he called Socialist Unionists. I would have expected that criticism to come from a crank individualist, but I would not have expected it to come from the hon. Member opposite. May I set his mind at rest immediately and tell him that State insurance against unemployment is the very antithesis of Socialism, that State insurance against unemployment and Socialism are the North and South Poles. State insurance is as different from Socialism as the medicine of a skilled practitioner is different from the poison of a skilled assassin. It breathes freedom and not slavery. It would free the individual from the trammels and the meshes of poverty. It would inspire him with hope rather than fill him with despair, and help him instead of being a useless member of society to become a wealth producer.
  Socialism, on the contrary, makes no distinction whatever. It would make the thrifty and the thriftless, the idle and the diligent, the rich and the poor, alike the slaves of the State. I received numerous letters in my capacity as chairman of the Anti-Socialist Union from people of a school of thought which has to be reckoned with. I call them individualists—crankindividualists—asking me to use my influence to get the organisation of which I have the honour to be chairman to oppose tooth and nail the measure which is introduced on this occasion. But although I oppose Socialism almost daily in all its forms and phases, I do recognise that the crank-individualist is as dangerous a member of society as is the crank Socialist. After all, he would have allowed our factories to remain as fever dens and our workers to have been stunted by excessive toil. What would the crank Socialist have done? He would
  708
  have compulsorily brigaded the workers in State-owned factories.
  Mr. LANSBURY: Your compulsory insurance is another voluntary scheme.
  Mr. CLAUDE LOWTHER: And I suppose he would have made short shrift of the employers by hanging them up to the nearest lamp-post. Surely the margin between Socialism and Social Reform is broad enough. The touchstone to be applied to all questions of Social Reform is this: Will they promote self-help and develop individuality, or will they strange self-help, stunt thrift, and destroy independence? It is impossible to set arbitrary limits to the functions of the State. Nobody can deny that increased civilisation has entailed increased responsibilities. I say that it is not only within the province, but it is the duty of the State to deal with the problem of poverty, and not only to deal with the problem of poverty, but to discover the causes which engender it, and to prevent them if they can. I think the House will agree that the economic insecurity of a great proportion of the population constitutes at any rate a danger and a menace to society which must be compulsorily dealt with in the same way that an epidemic is dealt with. If it is not Socialism for the State to compel the individual to protect himself against the terrible scourge of smallpox by means of vaccination, surely it cannot be called Socialism for the State to compel the individual to defend himself from another dread disease—the dread disease of poverty—by means of insurance.
  I am aware that the heavy expenditure which a national scheme will necessarily involve will be objected to by all those who fear to embark upon a new and big venture without any precedent, and still more by those who fear to even consider a scheme, the cost of which cannot be reckoned upon an actuarial basis. But although I admit that the question does bristle with difficulties, the arguments, both ethical and economic, are overwhelming in its favour. Even to-day, hon. Members will agree, with Poor Laws which are chaotic, and which breed paupers instead of checking pauperism, the State recognises its moral obligations to the destitute. No man in this country is allowed to starve. The State acknowledges itself morally bound to give not only food but lodging and shelter to those who cannot find them for themselves. So far and no farther does the State go. But instead of attempting to rehabilitate the

  709
  individual, instead of helping him to re-find his lost manhood and lost dignity, the State brands him with a stigma of disgrace which often causes the honest working man, out of work through no fault of his own, to sink deeper and deeper into the morass of pauperism and despair. Surely these are false economics. If the worker were helped to tide over his temporary difficulty, if he received unemployed benefits, not as a charitable dole but as a reward for good citizenship, if he were assured of medical supervision and freedom from despair, he would in time become again a useful member of the community and cease to be a burden upon the nation.
  Again I say I hope the Chancellor will see his way to introduce a universal scheme. Although the cost actuarily may be great, yet the approximate cost can be arrived at. Mr. Rosenbaum, who is one of the most competent statisticians in England to-day, and a member of the Royal Statistical Society, has given an estimate of the cost of a compulsory scheme. [An. HON. MEMBER "Tariff Reform League."] Do hon. Members below the Gangway opposite think less of his statistical ability because of the fact that he has been engaged in doing excellent work for the Tariff Reform League. Mr. Rosenbaum estimates that the cost of compulsory insurance against unemployment, equally divided between the employer, the employé, and the State, would mean to the latter a contribution of approximately £5,000,000 a year. Hon. Members may say that is a very large sum to put upon the people already overburdened by taxation. But if this scheme went side by side with reform of the Poor Laws, as surely it ought, a distinct saving would be effected, and you would have a scientific and humane scheme superseding an inhumane, unproductive and deteriorating system. There are certain uninsurable risks which demand that certain conditions should be applied. One is the segregation of the wastrels from the genuine unemployed, and that also entails some sort of punitive system such as they have in Germany. A far more important point, but one which I shall not labour, is the decasualisation of labour. Although I do not wish to speak in any party spirit, still there do seem to loom two almost insurmountable obstacles in the way of a solution of this question of unemployment. One is our ineffective Aliens Act. The other is
  710
  the stubborn refusal of the Government to consider for a moment the protection of British markets and British enterprise. Is it not a little grotesque to insure our people against unemployment when we allows aliens from all over the world to come in shoals into this country Does it not seem a little ridiculous that you should insure against unemployment and yet allow the surplus products of foreign labour to come into this country without restriction? Surely the time and labour the Chancellor of the Exchequer has given to this important question points to the obvious necessity of removing those obstacles. I, for one, am glad that this great question of Social Reform, perhaps the most important that has been introduced into this House during the last century, has been the means of making the two great parties of the State drop their differences for the moment and deal with this question in a generous, national, and universal way.
  Mr. BUXTON: The hon. Gentleman who has just sat down has endeavoured to show us what is true Socialism and what is false Socialism. As far as I am concerned I do not care how an hon. Member may label himself so long as he is prepared to support this Bill. I am glad to recognise —as I do very fully and very frankly on behalf of the Government—the extremely generous way in which in all quarters of the House the main principles of this Bill have been received. If the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcestershire (Mr. Austen Chamberlain) were here I should like to have thanked him on behalf of the Government for the way in which, immediately following the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he received the Bill the Chancellor of the Exchequer presented to the House. May I say that as far as I have listened to the speeches that have been made I do not think any hon. Member, with the possible exception of my hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract (Mr. Booth), and I do not think even he, objected to the principle on which this Bill is laid. We have had some criticisms of details, which, in a Bill of this kind is very natural. I can say, on behalf of the Government, that we desire to place before the House the fullest possible information with regard to the matter. My hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract seemed to think we had based the finances of this Bill on certain actuarial calculations, which we were endeavouring to withhold. I can assure him

  711
  that there is nothing of the sort; but it could not have been expected that we should have put in the actuarial calculations before we had introduced the Bill. We desire to give the fullest possible information both in regard to the purpose and objects of the Bill, and its finances, in order that the House may be in a position both on the Second Reading and in Committee to discuss it with the fullest information and with the greatest possible detail. I am quite sure my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and myself, and the Government will not for a moment contend that this Bill is of the nature of a sort of verbal inspiration. On the contrary, speaking on his behalf and that of tile Government, we shall welcome criticisms in regard to details, especially as the principle has been generally accepted.
  In regard to various criticisms, I think hon. Members will find when they have studied the Bill that they have been very largely anticipated. My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Penry Williams) wanted to know whether the contributions paid by the workman or the employer would be immune from seizure. I think he will feel quite satisfied when he sees the Bill that his point is fully met. I think the same answer applies to a good many of the criticisms in regard to the methods in which the payments will be made, and I think hon. Members when they see the details will be quite satisfied as to that matter. My hon. Friend the Member for Leicester desired to know as to another point, which I think he will find to be met by a Clause dealing with the case of a workman who has recurrent unemployment and securing that there shall be opportunities for improvement. There are many other details I do not think I need touch on, and I think a good number will be found to be anticipated by the Bill. I can assure the House that the greatest possible trouble has been taken in regard to all the various points in connection with the Bill. Some points have been discussed and rejected, and such points as have been rejected are, I can assure the House, open to reconsideration if good cause can be shown. I am sure the whole House recognises that in a Bill of this sort, of this far-reaching importance, and of this character, it is quite essential we should have behind us the general feeling and general support of all Members of the
  712
  House if we are to bring it to an effective conclusion. Most of the questions asked this evening have been in reference to that part dealing with unemployment, partly, no doubt, because my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer had not the same opportunity of expounding it in detail at the end of his exhaustive speech. Therefore, as the Board of Trade is especially interested in that portion of the Bill, I should like to give a little further information in regard to some of the points that have been mentioned. The Bill is founded on the principle of insurance. What we desire is to distribute the remuneration of labour more regularly over the time of unemployment as well as of employment, so as to mitigate the hardship to individuals which the present system entails. We believe that the system that we are introducing, with the safeguards provided in the Bill, will not only mitigate the hardship during the period of unemployment, but will do a good deal to regularise employment, and, therefore, to diminish unemployment itself. Hence this, as well as other portions of the Bill, will not only be an assistance at the time, but also a preventive of the evil which we desire to mitigate.
  The unemployment portion of the Bill is based on a two-fold position. Not only does it apply to the particular scheduled trades, in which there will be compulsory contributions and minimum benefits, but we are extremely anxious in a Bill of this sort to encourage as far as possible voluntary effort in other directions, in other trades, and in the insured trades themselves. Therefore, apart from the minimum benefits which will be met by contributions from the workmen, the employers and the State, the House will find in the Bill provisions under which, both in the insured trades themselves and in other trades, the associations—trade unions and others—which already provide unemployed benefits, or will do so in the future, will receive a direct State subsidy in aid of their voluntary efforts. They will receive a State grant of one-sixth of the benefits they pay. In the insured trades the direct State subsidy will be made, in addition to the contribution, which I shall explain in a moment. Outside the insured trades any association which gives unemployed benefits will receive an equivalent State subsidy to encourage it in that excellent work. Therefore, the object of the Bill is not only to introduce compulsory insurance against unem-

  713
  ployment in the insured trades, but as far as possible to encourage the voluntary efforts of associations. The right hon. Member for East Worcestershire asked how the question of State contribution stood. Perhaps I may explain the proposals of the Government in regard to the amount of the State contribution and the reasons why it was given. What is proposed in regard to the insurance scheme is that there shall be a contribution from workmen and from employers of 2½d. each. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer referred in his speech to one feature of the contributions of the employers. That is that we have thought it would be a very distinct encouragement towards regularity of employment if we gave the employers something in the nature of a pecuniary advantage in respect of their regular men. We therefore propose that the employer shall be able to compound—if he desires to insure his men over the year—at a lesser rate than if he paid week by week. We hope this commutation proposal will be largely taken advantage of by employers, and will assist towards the attainment of regularity of employment. The employer's contribution then is 2½.—so far as this particular Act is concerned—the workman's contribution is 2½d., and the contribution of the State added to these will be one-third. If these contributions are added together, the State, the employers, and the workmen—the contribution of the State will be quarter of the whole. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcestershire seemed to be afraid that under certain conditions the contributions of the State might be of an unlimited extent. The State contribution is fixed proportionately to that of the other two parties to the transaction.
  It may be interesting to the House to give the total of these contributions. The workmen will contribute £1,100,000, the employers £900,000, and the State one-third of the combined contributions of employers and workmen. From this Fund 10 per cent. will be deducted for the expenses of administration. The point has been raised as to whether this system of insurance ought, in the first instance, to be confined to certain specified trades. The Chancellor of the Exchequer pointed out that the trades we were proposing to take in the first instance were in the one group, the engineering, shipbuilding, and vehicle-making trades, and in the second the building
  714
  and construction trades. The answer is really very simple. The reason we in the first instance have confined ourselves to certain specified groups of trades rather than endeavour to extend the operations of this new proposal over the whole sphere of labour is that unemployment insurance is a novelty and in the nature of an experiment. We have no experience of it elsewhere, although there has been considerable experience of sickness insurance in Germany. But we have no experience of compulsory unemployment insurance in any part of the world. This is the first instance of an actual compulsory system of unemployment insurance. And it was thought that a matter of this great importance was better worked rather slowly. The trades taken were those in which the fluctuations were marked, in which the wages were time wages, trades which were somewhat self-contained and which could be grouped together, and in which the unions had provided some measure of unemployed benefits, and therefore could show some experience in the matter. Although we have confined our operations for the time being to the particular trades that I have mentioned, the scheme as it stands is bold and comprehensive. It includes from the very beginning no less than 2,400,000 industrial workers out of a population of something like 10,000,000 or 12,000,000, which is a fair proportion. Hon. Members will find when they see the Bill that we take provision under a Clause whereby if it is found this experiment is a success the parturition system will be applicable to other trades. Subject to certain financial conditions it can be extended to them from time to t line, and we may bring other sections of trade under the insurance system. We desire, however, to get experience before extending it too widely. A good deal also was said in reference to the question of the benefits to be received. My right hon. Friend pointed out that we divided the insured trades into two groups—the building trade and the engineering and the benefit is to be 6s. a week minimum for a period of fifteen weeks in the building trade, and in regard to the shipbuilding and engineering trades the benefit will be 7s.Of course, there is a cerain amount of difference and elasticity due to the fact that so far as our data goes in the building and constructional trades, the percentage of unemployment is rather greater than in the engineering trade. Therefore, although we

  715
  have the same contributions we vary the benefits. Hon. Members will see we have allowed a certain amount of elasticity in this matter, and that the Board of Trade will have power within limits to revise from time to time the benefits to be paid.
  Mr. BOOTH: What will the waiting time be?
  Mr. BUXTON: On that point I want to point out that the great danger to be guarded against in this scheme is malingering. We believe both in regard to sickness and in regard to unemployment we have regulations that will meet that difficulty, and I can assure hon. Members if in the course of the Committee they can suggest further means for the prevention of malingering we shall consider them. The reason that a week is inserted in the State scheme instead of two or three days, is because of the greater difficulty in the first few days in preventing malingering which the State would have than trades unions or trade societies, and therefore it is in the interests of the trades themselves that the first week should be a waiting week. We shall have a certain amount of discretion in regard to benefits as experience shows us what is the true financial position. We are starting with two or three trades in the first instance as an experiment. We are doing this because the data before us in regard to the financial position is not sufficient. We must find out first whether the contribution will be sufficient to meet the benefits, and only experience will show us that. But we start with a good surplus. One point put by the hon. Member for Leicester was in regard to trade unions, and he asked how far are you going to interfere with what he called the machinery of trade unions. I can assure him that both in regard to sickness and unemployment there is certainly no intention of any interference with the general machinery of trade unions. On the contrary we hope to utilise their machinery for the purposes of this Bill. If a particular trade union desires to receive the unemployed benefits to be paid over to them for distribution among their members as part of the existing system of distribution they will be handed over in this sense. Where they have spent a certain amount on benefits, subject, of course, to proper safeguards, they would be reimbursed that amount from the insurance fund. The money they so spend will be repaid them subject to certain guarantees.
  Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD: Does that mean the difference over and above their own payment?
  Mr. BUXTON: The idea is that there will be a certain minimum benefit. In order to encourage further provision they will receive also one-sixth of the benefits they have to pay over and above that amount.
  Mr. WORTHINGTON-EVANS: Are they to pay by stamps?
  Mr. BUXTON: As far as the contribution is concerned the only possible method is by means of stamps affixed by the employer. When he fixes these stamps for his own contribution and that of the workman, it will not matter, and he will not, know, whether that particular workman is a trade unionist or not. I was only speaking of benefits. As far as their own members are concerned we thought it was an advantage that they should be able to utilise their own organisation for the distribution of benefits amongst their members.
  Mr. WORTHINGTON-EVANS: Will the trade unionists pay the trade union subscriptions as well as the stamps to the Government fund?
  Mr. BUXTON: There are certain payments and certain minimum benefits. Whether the trade unionist continues to pay his contribution to the trade union or reduces it by 2½d., as far as the trade union is concerned, it is as broad as it is long. They either get the benefit on the one hand or they do not pay so much on the other. I think those are the main points in connection with the matter. I am sure the House recognises this is a great step forward in social reform. We are now dealing with a gigantic problem. I think it was the hon. Member for Leicester who said we shall have almost to reconsider the position in regard to social matters. My right hon. Friend in this Bill is proposing to deal with no less than 15,000,000 of persons and £24,000,000 of money annually. That is a great reform in itself, and it will give the greatest possible satisfaction to every Member of the House that it is going to be considered entirely on a non-party basis. We put this proposal before the House as a sound business proposition, but it has the additional inestimable advantage that it will also, if carried through, greatly tend to mitigate the enormous hardship and suffering of so many thousands of workmen and women.
  Dr. J. ESMONDE: I regret the time is so short, and that I shall be unable to say all I wanted. I think the Debate ought not to close without some medical man who has had some experience of the working of friendly societies saying a word or two. The right hon. Gentleman who introduced this Bill, I think, realises the fact that, if it is going to be a success and a real measure of benefit to the mass of the people of this country, it can only be so if he has the whole-hearted sympathy of the medical profession. Up to this the medical profession have been in a very different position than that they will occupy in the future. Doctors who live in rural districts have accepted positions as medical officers to the benefit societies, such as the Oddfellows and Foresters, simply and solely because they recognised they were philanthropic societies, and it was the duty of a profession with high ideals and noble aspirations to help them in their object. Everyone must realise—if they do not they ought—that when this Act passes the duties which are at present being exercised by these societies are being taken over by the State. We have no strict trade union principles in connection with our profession, but I think the House will realise, if you are going to have the best medical attendance and the best medicine for the people whom this Bill is going to bring under its wing, the profession must be studied and paid a fair trade union rate of wages. The right hon. Gentleman who introduced the Bill said the amount of fees varied from 2s. 6d. up to as much as 6s. I was not aware it went so low as 2s. 6d., but I quite admit the average is 4s. That 4s., however, never paid any medical man for doing his duty to the society which he attended. I notice he intends to divide the question of medical advice and medicine. I hope that will not be carried out. There is a great deal to be said in favour of allowing the doctors to prescribe and the chemist to make up the medicine. That is all right in London and in large towns, but in numbers of villages and small towns throughout the country there is no chemist. What is the distance to be recognised as the correct one for a person who gets a prescription from the doctor to have to go to get it made up by a chemist? In nine cases out of ten a patient who is seen by a doctor is at work; he gets his advice and medicine in the evening, and goes to work again the next day. But if he is to be given a prescription and to have to travel two miles to get it made up, I doubt very
  718
  much if he will think it fair to have to do that. Then there is the question whether the doctor who is called in to a case is to be paid for the hypodermic medicine he uses, although there may be a chemist in the village or town. The serum treatment is the treatment of the future. It is an expensive treatment, and diphtheric serum is especially so. Who is to be paid for that? If the doctor is called in such a case, is he to wait until the serum can be fetched from the nearest chemist I After an experience of twenty-five years with two or three friendly societies I have the greatest doubt if this is going to lead to better management. I am certain it is not going to be more economical, and inasmuch as the chemist may be a friend of the patient, it may lead to considerably additional expense. I think this is a matter which should be carefully thought out before you divide up this question of prescribing by one person and having the prescription made up by another.
  Then the question of Ireland comes in. This Act, like all other Acts, though suitable for England, is totally unsuitable for Ireland. In the majority of villages and small towns in Ireland there are no chemist shops, and if this Act is going to he a success it must be worked in conjunction with the medical profession and they cannot be expected to work under it unless they get reasonable remuneration. A suggestion was made by the right hon. Gentleman—it was not a definite statement—to the effect that he was going to take into consideration the present societies and consult with them as to what the medical men should be paid. I am absolutely certain the Act will be a failure if the medical men are put in such a position as that they will be bound in self-defence to refuse to have anything to do with it unless they are paid a fair and reasonable sum for their duties.
  Mr. H. W. FORSTER: I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that no one on this side of the House wishes to prevent the effective introduction of the Bill to-night, but during the few minutes that remain I should like to make one or two observations. In the first place we congratulate—we all congratulate—the right hon. Gentleman on his performance this afternoon, and we congratulate the Government on their Bill, but I should like to say that we on this side of the House wish to enter a protest as to the circumstances under which the Debate was entered into. It is little short of monstrous that on an

  719
  occasion of this kind, when the Government is embarking upon what everybody must admit is the greatest experiment in legislation which has ever been introduced in any assembly in the world, their proceedings should have been interrupted by one of these private Bills which take up so much time. I do not blame the Government, but I wish to call attention to the matter, because there are a large number of my hon. Friends who have made a special study of this question and taken special pains to collect information bearing upon it, who would otherwise have wished to have laid their views before the House, but have been deprived of the opportunity of doing so by this incident. The experiment—I think the Government will admit that it is an experiment—is, as I said a moment ago, the greatest that any Legislature has undertaken. In some respects it is a leap in the dark; in others we are able to profit by the experience of other countries. But no country in the world has ever attempted to deal with the two cognate though separate branches of industrial insurance in one measure in the way in which the Government proposes to do. The cost is great, but most of the cost falls upon the employer and the employed. The cost that falls upon the State compared with the sums that you exact from those two partners in the tripartite co-partnership is insignificant. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer may base his claim, perhaps, upon this, that the State controls the organisation, and without the organisation of the State the system which he proposes to create would be impossible. This is not a scheme of charity. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Buxton) advanced it as a business proposition. If you advance it as a business proposition, and such a proposition it undoubtedly is, it lies with you to justify the claims you make upon each constituent party in the tripartite partnership, the workman, the employer, and the State. As you are able to justify the contribution that you invoke, so shall you receive the support of all classes of the community. Speaking, if I may, on behalf of my hon. Friends on this side of the House, I will say that, believing as we do that you are animated by the sole desire to confer a lasting benefit upon all classes of the community, so we will aid you in the perfection of the details of your scheme with all the zeal and all the ability and all the goodwill that we can give to it.
  Question put, and agreed to, "That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for insurance against loss of health, and for the prevention and cure of sickness, and for insurance against unemployment, and for purposes incidental there to."
  Bill ordered to be brought in by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Buxton, Mr. Churchill, Mr. Burns, Mr. Herbert Samuel, the Attorney-General, the Solicitor-General, Mr. Masterman and Mr. Hob-house. Presented accordingly, and read the first time; to be read a second time upon Monday next, 8th May, and to be printed.—[Bill 198.]
  Adjourned at Seven minutes after Eleven o'clock.