LONDON POOR. (Hansard, 17 May 1911)

§ Lord ALEXANDER THYNNE

I beg to ask leave to bring in a Bill "to provide for the amendment and better administration of the Law relating to the poor of London."

It is not necessary for me to emphasise the pressing need, especially in London, of comprehensive treatment of the Poor Law question, which for more than fifty years has been the subject of piecemeal legislation and spasmodic reforms, with economic results which have met with the unanimous condemnation both of those who signed the Minority and of those who signed the Majority Report of the Royal Commission. In no part of the country is the problem more urgent than in London, where in one year we spend as much as £3,750,000 in the administration of the present Poor Law system. In no other part of the country is the problem so unique in extent, so unique in intensity and, therefore, so unique in the difficulty with which its solution is accompanied.

The first and most important consideration in all questions of Poor Law reform relates to the machine created to carry out the principles of administration. The most admirably and carefully devised principles would prove in the long run ineffective in operation unless their enforcement was vested in a thoroughly efficient administrative machine. To a certain extent the converse also would be true that a thoroughly efficient administrative machine would in the process of its work, out of its cumulative experience, be able to adjust, rectify, and elaborate principles by which it could attain its end. For this reason the Bill starts by substituting for the thirty-one boards of guardians which at present operate within the Metropolitan area one central authority, in whose hands it concentrates all the varying functions at present distributed among five or six different kinds of authority. Boards of guardians, especially in London, have for some years been the target of very adverse criticism, some of it wholly unjustified. A great part of their faults and delinquencies are due, in the first place, to the circumscribed area which they are called upon to administer—areas far too small in extent to permit of that differentiation of treatment and of classification which was first foreshadowed in 1834, and which of recent years has been growing in importance as people have come to recognise more and more that the first duty of the Poor Law is to cure and rehabilitate 2016 individuals. From this process of unification London will, I venture to suggest, derive three great benefits. In the first place it must lead to economy and efficiency of administration. In the second place it will improve the status and character of the officials who are engaged in this work. Lastly, it makes it possible to create one central rate for all Poor Law purposes in the Metropolitan area.

If the principles laid down in this Bill are accepted, we shall have one common expenditure in London, met out of one common fund, under the auspices and control of one common authority. It is obviously inadvisable to multiply the number of rating authorities in London. We therefore propose that this duty shall be laid upon the London County Council, acting through the agency of a Statutory Committee. Of this Committee the majority shall be composed of actual members of the London County Council itself, a proportion shall be co-opted by that council from outside its own ranks, and a further proportion shall be nominated by the Local Government Board. There are two obvious advantages in having a Statutory Committee of this sort. In the first place it enables the London County Council to co-opt, and the Local Government Board to appoint, experts who have made the question with which they will be called upon to deal, their lifelong study. In the second place it will relieve the London County Council of all the details of administration at a time when it is so encumbered with work that it can hardly perform those normal and very important functions which it is called upon to discharge. Under this Central Statutory Committee will be a number of local committees, administering areas more or less co-terminous with the present areas of the boards of guardians. Those local committees will be appointed to a large extent by the Central Authority, but more than one-third of their members will be appointed by the Metropolitan Borough Councils. It is hoped by this means to enlist the services of the best of the present members of boards of guardians, without whose co-operation no scheme of Poor Law reform can possibly be successful or attempted.

I cannot now describe the second part of this Bill, in which certain general principles are laid down on which this new authority shall work. It might, no doubt, be considered that such questions as the details of administration and the principles laid down in the second part of this 2017 Bill might properly form the subject of those periodical circulars which are issued by the President of the Local Government Board. But it was felt advisable to indicate in a legislative form the general principles on which it was desired that this new body should operate. I will only state one briefly: that the general idea, the broad principle, running throughout this Bill is that of rehabilitation of individuals. It is recognised that we ask something more from our reform system than that it should prove a deterrent and punitive agent, except in regard to certain specified classes. Each case will be dealt with on its symptoms very much on the same plan as a medical practitioner deals with his private patients—a precise classification of every case, and an exact differentiation between different classes of institutions. The only other two points I wish to call attention to in regard to this part of the Bill is, in the first place, the provision for the recovery of expenses in certain cases in which it is clear that the recipient can afford to pay; and, in the second place, to what is undoubteldy one of its most important provisions, the institution of case papers, and the treatment of the family in the union.

There are so many other considerations dealt with in this very comprehensive Bill that I will not do more now than say that it is a logical, consistent, interdependent whole, which has received very careful consideration, both in regard to general principle and in detail from some of the leading authorities on the question in this country. In the first place—p;and I should like to emphasise this point principally—it is sanctioned by fourteen out of the eighteen members of the late Royal Commission. It follows in many respects the lines of the scheme which the London County Council itself laid before the Poor Law Commission. It also meets, or endeavours to meet, many of the criticisms which were advanced by the Association of County Councils of this country. I am aware that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Rotherhithe (Mr. Carr-Gomm) has introduced a Bill dealing with a similar subject to the one which I am now discussing. I can only say that I realise the great importance that any measure dealing with this subject must have upon the vast population that live in the metropolitan area. I therefore feel that those of us who are responsible for the promotion of this measure should endeavour to come to a mutual understanding on all points of detail, and even 2018 on matters of subsidiary principle with those who may not be able to see eye to eye with us—