POOR LAW (LONDON) BILL.

HC Deb 26 May 1911 vol 26 cc593-670

Order for Second Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time.

Mr. CARR-GOMM

Once again, by the fortunes of the private Members' ballot, it is my privilege to call the attention of the House to that not unimportant portion of the British Empire known as the County of London. This is by no means a new subject, as the House well knows, and I may perhaps be allowed to deal with one or two previous Motions which have been made upon this point. In 1907 a Motion was moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich (Mr. Crooks), "to call attention to the inequality of the rates in different parts of London," and declaring that the matter "required the early consideration of Parliament." My hon. Friend the Secretary to the Admiralty, who was then Secretary to the Local Government Board, replied for the Government, and said:— He thought it must be obvious to anybody that equalisation to a greater extent than they had at present was urgently necessary. One thing they might do would be completely to equalise the Poor Rate, which would be a considerable advantage to the poorer parts. Then they would have to ask themselves whether they would rely on the Local Government Board to deal equitably between those who paid in and those who took out. The hon. Member for North St. Pancras did not think so, and the hon. Baronet, the Member for the City of London, thought a central authority, rather than a Government Board, was required to deal fairly between those who paid in and those who took out. He further stated:— The equalisation of rates was put into the King's Speech in 1900, so that the Government who, pledged to the principle, though it had become much more difficult of application on closer consideration than might have been at first imagined. In the following year my hon. Friend the Member for St. George's-in-the-East again raised this matter in the House, and, lastly, on. 5th May, 1909, I had the honour to move:— That in the opinion of the House, there is urgent need for the reform of local government in London, so as to secure by means of unification of authorities, an improved simplified and more economical system of public administration, and a complete equalisation of the burden of the rates."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, May 5th, 1909, col. 1133.] I wish to specially call the attention of the House to the remarks of the present Under-Secretary for the Home Department (Mr. Masterman), who then held the position of Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board. He spoke for the Government, and said:— The recommendation of the Local Taxation Commission, or at least of some of its most expert financial advisers, outlined schemes which would have given an enormous amount of relief to London. The Members who have brought this subject before the House, have rightly declared that if there is one subject upon which the whole of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law are united and spoke with more deliberate and emphatic voice than any other, it is the question of the reform of Poor Law Government in London. The Majority Commission in words which have been quoted in this House break into almost unnatural emphasis in their condemnation of the present system. Then he refers to the Minority Report, and says:— The Government have promised, in a series of speeches from the Prime Minister downwards, to deal next year with the question of Poor Law Administration. It has been commonly recognised, I think, among all critics, from whatever side they come of this great Poor Law Commission, that that part of the Poor Law administration which, on the one hand, most drastically calls for treatment, and on the other hand might most easily be isolated, is that part which deals with the Metropolis. Speaking for myself as a Greater London Member I am grateful to hon. Members for having brought this subject forward. I hope they will never cease to bring this forward until some relief is afforded. The Government entirely accept the Motion which has been moved to-night, and if I could offer a piece of private advice to my friends I would advise all those who are particularly interested in this matter, during the next few months, to concentrate their attention specially on purposes for the reform of the Poor Law in the Metropolis. My hon. Friends on this side of the House representing London constituencies may be somewhat sluggish and slow in these matters, but they do on occasions take advice from those who sit on the Front Bench, and acting on that advice we have brought forward this Motion today. I will not quote further from the reports, because hon. Members know that, the majority did condemn in a thoroughgoing manner the present system in London. The Majority Report on the London, Problems says:— The case for the abolition of boards of guardians has been more conclusively demonstrated in London than in any other part of the Kingdom. The variations of rateable value as compared with needs and population, make it very difficult to establish a common standard of treatment without an equalisation of expenditure. An examination into the policy, practice, scale of relief, and cost of institutions, show a wide divergence between the different unions and sometimes between unions immediately adjacent to one another. These differences exist whether the unions in contrast are rich or poor, in the south, the east or the west, neither locality, nor wealth, nor poverty, seems to, have been the main contributing cause of this variation of treatment and of policy. I will quote one short sentence from the Minority Report:— The whole cost of poor relief in London, however computed, whether per pauper, per head of the population, or per pound of rateable value, is proportionately far in excess of that incurred in any other part of the Kingdom. The serious condemnation of the cost of poor relief in London has a striking comment in some remarkable figures published recently with regard to expenditure upon the Poor Law in England and Wales. I have here some figures for six months issued in the middle of the year 1910. I am taking the estimated population of the country for that year. The aggregate expenditure upon the Poor Law for England and Wales was equivalent to a rate of 4s. 2d. per head, as compared with a rate of 7s. 9½d. in London, or nearly double the amount in England and Wales. The present county council have recently proved that they are alive to the evils of the existing system, and the Local Government Committee of that body has submitted a report to the council, demanding a scheme of complete equalisation with regard to the Poor Rate, and the setting up of a central Poor Law Authority for London. In this report they call attention to the lack of uniformity in valuation, to inequalities arising in connection with the collection of central rates, and to unequal rating involved by the retention of separate Poor Law Unions within a single borough area. The inequality of London rates, as I said before, has often been dealt with in this House, and the figures have been contrasted by speakers on many occasions—so much so that I do not feel called upon to waste the time of the House in re-telling this often told tale.

Some interesting figures have been drawn up by Mr. Thorpe quite recently. He puts two lots of figures together, and the result is somewhat striking. I will take the greatest contrast in the City of London. In 1910 the rateable value was £4,148 per pauper, as against £2,631 in 1902, an increase in eight years of £1,517. In Westminster in 1902 the rateable value was £1,110 per pauper, and this went up in 1910 to £1,352, or an increase of £242. In Hampstead for the same period the amount remained almost stationary, being a little over £1,000. At the other end of the scale in 1902 it was only £112 of the rateable value, and in 1910 it dropped to £82. In Bethnal Green it was stationary at £140 per pauper, and £145 per head of the rateable value. It may be said that these are contrasts between rich and poor districts in the East and West of London. I will take for example the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney. In individual parishes there the rates in 1910–11 ranged from 8s. to 9s. 5d. in the £, and in Westminster they ranged from 6s. 2d. to 7s. 6d. These are not contrasts between east and west, but between parishes within one and the same Metropolitan borough. These are, of course, total rates, but we maintain that by abolishing the local areas of Poor Law administration, and making London one great union, you will reduce the inequalities of the total rates, and instead of the great difference which now exists between Poplar's rate of 12s. ld. and Westminster's rate of 6s. 3d. you would get only a difference between 9s. 2d. at Poplar and 6s. 8d. at Westminster, and instead of there being a difference of nearly 6s. in the £ you would get a difference of only 2s. 6d. These alterations in the local rates are of course based on mere equalisation, and do not take into account the economies which would and ought to be most certainly effected in offices, officials, and the general machinery of the various unions. May I, for example, call the attention of the House to the time and trouble and the cost which is now incurred in carrying out the work of the Settlement Act. I have received information of the working of these Acts from five separate unions, and I find that in these five typical unions £1,285 is spent annually by those unions in the wages of settlement officers employed to carry out the Settlement Act. The cost of inquiries and removals each year amounts to £860, and the number of persons removed yearly is 2,137. All this fuss and trouble goes on in London to find out which union is responsible for the maintenance of the paupers, and if necessary to transfer them to the unions to which they belong.

Mr. BOOTH

The hon. Member has just referred to the figures relating to settlement cases. Does he mean cases between the London unions or between London and the provinces?

Mr. CARR-GOMM

Between London and the provinces. Surely in common fairness the poor of London should be maintained by the people of London. That is one of the reasons why we ask that this great city should be made one great union. It must be recalled that, of course, the inequalities exist in spite of the attempts of previous Parliaments on several occasions to equalise local burdens. I think I am right in saying with regard to the Poor Rate that, if it were not for the operation of the Common Fund and the County Grant which are at present in existence, the inequalities in the Poor Rate would vary from 4d. to 5s. 9d. in the pound, but, as has often been pointed out before by my hon. Friend the Member for North St. Pancras (Mr. Dickinson), to whose help and assistance I owe a great deal in raising this question, these grants though they do a good deal to assist the poorer districts, nevertheless add to the cost of administration, increase confusion, and diminish the amount of direct control of those who raise the rates, in a very startling degree. Before I come to an examination of the provisions of this Bill, I wish to refer to one further matter. It will be remembered that hon. Members opposite at the beginning of the session drew attention to the burdens of the local ratepayers in London and to the lack of sufficient assistance to the local authority from the Imperial Exchequer to enable them to carry out the duties which the State has recently placed upon them. The Government, as is well known, has set up a Local Taxation Committee to advise them on this subject. We maintain that, before you proceed to apportion the burdens between the local ratepayer and the national taxpayer you ought to consider the inequalities and anomalies which at present exist in the different quarters of our great capital. Such a proposal as we bring forward to-day should come before us at any rate concurrently with the readjustment of local and Imperial burdens.

Since this Bill was printed and circulated to the Members of the House another Bill has appeared under the name of the Noble Lord the Member for Bath (Lord Thynne). It deals with this matter very much, if I may say so, in the same way, but I notice the Noble Lord calls it the "London Poor Bill." I suppose he does that in order to avoid the supposed indignity of calling it the "London Poor Law (No. 2) Bill." After all, what is in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet. I should not be in order in discussing that Bill. It recasts the Poor Law system as our Bill does, and, although the Noble Lord's solution of the problem differs from ours, yet I regret it as a rival competitor, and not as a hostile foe to our measure. The principle of our Bill is contained in the last two paragraphs of the memorandum which accompanies it. The first two clauses transfer the duties and the powers of Poor Law administration to the London County Council. We have selected the London County Council, and not either a Statutory Committee or a specially constituted ad hoc body, because we thiink, in conformity with the spirit of the times and the purposes of better administration, that body should take over the work The authority in the Bill of the Noble Lord is, of course, a Statutory Committee, a very largely nominative Committee, and it would have the powers we propose to put on the whole Council. An ad hoc body, which is recommended by various persons, would set up a separate rating authority, and, if you have any idea of reforming and co-ordinating the local government of London in future, we think you ought to separate the functions which will be contained in this Bill from the work which is now being done by the various committees of the London County Council, very largely in the same field of administration. Clause 3 deals with the increase of membership, and may I draw special attention to the words— The Members of the Council shall be directly elected. We shall by this means give the ratepayers of London direct control over the big expenditure of their yearly work. I think I am right in saying they receive 70 per cent. of their expenditure from central funds and about 30 per cent. is raised locally. Clauses 4 and 5 deal with inquiry by the Local Government Board. We wish that every portion of the complicated and diverse area of London should be carefully considered in framing this great reform. Clause 6 really contains the whole spirit of the Bill. It will be seen by the various sub-heads that we divide the great functions of Poor Law administration between the Education Committee, the Asylums Committee, and the Health Committee. May I be allowed to call attention to the words at the end of Sub-section (d)— laying down general rules regulating the system and scales of payment of relief and the management of institutions. We feel we want in the future with regard to the administration of the Poor Law some regulated system and similarity between the various portions of the great city. Sub-section (e) deals with the Local Committees, and here I may say that, even if Members disapprove of this method of the appointment of Visiting or Advisory Committees, I certainly as one responsible for the introduction of this Bill will be glad to hear any suggestions which will improve the Bill. What we require is to get men of experience to take on this important work. The proviso at the end of this Clause lays down that— Nothing in this Clause shall authorise the Council to delegate to a Committee any power of making a rate or borrowing any money. No one, unless he is directly elected on this large council, will have the power of levying rates on the Metropolis. I do not disguise the fact that this is a complete reversal of the existing system, and in the execution of this great change many vested rights and worthy traditions will be offended, but, if you are to bring up-to-date the machinery of this vast social organism, these long-established institutions must accommodate themselves to the new position and altered circumstances. When I say "altered circumstances," I might perhaps, in passing, refer to the startling and interesting figures published by the President of the Local Government Board in the Census. There is in this proposal no betrayal of democratic ideals. In a tangled network of Local Government such as exists to-day in London, in the continued repetition of elections, democracy has less control and less influence over its executive officials than it should have if its machinery were simplified, and its elections less frequent but more important. It will be noticed that in the Bill there is no mention of machinery to deal with insurance. This will be obvious to hon. Members when they recollect that the Bill was printed and circulated some weeks before the Government's Bill was introduced. The appearance of that great measure on the scene, so far from weakening our case, makes it more urgent that the reorganisation of the Poor Law in London should proceed as soon as possible. This reform of the machinery dealing with the Poor Law in London is a complement, in my opinion, to that great and far-reaching measure which has been proposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the whole country; and this brings me to the great objection which is constantly raised to our proposal, namely, that the county council is unable to carry out the great work of Poor Law in London, at present administered by the thirty-one Boards of Guardians, the Metropolitan Asylums Board and the other bodies now in existence. Other speakers will doubtless deal with this very important point, a point which I do not wish in any way to shirk, but which should not be used as a complete barrier against any attempt to alter the existing system.

What is the task confronting Poor Law administrators in our great city to-day? It is a vast field for work, but, thanks to recent reforms introduced by this Government and to better administration, the problem is not quite so vast as it was when the Royal Commission reported. The President of the Local Government Board, speaking in the House on April 27th of this year, said:— Since 1905, the total pauperism in numbers has diminished by 22 per cent; outdoor pauperism by 33 per cent. In London, total pauperism has diminished by 14 per cent.; outdoor pauperism by 37 per cent. From 84 per cent. to 90 per cent. of the total pauperism with which we have to deal is not pauperism of the industrial character which has been described; it is due to physical, mental or other disability. From 12 per cent. to 18 per cent. is more or less mentally defective."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 27th April, 1911, col. 2031.] If so great a portion of the pauperism in. existence to-day is due to these non-industrial causes, is it to be wondered that when the Government, by its successful policy of social reform is reducing and narrowing down that section of the population which has to be relieved out of public funds, that we in London should ask the House to assent to a proposal which would place this diminishing section under the control of the great committees of our London County Council, instead of allowing them to continue, as they are now, under various and numerous public bodies. Looking at the reforms which the Government has already carried out, and is carrying out, and comparing them with the great schemes outlined by the Royal Commission on the Poor Law, I venture to suggest that those ladies and gentlemen who signed that historic and famous document have good cause to congratulate themselves on the influence that they have exerted over the field of recent domestic legislation. Old Age Pensions, National Labour Exchanges, Sickness Insurance, and Unemployment Insurance, the Trade Boards Act—these and other great reforms have altered, and are at the present time rapidly altering—the whole outlook with regard to the vital question of poverty. It is because we want our great, capital to take full advantage of these national reforms and to place her poor under a simpler and stronger administration than it is at present—

Attention called to the fact that forty Members were not present. House counted, and forty Members being found present.

It cannot be in any way said that under the complicated network of existing authorities that it is possible to classify and deal with the poor of London as they should be dealt with under the social reform policy of to-day. We are making no attack on all the experience, the care and the industry of those who are working in the field of Poor Law. Our objective is a system which will give these administrators greater power and greater opportunity to attack the causes of poverty and to use a phrase now famous, to prevent destitution. I grant that this is a far-reaching measure for a private Member to introduce on a Friday afternoon. But after the advice given us by the two former Secretaries to the Local Government Board which I quoted at the beginning of my speech, are we not amply justified? Can we not confidentially appeal to the Government and the House to allow us to have a Second Reading? We ask that the Government seriously face the situation and not to once again disappoint London. She is becoming the Cinderella of the United Kingdom, and we who have been sent here by her citizens confidently demand for her the reforms for which she has waited so long.

Mr. W. R. PEEL

I beg to move, to leave out the word "now" and to add at the end of the Question, the words "upon this day six months."

In moving the rejection of the Bill I will say but a very few words. It is quite true that the hon. Member spoke of another Bill as a competitor rather than as an enemy or a rival, but I am one of those people who are possibly of a jealous temperament, but who regard competitors and rivals as enemies, and as I am a supporter of the other Bill which was introduced by my Noble Friend a few weeks ago, I think we had better clear all competitors out of the way in order that we should have a clear field for the Bill which we wish to pass into law. In saying that, I of course wish to pay a tribute to the hon. Member opposite and those associated with him in their efforts to deal with this very vast problem. In fact, those who have studied the two Bills in question will have no doubt that there are many points in which the two measures agree, and I am bound to say that I am moving the rejection upon what are very important details in the Bill rather than upon some of the principles contained in the measure itself. I will deal very shortly with one or two of the general principles with which I agree, and then I will deal with the points upon which I disagree with the hon. Gentlemen opposite. I certainly think first of all that we ought not to be precluded from dealing with a measure of this kind merely because of the Insurance Bill of the Government. I know that is the view of the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Local Government Board. He, in fact, has taken shelter behind the Insurance Bill of the Government, but on the contrary I think that although I have very great hopes that that measure may do a great deal to relieve the pressure of pauperism and may diminish very largely the number of those who have recourse to the Poor Law or public assistance it will not diminish the urgent character or nature of the Poor Law problem or diminish the number of those who come within its purview. For instance, the whole question of mixed workhouses is really entirely untouched by the Insurance Bill.

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

I am sorry to interrupt, but the hon. Member twitted me—

Mr. PEEL

As a Member of the Government—not personally.

Mr. BURNS

The hon. Member twitted me with sheltering myself behind the Insurance Bill that the Government recently introduced since this Bill now under discussion was printed and circulated to Members. It will be interesting to me to know what evidence he has for making such a statement?

Mr. PEEL

Certainly, I shall be very ready to state it. It was not really as a matter of hostile criticism of the right hon. Gentleman at all that I spoke. What I based it upon is a statement made by the Prime Minister in answer to a question—I cannot give the exact words—two or three weeks ago, in which he said that the Government were not going to deal with the general question of the Poor Law at present before they had some idea of what might be the result of the Insurance Bill.

Mr. BURNS

Then I understand that he had that question and the answer of the Prime Minister in his mind when he suggested me.

Mr. PEEL

The right hon. Gentleman is, after all, bound by a declaration of the Prime Minister. I do not wish to suggest anything personal as to the right hon. Gentleman except as a Member of the Government. Of course, if the right hon. Gentleman differs from the views of the Prime Minister he will perhaps say so afterwards.

Mr. BURNS

Oh, no.

Mr. PEEL

I think this question of mixed poorhouses is a matter which we might deal with at once, and it is impossible to deal with the question if you are going to leave the Poor Law area as it is at present.

Mr. PICKERSGILL

It is not impossible in London under the Metropolitan Poor Act.

Mr. PEEL

I do not want to argue that point, it is very difficult. If we are to have one large authority what are the centralising arguments with some of which the hon. Member has dealt? A former Bill dealt with larger Poor Law areas, but we should go far further than that did, so that the treatment may be differentiated. Another point is that owing to unification of areas London has become far more united than it was, and therefore it is far more impossible to say that the Poor Law problem of London should be dealt with as segregated in different boards of guardians in different parts of London, We are aware that there have been various charges recently brought against various boards of guardians in London, but I do not desire to base my claim for unification upon that, because I have a knowledge of the good work which has been done by boards of guardians in London, and as there are thirty-one of them it is possible that the administration of some has not been so good as others. That is by the way, but there is no doubt owing to and growing out of that sense of greater unity in London there is a feeling that the Poor Law must be dealt with as a whole and that the rating of London for the provision of Poor Law relief must still more be dealt with as a whole. It is obviously exceedingly difficult to enlarge the grants of money to these guardians to bring up the amount of money they receive by from 80 to 90 per cent., and have really no control over their management. We wish them to have a desire for economy, but that desire would be diminished if, under a growing sense of the unity of the problem we were to give them 80 or 90 per cent. of the money they have to expend, without control over them. I am one of those who have gone through many painful, and other experiences in London elections, municipal and otherwise, and I agree that it is very difficult at a county council election to rouse the voters to much sense of the responsibility which they are placing upon their representatives. All the members for London know how small the percentage is of those who vote not only for the county council, but also at some of the elections of boards of guardians. The fact is — and it seems a curious thing in a way to us who are accustomed to laborious elections—that a man looks upon it as a matter of immense labour to go across the street to record his vote, but that is so, and people resent being called on to take part in repeated elections. The fact that we are able to diminish the number of elections in London is, I think in itself a great gain because properly speaking I do not think the ordinary man can concentrate his attention on more than two elections a year, the first as to the local business in which he is interested, and the second in regard to the national business. If you split up the question into too many sides he loses his interest and he is inclined to let the thing go by altogether. Therefore, I think it is best to concentrate his attention upon one body for municipal questions and not upon several. That is another reason why I strongly advocate concentration in one body of the general control over Poor Law administration in London. I say nothing about the areas outside. Of course we know that the present area of London is a mere accident, and not a very happy accident, and perhaps even a less happy accident now when we have the figures of the Census and see the relation between the great population in London and the population outside London. But that is too large a matter to go into now, and I must accept the area of London as it is.

Having dealt with that aspect of the question, how are we to proceed further? What is to be our central point? There is the question of the ad hoc elected authority. I am opposed in these municipal matters to ad hoc elected bodies. Especially as regards the Poor Law it is exceedingly inadvisable for reasons which may present themselves very easily to he minds of hon. Members. Then you are left really with the question whether you should adopt that principle to which all local government has been tending in the last seventy or eighty years, to concentrate all services which can be described as municipal in one body, and that is the principle we ought to adopt, that—and I am approaching now the great point of division between myself and the hon. Member opposite—you cannot do anything but land these duties in some sense or other, and in some distribution or other, on the great central authority—the London County Council. Of course, there is no one more conscious than I am of the difficulties. I look upon it rather differently from what I did a year ago, because I am no longer a member of that body, and I can look with more equanimity on the idea of casting fresh duties on that already very hard worked body, and hon. Members besides me are perhaps in the same condition. There are proposals in the Bill for enlarging the numbers of the county council. There are also very great objections to that proposal. We have now on the London County Council 139 members. There is a limit of course—I think it is between 180 and 200—to which the hon. Member is prepared to increase the London County Council. For the purpose of debate it is too large now, and it really is a miniature Parliament. But when you carry that to sixty or seventy more members, and want 200 members to deal with it, you can imagine the kind of large and extensive debates there may be, although I have on one occasion supported a measure slightly increasing the representation on the London County Council, especially for those boroughs which are at present very largely under represented. But here again the proposals contained in the other Bill really meet the difficulty better than the proposals of the hon. Member opposite. I pass by the suggestion which is made in the Majority Report and for which I daresay there is a great deal to be said of having a certain number of commissioners and not an elected body at all which should deal with the matter on the analogy of Washington, but that is not really practical politics at present, and I may as well leave that to the condemnation of the Majority Report itself.

1.0 P.M.

How, then, are you to deal with those centres? How are they to be discharged by the London County Council? I may lay down two principles which are contrary to the principles of the Bill. The hon. Member wishes the whole of his body to be purely elective. I am a strong supporter of a certain co-opted element. The experience of local government, during the last twenty years has shown the enormous value of the experience which you get through persons who are co-opted and who are not directly elected. Experience further has shown that a very large number of persons who would not submit themselves for election would come forward and are ready to serve, when they are selected or co-opted on the various committees. In fact, from the point of view of economy of labour you really tap a very large source of experienced assistance if you are ready in some cases to mitigate the extreme rigours of the elective principle. I am very sorry to see that the hon. Member entirely rejects that principle so far at least as the county council itself is concerned. I think you ought to have a large co-opted element for that reason and also for the reason of securing some kind of continuity if possible between an old and a new administration, because there is a very large and valuable element of the old administration which ought not to be lost, and I believe in this way could be made use of if you did not draw this sharp line of severance between the old administration and the new.

I should like to say a word as to the method of constituting the new electoral divisions. It is a matter of detail, but very large powers are given to the Local Government Board. Under the Act of 1888 a Schedule is set out in the Act itself and Parliament itself had to decide what the Constituencies were to be, and after all, if Parliament was to be guilty of this sort of manipulation or gerrymandering, that is the fault of Parliament and Parliament roust be responsible. Let it be done by Parliament and not by the Local Government Board without reference to Parliament. I am quite aware that there are closer precedents possibly in the Act of 1899. There the Local Government Board certainly gets far larger powers of dividing up Constituencies than had under the Act of 1888. The borough council areas are to be the units and there are to be as far as possible equal electoral divisions. But subject to this the Local Government Board can delimit the Constituencies exactly as it likes. That is far too great a power to be given to the Local Government Board.

Then how does the Bill deal with management and organisation by the London County Council itself? It has first of all to submit a scheme, and it is not free to deal with the details of the scheme, because a great many important principles are laid down. Certain duties are to be allocated to certain committees—certain duties of the Poor Law to the Public Health Committee, certain others, again, to the Education Committee—and then there is to be another committee, which is a sort of residue committee, like the Post Office contributors, I suppose. It is to have all the duties which are not allocated to these other committees. The appointment of a public assistance committee of the council for the purpose of dealing with such duties of public assistance or relief as are by this Act imposed upon the council and are not referred to any other committee, and for the reference to such committee of the duties of supervising the methods of investigating and relieving cases of destitution and laying down general rules regulating the system and scales of payment of relief and the management of institutions. As a matter of practical administration may I call the attention of the House to the great difficulty of a proposal of this kind. You have different committees, of course, of the county council dealing with different matters. You add to them certain duties falling within Poor Law work. You have the other committee, which is apparently an ordinary committee of the council and yet is a superior committee, because it has the duty of laying down all the general regulations and rules which are going to govern all the different committees. There are general considerations, perhaps, which are dealt with in other cases by the recognised centre of the council, the General Purposes Committee, but it would cause an enormous amount of friction and a great deal of difficulty and unnecessary delay also if you had all these rules dealt with and defined by a sort of superior overlapping committee, to which were left all those different duties not allocated to other committees. Again, this particular committee would not have the experience of dealing with the Poor Law itself generally. It would have to lay down rules theoretically and in the air, and not lay down rules arising out of its own experience of the subject matter of the Poor Law itself. Therefore, on practical grounds, there are very great object- tions to rules of this kind. Paragraph (L) says:— The establishment and maintenance, until such time as a national organisation may be established, of training, detention, or other labour colonies to be established either within or without the county area and for the making of regulations. The House will observe that this scheme is mandatory. The county council shall do it. It is not a case of handing over these duties to them and saying that they shall have certain freedom as to the way in which they shall discharge them. It is to establish these labour colonies until a national organisation has been established. Who is to be the judge whether a national organisation has been established I do not know. It is quite possible that in a few years there will be no question of establishing a national organisation, and the whole question of labour colonies will disappear altogether. We know perfectly well that in the case of distress committees and of municipalities supplying work for the unemployed public opinion has turned against them. You are proposing here to tie the county council as with a band of iron as to the necessity of establishing labour colonies. The word used, "colonies," is plural, and I presume there must be at least two. If they establish two to meet the requirements of the Section they have to maintain them until some national organisation is established. I think that is a foolish and unwise provision, and at any rate that should be dropped out of the Bill. Is it not a bad way of dealing with the subject to say that the county council shall submit to a scheme of this kind for delegating specific duties to specific committees? That is an iron system, for there is no provision for altering it in any way. According to the Bill, whenever the scheme is established, and whatever may be the internal organisation of the county council, this system is fixed for ever, and there is no provision in the Bill by which it may be altered. Surely if you are going to give fresh duties of this kind to the county council you should give it power to deal with its own internal economy. New conditions will emerge from time to time, and the duties of one committee may be transferred to another. But they could not appoint a Committee here if they wanted to do it. The county council would be absolutely debarred from dealing with its own internal economy, and it would have to maintain one of its committees if only for the purpose of carrying out the duties which had been fixed under this particular scheme.

I strongly object to the whole principle on which this Poor Law work or public assistance work is to be distributed among the committees of the county council. It is a matter largely of organisation, but it is a matter also of principle as well. I support the principle of setting up a statutory committee of the county to deal with the whole subject. I do not mean to say that there are not portions of Poor Law work which are so cognate to the labours of certain specific committees that they might be handed over to them, but I do say that the main work should be dealt with by one large statutory committee. If you get that large statutory committee you would always have a majority of elected members to control finance, but you could have on it a large number of persons experienced in Poor Law work who would provide that skilled assistance which you will not get from the ordinary elected member. But I do not think it is right that Poor Law and public assistance work should be scattered about, as it were, among the different committees of the council. It should be arranged so that people would know what is being given for Poor Law and public assistance work. First of all let that committee deal with it and concentrate upon it all the experience it can get. Let the accounts for different kinds of work be kept separately so that you will know what you are spending. After all, there must be a great deal of difference between the ordinary work of education committees, public health committees, and Poor Law committees. I think there would be considerable resentment on the part of large classes of the population who are not subject to the Poor Law if they knew that they were being dealt with in the same way as people who are subject to the Poor Law.

I quite admit that we ought to make the Poor Law more humane in future, and that we should adopt the curative and preventive principle, but still I think there must remain to some extent the old distinction in administration. You cannot treat in the same way people who come under the Poor Law as you do those persons who have escaped the Poor Law. You cannot treat those who come under the Poor Law purely as people whose condition is due to misfortune. You cannot treat all those who come under the Poor Law on the same principle as those who have kept outside of it. You want to keep up the incentives of human nature, by which people are enabled to remain strong, moral, and independent. You must give expression to that principle, and it is because I do not want the Poor Law to be mixed up with the whole machinery of administration, because I think that for the purposes of organisation and administration we ought to maintain some sort of separation from it, that I move the rejection of this Bill in order that we may get it out of the way and make room for the Bill of my Noble Friend, which I strongly support, and which I hope will have some opportunity of becoming law.

Sir FREDERICK BANBURY

I rise to second the Amendment. It seems to me that there are very many reasons against the Bill. The first is one which I think will commend itself to nearly everybody in this House, whatever their opinions may be. It is this: If we are to deal with the great question of the Poor Law—for the moment I do not intend to argue whether we ought to deal with it—it should be dealt with by the Government in a scheme dealing with the whole of the country, and it should be brought forward after careful consideration has been given to it, and when the House is prepared and able also to give it careful consideration. To bring forward part of the scheme—this patchwork piece of legislation—on a Friday, when you can just manage to get forty people in the House, to be dealt with in a private Member's Bill, without any prospect of facilities being given for further discussion upon it, is not the way to deal with the question. The Bill deals with London only, and while it is a place of importance, it is only a portion of the Empire. Therefore, under these circumstances, and for that reason alone, I think there will be a large number of Members who, whatever their opinions may be in regard to the Majority Report and the Minority Report, whether they think the Poor Law should be altered or not, will be prepared to vote against this particular Bill. That seems to me to be one of the chief reasons why the Bill should be rejected. The hon. Member who moved the Second Reading of the Bill said that in London the expenditure of the guardians was greater than in the rest of the country. He objected to that, and I agree with him, because I am in favour of economy. But you should not take the London County Council as an authority which is to practise economy. If there is one extravagant body in the whole civilised world, except perhaps in New York, it is the London County Council. If any hon. Member doubts that, let him look at the increase in the London education rate since the County Council took the matter over. I am credibly informed that the education given is no better than it was. And then, although I do not like to mention it in the presence of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Burns), we cannot forget the steamboats. I do not doubt the good motives of the County Council, but they are extravagant. They live in magnificent buildings; they are going to live in more magnificent buildings, and they will have to justify their existence when they are housed in the beautiful new buildings opposite. The delusion of the hon. Member opposite that expenditure will be decreased under the London County Council is not one that will be shared by other Members of the House. I have not got here the Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission, and I forgot whether any of those who signed it are Members of this House.

Mr. LANSBURY

The hon. Member for Bow.

Sir F. BANBURY

Well, he certainly is not an economist. He is animated, no doubt, with thoroughly honest motives to do the best he can for suffering humanity, but he is not desirous of doing it in an economical manner. The people who signed the Minority Report, on which this Bill is to a great extent founded, are certainly not economists. On the contrary, they may be described as people suffering from soft hearts and soft heads, who are willing to dispose of the property of other people for the purpose of relieving distress whether the distress is owing to the fault of the distressed or not. Then the hon. Member went on to deal with the inequality of the London rating. That is a subject that has been put forward by hon. Members on that side of the House during the nineteen years that I have been a Member of this House. They say that in Poplar the rate is 10s. or whatever it may be, while in the City of Westminster it is only 7s. 6d. They entirely forget that a great deal as to the size of the rate depends on management. They also forget that a penny rate in Westminster produces a great deal more than a penny rate in Poplar or St. George's-in-the-East, and they do not see that a person living in a £30 house in the East End who is charged a 10s. rate pays very much less than a person living in a £200 house in Westminster who is charged a rate of 7s. 6d. in the £. The hon. Gentleman told us that in the City of London there was one pauper for, I think he said, 24,000 of rateable value, whereas in some other places there was one pauper for £2,000 of rateable value. But what does a shilling in the £ produce in the City of London? I have here a return of the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund of Lady Day, 1910. It is issued by the Local Government Board in February of this year. I venture to say that the actual sums paid by the different places is a very much greater test of how they contribute than any comparison between the number of paupers and the rateable value. From this return I see that the City of London contributes £98,196 to the common poor fund. Stepney contributes £5,806. That shows the fallacy always underlying the arguments of Hon. Gentlemen opposite when they drag in these comparisons of 10s. in the £ and 7s. 6d. in the £. The richer districts contribute very much larger sums than the poorer districts to the common poor fund as it exists at the present moment.

Mr. CARR-GOMM

Do you approve of the present system?

Sir F. BANBURY

Being a human world I do not say that there is anything perfect in it, not even the House of Commons, but I say that the present system has worked very well, and when you compare it with what is proposed under this Bill I prefer the present system. The placing of the rate so that the same rate shall be levied all over London is against economy. When the question of the equalisation of rates arose some years ago there were only two hon. Members, London Members, in this House who were strongly opposed to it. One was the late Sir George Bartley, who sat for a Division of Islington, which was going to benefit more largely from it than any other Division of London, and the other was myself, who then represented the Peckham Division of Camberwell, which was going to benefit in the second degree; and we both opposed that equalisation of rates on the ground that it would tend to extravagance, and we were both very largely opposed by certain of our constituents, though we both got in again, I am happy to say, having had the courage of our opinions, which, after all, is not a bad thing sometimes. But what we said actually proved true. Instead of the ex- penditure being diminished it always increased, because you put money into the hands of people who are not responsible to the people who provide the money. They say: "Here is a sum of money. We will spend it on any fads that we desire to promote." Therefore this equalisation of rates, whatever it is going to be, is not going to be an economical measure. The hon. Member is under the impression that London is one city. It is a conglomeration of cities inhabited by various classes of people actuated by different motives and policies, and which, owing to its having become the centre of the Empire, surround this House of Commons. To suppose that you are able to take that immense area, containing roughly five and half millions of inhabitants, and remove from it the thirty-one existing boards of guardians, and to centralise them all in one body, which is already overworked, is to my mind an absurd proposition which will not hold water for a moment. The hon. Gentleman said that under this scheme the ratepayers would have control over the elections, but I do not know how he arrives at that conclusion. A number of people have votes for the election of the London County Council who are not ratepayers and, consequently a very large number who are not ratepayers will return members whose objects are not identical with those of the ratepayers. I remember that not so very long ago we had an election of the London County Council in which a candidate was defeated because it was said that in the previous session of the County Council he had voted against the feeding of school children. An action at law was brought in which the gentleman recovered very considerable damages. That only shows how false issues come before the electors. Under this Bill, when you have a county councillor giving his vote honestly in the interests of economy—which the hon. Gentleman opposite has so much at heart —his opponents will bring forward that vote, and a large number of electors will poll against him simply because he has been economical. Instead of this Bill giving control to the ratepayers, it will do nothing of the sort; it will, rather, give control to those people who want money spent for their own particular benefit.

There seems to me to be no need of the alterations which are proposed if the Bill, which is called the Poor Law (London) Bill. It goes very much further than that, because it alters the constitution of the London County Council, as I read it, by doing away with the aldermen. Section 40, Sub-section (4) and (5) of the Local Government Act of 1888 relate to the election of aldermen of county councils, and by this Bill those Sections are repealed so far as concerns the election of aldermen in the London County Council. It does not go so far as to abolish aldermen of county councils outside London, but, under the guise of a Poor Law Bill, this measure alters the constitution of the London County Council as set up by the Act of 1888. That may or may not be a good or a bad thing, but it is not one which should be dealt with under a Bill having reference to the Poor Law. Whether it is in order or not I do not know, but do not raise the point, as the Bill has not the slightest chance of passing. Still, it does seem a very far reaching proposal, and, without any desire to hurt the feelings of the hon. Member who introduced the Bill, I think it is one which ought not to have been brought in under the guise of a measure dealing with the Poor Law. Again, the Bill entirely alters the electoral area. Not only does it alter the constitution of the London County Council, but it increases the number of members from 139, or whatever is the present number, to 180 or 200. My hon. Friend (Mr. Peel) pointed out that the electoral areas of the London County Council have been settled by Act of Parliament, and there is no possibility of gerrymandering. I do not, think for a moment that, under the present President of the Local Government Board there will be no possibility of anybody being allowed to gerrymander a constituency. We will not always have the present President of the Local Government Board, and personally I do not like throwing all this responsibility on one Member of the Government. I have had no consultation with the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Burns), but. I should think he would not care to undertake the task which this Bill imposes. It. would be a very invidious task. Whatever he did it would be sure to be objected to; he would not be able to satisfy everybody, and he would arouse against him a very considerable feeling of hostility which at the present moment does not exist.

It is not for me to offer advice to the right hon. Gentleman, but, if he will allow me to do so, and I do it: in a very humble spirit, I would say that if he desires to maintain his present popularity he had better not put his hand into the hornet's nest, or the commotion that would arise on an attempt to alter the whole of the electoral representation on the London County Council. There, again, is a very strong reason for rejecting the Bill. The hon. Member who moved the Second Reading of the Bill has not denied that the county council are overworked, but he bases his Bill on the fact that he is going to give that body a larger number of members, and therefore afford them increased facilities for their work. That brings me to the question whether the London County Council are sufficiently free, or have sufficient leisure to attend to this vast amount of new work to be cast upon them. I have had conversations with friends of mine who occupy prominent positions on the London County Council, and they assure me that their work at the present moment in the county council is infinitely harder than our work in this House, and that the committees of the county council sit the whole day. I have no reason to doubt that their statement is correct, and, if it is correct, it would be absolutely impossible to put this additional work upon them with any chance of its being properly carried out in an efficient manner, when already that particular body is so very much overworked.

The Bill provides for a variety of things, and I think none of them can be supported by anyone who has the interests of the London County Council or of London at heart. I may point out, and this is a very important matter, that the present boards of guardians are under the control of the Local Government Board which, by the various inquiries they have made during the last six or seven years, have done very efficient service in promoting good management of the guardians in London. If this Bill becomes law the London County Council, not being under the authority of the Local Government Board, the protectection and guiding hand of the Local Government Board will disappear, and the whole management will be in the hands of an elected body composed of persons elected for all sorts of different reasons; and not merely because they are good business men who understand Poor Law and its administration. I have always objected, and especially during the last four or five years, to the very great increase in officialism which is going on. The proposals of this Bill would lead to an increase in officialism. The London County Council is already overburdened with work, and it stands to reason that any further increase in the number of its committees must tend to a larger increase in the number of officials. My experience of committees is that unless the chairman happens to be a very strong man, who takes great interest in the work, the tendency is to lean upon the officials, and thus to an increase. I think that would be a very great mistake.

As I understand the Bill, under it, instead of one body in the Poor Law, you would have three, and in the case of the mentally affected four bodies dealing with the same individual at different times. For instance, a father unemployed would be dealt with by a proposed training or labour colony, and, if taken ill, by the health committee. Children under school age would be dealt with by the health committee, and of school age by the educational committee, and the mentally defective by the asylum committee. Instead of having one body with a knowledge of the locality and as to whether the people were deserving or not, that is all to be replaced by three or four different committees with different interests and different officials, all dealing with the same subject. I am also informed that, instead of having officials under one body, each of the committees would have its own staff of officials, acting independently and under different orders. That seems to be an extremely bad plan if you are desirous of having efficiency and economy. The question of relief would inevitably enter into and affect election to the London County Council. At present there are thirty-one boards of guardians in London, composed of 815 guardians, who are responsible for the care of 128,000 people. There are also, I am told, a large number of hospitals which would be done away with and put into the hands of the London County Council under this Bill. There are two other points, and the first is the question of economy. An hon. Member interrupted me a short time ago and asked me if I was in favour of the present system. Let us consider the advantages of the present system. It. provides that all the different parishes in London shall contribute, according to their rateable value, to the common poor fund, which ministers to certain specified matters and contributes 5d. per head to the maintenance of indoor paupers. The county council, under the Act of 1888, contribute by a rate from the whole of the Metropolis 4d. per head to the maintenance of the poor in London workhouses. That meets the point raised by the hon. Member who introduced the Bill that the whole of London shall contribute certain sums into a common poor fund. It is also provided that the Local Government Board shall have control over that poor fund. The guardians raise a rate dealing, I think, entirely with outdoor relief, and the rest of the money required for the maintenance of the indoor is obtained from the ratepayers in the locality. I say that that leads to efficiency and economy, because the ratepayers in the locality act as a check and they know that unless they elect men who administer the Poor Law in an efficient and proper manner they will have to pay increased rates. Therefore that does tend to keep a local check upon the boards of guardians. If this Bill passed all that would disappear at once. Every faddist and sentimentalist, everybody with an idea that by some fad of his own he was going to alter the whole world, do away with poverty and bring about the millennium, would be able unchecked to carry out his wild ideas.

Mr. DICKINSON

May I ask why unchecked?

Sir F. BANBURY

Because he would not be elected for that particular purpose, but for all sorts of other things. You would have a large number of people who would be elected, and who would outvote the ratepayer who provided the money. The hon. Member knows perfectly well that a large number of electors of the London County Council do not pay a penny of rates directly. The lodgers do not pay anything. Therefore those people would be able to combine together, as is the tendency, in order to return persons who think that they are going to bring about a state of things which no doubt everybody would like to see brought about, but which cannot be brought about in this unfortunate world. There is one other question, namely, that of the labour colonies. This, again, is a totally novel proposition, which has nothing whatever to do with the Poor Law at present. The London County Council are to establish labour colonies and detention colonies, whatever they may be. I do not know whether the hon. Member opposite under this Bill, if he is chairman of a committee, is to be able to say, "Summon before me so many men who are now in the workhouses under the London County Council," and to say to them, "I am going to detain you in a colony." There is no definition in the Bill of what a detention colony is, but I know there are certain people who would like to do that sort of thing. At the present moment when we have an Old Age Pensions Act and are going to have an Insurance Act, which I hope will do some good, though I am rather doubtful about it, why should we stop suddenly and have labour colonies, detention colonies, and other colonies whatever they may be? This is a Bill for the glorification of the London County Council, and for no other purpose. It is to make the London County Council the arbiter of our destinies in London. Much as I respect the London County Council, I am perfectly happy to go on as we are. Until we have a responsible Government dealing with the whole question of the Poor Law in relation to the whole of the country and not to one part of it only, I prefer that the present system should go on. For that reason I beg to second the Motion for the rejection of the Bill.

Mr. LANSBURY

The question we are discussing this afternoon is, so far as London is concerned, of the utmost importance both to rich and to poor, but more especially to the poorer districts of this great Metropolis. Hon. Members who sit for the wealthier parts of London do not appear to me quite to realise how much this question of the Poor Law and Poor Law expenditure really affects the condition of the people in the south and east of London. In passing, I may say that the districts which are claiming central aid and central organisation are districts to which for the most part the poor have been driven. The Right Hon. Charles Booth, in his book on "Life and Labour," and in his latest book on investigations amongst the poor in the Metropolis, and also Mr. Rowntree in his book on York, have made it perfectly clear that the poorer the people are the more they are driven to live in the unhealthy and lower parts of our great cities. That is true, not only of the Metropolis, but of every industrial centre. The President of the Local Government Board has in his Department a series of maps showing that the parts where poverty exists are in the main the unhealthy districts of every city. Everyone will agree that Hampstead is much more healthy than Old Ford or Hackney Wick, and the heights of Greenwich than the lowlands of the Isle of Dogs on the opposite side of the river. It will also be agreed that the population of Hampstead and of Blackheath is less susceptible to the ills of life in the shape of sickness and all that sickness means, than the people who live in the low-lying districts that I have mentioned. The result is that you always have on your hands in these districts a mass of destitution and poverty which very often has to go unrelieved, but which, when it is relieved, is relieved at such a cost that it becomes an almost intolerable burden on the district responsible.

It is perfectly true to say that only 30 per cent. of the expenditure on relief comes out of the rates of the district. But this is what that 30 per cent. represents. If any domiciliary treatment or relief in the home is given, the union giving that relief is more or less penalised, because not a single penny of it can be levied over the whole area. Hon. and right hon. Members have in the past made great play of the fact that those unions which had a very high rate to pay had it because they were giving outdoor relief instead of institutional relief, so that they were really creating their own burden. The mere removal of the pauper disqualification for old age pensions took off the shoulders of Poplar alone a 3½d. or 4d. rate. You cannot say that the guardians who gave outdoor relief at that cost were immoral and bad in so doing, and that the recipients were less worthy on the day, they got outdoor relief than on the day when they received old age pensions. From the public health point of view the same thing holds. Not merely is the question of Poor Law relief a local one when it comes to the question of outdoor relief, but the whole burden of public health administration is borne almost entirely by the locality. In a district like Poplar, Bermondsey or Rotherhithe, we ought to spend much more on public health than we do; but as almost all that we do spend cornea out of the local rates, we are less able to keep ourselves healthy than other districts where, owing to their healthy conditions, so much expenditure is not needed. That operates again to leave on our hands a heavy burden of sick people. The Chancellor of the Exchequer the other night, in his figures in regard to Poor Law relief, stated that a very large proportion of it was due to people who required relief of one sort or another on account of sickness.

All this proves that districts like Poplar, Bermondsey, and Rotherhithe, are less able to stand up to the burdens which their own districts impose upon them, and which lead to Poor Law relief either in institutions or in homes. It is very well to talk about institutional treatment, but a large mass of these people do not need to be carted off to institutions at all, but can be quite easily dealt with in their own homes. Some of them, of course, would be very much better in an institution than in their own homes; but, on the other hand, for a large number of them it is better that they should be treated in their homes than that they should go to an institution. The point I want to urge is that when you come to deal with public health, and with the doctoring, the medicine side, of Poor Law relief, those unions in the Metropolis that have got the most sick to deal with and want to deal with them in their own homes, according to the doctors instructions, are penalised, even under present conditions, because every penny of the money required must come out of the local rates and cannot be spread over the whole area.

The other set of people, the next biggest number, who have to be dealt with by the boards of guardians, are women and children. This House has always, it seems to me, when it has had the opportunity—and although I am a new Member I have taken a good deal of interest in what this House does, for years past—when, I say, the House has come face to face with a great problem of child poverty, or of poverty brought about by reason of widowhood, and the misfortunes of widowhood, has always been inclined to take a more generous view than when dealing with the able-bodied and people whom it is imagined can take care of themselves. In London at the present time you have two or three authorities dealing with children who need public assistance of one kind or another. I want to ask the House whether the Members think it is a reasonable proposition that because an able-bodied man is out of work and his child or children have to be fed at the cost of the community in the elementary schools and the man not be accounted a pauper, nor his children paupers; that, on the other hand, the unhappy widow who, because she is left penniless and helpless and needs not only food but clothing for her children, and because she gets relief under the system, is with her children branded with the stigma of pauperism? I contend very strongly indeed—and I have heard no arguments this afternoon, nor have heard any arguments anywhere else outside this House to the contrary—why should there be that kind of separation between the two sets of people. In my judgment the child and the widow are, if anything—if you are going to argue about it at all—the persons who ought not to be stigmatised as paupers, rather than the able-bodied man and his children.

Remember that the children are the next big factor in the work of Poor Law guardians—the children and the question of sick pay. The aged people you have heard something about in regard to old age pensions. I will not say anything about that for the moment, except this, that I cannot help but feel that the State, having taken over the responsibility when seventy years is reached, cannot possibly stop there. A man in the same position at sixty-nine is as much entitled to be considered a State pensioner as is the man of seventy. But that I do not want to argue. I want to come down to the able-bodied part of the question. Here the House should remember that the able-bodied pauperism of London is quite tiny, and the right lion. Gentleman has proved that on a good many occasions. In relation to the whole it is a fragment. This House need not, from the point of view of the able-bodied man, bother itself very much about the question. We have over and over again pointed out that in the ordinary workhouse the men who go in and are classed as "able-bodied men" are in the majority of cases not able-bodied in the true sense of the word at all. They are mentally, morally, or physically deficient. The problem of able-bodied poverty is outside the Poor Law at the present time, and is, I think, likely to remain outside except as regards the casual. It is, I think, estimated that in the whole of England and Wales the number of able-bodied men of the class referred to would be anything from 10,000 to 15,000, leaving out casuals.

2.0 p.m.

We come, then, to this: Why should we set up the London County Council as the authority? In the first place, there is no other authority to set up. I want to point out to the House that in my opinion— and I give it as against the right, hon. Baronet who has just spoken—the people of London would not tolerate the sweeping away of the boards of guardians and the setting up of another ad hoc authority. I think myself that their choice is either for leaving things as they are, or transferring the work to the London County Council in one way or other. I am not going to argue from that that the Bill is perfect in any sense of the word. The principle it establishes is, I believe, one which every municipal administrator will adhere to—namely, that you can only have for one area one municipal authority for all purposes. But the first reason why you must have one authority is that if we can make out a case for equalisation—and I contend that a case has been made out over and over again for equalisation—you must have central control. You cannot, I have often said—and I remember I went as a member of a deputation to the Leader of the Opposition, when he was head of the Government, on this subject, and he challenged myself and the hon. Gentleman the Member for Woolwich to say whether we would be in favour of central control, if we received central money. It is perfectly obvious that we are bound to have it. No one outside Bedlam would ever dream that we could take money from a central authority and spend it how and where we pleased in the outside localities.

If that is so, and the London County Council should be the authority, the next question is how the matter can be administered. I have heard a great many discussions on this subject, and I have heard, I think, a good many people say things which are more or less beside the point. The first thing is that the London County Council is tremendously overworked. So far as my experience goes, and it is only a very limited one, I agree that the London County Council is a model for businesslike administration. [Hon. MEMBERS: "No, no."] Yes. I neither belong to the majority nor the big minority of that council. I am in a tiny minority, but I like to speak of people as I find them. I have been an administrator of a sort for twenty years in London, and I say without, any hesitation at all that the London County Council could give us all points as to how to administer purely and well. Their members do a tremendous amount of work for London. But when I am asked to believe that if this extra piece of work is put upon them the whole machinery will break down, I want to investigate that a little further. When you put education upon the London County Council you did put suddenly an enormously big piece of work, and new work, entirely upon them. It was work of which they had practically no experience of at all. It necessitated an entirely new organisation being set up by the county council. In regard to this question of the Poor Law an entirely different set of circumstances arises

Mr. BOOTH

You co-opted the education members.

Mr. LANSBURY

It is quite true that when you set up the Education Committee of London you co-opted certain members on to it. But the point I want to emphasise is that it was an entirely new piece of work which you put upon the London County Council, absolutely and entirely new. No one can gainsay that. But in regard to the Poor Law the same thing does not hold true. I want to point this out in regard to the children, that you have already an overwhelming majority of the children of London of school age under the care of the county council. You have also imposed upon the London County Council the duty of taking care of the health of these children. They have to be medically inspected and medically treated, supplied with spectacles and all other things that are necessary if the council do their duty towards preserving the children in good health. They are obliged to feed children who need food, they have at their disposal an industrial day school and an industrial boarding school, and the whole machinery for dealing with children of school age. What is it that we ask to-day Simply to add to those duties the duty of caring for the children of the widow and for the deserted child, and for my part I ask that that duty be given to the Education Committee to see that these children have all the maintenance they require. It is said that that would break down the Education Committee, and that it would be the last straw, but let us take the matter a little further. You already have a magnificent system of visits by the county council. You can go into the office of the centre and ring up every district, and within an hour find out about all the attendance of any particular child at any particular school all over the whole area. You can ascertain whether that child was at school, and if not why not, and I say you could avail of that exact same kind of machinery for the necessary inquiry and supervision of the children in this instance. You are not, therefore, imposing an impossible task upon the Education Committee if you ask them to take over this piece of work.

I quite agree you may counter that by asking what about the children who are deserted? But it would be perfectly easy for the Public Control Committee of the London County Council to have referred to it all questions of prosecution and in regard to the desertion of children. The point I am urging is that all the time you have got to deal with this child as if he was the ordinary little citizen of the Metropolis, and you must not visit the sins of the father upon it, and you must deal with this child as if it was the child of a workman out of work.

Lord ALEXANDER THYNNE

That is the proposal of both Bills.

Mr. LANSBURY

I do not see why there should be any bother about the two Bills. If it is in the two Bills it only shows that there is a general consensus of opinion in favour of it. What I am contending for is that the London County Council, if it has added to its work the care of this tiny handful of children, it would be perfectly easy for them to see—say, for instance, in the case of a widow who has to go to work—that the child is cared for at the day school, say industrial school, thereby insuring not only that such children are kept out of the streets, but that they are properly looked after and fed. The whole machinery is already created, and is in operation at the present moment.

Some people seem to imagine that it is necessary to have a separate authority for dealing with, say, imbecility, from that which deals with lunacy. Although I am proud of the fact that I have been a member of the Poor Law Commission and one of the signatories to the Minority Report, I say that we stand alone in asking for one authority to deal with imbecility and lunacy and simple-mindedness. People might say we were enthusiasts and sentimentalists who did not know where we were, but the Commission on the feebleminded also reported that there should be one authority for dealing with this class of persons, and it is quite too late to say now it is enough to leave it in the hands of boards of guardians in the metropolis. Every one of the thirty-one boards of guardians have their receiving houses. Think of the extravagance of that even from the £ s. d. point of view. I recommend hon. Members to go round and visit the various receiving houses and take stock of them for themselves. They are packed away where there is little air and little sunshine. It is no answer to me to say the people are only kept there for a little period. Many of them are there for weeks and months on end waiting to be certified, and sometimes waiting for removal to London asylums. And here you have the London County Council with its statutory Asylums Committee, which is very seldom interfered with by the county council. I have heard discussions upon the reports of almost every other committee, but on the report of the Asylums Committee there is hardly ever any discussion.

Lord A. THYNNE

Because it is a statutory committee.

Mr. LANSBURY

Exactly, as the Education Committee is. But we find fault with the Education Committee because we disagree as to the standard of efficiency set up, but we do not disagree with the standard of efficiency set up by the Committee which is dealing with these unhappy people. We all feel we have to do the best we can for them, and the point is this. Why should you have the Metropolitan Asylums Board cheek by jowl with the county council dealing with people who are only a little feebleminded, harmless lunatics or people suffering from some harmless kind of dementia. What is the reason for two separate authorities? When I was told that the Asylums Committee would not have time to look after these few hundreds, as compared with the thousands now dealt with by the county council, I ask the House to consider whether at this moment it is not a fact that the county council is dealing with the great bulk of these people, whereas the Metropolitan Asylums Board with all its extensive machinery, is only dealing with a tiny handful.

Therefore I say that you might well transfer the whole of the feebleminded to the one authority. And may I point out also that the county council has homes for children who happen to be less alert and less intelligent than the ordinary child. It runs an institution for children who are not as keen-witted as the ordinary children. If you are going really to deal with the problem of feeblemindedness effectively you must have one authority that can take care of the child until it becomes a man or a woman, so that you may have some sort of knowledge of the whole history of the child and the conditions under which it was brought up. From my point of view, in the case of all these persons that need treatment the argument is in favour of giving control over to the county council, which has the machinery for doing the work and is doing the work efficiently and admirably for the people of the Metropolis.

Then there is the question of public health generally. I admit under this Bill and under the present administration in London a good deal of the public health is in the hands of local authorities. I hope we shall have in future one standard of public health for the whole of the districts. And I hope the London County Council will be made the public health authority for the whole of the district. Let us just think whether we could not dovetail some Amendment in this Bill, even without a drastic proposition, to bring the local health authorities into relation with the county council. I have always con tended, and I have not yet heard any arguments to alter my opinion, that it is rather a stupid thing to have a public health authority to deal with infectious sickness in each locality and side by side have the guardians' officers dealing with the persons who only need public assistance of another kind, and persons suffering from phthisis, bronchitis, rheumatism or any other disease. I challenge any hon. Member to say it is any more right for the community to deal with a person under one set of conditions and not deal with them under the other set. I hope under this Bill we shall be able to take out of the hands of those districts which have the most poor the burden of having the care of the sick poor, and by a system of devolution from the county council to the local authority set up a system by which the central authority can set the standard of public health for the whole of the Metropolis and get it locally administered through the public health authorities.

The hon. Member for Taunton and the hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London both called attention to the Clauses dealing with the taking over of labour colonies and establishing labour colonies and so on. That is a very essential provision, because it happens that there are two labour colonies already in existence. There is the Hollesley Bay Labour Colony, on which a tremendous amount of money has been spent, and which is now paid for and is the property of the people of London. Therefore it cannot vanish into thin air. Some of us hope that under the county council it will be administered better than it has been under the Central (Unemployed) Body. The same is true in regard to the colony at Laindon. Whatever the Hon. Baronet may say as to the opinion of those who have been sent to inquire about labour colonies, at any rate, they are better than the brick workhouses in the Metropolis. After all, those who have sat for three and a-half years considering these questions are entitled to be heard, and when you get the majority of the Commissioners declaring that the present workhouse system has failed and requires revolutionising, I say that opinion ought to carry some weight. When you come to labour colonies, even the right hon. Gentleman himself, when he set up the test-house for the whole of the Metropolis, took over the huge estate at Belmont, and said the men there were to be put to dig the land. When you are told that is what ought to be done, I think it is some evidence at any rate that there is something after all in labour colonies. Even the London County Council has a committee for this special work called the Small-holdings Committee, and it would be a delightful thing for that committee to have something to do. Up to the present it has not been able to find any work, although it meets every Friday, talks a good deal, and gets a lot of information, but nothing very terrible comes of it all as is the case with this House on Fridays. That committee does give a certain amount of time to this work, and therefore they could carry out these other duties.

I do not agree with every detail of this scheme, but the principle of it is on all fours with everything that has been done municipally for the last generation. When we ask you to give the children over to the education authority, we are only carrying out logically what you have done in regard to education. Let this House remember that there was a time when, if a parent could not pay for the education of his child, the fees were paid by the guardians, and the mother and the children became paupers. Nobody wants to do that today. There was a time when no child could get assistance except through the Poor Law, but to-day the child of the unemployed workman can at least get food at the hands of the community without its parents or its brothers and sisters becoming paupers. There was a time when a chill could not get medical relief except at the hands of the Poor Law, but now you have broken all that down. Children now are inspected and attended to, and everything is done for them necessary to bring them back to health. Therefore it is altogether going back to say that the child of the widow shall be treated less advantageously than other children. To talk about the doctrine of non-eligibility is perfectly absurd at this time of day.

Do not let us quarrel about the details of about the Bill of the Noble Lord opposite, but let us say definitely that we in London recognise that the burdens of poverty shall be spread over the whole Metropolis. Let us recognise that we must have one central authority for levelling rates and controlling the expenditure of the rates. Let us get the Bill into committee and hammer out its details there. Let us give to the people of London one administrative centre making for efficiency. I have not said a word about the question of contracts. Some one said something about inquiries. With thirty-one boards of guardians you have thirty-one opportunities for peculation and all kinds of misdemeanours. You have thirty-one sets of officials open to all kinds of bribes, and you have no business to tolerate that system after all you know about it, and I am afraid you do not know one-tenth. That being so, is it not time that from every point of view we should clear up this mess and give London a simpler administration, so that no child shall be fed at the cost of pauperism, and no woman driven to distress because she will not endure pauperism. For all these reasons I support this Bill, and I hope the House will give it a Second Reading.

Mr. HARRIS

The memorandum which prefaces this Bill states that it adopts the principles of reform with respect to London laid down by the Royal Commission as to which there is no disagreement between the Majority and Minority Reports. So far as this Bill is concerend it aims at unifying Poor Law administration, and I feel it difficult to resist it, although it may not be in the financial interests of my own Constituency. My hon. Friend the Member for the City of London overlooked certain facts. In the first place he appears to have forgotten that a portion of the expenditure of the Poor Law in London is equalised at the present time, and in the next place that the demand for further equalisation is impossible to resist. Therefore, looking at it from the point of view of a rich district, I feel the necessity for some strong central control of the expenditure. My difficulty with regard to this Bill arises from the fact that its actual administrative proposals are not in accord with the recommendations either of the Majority or the Minority Reports of the Royal Commission, and it ignores certain principles laid down in those Reports. The proposal of the Bill is that the London County Council, with its compostion amended so that it shall consist entirely of elected members, shall be the authority to administer, through various specified committees, the powers transferred to it. The Majority of the Royal Commission found that direct election had brought certain evils in its train which ought not to be perpetuated, and they suggested a statutory committee of the county council as a means by which they hoped the evils might be mitigated or removed. The promoters of this Bill do not adopt that proposal, and they are by way of following the recommendations of the Minority, but they discard the essential and vital portions of those recommendations. Let me make that good from the Report of the Minority Commissioners themselves. They say:— It is impossible to expect to get either uniformity or impartiality in decisions on successive cases, if these decisions are arrived at, without automatic check or guidance, by such a many-headed tribunal, of such mutable membership, as is presented by a representative committee. There is no reason to think that the several committees of the Borough or County Borough Councils, subject as they would be to the same influences, though possibly to a lesser extent, would if they had to perform exactly the same duties as the boards of guardians be able to arrive at greater uniformity or impartiality between case and case, than the members of the Destitution Authority. What was the proposal of the Minority Commissioners? It was to divide up the various Poor Law duties between certain committees of the London County Council as this Bill proposes, but also to do what this Bill does not propose, namely, to make each committee submit its proposals to an authority external to them all. The hon. Member for Bow (Mr. Lansbury) no doubt remembers that important recommendation. The Minority Commissioners pointed out that the committees of the county council would have to submit their proposals in the great majority of cases to this external authority. The authority proposed was an official of the county council, to be called the Registrar of Public Assistance, and without his sanction no grant was to be made, though an appeal might lie to a Government Department. Whatever may be the merits of that proposal, at any rate it differs in principle from the proposal of this Bill. The Minority Commissioners said you can entrust these duties to the committees of the county council if you set up this external authority to see that all the proper circumstances are taken into account. I should like to give just a summing up of the proposal which was made by the Minority of the Royal Commission They say:— Thus, for the first time, it would become possible, whilst leaving to representative committees directly responsible to the ratepayers, the whole treatment of the cases, whether in the Institutions or in the home, and even the full responsibility for proposing the grant of home ailment, to secure the advantage of a judicial consideration, case by case, of the economic and other circumstances involved. Under the proposal of the Minority Commissioners that would be secured, but under the proposal of this Bill these duties would be placed in the hands of these committees without any check by this external authority, without any safeguard against the evils referred to both by the Majority and Minority Commissioners, and without, as far as I can see, any effective co-ordination of the work of the different committees. I observe that in the Prevention of Destitution Bill introduced last Session by the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk, and again this Session, the Registrar of Public Assistance takes quite a subordinate position. He is not made the external controlling authority. The work of co-ordination is entrusted to a committee of the county council. I suppose it is realised that committees of the county council would not easily submit to having their proposals rejected by one of their own officials, or by any official. The position of an official who tried to do his duty might be rather an invidious one. While that particular proposal may not be a tenable one, the purposes for which this official was to exist still remain to be met. We have still, if I may use the words of the Minority Commission:— to ensure that the family shall always be regarded as a unit, and that all the circumstances—educational, moral, sanitary, and economic—shall be taken in due proportion into account in the work of these committees. With the abandonment of this proposal for an external controlling official, the recommendations of the Minority Commissioners really fall to the ground. I should like to make that clear from their own report. After having said these various committees might be trusted to admit people to institutions, they go on to say:— to permit the same freedom in the granting of home ailment to all the various committees of the county or county borough councils, each one merely considering the needs of the particular member of the family—the child, the mother and infant, the sick father, the aged grandmother—might easily result, as it frequently does at present, in one family obtaining more than the current income of a respectable artisan. Nor will the establishment of a common register do more than mitigate this evil. What is required is that, before any (beyond temporary) public assistance is given in the home, there should be due consideration, not merely of the need, in respect of treatment of any individual, but of the circumstances of the family as a whole.…It would never do to let all the several committees lie granting home ailment without a common standard of economic necessities and due regard for the possible effect in subsidising wages. They go on to lay stress on the necessity of ensuring that a family shall always be regarded as a unit. The necessity for co-ordination is recognised to some extent by the Prevention of Destitution Bill, and I presume some similar provision is contemplated by Clause 6 Sub-section (d) of this Bill. The Prevention of Destitution Bill proposed to set up a Public Assistance Co-ordination Committee. That corn-mitten was to be some committee of the County Council other than those actually or principally engaged in the work of public assistance. No grant of public assistance was to be made without a certificate of non-overlapping from this coordination committee. My criticism of that proposal is this: It sets up one committee of the county council to control the action of other committees of equal authority and possibly of larger numbers, and committees with separate staffs. The committee exercising the control would presumably be also one with less experience in public assistance than the committees to be controlled. It does not seem to me that is a proposal which would work. I cannot imagine the Education Committee of the London County Council, a large and powerful committee, easily submitting to having its proposals rejected by this co-ordination committee. The result would be constant appeals to the council, and then I am afraid you would not get that judicial consideration which the Minority thought to secure by their proposals. You are much more likely to have cases decided on the council by appeals to popular prejudice.

I cannot help thinking that if the London County Council is to be the authority we shall have to deal with the matter on somewhat different lines. If it is to be the authority you ought not to divide the work up between four or five committees of the council. You should concentrate it in the hands of one single committee. The work would naturally be divided up into sections between the committee and the various sub-committees, but it is essential, I believe, to have a single committee competent to see that all circumstances, economical and others, are duly taken into consideration. The relationship of that committee to the administrative committees ought to be that of a committee to its sub-committees, and the public assistance committee should have the control of all the staff dealing with public assistance work. I think we should then get a much better system of co-ordination if the London County Council is to be the authority. I confess I very much doubt whether it is desirable to throw on the London County Council direct and continuous responsibility for administering the public assistance which is proposed by this Bill.

Under the Bill the London County Council is not required to delegate any powers whatever. It may do so, but my experience of the council is that it is always reluctant to delegate, and, therefore, you must contemplate the probability that you will have on the agenda paper of the London County Council, week after week, a long number of reports—or even a single report—dealing with public assistance similar to those which the Education Committee now present so regularly to the council. Speaking as an ex-chairman of the county council, I am inclined to think that the effectiveness of the council's supervision over the work of its committees and the opportunity it has for the public discussion of large questions, which I think have been very useful in the past, would be lessened by the transfer to the council of the work of education, and I think it will be further reduced if you require the council to conduct the work of public assistance on the same lines as it conducts the work of education.

For these reasons, therefore, I am inclined to think we should do well if we dealt with the matter on somewhat different lines. Quite apart from those domestic reasons I think we must take into account the evils connected with the administration by directly elected bodies on which both the Minority and the Majority of the Royal Commission lay considerable stress. This Bill exhibits almost a superfluity of naughtiness, seeing that it proposes to convert the London County Council into a body of directly elected persons. Surely it would be better to take note of the warning of the Royal Commission and to frame the scheme more on the lines they suggest. I confess I should prefer to confine the work of the London County Council, if it is to be the authority, to general financial control and to a periodic review of the work of public assistance. Possibly it might lay down regulations for the administration of the work, but I would suggest that the work of every day administration should be entrusted to a statutory committee, on which there should be a majority of members of the county council and also a minority composed of persons not directly elected. I know there are certain drawbacks to that proposal. The Council might sometimes feel that it was being affixed with responsibility for what the statutory com- mittee was doing which they might not be able immediately or effectively to regulate. On the other hand, the council would have the very important power of the purse and the power of appointing the larger number of the members of the committee. I think that the withdrawal of the council from direct every-day responsibility would relieve it of a great burden and enable it to take a broader view of the great problem of public assistance than would be possible if it were required to administer week by week the small details of public assistance administration.

Whatever view may be taken with regard to that this fact remains: that this Bill is not in accord with the recommendations either of the Majority or of the Minority of the Royal Commission; that it ignores those evils which were pointed out by the Majority and the Minority, and of which I think some account must be taken in any scheme that is framed. Though I accept the Bill so far as it follows the recommendations of the Commission and so far as it aims at unifying Poor Law administration, I feel it requires such drastic amendment that I cannot support it in its present form. I presume it has been brought forward in order to promote useful discussion on this important subject, and from that point of view, I welcome it, as I am anxious to co-operate with hon. Gentlemen opposite in order to have this matter directly and effectively dealt with.

Mr. PICKERSGILL

I took an active part nearly thirty years ago in the public agitation which resulted in the creation of the London County Council. I was subsequently a member of that body, therefore it cannot be supposed that I am hostile to the council. On the contrary, I am warmly in sympathy with it. But what I have seen is this: that year by year duty after duty has been heaped on the London County Council, culminating in the enormous work of London education, with the result that there has been, and there is now— and I say it deliberately—an almost total negation of all self-government and that officialism is rampant. It is proposed by this Bill to pile upon this stupendous fabric the whole work of administering, not the Poor Law only, but also what we hope will before very long be substituted for the Poor Law. To my mind that is a monstrous proposition. In 1884 Sir William Harcourt, in his great London Government Bill—and here I may say incidentally that we London reformers were very much more enthusiastically in favour of the centralisation than some of us are now after experience—that Bill of 1884 did not propose to confer the administration of the Poor Law upon a central authority. Not only does this Bill propose to do that, but my hon. Friend and colleague in the representation of East London actually wants to do more, and to hand over to the London County Council at all events some of the powers of the borough councils. I hope the borough councils will take warning and note what they are to expect from these megalomaniacs who want to concentrate the whole power into the hands of the London County Council. It will not do to say we are going to increase the number of the London County Council—we are going to increase it at least to 180 or 200 members. That will be no remedy at all; if anything it will make the matter worse, because even now, the London County Council is too large to secure a close and businesslike control of local affairs. Further, I object to the increase of the London County Council on this ground. The majority of your new Members will know nothing whatever about the real needs of the Public Assistance Committee, and therefore the majority will starve the service of the Public Assistance Committee just as they are now starving the service of the Public Education of London.

I am really surprised on looking through the details of this Bill to see how completely it fails to carry out the professed object of its promoters. I thought that they were extremely anxious to simplify matters, that they pointed out that at present a workman's family was dealt with by a number of different authorities, and it was desirable to simplify and unify. But your very simplifying and unifying proposals of the Bill will complicate matters under it. There would be at least three committees, and there might be four, who would be dealing with different individuals of the same family at the same time, or with the same individual of the same family at different times, and not only so, but each of these standing committees would have its own army of inspectors and officials acting independently and under different orders. Something might be said, and truly, of the antagonism and friction which occasionally exists between different elected bodies but that would be nothing as compared with the antagonism, friction and jealousy which would exist between these great Standing Committees and their officials under the great unwieldy body which this Bill proposes to bring into existence. Even the Poor Law has to be administered by local public assistance Committees chosen by the Council, and there is no provision that those nominated persons should even be resident or interested in the locality for which they are concerned. I have no doubt that the effect would be to bring down very superior persons from the West End in order to administer the affairs of Bethnal Green. I object to that. At all events, these local committees ought to be composed of local persons who know the needs of the locality and are intimately acquainted with the district. The fact is that the position of these local committees will be exactly the present position of the managers of the London County Council schools, and anyone who happens to be a manager, as I am, knows that that relation is not a satisfactory or business-like one.

My hon. Friend said that there ought to be only one rating authority for London. Really that does not arise on the issue which we are considering to-day. I quite agree that there ought to be only one authority to collect rates in London, and I will go further and say that there ought to be only one authority to assess property in London. But granted that what is to prevent one spending authority in London presenting its precept to the collecting authority and the collecting authority taking and levying the rate and paying it over to the spending authority. That is not inconsistent with any canon of good government which we know to exist. The only condition which has to be made is that the spending authority should be representative of the whole area of the ratepayers who have to pay the money. My hon. Friends who are promoting this Bill are holding out to London ratepayers the bait of equalization of rates. I am as strong an advocate as any Member in this House of the equalisation of London rates so far as it can properly he done, but even this great boon, the equalisation of London rates, might be bought too dearly, and it would be bought too dearly if you took away from the local people all control over their own local affairs and placed enormous power, as I have endeavoured to show, in the hands of officials and bureaucrats. There is another reason why I hope that the Bill will not be pressed to a Division to-day. In the first place, it is obvious that a question of this enormous magnitude ought not to be dealt with, and cannot properly be dealt with, by a private Member's Bill. There is another consideration, moreover. I cannot conceal from myself that the conditions of the problem have been very materially modified by the proposals which are contained in the National Insurance Bill. I do not think anybody will deny that proposition. We have those proposals now before us, and I think that the judgment of Parliament ought to be pronounced upon them before the larger question of the reform of the Poor Law generally in London or the country at large can properly be taken into account. I hope, therefore, for these and other reasons, with which I will not trouble the House, that this Bill will not be pressed to a Division to-day. If it is so pressed I regret very much, because of my intimate relations with the proposers of the Bill, that I for one shall not be able to vote for it.

Mr. J. S. FLETCHER

I commence by saying how much I agree with the hon. Member who has just sat down. We all feel that in considering the insurance scheme of the Chancellor of the Exchequer we are considering a plan of enormous magnitude and difficulty which we hope must and will affect the position of the larger class of poor people in the country. I hope the hon. Member for Rotherhithe will not press this Bill to a Division, although we are all very much obliged to him for having initiated a very interesting discussion. I think the speeches to-day have been extremely interesting. I shall not have time to travel over the ground traversed by the two hon. Members who proposed the rejection of the Bill and the hon. Member who introduced it, but I want to refer to one or two matters which I think have not been referred to up to the present moment. I am very much astonished that the hon. Member (Mr. Carr-Gomm) makes no mention whatever of the work of women in Poor Law administration. He might really never have heard that there are such things as lady guardians. In Hampstead we have the great honour of electing a third of our board consisting of ladies. I think we are the first or the second borough council in the United Kingdom which has ever had lady guardians, and they have been of the greatest possible value in every respect in increasing the humanity and the sympathy with which we treat the suffering, and especially in women and children entrusted to our care. They have also proved themselves excellent economists; they have gone into matters of detail in which those who study these questions know that, women are remarkably good. Practically the homes in this and every other country are administered economically by the women, the men finding the money and the women administering it. We have found lady guardians of the greatest possible advantage.

One of my strongest objections to this Bill is that there is no provision for women taking part in Poor Law work, and they will be greatly discouraged by it. The reason why ladies have obtained seats on enlightened boards of guardians, like Hampstead, has largely been one which cannot defend, though it is a fact—the little interest taken in guardians' elections. Hardly a tenth of our ratepayers care to vote in guardians' elections, and yet that is partly explained in Hampstead by the fact that we have very good candidates and people do not care vigorously to oppose them, and so the ladies have easily got elected, and have justified their election by their work. There are many women with great administrative powers who have no wish to shine on platforms, and who dislike extremely the party element in elections, and I am convinced that they would cease to come forward under this Bill, and we should lose their services. For that reason chiefly, though there are other reasons, I am strongly in favour of co-opted members. That is the only way in which you can make it possible for a body like the London County Council, which I wish to be the authority in matters of Poor Law, to undertake the work, by having a sufficient number of co-opted members to assist them, and by the cordial co-operation of the borough councils. That is another amazing omission in the Bill. The hon. Member really draws the Bill as though the borough councils of London did not exist. Borough councils have existed for fifteen years, and have done most excellent work, and I am in favour of increasing their power in local matters, and not taking it away. Not only would their co-operation with the London County Council be absolutely necessary for the work to be done with their local knowledge, but it would also be a strong element in preventing too much power, which might become very dangerous in the hands of officials and bureaucrats if we handed the administration of the Poor Law in London too exclusively to the London County Council. Again, going back to the question of the ladies and local people who take an interest in their work, it is the local people in the borough councils who take an interest in Poor Law work, and have administered it with ability for years past, and I want to secure their co-operation in any change which may be made, and I should like to see, not only the borough councils taking an active part, but to see each borough council having its poor administration committee and its local members co-opted on that body, and in that way secure the continued help of the gentlemen and ladies of Hampstead, for example, who have had great experience of the Poor Law, and who, I hope, will continue their work under any change which may be made.

3.0 P.M.

I also think that this Bill is very objectionable in laying down too much in detail what the London County Council is to do. It first gives great powers to the county council and then seems to provide a scheme by which their work is to be regulated in a very cast-iron manner in matters of detail which I think should be left to them to settle. I also should wish them to work under the kindly and paternal supervision of the Local Government Board, and it appears to me that in a way which is hardly straightforward this Bill proposes to remove that wholesome supervision of the Local Government Board, under which the London County Council, of which I am a great admirer, has worked, and which has kept it in touch with the Government of the day. That would be most mischievous. Speaking as an old member of the county council for fifteen years I am strongly against increasing the members of the county council. The restriction of numbers in the borough councils, as compared with the old vestries has been a very good thing. A smaller number of men serving on the borough councils do their work infinitely better than the larger numbers which existed on the old vestries. I am satisfied that the numbers on the London County Council is quite large enough for practical work, and if this additional work is to be handed over to them, by their having experts co-opted on their committee, and with the assistance of the borough councils, I do not think the extra work of administering the Poor Law would crush the London County Council.

There is another matter in which I take a great interest, and which I hope will be set right when we make any change in the arrangements of the Poor Law. I have always thought it would be a most mischievous thing to give free meals to children being educated in London and the country without constant reference to the conditions of the family. I hold that strongly, and I was glad to hear the hon. Member (Mr. Lansbury) say that the unit of relief should be the family. The great aim and object of any Poor Law system should be, as far as it can be done, to keep the family on its legs, and where the family is in danger of being submerged to make it possible for the family to be restored to independence as soon as possible. While thoroughly convinced of the absolute necessity of feeding many of our children while they are being compulsorily educated, I have always felt that relief should be given by relieving the family and not that one, two, or three children should be taken and fed without any full knowledge of the conditions of their fathers and mothers. It is a bad thing for the children. It makes them selfish when they feel that their stomachs are filled and their relations at home are neglected, or in some cases I am told, and I am willing to believe it, that poor children have been found hiding portions of food in their garments to take them home to their relations, who were in a condition of starvation. I hope therefore when this work is handed over to the county council there will always be reference to the condition of the family at home before the free food is given to the children.

With regard to the nomination and election of members of local public assistance committees the arrangement seems to be quite inconsistent with the memorandum of the Bill, which speaks strongly about that work being done by elected members. They say in the memorandum that its numbers should be increased, but I object to that, and that it shall consist of elected members only. That seems to be inconsistent with the principle of objecting altogether to co-opted members. The Bill speaks of the appointment by the council of officers for executing the powers and duties conferred upon relieving officers by the Poor Law. One of the difficulties in dealing with any change in the Poor Law is that both the Minority and Majority Reports appear to attach great importance to altering the names of things without any regard to the fact that there must be some name. Relieving officers have always been unpopular. It will not get rid of their unpopularity to call them by some other name. I maintain that under any system of Poor Law relief we must have some machinery which will deal with the poor on well considered lines, but not deal with them with the view of obtaining popularity in the locality in which they live. There are many points which I should like to speak upon, but I shall only express the hope that the hon. Member for Rotherhithe (Mr. Carr-Gomm) will be content with the interesting discussion which is going on and will not press the measure to a Division, for I am sorry that I cannot support him.

Mr. EDWARD STRAUSS

I wish to refer briefly to some of the speeches made by hon. Gentlemen opposite. I must say that, with one or two exceptions, I was somewhat surprised to hear hon. Members opposite say that they could not support the Bill. They have referred to various proposals with which they do not agree. In my opinion, they are committee points which are not vital to the Bill. I do say, with all sincerity—and I am sure everyone who comes in contact with the daily lives of the poor of this great metropolis will agree with me—that we welcome very cordially any discussion which will concentrate more attention on this great problem—the greatest problem we have to grapple with in London. Whatever our views may be on the provisions of the Bill, we are very grateful to the hon. Member for Rotherhithe for introducing the measure and giving London Members an opportunity of expressing their views on this very complex and difficult question. I do not know if my hon. Friend is so sanguine as to believe that this Bill will find a place on the Statute Book in the course of this Session, but I do think that when time does come for dealing with an alteration of our Poor Law system due consideration ought to be given, not only to the question of children under Clause 8 of school age, and who are, therefore, under the system of the Board of Education; but that due consideration ought to be given to the beneficent results of the Old Age Pensions Act, and the great possibilities of the scheme of National Insurance. I am sure that we on this side of the House, and I believe hon. Members on the other side as well, expect great things from these two important measures. At the same time we would all welcome in London an equal rate for the whole county. We have been asking for it for many years, and anything which will further that great desire of London ratepayers will, I am sure, receive the hearty support of all Members of this House who are acquainted with this very important subject.

Naturally, it is a change which can take place only if we have an alteration in the administration of the Poor Law of London. Under this Bill these important functions are to be transferred to the London County Council. All of us know full well that the duties which are already cast on that important body are very onerous. They can hardly discharge their important work satisfactorily at the present time. Therefore I trust, if the number of councillors are increased as suggested in the Bill, we shall do all we can to be very careful that those who administer the Poor Law shall be elected representatives, and that those important duties shall not be relegated to officials, or to what I might call busybodies, in the committees to be established under the Bill. I, for one, would object to see our unfortunate and poorer neighbours placed at the tender mercies of officials and those busybodies who are responsible to nobody. I have had the good fortune to know a large number of members of boards of guardians in London. Although they may have shortcomings, I can speak of the magnificent work which a large number of them have done in the past. Whatever may be in store for them in future, and whatever authority may take charge of their important duties, I sincerely trust that we shall always have the advantage of the experience and knowledge of members of boards of guardians in one capacity or another. I think we ought to be very grateful to the large majority of members of boards of guardians for the good work they have done.

So far as the finance of this Bill is concerned, possibly we cannot get an equal rate for the whole county at once, but some progress might be made in the direction of the equalisation of the rate for the Poor Law. Something might be done on the lines of equalisation which we have at the present time for borough council purposes. It is not a perfect method of dealing with this matter, but it will do something to relieve the poorer districts of London which under the present system have to bear the largest burden of taxation. I suggest that method. I think it could be done by fixing the minimum cost for a pauper and allotting that sum to the various unions and boards of guardians. It is only a temporary expedient, but it would, I am sure, relieve the poorer unions in London of a great burden of taxation. When once the great scheme of National Insurance has been on the Statute Book for a few years, and when we have insurance against sickness, invalidity, and unemployment, together with the Old Age Pensions Act, as part of our great social system, I am sure that even the most pessimistic individual will not hesitate to prophesy that the number of paupers who will have to seek relief will be greatly reduced. Even now there are very few members of friendly societies who come before boards of guardians asking relief. I have asked many members of boards of guardians on the subject, and they all admit that it is very seldom a member of a friendly society comes before a board of guardians for Poor Law relief. Since the passing of the Old Age Pensions Act, we have found that the number of paupers all over the country has also decreased. We have, therefore, much reason to expect great things from these social measures. There is another thing to which, as an ex-rural Member of Parliament, I attach great importance. I trust that the day is not far distant when we shall have a successful land council which will do something to lessen the migration of people from rural villages to the towns. I gladly admit that the Small Holdings Act has alone something in this direction. It has already converted 100,000 acres into small holdings, on which there are now four or five times as many people employed as there were before the land was so converted. And when some of the slums of our great towns are cleared away, when light and air are introduced in place of the foul conditions which prevail at present, I really think that this question of Poor Law reform will not be the great problem which faces us at the present time, and that those who will be called upon to deal with it, if they are sensible, reasonable individuals, will be able to do so with great advantage to the community.

Mr. SPEAR

While I appreciate the spirit of the hon. Member in bringing this question before the House, I am sorry I cannot support the Bill, because I do not think that the taking away of the administration of the Poor Law from boards of guardians and giving it to the county councils will promote the better application of the Poor Law to a more considerate treatment of the poor, and I am certain it will greatly increase the financial burden. Therefore I am driven to vote against the Bill. I know as regards the London County Council, and all the county councils at present, that we are almost overburdened with work, to such an extent indeed that we are obliged to delegate much of the work to paid officials, and I am satisfied that if we place the administration of the Poor Law in the hands of the county council it would be disastrous to the poor, and will still further burden and injure the efficient performance of the heavy duties which already devolve on these public bodies. I also object to the Bill because it does away with the representative character of the public assistance committee. Boards of guardians hitherto have felt a very deep interest in their work. They have a knowledge of the poor and the history of the family and an acquaintance with the cases that cannot be in the possession of the public assistance committee. I know it is suggested that the county council would appoint men and women who have had experience as guardians on those committees. But they will be in a very different position as the nominees of the county council from what they would be in as the elected of the people for the administration of the Poor Law. And I feel from experience as a guardian that there would be a danger of a diminution of interest, and there would be a lack of the requisite knowledge by the members of the public assistance committee to deal with the application of the Poor Law in a way that would be considerate to the poor, and at the same time just to the ratepayer.

While saying that I quite feel that there is roam for a still more efficient application of the Poor Law. But I am satisfied that if boards of guardians have increased power they can deal with all these aspects of Poor Law relief with greater efficiency, and I believe in a better manner than would be the case if boards of guardians were scrapped, and the administration was placed in the hands of the county council. While we who are guardians would like to see some machinery that would enable us more effectively to deal with the prevention of poverty and pauperism, and also would like to have more powers of a curative character, yet looking at the history of the Poor Law administration since 1834 we must feel that boards of guardians have rendered great service to the country by the work which they have done, and that they have secured results which to a very large extent indeed are entitled to the approval of all who are interested in bettering the condition of the poorer classes. In 1850 we had sixty-two people per thousand in receipt of Poor Law relief. In 1909 the number was reduced to twenty-six, and since then it has been further reduced to eighteen per thousand. With the able help of the present President of the Poor Law Board enabling guardians who have been enthusiastic still further to improve the lot of the poor in their charge, we are today effecting improvements in the administration of the Poor Law which I think entitle guardians to the respect of the people and the continuation of confidence in their labours in dealing with this great question.

In 1850 outdoor poor received relief to the extent of fifty-four per thousand. That number is now reduced to eleven per thousand. With regard to children, all boards of guardians have been most anxious to do what they can to separate children from the associants with the workhouse. They are placed in cottage homes, and much is done, perhaps all that can reasonably be done to enable these children to grow up forgetful that they were once connected with Poor Law relief. The result is that during the same period the number of children connected with the Poor Law administration has been reduced from twenty-six per thousand to seven. Able-bodied outdoor relief has been reduced from twelve to two per thousand, and indoor relief has increased from £7 18s. per head to £13, which is evidence that guardians have recognised the desirability of securing better nursing and better feeding and more perfect sanitary arrangements for the people who are put in their charge. All this goes to show that the administration of the Poor Law by boards of guardians has a record that cannot be excelled by any administrative body in the country. The Poor Law Association of England and Wales, with which are affiliated 540 boards of guardians, are almost unanimously against what is termed the scrapping of boards of guardians and the placing of the administration of the Poor Law under the county council. I know some may be inclined to say that the Poor Law Association are jealous of their dignity. As vice-chairman of that body, I say that if Gentlemen who speak in those terms would only attend our annual meeting and there see about 600 or 700 men and women who have devoted their life work to the administra- tion of the Poor Law, they would be convinced that we have come to that conclusion not from any selfish or narrow ideas but because we are satisfied that the guardians who know the circumstances of the poor with whom they have to deal are able to approach the questions of the poor in a more sympathetic and more effectual manner than would be the case if the Poor Law administration were placed under the county council.

I remember when the question of Poor Law Boards was under discussion it was pointed out that 84 to 90 per cent. of the total of pauperism to be dealt with arose from physical, mental, or other disabilities. If that be so, surely the great step to be taken under the Insurance Bill should do something to mitigate and reduce the number who will eventually have to come to the Poor Law administrators. Therefore; I feel compelled to vote against the Bill, not only because I object to centralisation but because I believe in government of the people for the people by the people. Guardians are in touch with the people and with the claims of the poor, and, as ratepayers, they feel the responsibility of carrying out the work of Poor Law administration as economically as it can be done, having due regard to justice to the poor. From long association with hoards of guardians I can say with confidence that they labour in the interests of the poor, though I am aware that theorists are apt to speak in rather disparaging terms of them. I do not yield to the hon. Member for Rotherhithe, or anyone else, in a desire to promote the interests and well being of the poorer classes of our country. I should be rather inclined, if I had the time, to follow the hon. Member who referred to it into the land question; but I will not do that except to say that we recognise that one of the real remedies for poverty and overcrowding in the town is to get more people to live in the country districts. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Hon. Members say: "Hear, hear."

I know that in theory they agree to that principle, but I would remind them that the only way you can get more people to live in the country districts is to make it better worth their while to stay there. But your land laws and your Budget are doing the very thing to drive them away from the land, and to make it impossible for farmers to carry on their work in a way that will lead to a reasonable amount of success, and enable them to employ workmen and pay them better, as they would like to do. The very steps which you Gentlemen opposite are taking are doing more to carry possible ruin to the rural districts than any steps that have been taken for a long time. But that is by the way. We all want to get more people to live upon the land, and we want to see them better housed.

Mr. EDWARD STRAUSS

Are there many vacant farms in this country?

Mr. SPEAR

No, there are not many vacant farms, because happily the agricultural class are the most industrious and persevering of all the community. I make bold to say that for fifteen years the average British farmer has not had a penny interest on his capital. He has simply had bread and cheese for his labour. Yet be has persevered, and by the liberal cooperation and help of the landlords he has kept his head above water. One of, the reasons why land has been taken up so generally and so readily by the people—a matter which we all rejoice to see—is that in the depression since 1879 the farmers could hardly afford to employ labour, and their sons were very anxious to stay at home instead of going into business.

Mr. SPEAKER

The hon. Member should address the House upon this Bill.

Mr. SPEAR

I bow with great respect to your ruling, Sir. I was following my hon. Friend opposite, and I only mention the matter as having a bearing on the question of the rural population, which is very closely touched by Poor Law administration. With reference to the Bill, I do not believe it will be in the interests of the poor themselves, or in the interests of economy, or in the interest of encouraging them in local administration. I shall certainly vote against the Bill. Apart from the merits of the particular question with which we are dealing, I consider that the matter of Poor Law administration should not be dealt with in a private Member's Bill, but should be dealt with by the Government in power. In the meantime I do hope t hat the result of old age pensions, and of the Insurance Bill, if it becomes law, will have some effect in lessening, or at least not of increasing, the machinery for dealing with the poor. At any rate, until we have seen the full effect and development of those great; measures it would be unbusinesslike and wrong to scrap the boards of guardians and set up a big system which would be autocratic in its action and, in my opinion, would alienate some of the best men and women from cooperating and dealing with the problem of the poor, and from devoting their best interests ungrudgingly to promote the welfare of the poorer classes.

Mr. DICKINSON

The observation made by my hon. Friend opposite just now, and which has been made by one or two Members in the course of this Debate, that in their opinion this matter ought to be dealt with by a Government Bill, and not by a Bill brought forward by a private Member, somewhat disregards the fact that really the only method which is now open to a private Member to have a thorough discussion upon a point in which he is interested is to take advantage of the fortune which the ballot has given him to bring forward his proposal in the form of a Bill. We do not anticipate or expect that the Bill will go through all its stages this year, but I submit to the House that it is a far better method of bringing forward a question than to put clown an ordinary Motion, on which no real criticism is obtained. But the Member for Rotherhithe stated in his opening speech that he brought forward this Bill on the direct invitation of the Local Government Board. As was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board in 1909 distinctly asked us to turn our attention to the question from the point of view of the reform of Poor Law administration in London. We have done so, and my hon. Friend has prepared this Bill. I would submit to the House that the discussion we have had to-day upon the details and also on the principle shows that it is an advantage for the House to have a Bill before it in order that they may see what the objections to the proposals in detail are, whereas possibly they might accept a Motion on the principle without really thoroughly sifting the matter. The hon. Member who spoke last has given us his opinion from the point of view of the administrator in, I presume, the provinces. With great respect I would say to him that I do not propose to follow upon his remarks, because I think he will see, and anybody who has examined the question will see, that the question of Poor Law in London stands altogether by itself.

The Majority Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law, and in this the Minority concurred, stated that the case for the abolition of boards of guardians has been more conclusively demonstrated in London than in any other part of the Kingdom. What we suffer from in London largely is this, that hon. Members who naturally have not got the opportunity of thoroughly studying London questions imagine that questions in London can be dealt with upon a similar system to that which is applied with regard to the rest of the country. The hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London said that this ought to be part of a general Bill. I venture to remind him that almost ever since the original Poor Law Act was applied to the whole of the country that London has been specially dealt with on Poor Law matters time after time by Parliament, and by Orders of the Local Government Board. Whether it is part of a national Bill or not it will have to form a special portion of it, and it will have to have special provisions made for it. London differs from every other community in some very remarkable ways. First of all, there is its size. The management of the affairs of 5,000,000 of a population must always be a very difficult question to provide for. Then it differs in other ways. It is perhaps the spot where the greatest amount of wealth is accumulated, yet that wealth is accumulated in certain parts and not in others. The consequence is, if you divide London and put the poor on one side and the rich districts on the other, you are forced to engineer a method whereby you can bring the wealth of the wealthy districts to help the poverty of the poor districts. This is a question that goes far beyond the question of rating. When you have a condition of affairs in London under which a place like Poplar is rated at 12s. in the£ you bring about a condition of social affairs that is unknown elsewhere.

We have at the present moment, as a result of this, a movement away from London of population and of industries. London is still the greatest manufacturing centre in England, but no industry in the east end of London can stand the high rates, and they are being driven away on that account. Those rates are high through no other reason but the fact that the City of London is exempt from taking its fair share of the burden. The question of the reform of London administration is based on the question of London finance, and London finance is absolutely peculiar in its conditions. The problem before us and before the President of the Local Government Board, or anyone who deals with this question is two-fold, namely, the problem of finance and the problem of administra- tion. My hon. Friend who spoke so shortly and to the point, the hon. Member for Southwark (Mr. E. H. Strauss), who I am glad has been able to take part in this Debate, threw out the suggestion that differential rating could be solved by some extension of the equalisation of rating system, which was adopted by this House. With great respect I would advise him that it is because he has not had the opportunity to thoroughly investigate the financial position that he makes that suggestion. It is that method of dealing with the subject which has been adopted year after year and with, I may say, absolute failure. In the first place, in 1867 the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund was initiated in order to meet this difficulty, the difficulty being that you had a lot of separate boards of guardians, separately responsible to their ratepayers, separately charged with maintaining the poor, and they had to provide all their own expenditure out of their own rates. The Metropolitan Common Poor Fund was initiated with immediate advantage. Let me illustrate. In Whitechapel the rates before that fund were 5s. 10d., and after the change 4s. 3d. In Paddington the rate was 3s. 6d., and afterwards 3s. 9d., therefore there was an immediate change, the burden in Paddington increasing, while there was relief in Whitechapel at one and the same time.

The rates still continued to rise till in 1888 the Local Government Board, with Mr. Ritchie as president, was convinced that something more must be done, and a further method of equalisation was brought about and a system initiated under which the county council gave grants in respect of indoor paupers. Before that provision the rate in Bethnal Green was 6s. 8d., and afterwards 5s. 10d. In St. Martin's the rate was 4s. 4d., and afterwards 4s. 10d., thus we had the same process of change. And yet those divergences still go on, and at the present moment they are so great that, as my hon. Friend pointed out, in Poplar the rate is 12s., while in St. Anne's, Westminster, it is 6s. 2d. That is due to the fact that, notwithstanding that out of a total expenditure of something like £17,000,000 for local administration in London, some £14,000,000 are spread over the whole of London, the amounts which fall locally on the poor rates are enormously different. Putting on one side all the money which the guardians receive from the central funds, and taking only the amounts for which the guardians themselves are responsible, you find that in Poplar this involved a rate in 1910 of 3s. 5d. in the £, whereas in St. James's, Westminster, the rate was only ld. That is what we are dealing with in this Bill. I say with great respect to my hon. Friend, do not those facts differentiate London from the rest of the country? They prove this too, that however much you may try to equalise rates by the process of a common Metropolitan Poor Fund, or any similar process, you do not attain your object, and that the only way in which you can really attain your object is to unify the administration at the same time as you try to unify the rates. That is the conclusion which everybody who has inquired into this question has arrived at. The Majority of the Poor Law Commissioners, after dealing with the question of taxation, state:— The first reform necessary in our judgment is the total abolition of the boards of guardians, and the establishment of a unified London for all purposes of public necessity. That was said by a very responsible, powerful, and experienced Commission. The Minority agreed upon the same principle. On the agenda paper of the London County Council this very week there is an elaborate report on the same subject, in which they themselves point out that what is necessary for a unified rate is a unified system of Poor Law administration. Everybody who has followed this Debate must have been struck by the fact that on this general principle there is very little divergence of opinion. The hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. Peel) has had much experience on the London County Council; he knows exactly what the county council can do. He knows as well as any of us what the position of London is; but he distinctly stated that he was in favour of some kind of unified administration. In the Bill introduced by the Noble Lord the Member for Bath (Lord A. Thynne) it is distinctly laid down that on all questions of finance—and finance is at the bottom of the whole matter—the London County Council is to be responsible. As we have reached a point at which there is such general agreement, we ought to be able to go forward to find a solution in detail based upon that general principle.

Finance must be centralised, rates must be unified, and, in order to do that effectively, administration must also be unified. How can that be done? We have had a very instructive discussion this afternoon upon the various methods. There are only three, and I do not believe that even the President of the Local Government Board will be able to discover a fourth. The first proposal is to set up a separate body altogether; the second is the proposal made by the majority of the Royal Commission, to establish a Statutory Committee; the third is the proposal of my hon. Friend, which is more in accordance with the Minority Report, to put the ultimate power in the hands of the London County Council, and to give them power through their committees to deal with the matter in the best way they can. As to the proposal for a separate body, when anybody comes to elaborate the details it is found to be impossible. If you are to have a really separate body, such as the London School Board was, to remove from the county council all its responsibility and work in relation to this matter, that authority must be directly elected. I do not believe that anybody could establish a separate authority which would have to borrow £30,000,000 or £40,000,000 on the security of the rates, and to spend £4,000,000 or £5,000,000 annually of the ratepayers' money, unless that body were directly elected by the people. If that is so, there comes in the great question of London elections. We who have had much experience of London elections do not believe that it would be possible to get together in London a satisfactory body directly elected if all that it was elected for was merely the purposes of Poor Law administration, and perhaps to look after a certain number of lunatics and imbeciles. The present difficulty in London is to bring enough interest to bear upon the election of the London County Council. You will do great detriment to London if you think of establishing a separate directly elected body merely for the purpose of administering the Poor Law.

Then we come to the statutory committee. A great many people jump at the statutory committee, and think it an extremely easy and satisfactory way of getting over the difficulty. Perhaps they have not thought sufficiently about the matter. It is to be established for what purpose? Because it is thought that the county council by itself would not be able to do the work, and that you would get upon this committee people to do work which if put on the county council would over-burden it. But you have not done with the question when you have said that. The statutory committee itself would impose a great burden upon the county council. We have had experience of that in connection with education. It is all very well to say that you will bring in co-opted members, but you are bound, as is shown by the Bill proposed by the Noble Lord opposite, if the committee is to have power to spend the ratepayers' money, to have on that committee a majority of representatives at the electors. Therefore, if you have a statutory committee of sixty members, you must have thirty members of the London County Council on the committee. That in itself is no light burden on the council. In my opinion the only way to lighten the burden on the county council is by some well thought-out scheme of delegation to committees and local management. You can delegate very large authority if the committees to which you delegate it are composed of directly representative members. You can give powers of expenditure to such a body which you cannot give to a body which does not consist entirely of members of the council. We have seen that on the county council in connection with the Education Committee. The work of the county council has been added to enormously by reason of the fact that the county council could not see its way to delegate to the Education Committee all that might have been delegated. You have in all these matters to consider the question of delegation, and you can have no effective delegation unless you have a body to delegate to consisting of elected members, who serve also on the council itself and can there give vent to their views.

Another objection, which I think is of the utmost importance, is that if you have a Statutory Committee for this purpose it will be a Poor Law Committee. I cannot imagine the establishment of a Statutory Committee unless it is to take the place of the guardians and become a destitution authority. That is where the minority of the Royal Commission differed from the majority. That is where there is a great cleavage of opinion. But even here there is no cleavage of opinion on all points. Hon. Members opposite have admitted that even if we had a Statutory Committee certain subjects would be taken away from its jurisdiction. There is the question of education. No one would put Poor Law children under the statutory authority. The feeble-minded and lunatics ought not to be put under any statutory authority having the colour of pauperism. If you have a Statutory Committee you will be almost bound to make it a Poor Law authority, and then you have the old system under which people are dealt, with because they are paupers, and not because they want help in other respects. There is also one other objection to that; that is, are they going to put anything else on to a Statutory Committee? I do not know what the right hon. Gentleman is going to say, but I have a shrewd notion that he is going to suggest to this House that the House ought not to pass this Bill, because there is the question of invalidity insurance and old age pensions in hand—as to which he made us an eloquent speech the other day.

This raises a very important point. If you are going to establish a Statutory Committee, essentially a Poor Law committee, are you going to give to it the work that the county council now does with regard to old age pensions? Are you going to give the work that the county council health committees do in relation to invalidity insurance to it? If you do you will put back pensions and invalidity insurance into the Poor Law. I do not believe that the Government would venture for one moment to establish an authority which was ostensibly a Poor Law authority and then give it these powers in relation to pensions and invalidity insurance. If they do not do that who is going to do these things? The county council at present looks after the pension business so far as that business is clone by the local authority. At all events these committees get their chief support from the county council. [An HON. MEMBER: "No."] An hon. Member says "No." I think it would be very difficult to establish these committees unless they were connected in some way or another with the county council. Seeing you have to use the county council for this purpose, I devoutly hope that no suggestion will be made that the work at present done by the bodies responsible will be put on to a Statutory Committee; that is to say, the work connected with invalidity insurance and old age pensions.

The two Bills introduced by the Noble Lord opposite and the present Bill proceed very largely upon the same lines. Both give the county council very wide powers. I cannot see why, when this Parliament is overburdened with work, as it is at the present time, you should not leave these matters to be elaborated and dealt with by the local authority. There is no one so well qualified to do the work as the London County Council, which, through its officers, are far better qualified to do the work than the Local Government Board. The Local Government Board has not special knowledge with regard to London management and administration. The London County Council has many years of bitter experience of this fact. It has been borne in upon the minds of everyone connected with the council. The London County Council, from its knowledge and experience, could elaborate a scheme which would be most satisfactory. That is the reason why we suggested that the council should prepare a scheme and that that scheme should be a subject for discussion during the time that elapses before the next county council comes into existence. The House has not had the opportunity of discussing or realising what is in the Bill of the Noble Lord. If I may be allowed, I would like to deal with four or five of the main points. The Noble Lord proposes that all financial authority should be in the hands of the county council. The present Bill does exactly the same thing. The Noble Lord's Bill provides for the appointment of local managers; so does ours. There is a little difference, mainly difference in detail, as to the method by which the boards of management are to he appointed.

4.0 P.M.

The Noble Lord suggests that all Poor Law matters should be left, to one committee. The Bill now before the House proposes that it should be left to the county council to distribute amongst its various committees as it thinks best. The Noble Lord's proposal lays down in very elaborate terms indeed a great scheme of administration. By our Bill this is left for the consideration of the Local Government Board. He adds co-opted members on the Statutory Committee. This Bill does not prohibit it in any way whatsoever. This Bill does propose to do away with aldermen, and if I may explain the reason, it is this: we felt we were not justified in withdrawing from the electors of London any control which at the present time they have over the boards of guardians. That is one of the reasons why we thought that all these matters, which are matters for discussion, should be discussed, and when once we get to Committee I feel certain that in the course of discussion a scheme will be mapped out that will be satisfactory. I do not know what course is going to be taken, but I cannot help thinking that there is no better tribunal for discussing these questions than a Grand Committee of this House, especially if we can have the advantage of discussing at the same time the Bill which is proposed by the Noble Lord. That, of course, is out of our hands.

I do most earnestly venture to urge upon the right hon. Gentleman that when he finds that on broad principles the representatives of London on both sides of the House are agreed to a very great extent. [HON. MEMBER: "No, no."] If my hon. Friend who dissents will read through the two Bills he will be startled at seeing how far on principle they agree. It is all very well for the right hon. Gentleman to laugh and to imagine that he can take advantage of the criticism in detail that there has been. I admit at once that there has been important criticism of detail, but of mere detail, and if we are agreed, as I believe we are, on the broad principles, that there should be one poor rate throughout London levied by the London County Council, that the administration should be in the hands of committees, either statutory or otherwise, of the London County Council, then I do venture to say to him that he should allow this matter to go a step further, or at any rate allow us to see how far we can come to agreement upon it. Because this is a matter which is very urgently needed in London, and we ought not to allow an opportunity like this on a Friday afternoon to slip away without any result, merely to eventuate in what may be called a series of expressions of pious opinions. I do trust the right hon. Gentleman, even if he cannot see his way to let the Bill go upstairs, if he thinks it is better to consider it on the floor of the House, I do earnestly urge upon him that he shall not disregard the fact that there is a great, genuine, unanimous desire to deal with this subject at a very early date on, at any rate, some broad principles on which there is a very wide consensus of opinion.

Mr. H. W. FORSTER

The lion. Member who has just sat down has made an able speech. He has a strong idea of what is the most desirable policy to pursue in regard to London, and he never hesitates to express it, and always ably and with great clearness. I am bound to say that his policy is one with which I do not myself agree. But I could wish that the two great parties who have to manage London's affairs could come rather closer together as to the problems involved. The hon. Gentleman who has just spoken urges the very great measure of unanimity of opinion amongst London Members with regard to the problem involved in the Bill which is now before the House. I think there is very great unanimity in favour of some change. That opinion is very strongly held not only by the Members who sit for London, but by other Members who represent other parts of the country in the present House of Commons. It is rather remarkable that the chances of the ballot should have brought about a discussion of this Bill and sandwiched that discussion between discussions which relate to wider and larger areas, but covering, to some extent, the same ground. I think it is just as well that this discussion should have taken place at a time when our minds are pretty full of the larger question.

In my judgment you cannot properly deal with London by itself. I know it may be urged that the conditions of London differ from the conditions of any other part of the country, and that, therefore, it is possible to do so. I do not deny the possibility, and if it is possible to deal with London by itself as a separate unit, I do but deny it is desirable. I know the hon. Gentleman the Member for North St. Pancras has large views. I know that he sees in the future the possibility of pushing the boundaries of London further out from the centre and embracing those areas which now he outside the London boundaries. There may be a great deal said in favour of that, but I think before you do that you ought to secure the assent of the areas affected. I happen to sit for one of those areas, and I do not think my Constituents would view with any great enthusiasm the prospect of having created a separate authority for the administration of the Poor Law in London after which the London boundaries should be so altered, so that they should be brought in under a system to which they were not consenting parties.

I am not going to argue the merits or the demerits of this Bill, neither am I going to make any such reference to the Bill introduced by my Noble Friend the Member for Bath, but if I had to choose between the two I would prefer the Bill of my Noble Friend to the Bill introduced this afternoon. I think the time is inopportune for making changes in our Poor Law system on account of the passage of the Old Age Pensions Act and the introduction of a measure dealing with health and insurance and invalidity. I take up this broad ground that it is not desirable to make a change in our Poor Law system, unless the change is going to be permanent, and I do not think anyone would say that any change introduced this afternoon, whether affecting London as a whole, or affecting other parts of the country as well, could be said to have any prospect of being permanent in view of the Insurance Bill of the Government. The whole position reminds me of the toy that I used to play with when a child—the old-fashioned kaleidoscope. You shook it up and looked through, and you got ever-varying shades of colour. So it is with the problem of the Poor Law at the present time. Many of us have urged a review of the Poor Law system ever since the Poor Law Commission reported. I admit that there seems to be some inconsistency in these proposals. May I point out that the problem is not now wholly the same problem as that which was submitted to the Poor Law Commission. The right hon. Gentleman got into trouble for referring to the reports as being archaic and obsolete, and the expressions used by him at any rate were in the nature of picturesque phrases, in which he said the problem had changed since the Commission had examined into the question, and even since the report of the Commission was issued. The position has been most materially affected, not only by the provision of old age pensions, but by the suggestions contained in the Insurance Bill. You are going to have, as a result of the Insurance Bill, a wholly new health authority established in the local health committees. I look forward to the establishment and creation of those committees as one of the most valuable parts of the Insurance Bill.

The hon. Member for St. Pancras said he hoped that the duties of administering the pensions and invalidity insurance would not be placed under the control of the authority charged with the administration of the Poor Law, and with that I entirely agree. What we hope to see is that these matters of Poor Law administration which affect health should be taken out of the hands of the Poor Law authority and placed under the charge of the new local health committee. By doing that I believe we shall free from the taint of pauperism a great deal of medical sickness benefit which otherwise would be less welcome to those who are unhappily compelled to make use of it. There is not the slightest doubt that the passage of the Insurance Bill must compel the revision of the medical side of the Poor Law system, and I think we may well ask the President of the Local Government Board to give us a promise that this matter will engage his attention immediately after the passage of the Insurance Bill. We shall then be in a position to know how far we can use the new health authorities, and how far we can change and interchange the duties of administration now entrusted to the Poor Law authorities. I hope we may come to a more enlightened method of administration on the whole.

There is one further reason why the introduction of the Insurance Bill ought to make us hesitate before making any drastic change at the present moment. I hope that the result of the Insurance Bill will be to enable a considerable saving to be made in the expenditure upon the Poor Law. If we can save the poor rate I think we shall not only do a good deal to commend the provisions of the Insurance Bill to those who now are perhaps reluctant to accept it, but I think we shall have done a great deal to have lightened the load of work which will fall upon the Poor Law authority, and on that account I think it is desirable to pause a little before we undertake drastic reforms. I have endeavoured to indicate, as shortly as I can, the ground on which I hope the House will not proceed with the Bill now before us. I think I can adduce one further argument why there is no need to take the course of passing the Bill and sending it to a committee. After all, if we look at the matter as practical men, what is the use of sending this Bill to a Committee at this period of the Session? If it were in the early days of the Session, if there were an opportunity of close, studied, and detailed criticism, and if there were an opportunity of taking into effective consideration both the measures that have been introduced dealing with London Poor Law, then I think there might be a great deal said in favour of asking the Committee to undertake such a consideration. Everybody knows the circumstances of the Session are peculiar, and to send this Bill to a Committee under those circumstances, I think the House will agree, is undesirable.

Mr. BURNS

The hon. Member for Rotherhithe (Mr. Carr-Gomm) has been exceedingly fortunate in securing, through the ballot, an opportunity for discussing a Bill that raises one or two of the most vexed and complicated problems of London administration, and, in so far as the Bill has been useful in eliciting some speeches that have been delivered this afternoon, the President of the Local Government Board has no reason to be dissatisfied with the views that have been expressed by Members in all quarters of the House. The consensus of the speeches was roughly this: There was still great division of opinion and tremendous difference of view, and the London Members themselves were seriously divided, not only on matters of detail, but also on matters of principle. I do not wish to depreciate either the importance of this subject, the subject itself, or the value of the contributions that have been addressed both to the Bill and the subject, but it did come as a surprise to me, and almost as a shock that, on what I thought was going to be a very serious and almost exciting Debate on a thrilling subject, we should have witnessed, as we have witnessed to-day—and I say it with regret—the smallest House I have ever seen on a Friday during my Membership of twenty years. There was only a maximum of forty Members present at one time, while the average attendance ranged between fifteen and twenty-five. I am going to deal with the reasons for that. I note, too, with some interest and satisfaction that those who took part in the Debate and had knowledge of county council or Poor Law administration warned the House in the light of their experience as members of boards of guardians and as members of the London County Council to follow the example of Agag, and tread lightly and delicately in handling the reconstitution of the Poor Law problem, whether in London or elsewhere. When I found hon. Gentlemen like the Members for Bethnal Green and for Taunton, and others representing London constituencies, here expressing the need for reserve, hesitation, and care in altering Poor Law administration in London, and that the only Member who, with one exception, was enthusiastically in favour of the Bill happened to have been a member of the county council for only a very short time, it did seem to me that some of the optimism which I have expressed on this problem during the last two or three years has been more than justified by-to quote the words of President Kruger—" the moral and intellectual" support I have received from unexpected quarters this afternoon, because out of eight London Members of Parliament who have been on the London County Council, six are practically against the principle and details of the Bill, and two only who have been M.P.'s and county councillors have given it qualified support.

I admit that there has been interest, but not excitement on the subject. There has been consideration for the importance of the matter being dealt with, but no enthusiasm for the particular measure submitted to us this afternoon. What interest and enthusiasm has been evinced on one side of the. House has been less for this particular Bill than for another which has been printed, but not yet argued. I can say with regard to both: "How happy could I be with either, were t'other dear charmer away." It seems to me there is an underlying reason for the agreement on only a few points and the serious disagreement on details. And here is the reason. Since the National Insurance Bill was introduced another aspect of the Poor Law problem has revealed itself with a kaleidoscopic rapidity that has appealed to the childlike mind of the President of the Local Government Board, and to the mind of the hon. Member who now leads the Opposition (Mr. Forster). I might say—going a bit further—that even the speech we heard from the hon. Member for St. Pancras, whom I have always regarded as the stalwart champion of the London County Council under all conditions and all circumstances, struck me as being perhaps, from the point of view of the President, of the Local Government Board, a most interesting contribution, for he warned us to have nothing to do with a Statutory Committee even of the London County Council. In that perhaps he was well advised. Although there was a strong case for an ad hoc authority being instituted for this or any other purpose in London he was in favour of the London County Council itself doing this multifarious work. He was, as I am, strongly opposed to co-opted members, and I did not gather from him that he believed in the borough councils either doing the work now done by hoards of guardians or by being directly delegated by the London County Council to carry out the work now discharged by those boards. He did favour delegations to certain committees, but whether they were to be elected, nominated, or selected by the London County Council or the Local Government Board did not transpire, I assume rather from lack of time than from lack of fertility in suggestiveness on his part. He wound up by saying that he warned Parliament and the President of the Local Government Board in regard to giving pensions for invalidity and in reference to other aspects of the Poor Law problem that are now revealing themselves in a light which was not possible a year or two ago. He advised me, under no circumstances whatever, to give powers to a Statutory Committee, because that would become, in the Poor Law sense, a destitution authority, and, still further, because a widespread stigma would attach to a Statutory Committee of the county council helped by outside persons in regard to the new form of invalidity, in the same way that attached to the old form of Poor Law dependence. The fact was that he was driven back to one suggestion in the Bill, and that was his practical contribution to the Debate, that it had better be left to the London County Council to prepare a scheme of administration of duties by committees, the amount of money to be spent, the rate to be levied, and the nomination, selection, or election of people to do the Poor Law work in various parts of London, and beyond that he asked for a Select Committee for both Bills to be considered.

We have not materially advanced this problem further except in general interest in and sympathy with the poor in whatever quarter of the House we may sit, and I must put it to my hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras that it would be playing with the House if I as representing the Government, seeing that these two Bills are in my judgment mutually incompatible and irreconcilable, should endeavour to merge one into the other as hon. Members suggest. It would be playing with the House of Commons if we were to agree that these two Bills, one representing the Majority and the other the Minority Report of the Royal Commission, two Reports which up to now have been regarded as incompatible, contradictory, and hostile in their main principles with each other—it would be playing with the House if I were to say that they should be sent to a Select Committee for Members to waste two or three months upon the consideration of them, and in the end probably that something worse should happen than that which happened from the Royal Commission and the whole problem thrown back upon the Government, the only authority in my judgment capable of dealing with such a gigantic subject as we are discussing to-day. An hon. Member whom I should not regard as an authority on the Poor Law asks "When?" Let anybody look at the Order Book of the House of Commons in regard to what has to be done this Session for a reply to that. Let anyone look at the. Insurance Bill, which I trust will and ought to be put upon the Statute Book this Session. Is it too much when I say that to promise the consideration of the subject matter of this Bill this Session is wasting my time and inducing Members to hope against hope for any practical remedy from either of the two Bills submitted this Session. The hon. Gentleman who has just sat down asks me to make a promise to deal with the Poor Law medical service when the Insurance Bill passes in the light of points of general agreement which we can accept, and which have been put forward this afternoon. I not only make that promise, but I can assure the hon. Member that for the last three months, under the impression, as I firmly have been, that the Insurance Bill would become law, I and my staff are so adapting the medical service of the Local Government Board in London and elsewhere, as London Members who know Poor Law will readily admit—we are already bending our energies and services and adapting the existing institutions, buildings, and organisation to the possible, and, I trust, immediate assimilation of what is good in the Poor Law institutions and service to this new insurance scheme which has been so favourably received.

I want to suggest to the House what this Bill outlines. A President of the Local Government Board who has added three, times the previous area to the City of Birmingham, who has abolished a large number of local authorities, including soma boards of guardians in the bigger town ships, will not be accused of lacking daring in amalgamation or absorption when the facts warrant and circumstances justify and there is a minimum of danger in so acting, but I can assure the House that if I were asked to apply this Bill to London's Poor Law service as it now exists, in the light of the Insurance Bill, plus Labour Exchanges, plus pensions, when we have had a year without the Poor Law disqualification, I would hesitate to accept such a responsibility, and I am not so sure that I would not be justified in shrinking from the task if it were put upon me in consequence of the serious danger, almost disaster, which would accrue both to the Insurance Bill and the Poor Law under the circumstances dictated by this Bill. I am not afraid of the responsibility. This Bill on a Friday, on the Motion of a private Member, abolishes thirty-nine local bodies in the county of London. [Cheers.] Hon. Members cheer that who have not been members of either of these local bodies and who are painfully innocent of the obligations and duties connected therewith. It abolishes thirty-nine local bodies and dispossesses 1,015 members, including 128 women. If the scheme and structure of the Bill was adopted and the county council had as much of it as some hon. Members would like, there would not be twenty-eight out of the 128 women engaged, because our experience is this: There are only two women on the county council out of 139 members, and I am inclined to think that mistaken tactics on the part of so-called friends of women, instead of popularising ladies as a medium of public service, have done them great disservice and a great deal of harm. It gets rid of thirty-nine bodies, 1,015 members, and 128 women, and it throws the duties discharged by the existing thirty-nine bodies and 15,000 officers who are engaged in Poor Law and cognate services on the body of which for eighteen years I was an energetic member, which for the moment, I think, has quite enough to do in strengthening the crooked paths of municipal administration at Spring Gardens. Since the county council was created they have had sixteen large public duties imposed upon them. These duties are either unknown to or unrecognised by the hon. Members who have spoken this afternoon. For the last few years there has been imposed the new duty, undreamt of by any of us, even in our salad days at Spring Gardens, of administering £13,000,000 worth of municipal or commercial undertakings, such as tramways, housing, and what were hitherto known as commercial businesses. On a Friday afternoon it is proposed that these thirty-nine bodies are to go, that these 15,000 officers are to be transferred, and that 300 institutions and the daily charge of 200,000 men, women, and children, are to be thrown upon Spring Gardens on the initiative of a private Member who has not sufficiently calculated the cost, the responsibility, or the danger of too hurriedly doing this particular thing. But hon. Members ought not to be satisfied with that. They ought to realise that even the London Poor Law authorities and the county council themselves have received substantial assistance from the State in meeting many of the obligations that have been put upon them. I do not say that the State has been too generous in its local grants to the county council or elsewhere. I hope the committee that has been appointed will devise a more excellent way for the State helping local authorities than the present unsatisfactory system. Hon. Members who represent London constituencies, especially poor districts, must realise that the granting of pensions to 60,000 pensioners in London has not only profoundly affected the Poor Law problem, but that it has in some parishes reduced outdoor pauperism between 40 and 50 per cent. All over London the reduction has been between 20 and 30 per cent. Beyond revolutionising our poor relief system in the matter of numbers, methods, and treatment, it has also been a great financial boon to London. Hon. Members who represent East End constituencies know that the financial help of pensions, apart from the way in which it has reduced their pauper problems, has reduced some of the local rates between 2d. and 4d. in the £. The State now contributes £800,000 per annum, or nearly what represents a fourpenny rate, to the relief of the burden for actual or potential paupers. These poor people would have been on the rates two and a-half years ago, or they would have come on the rates if this substantial provision had not been secured. I am glad to say that one fact emerges from the granting of pensions, so far as London is concerned. Since pensions have been instituted the column in the weekly return giving the number of outdoor paupers of sixteen years of age and upwards shows that in three years they have been reduced from 33,000 to 16,000, or about 50 per cent. Before we can gauge the extent to which this has already contributed to the reduction of pauperism or lessened the financial obligations of the local authorities we will have to wait until December next.

Hon. Members to-day I expected would have spoken about the horrors of the mixed workhouse. I thought they would have rebuked me for the way in which Poor Law children were languishing in almost criminal associations in the mixed workhouses. We heard nothing of it. This charge cannot be urged, because without waiting for this or for any other Bill we have cleared all the 23,000 children out of the London workhouses, and there are practically none in the London workhouses at this moment. During the last two or three years we have been able, by using existing institutions and applying to them something like ordinary common-sense and some degree of experience, to break up for adult people what were known as the horrors of the mixed workhouses. I have only got to take a very poor district as an example of this. I will take Bermondsey. Under the old system we used to have a mixed workhouse in which the imbecile, the children, the able-bodied men, women in health, and women temporarily disabled were more or less indiscriminately mixed up and promiscuously herded together with disastrous consequences. Even the hoard of guardians has split that problem up with great advantage. They have the old workhouse, but even in the old workhouse there has been segregation; the goats have been separated from the sheep. Men who are not able-bodied have been sent to special places, and there has been segregation of classes and classification of individuals.

There have been infirmaries for both adults and children; children have been sent to proper schools and the younger children have been sent to special children's homes. There are hospitals, hostels, and convalescent homes adapted both to age, physical state, and mental necessities, and if I am long enough in my present office and get the kind of support which I am getting to-day, there is no limit to what we shall be able to do. Without adding to the rates, and by merely utilising the existing institutions, there is no limit to the amount of good we can do to carry out the views of hon. Members who take a sane and practical view of this problem. There is another aspect of this question to which attention has not been drawn this afternoon. The most important thing that has happened, I believe, within the last ten years in this country is the unfolding of the Insurance Bill which we are all agreed ought to pass this Session. But considering the matter in the light of that Bill, we must remember that over 30 per cent. of the total pauperism in numbers and over 50 per cent. of the cost are due to sickness. But we are dealing with London, and I want to apply the same standard of calculation in London. In London 50 per cent. of the pauperism in numbers and 75 per cent. of the cost of dealing with it are due to sickness. That is illustrated by this remarkable fact. Forty-two per cent. of the total deaths in London of rich and poor take place in public institutions, either in hospitals, workhouses, infirmaries, or rent or tax supported establishments. Members should have those figures in mind when we approach the consideration of the Insurance Bill, because I want to be in a position when that Bill passes to take from St. Thomas's Hospital or St. George's Hospital people who are now kept there because for the moment there happens to be room. But, when the Insurance Bill is passed, and institutional treatment is enormously extended, as it must be, if we seriously hope to grapple with all the aspects of public health, we want to be able not to choke our public hospitals, which are for serious surgical cases, with people whose cases are less serious, and who ought to go to convalescent homes, or sanatoria, or to places provided by the boards of guardians, the Metropolitan Asylums Board, or other public bodies. I am quite sure that if this Bill hampered me, I would not be able to respond to the call of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to meet increased duties and increased burdens. I would not be in a position to do so if I were hampered in the way that has been suggested. When we are crossing the insurance stream we ought not to swap institutional horses. And I would beg those Gentlemen who ask us to remit one family to four committees, sometimes three, four, or five, whatever their doctrinaire views may be, whether in favour of the Minority or the Majority Report, to leave the London organisation—the borough councils, the boards of guardians, the Metropolitan Asylums Board, the county council, and the separate district asylums, to whoever may be responsible for the administration in London of the Insurance Bill. They will be able to select a portion or the whole of the existing institutions, untrammelled by any newly set up or newly created authority that for the moment might be due to the passing of such a Bill as this is.

Why do I say that? I say that with emphasis, because last year and the year before, and every year during the last five years, there have been 469,000 men, women, and children who go either to the workhouse, the infirmary, or to the relief committees of the Central Unemployed organisation—people who are pensioners, or are more or less for a short time—sometimes two or three times in the year—taking public relief in the form of medical advice, or in cash, or relief in kind. Under the Insurance Bill these 469,000 persons will have an enormous addition to their number. I do not know to what extent the 150,000 in-patients in the 100 general hospitals will be affected by the details of the Insurance scheme. For the moment I am unable even to conjecture how many of the 7,000,000 of out-patients who go to our 100 general hospitals will come under the Insurance scheme and have to go to other institutions—the sanatoria, the workhouse infirmaries, or the separate Metropolitan Asylums Board's establishments. We would be unwise if we were to tie the hands of my successor, or of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or of any of the local authorities in this vast city if we were to give effect to a doctrinaire view of official reorganisation. We would make a profound mistake if this afternoon we were to take that kind of advice. I come to another aspect of this which has got to be considered. This Bill would destroy the Central (Unemployed) Body, with its thirty-one distress committees and with its 30,000 or 40,000 applicants, not as large a proportion as I would like to secure work for. Who has got to do that work? That has not been mentioned.

Mr. DICKINSON

The Unemployed Act expires next year.

Mr. BURNS

That does not answer my point. It is not a question as to whether that body shall go on or not. It is not a question whether a grant shall be arranged or not. The point is what will happen to this body? Someone would have to do the work, and therefore the body on whom it would temporarily devolve would be the county council or some other authority created for that purpose.

Mr. KEIR HARDIE

There is the Right to Work Bill.

Mr. BURNS

The Right to Work Bill is dead. The hon. Member himself has killed it and common sense has buried it. That brings me to the unemployed aspect of the Bill proposed this afternoon. I find that ender the Unemployment Insurance Bill, showing how quickly this kaleidoscopic problem changes, there will be 220,000 men in the insured trades who will have to be dealt with. The Board of Trade will deal with some aspects of it, but will not be able altogether to do so in the first year or two. I put it to the House, is it fair to ask me, as President of the Local Government Board, to change the present system of organisation, when under the Invalidity Insurance 300,000 people will come upon the Local Government Board, on the public health committees under the scheme, and that in the insured trades the unemployed of the 220,000 will come upon some local authority and the Board of Trade. In a word, if you add those new people who will come under the insurance scheme and the new people under the insured trades who will come under unemployment insurance and add to those the 469,000 people who in any one year now go to existing public bodies, there are a million of people with eight or nine millions of money to he at once devolved on a Statutory Committee of the London County Council. You have only got to state the problem and it urges caution. You have only got to state it to an intelligent House of Commons—and on this subject it is more intelligent than it was—and you have only got to submit to an intelligent House of Commons the facts and the figures and the responsibility of the Poor Law problem as altered by unemployment insurance, by invalidity insurance, by Labour Exchanges, by pensions, and the new treatment of medical aspects of the Poor Law problem, to convert the House to the view which I honestly express, which is that for at least a year or so experience dictates a more excellent way of dealing with this problem than either of these Bills indicates. We should go easily but sensibly in the manipulation of those issues and new questions that are continually cropping up with regard to the London Poor Law problem.

Meantime, before the Insurance Bill passes, before it can possibly hope to get into working order, I promise Members of all sides that I will submit to the Government and to the Prime Minister, as it is my duty to do, the view, which to a large extent I share, that we ought to have greater equalisation of rate and, if we can, simplification of administration. We ought to press, if we can get it, for greater centralisation and control, that breaking up of purely municipal purposes. The London County Council I care for so much that I do not want to throw on that body disproportionately and rashly new duties on them which would probably complete what was done by the foolish destruction of the old School Board, and which would destroy the London County Council itself by the disproportionate amount of work that would be put upon it before it could assimilate over a longer period of time the increment of public duties that could be safely entrusted to it. For these and many other reasons, may I ask the House to take our advice, not to pass this Bill, not to link with this Bill the measure introduced by the Noble Lord (Lord A. Thynne)—which has a few merits of its own, though they will require something more than a Friday afternoon to elaborate and disclose them—and to be content with what I have already said. The Government has during the last three or four years done much in connection with this problem, and they have appointed a committee on local taxation. We must hasten slowly in this matter. I hope that hon. Members will be content with the sympathetic, kindly, and interesting Debate that we have had. I sincerely trust that after the unanimous support that our method of handling the Poor Law problem in London has received, as is shown by the absence of criticism or complaint, they will take our advice and not allow any but a Government to deal with the matter on their responsibility, so that we may be able to carry our policy still further in the next year or two, if the House trusts us in the generous and considerate manner in which it has done in the past.

Mr. CARR-GOMM

rose in his place and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put," but Mr. Speaker withheld his assent, and declined then to put that Question.

Mr. BOOTH

I am sure the supporters of the Bill must be satisfied that they have furthered their cause by their excellent advocacy this afternoon of the relief of the poor and the better distribution of the burden. I have listened very patiently to the whole of the Debate, and I had hoped the hon. Member for Fulham (Mr. Hayes Fisher) and other members of the London County Council, as well as those who are responsible for the administration of the Poor Law in London, would have enlightened the House on this subject. One of the most serious points to my mind is that there are a large number of women who are giving a great deal of time to this matter of Poor Law administration and specialising in it. While there are advantages of unification, there are also disadvantages, one of the principal being that, if you have uniformity of distribution of relief you will make very little progress. During the last few months hon. Members below the Gangway have had original and definite ideas about the treatment of the poor. Others have had quite opposite views. We have been able to judge of both systems, and we have learned a great deal. I am sure that local government in general has reaped great advantage, be- cause of the different administration in different parts of London. This problem is one of the greatest importance. The Bill interferes with the present constitution of the London County Council. That may be right, but there is nothing in the title of the Bill to indicate—

Mr. CARR-GOMM

rose in his place and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put," but Mr. Speaker withheld his assent, and declined then to put that Question.

And it being Five of the clock, the Debate stood Adjourned.