NATIONAL INSURANCE [MONEY]. (Hansard, 15 November 1911)

§ Mr. FORSTER
I understand that the Report of the Money Resolution is to be taken later on. I want to ask the Government whether in their view it would now be possible to move Amendments to the National Insurance Bill which will have 384 the effect of enlarging the Government contribution, and whether it would now be possible to get a readjustment in the scale of contributions which it is proposed to levy on the three partners in the great undertaking? I know that some hon. Members sitting below the Gangway opposite entertain the view that the contributions are not distributed justly under the proposals of the Government, and in the course of the earlier part of our proceedings various attempts were made to rearrange the burden of contributions. I would like to know, either from you, Sir, or from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether we shall now be in order, if we can find the time available under the guillotine, in discussing those Amendments?

§ Mr. SPEAKER
I cannot answer the hon. Gentleman. That would be for the Chairman of the Committee. I cannot tell what Amendments will be moved in Committee.

Mr. WORTHINGTON-EVANS
When this Money Resolution was before the Committee previously, we had no opportunity of discussing it at all, because it was proposed after half-past ten, under the provision of the guillotine, so we have never yet had the advantage of hearing from the Chancellor of the Exchequer why it was brought in or the amount which he anticipated would come to be paid under it. The actual form of the Resolution, as I understand, is that a further sum of an unlimited amount and not in any particular proportion to contribution will be authorised. In the previous Money Resolutions there was a strict limit, namely, that the Government were to be authorised to pay two-ninths of the benefits, which a certain set of contributions would produce under this Bill. There was, therefore, an automatic limit to the State subsidy and a proportion to the amount which the various contributors were taxing themselves. In this Resolution the amount is unlimited, and I think we ought to know from the Government whether the Government has any estimate of the extra sum that the Bill in its present amended form is likely to cost, and which makes it necessary to ask the House for this additional money. It may be a large or a small sum, but the House at present is unable to form any sort of estimate of the amount. Nor does the form of the Resolution give us any assistance. All we know apparently is that whatever checks were put upon expenditure by the first Resolution are 385 now to be removed, and consequently a series of Amendments which were proposed in Committee and were ruled out of order owing to the previous Money Resolutions, will probably now be in order, and may perhaps be moved when we come to consider the Schedule. Surely the Government must have come to some conclusion before they put down this Resolution as to the amount of money they are going to ask the House to vote.

§ The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Lloyd George)
The reason why the new Resolution is put down is because the Government have promised to consider first of all the possible burden upon the Exchequer in reference to the extension of sanatorium benefit to women and children. I am not quite sure whether it will be necessary, but as a precaution we thought it better to have it. The second reason is that the Government have already put an Amendment on the Paper to take off an extra penny from the lower grade of wages, the nine shillings a week grade, and then there is the reduction in the twelve shillings a week grade besides. I think that the hon. Gentleman is right in his view that when the question comes to be before the Chairman of the Committee the terms will enable an Amendment to be moved in the Schedule. We thought it better that the Committee of this House should be free to discuss the matter without any restriction, and we have therefore put it in this general form.

§ Sir FREDERICK BANBURY
This is an extremely unfortunate Resolution, inasmuch as it does away with the safeguard afforded by the original Resolution, and leaves it open to any single Member of Parliament to vote a sum of money to increase the contribution by the State.

§ Mr. LLOYD GEORGE
To propose to increase it.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
Under previous Resolutions that was not possible. It has been held over and over again that a member could not increase the two-ninths contribution by the State. Under this Resolution an Amendment is in order which may authorise a contribution by the State not of two-ninths, but of the whole nine-ninths if necessary. (Cheers.) That is cheered by hon. Members below the Gangway. Plainly they contemplate moving an Amendment for the whole of the cost to be borne by the State. That, I think, would be quite in order. The right hon. Gentleman will remember that yesterday the 386 hon. Member for Cork City (Mr. W. O'Brien) told him that while he was very lavish in his language, he was very costly in his figures. Here is an opportunity for the right hon. Gentleman to give to the House ample information on a very important question. All he has told us is that the reason for the Resolution is that certain fresh expenditure will be cast upon the sanatoria and that a penny has been taken off the contributions of the workmen in certain conditions. He quite avoided giving us any idea of what amount those two alterations will add to the burden on the State. There have been many important alterations in the finance of the Bill, and here was an opportunity for the right hon. Gentleman to have said, "I have not had an opportunity of explaining these alterations, but when I come down to the House with this important Resolution, I will take the House into my confidence and tell them, what perhaps I should have done before, what the result is going to be and what burden is about to be put upon the finances of the State." When the right hon. Gentleman and those who sit with him were in Opposition, they were never tired of denouncing the slip-shod methods of my right hon. Friends who now sit below me, and when he brings forward a Resolution of this sort, which involves an enormous sum of money, he does not give us the necessary information.
The right hon. Gentleman is always prepared to admit that his conduct when in Opposition was not always identical with his conduct in his present position, but I do not think he will deny the accuracy of my statement. It is most important that we should know what we are going to do with regard to the finances of this measure. I do not pretend to have followed all the intricacies of this measure. I hardly ever address the House now, much to my own satisfaction, and I daresay to the satisfaction of the House, but I asked an hon. Friend of mine yesterday, who has followed with great care this measure, in reference to a statement made by the right hon. Gentleman, "Is that correct? I did not know that that alteration has been made?" My friend said, "Yes." I said, "How does that work in with the finances?" My friend said, "That has all gone into chaos. Nobody cares about the financial question at the present moment." Now when the right hon. Gentleman has an opportunity of telling us what he thinks this measure is going to cost the State, he should avail himself 387 of it. More than probably he does not know, or, if he does know, it is a sum so vast that he would rather not inform the country. But at any rate he must know more or less what these particular alterations which he has foreshadowed are going to cost. Is it asking him too much to give us more detailed information as to what he thinks these two alterations—the sanatorium and the penny on the lower grade of wages—are going to cost the State? I do not think that hon. Members on either side of the House quite realise the enormous importance of the financial part of this question. The expenses of the nation are now over £180,000,000. We have Consols at about 79½. The credit of the nation has been falling for many years. Here we are going to spend, I do not know whether it is seventeen or twenty-five or forty millions, but when we are going to spend enormous sums like these we are not to be told by the guardian of the National Exchequer what the result is going to be. Unfortunately, I have not got the eloquence of the right hon. Gentleman, but I approach him in a serious manner, and I hope he will meet my observations in the same spirit; and I trust that the House will give him leave, which it can do if it likes, to reply to these few observations.

§ Mr. MAURICE HEALY
Is this Resolution limited to the two cases which the right hon. Gentleman, has mentioned—the sanatorium benefit and the additional penny? If I am right in that I do not understand the Irish position. The right hon. Gentleman said that the object was to provide only for these two cases.

§ Mr. LLOYD GEORGE
No.

§ Mr. MAURICE HEALY
Then we may take it that one of the objects of this Resolution is to meet the Irish case, where the State contribution is larger than two-ninths?

§ Mr. LLOYD GEORGE
Yes.

§ Mr. CASSEL
I should like an explanation as to one of the new Clauses. These Financial Resolutions appear to extend the provision in connection with sanatoria. It seems that they will place Wales in a better position than other parts of the country.

§ Mr. SPEAKER
The hon. Member can discuss that point when we reach the new Clauses.

§ Mr. CASSEL
There are twenty-one new Government Clauses, and I wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman for an explanation of the financial effect of those Clauses. I should have waited until the new Clauses were reached, but there are twenty-one new Clauses on the Paper in the name of the Government. They deal with the case of the Marines, with domestic servants, agricultural labourers, and a number of other cases, and the Clause upon which I wish now to ask a question is number nineteen among those twenty-one.

§ Mr. SPEAKER
The hon. Member cannot discuss those fresh Clauses to-day; he must wait until to-morrow.

§ Mr. CASSEL
I do not wish to traverse your ruling, Sir, but I wish to ask whether the financial effect of these Resolutions would not be to enable a special advantage to be given to the Welsh sanatoria as compared with sanatoria in the rest of the United Kingdom?

§ Mr. LLOYD GEORGE
No, that is not so. I answer it in the negative.

§ Mr. G. FABER
May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether the effect of the new Resolution is to open up the whole financial question of the contribution by the State under the Bill, or whether he intends to restrict it merely to the extra benefit to be given for sanatoria, or to the contributions which under the Bill as it originally stood were made by the workmen at the lower end of the scale. If that is so, would it not have been within the rules of the House to have restricted the Resolution to those two matters, and not opened it up in blank? I can quite well understand the effect of giving the right hon. Gentleman a blank cheque to be used in any way he pleases.

§ Mr. LLOYD GEORGE
In answer to what was said by the hon. Baronet the Member for the City, I propose to make a financial statement as to the effect of the 1d. There will be no increase in the charge save a prospective contingent one in connection with sanatoria. Except in regard to the Schedule, even in reference to Ireland, the Resolution does not increase the estimate of the State charge, but it alters the proportions, because there has been a reduction in the charge upon the employé. It applies in the same way to the agricultural labourer, because the proportion there again is altered, but 389 the amount of the contribution by the State is no higher than I originally contemplated. I could not have proposed the alteration without moving this Resolution, because the proportions are changed. The only possible increase is the increase in the Schedule, and there is also a contingent and possible increase, if there is a deficiency, in the case of sanatoria. That is not a blank cheque to me, it is a blank cheque to the Committee.

§ Mr. FABER
I am afraid that is the same thing.

§ Mr. LLOYD GEORGE
If I were certain of that, I think I should find myself almost alone with the hon. Baronet the Member for the City in resisting increases.

§ Mr. DAVID MASON
Can the right hon. Gentleman give us any estimate now of what the amount is likely to be?

§ Mr. LLOYD GEORGE
I think it is rather an unsatisfactory way to make a statement purely on an enabling Resolution, but when the new Clauses are reached I will make a financial statement;. I am quite prepared to do it.