§ Order for Second Reading read.
§ The MINISTER of PENSIONS (Mr. Hodge)I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
May I be permitted to say that I am not unmindful of the indulgence which the House has shown to the Pensions Ministry in the very arduous task they have had to perform. In the work of restoration it is essential that we should have the very best possible machinery for accomplishing what we are all so anxious to do. Local war pensions committees vary in ability. Some are exceedingly good, some not of much good, and others exceedingly bad. This is easily understood when one comes to realise that the Ministry of Pensions have really no power and very little control over local war pensions committees, the reason being that while we at the Pensions Ministry are responsible for two-thirds of the expenses of administration, the other third comes out of the rates. Originally, it was believed that a great dead of the money for administration would come out of voluntary funds, but that was a condition of things which did not appeal to the House or to the country, and when the Bill was passing through this House an alteration was made such as I have indicated. As there is a contribution from the rates, the estimate for the various local war pensions committees, instead of coming to the Ministry of Pensions for approval or otherwise, are sent to the Local Government Board.
When the local war pensions committees were being set up it was thought that town clerks, parish clerks and clerks of urban district councils and other officials of that kind, because of their administrative experience, would be the best men to be appointed as local war pensions secretaries. That, I think, was a great mistake, as all these officials have more than sufficient work to do without adding the task of secretary of local war pensions committees. Our desire is that the Ministry of Pensions should take responsibility for the whole of the expenses of administration, and consequently that the control should lie within the hands of that Ministry. That, I think, will enable 624 us to insist that as far as local war pensions committees are concerned we may have, wherever essential, in the larger cities and towns and urban areas, full-time men as secretaries, who will be experts, as far as the administration of pensions is concerned. This would have the advantage that when we find an inefficient secretary the Ministry would be enabled to call for his resignation. At any rate, the Ministry would have that measure of control which is essential for the proper administration of pensions in every local war pensions committee. Some of my friends seems to think that this Bill is inclined to bureaucracy. I can assure them that that is the furthest object from my mind. I realise, as an old municipal councillor, the advantage to local administration of local men taking a hand in matters of this kind, and I do not believe that a bureaucratic system would appeal to the country in the slightest degree.
May I give one or two examples where, if I may say so, there has been maladministration in connection with pensions. I do not wish to worry the House with illustrations, but on one local sub-committee there is a gentleman, his wife, his brother-in-law- and the local bank manager. The office for administration happens to be one of their houses. If it be convenient, the soldier or the soldier's wife is interviewed in this person's house; if it be inconvenient, the interview takes place in the street. That is a condition of things which cannot be maintained, and yet the Ministry of Pensions have no power to make an alteration. All that we can do is to request that the authority which appointed this particular sub-committee should make a change. In other parts of the country we find that the regulations are not observed, but we have really no power to compel observation. In one rural area a man who was an agricultural labourer lost a leg as a result of his war service. We all know that previous to the War the wages of agricultural labourers in some parts of the country were very low indeed. This man was entitled to be trained under the Ministry of Pensions, and while undergoing training was entitled to an allowance of 27s. 6d. a week, but the chairman of the committee paid him only 20s. As a result of one of our inspectors paying a visit he discovered this man, and pointed out to the chairman of the committee that he was absolutely robbing the man of 7s. 6d. a 625 week, which the Stale intended that the man should get. The reply was "Yes, but this man was only having 16s. a week before he became a soldier." The inspector pointed out that that had nothing in the wide world to do with it, that the State had said the man was entitled to 27s. 6d., and that his duty was to see that what the State provided the man should receive.
4.0 P.M.
These are some of the reasons why we desire a change. We find that a good many people who have taken and are anxious to take a big interest in the question of local war pensions administration do not secure seats on the committees. In future, when the Ministry are going to find the whole of the expenses, we think it is only fair that where there are conditions which are not so good as we think they ought to be, we ought to have the power to nominate men or women or discharged soldiers, who will see that the administration has improved and that justice is done as far as that be possible. In the latter part of last Session this House in its wisdom decided that it should be compulsory upon all local war pensions committees and sub-committees to have two or more disabled men added to those committees. Unfortunately the great bulk of the committees looked upon that particular phrase "two or more" as intended to mean "two." But I do not think that that was what this House desired. I believe its intention was that where the war committees were small bodies two would probably be amply sufficient to represent the interests of disabled men, but where the committees were large, as in the case in our big cities and towns, there ought to be a full representation of disabled men on those committees proportionate to the size of the committee. This Bill will give us an opportunity of insisting that disabled men shall be given a greater representation than is at present extended to them. After all is said and done, in view of what they have sacrificed, they are entitled to full representation as far as their interests are concerned.
§ Mr. HODGEMay I add that while some hon. Members may think the powers for which we are asking are too drastic, I do not believe it will be found that any single provision of the Bill is not already 626 embodied in some Statute which this House has passed, and we are asking for no greater powers than those possessed, for instance, by the Local Government Board. I will just run through the principal provisions of the Bill. First, it is provided that the State shall bear the whole of the administration expenses instead of only two-thirds as hitherto, the remaining third having fallen upon the local authorities. Then it is our desire to improve the constitution of the local war pensions committees. Another feature of the Bill deals with the cases where urban areas asked for separate local war pensions committees of their own and have been refused. In those larger areas we think that where the authority takes charge of municipal government it is quite as capable of taking charge of the full administration of pensions, whether in respect of treatment or training. Therefore we take the opportunity to extend that power to these larger areas. At the present moment one of our great difficulties is to get many of the disabled men—particularly the deaf—to accept treatment. We hold it is in the man's own interest as well as in the national interest that a man should be compelled to accept treatment. In the Royal Warrant we have power to punish a man to the extent of withholding half his pension. Personally, I do not like to take away any man's pension for any reason whatever, because of the punishment which, if he be a married man, is inflicted on his wife and children. We are hopeful, if we have the power asked for under this Bill that that in itself will be sufficient to induce men to accept treatment. It would be in the interests of the men themselves if we could put them into a treatment reserve and a training reserve where it is essential for them to accept treatment or training. It is true that some disabled men at the moment can find work easily because of the scarcity of labour, but when demobilisation comes then will arise the difficulty of finding light employment as far as these men are concerned. In this there may be some solution of that particular problem.
Another feature of the Bill is the provision we are making for the children of soldiers—the children of men serving in the Army or the children of those who have made the supreme sacrifice. I am sure I shall carry the House and the country with me when I say that the care of the children of those who have 627 fallen in this War must be a national obligation, and we must see to it that they do not suffer because of the sacrifice made by their fathers. We therefore propose to make provision for dealing with the children, who may be motherless, or worse, of a serving soldier and also to look after the orphan children of those who have made the supreme sacrifice. At the present moment, unfortunately, when a soldier comes back disabled and receives his pension, if he be a single man, and if he has an aged mother who has been in receipt of a Poor Law allowance, the guardians not infrequently seek to take away from the old woman that allowance because, of the pension granted to the son. We say that that is not right, and we ask the House to agree that the pension, as far as that is concerned, shall be immune and that no pension shall be taken into account by boards of guardians.
§ Mr. HODGEThese are the main features of the Bill. As far as I am personally concerned, the desire is that we should be able to organise as perfectly as possible the pension system. Members of the House may think that the Bill can be improved.
§ Mr. HODGEIn the past, when I have had the privilege of piloting Bills through this House, I do not think I have ever been found unreasonable. In this case, if the House in its wisdom can suggest any improvement of the Bill, no one will be better pleased than myself, and we shall be perfectly prepared to consider every Amendment upon its merits. I hope this brief outline of the measure will satisfy the House as to what are our intentions and that the Bill will be given a Second Reading on the assurance that as far as we are concerned we shall be prepared sympathetically to consider every Amendment put forward.
§ Colonel YATEDoes this Bill apply to officers as well as to men?
§ Colonel YATEThen what provision is to be made for them?
§ Sir H. CRAIKI beg to move to leave out the word "now," and to insert instead thereof the words "upon this day three months."
I would not move this Amendment did I think it would seriously affect the progress of the Bill, and I am sure my right hon. Friend will not have appealed in vain for considerate and generous treatment for his proposals. We fully respect the enthusiasm, zeal and sympathy which my right hon. Friend has thrown into his task. It has been of great advantage to those disabled soldiers who have looked for part of their solace to the efficacious aid of my right hon. Friend. But while we all admire the enthusiasm and sympathy displayed by the Minister of Pensions we perhaps may find in him some of the faults which attach to his Department. There is an old legal axiom that it is part of the duty of a judge to amplify his jurisdiction, and this Bill, when we look through it seems clearly to be one which vastly increases the power of the Minister. That may be for good or for ill, but I should like to point out to the House some of these proposed extensions of power, and I think I shall be able to show that the provisions of the Bill are not all, as my right hon. Friend suggested, drawn in accordance with precedent, but are absolutely without precedent, and almost astonishing in the extension of authority which they give. To begin with, take the first Clause, the administration expenses. That is a matter which has been very much discussed in the past. There is a good deal to be said on both sides. We carefully discussed it in the Standing Committee of which I was a member, and I may say that I moved this Amendment largely as a result of that discussion. The first section of the Clause relates to administrative expenses of committees. These in future are to be defrayed by the Treasury, but the estimates are to be approved solely by the Minister of Pensions. Hitherto the Treasury has been the holder of the nation's purse string, but under this Bill it is to be asked to surrender its powers with regard to a very large item and to give them over to a Department. This is a very strange proposal. Those of us who have had to deal with the Treasury and have often been provoked into the use of angry words by the actions of the Treasury have in the long run seen that it is a very wholesome and safe restraint which it exercises in the interests of the 629 country. This is the first time it has been proposed to saddle the Treasury with estimates and expenses approved solely by a Minister.
The right hon. Gentleman also proposes to deal with the local committees. I was quite prepared to find that he did desire some power to deal with unreasonable committees. I do not suppose that any Department had lacked experience of local committees which have proved very unreasonable to deal with, and it is desirable, to take power to supersede them in the same way as the Board of Education does. That is a common complaint, and I think my right hon. Friend is quite right to ask for considerable powers to be given to his Department in this respect. You must treat these local committees as if they were God's creatures and had some degree of self-respect in regulating their own proceedings. It would be far better to abolish the local committee altogether, if you do not give it the power of saying when it is to meet, how it is to conduct its proceedings, and what are to be its standing orders. But all this is to be done by the Minister of Pensions. My right hon. Friend says there is a reason for everything in this Bill. He is quite right to deal with troublesome local committees, but is there any precedent for such a provision as this, that the Minister of Pensions may
where he is satisfied that any member of a committee is habitually absent from meetings of the committee or is obstructive or is otherwise not discharging his duties as such member in a satisfactory manner, declare that such member has vacated his office.How is he to say when a man is obstructing? Is he to go to a local body and say "This or that man has really spoken too much. He has been obstructive, and he has not conceded a point to the majority of his fellow members; he really would be much better away, and I hereby draw my pencil through his name"? Is the man to have any opportunity of offering an excuse or an apology or an explanation to the Minister? While you may have troublesome local committees, it is going a little too far to interfere even in their most domestic proceedings, and to say "Such and such a member is really a troublesome, obstructive, cantankerous person. He may be conscientious, but I cannot understand his behaviour and must remove him." If that is done in the case of any administrative body I have yet to learn of it.630 Then the Minister is to have further powers with regard to these local committees. He is to have power to
issue an Order which may contain such supplementary and consequential provisions including modifications and amendments of the principal Act or any Act amending that Act as the Minister considers necessary for the purpose of giving full effect to the Order.If that is to be done what is the use of being here at all? The whole legislative power with regard to pensions is to be dealt with by the Minister of Pensions. My right hon. Friend must not think that I wish to interfere with his Department or that I doubt his usefulness or zeal, but I do think that the House should consider once or twice before giving such drastic powers over local bodies to any Minister, however capable or sympathetic, powers that are practically legislative powers and powers of modifying or sweeping away previous Acts of Parliament. I come now to Section 4, which deals with power to make Regulations as to proceedings of committees. The Minister is to regulatethe proceedings at meetings of committees, the appointment, removal, duties and remuneration of officers of committees.Are the officers likely to show respect to the committees if they know that the power of appointment and removal, and the fixing of remuneration, are in the hands of the; Minister of Pensions? These committees are not to be left to themselves in their deliberations. The Minister of Pensions is to have power for authorising and securing the attendance of officers of the Ministry of Pensions at meetings of committees, and for enabling such officers to summon and examine witnesses on any matters, the administration of which is vested in the Minister. The Minister of Pensions has power, I presume, as a Minister to make such inquiries as he likes, but is it essential that his officers are to be able to have power to defy the committees from keeping them out of their most private deliberations? Is he to have power to say, "Your doors must be open to my officers at any time, and my officers may use your committee as a place where they can carry on inquiries"? The officer may not only insist on being present at the committee, but he might summon every member of the committee to be a witness to be cross-examined by him.I will leave it to other Members to touch on some other points to which I might allude. I wish to come to Clause 6, because that touches very closely the functions 631 of the old Statutory Committee on which I had the privilege of sitting. I may recapitulate the course taken by this House in regard to pensions. When the matter first came before the House they felt that the question was so peculiar that it could not be dealt with solely and entirely on regular hide-bound official lines, and they proposed instead to establish a Statutory Committee upon which there would be various representatives, and which would take all matters into consideration, perhaps without finding itself so closely bound by the strict limits of administrative rule as other Departments. When the Bill was under discussion I ventured to doubt whether a Statutory Committee would be a satisfactory or an efficient means of carrying out the work. I sat upon it and my experience during these two years was not any lack of earnestness and assiduity on the part of my colleagues and myself, but that we felt that we had not concentration enough, and the very failures which I predicted did occur, but it was felt that the proposal of this House to have outside advice of a sympathetic and varying character connected with this administration was a very sound one, and one that ought to be to a certain extent preserved, and it was preserved in the maintenance of the Special Grants Committee. I am certain that my right hon. Friend will admit that the work done by the Special Grants Committee has been very valuable. It has been independent of the more formal rules, and one of its essential points has been that it has been able to give independent decisions without having its decisions overruled by the Minister. The very nature of the subject dealt with shows that you must sometimes go beyond any rules, however minutely these rules might be drawn up. The circumstances vary infinitely. They have to be dealt with rapidly and wisely, and cry out for sympathetic treatment; and when the Statutory Committee was abolished it was decided to continue this Special Grants Committee.
Under Section 6 of this Bill the Minister may decide the term and tenure of office of members of the Special Grants Committee, and he is to decide
the resignation of members of the Special Grants Committee, and the appointment of persona to fill casual or other vacancies on the Committee.632 I may point out that this is a remarkably badly drafted Section. Does it mean that the Minister may make Regulations respecting what is usually known as the resignation of members, or does it mean, as I suspect my right hon. Friend really intends, that he is to make Regulations to enforce the resignation of members when he wishes it? Though I doubt that that is what is meant by the words, I think that that is what my right hon. Friend intends. If he intends that, I tell him plainly that my consent will never be given to it. The word "resignation" implies that a man voluntarily gives up an office which he holds, and which he has accepted with all its responsibilities. When we appoint such a man, if we want him to act not as a mere puppet, but as an independent person, we leave it to him to say when he is to resign his office, but to say that a Minister is to be empowered to make Regulations enforcing resignation in certain conditions is a thing to which this House will not agree.Another Section which I think will meet with strong objection is Section 7, with regard to compulsory medical treatment. That is a new movement, a new idea. Some of us think the treatment good, and some of us may doubt a particular sort of treatment, but that a man is to be forced to undergo that particular sort of medical treatment as a condition of non-forfeiture of a pension is a thing about which I feel the House will think twice before agreeing to it. I leave it to my hon. Friend (Sir W. Cheyne), who speaks with the authority of the medical profession, to deal with this point. On the whole, I have hesitation and some regret in connection with the Motion which I am moving. I assure my right hon. Friend that I move it through no want of appreciation of his own earnest, zealous, sympathetic administration, but because I think that the House of Commons should think twice before accepting a Bill which confers on an administrative Department powers that are unprecedented in previous legislation, and which will arouse a feeling, on the part of the committees concerned with the administration of pensions, that they are to be schooled and tutored at every step, and that they are to hold office solely at the will of an autocratic Minister. I do not think, in the present state of feeling, that such a Bill, without very serious emendation, will prove acceptable to this House.
§ Sir WATSON CHEYNEI do not propose to occupy the time of the House for more than a few minutes, but Clause 7, to which my hon. Friend has just referred, is one on which I should like to offer a few observations. I have read a good many Acts of Parliament since I have been a Member of this House, but I must say that this is one that I have read with the greatest pleasure and amusement, because it is clear and it is minatory to a degree. Clause 7 of the Bill says:
If any disabled officer or man, on being so desired in the prescribed manner, refuses or without reasonable excuse fails to submit himself for medical examination, or if any disabled officer or man as respects whom it has been certified that treatment in an institution or otherwise is necessary in his interest, refuses or without reasonable excuse fails to undergo such treatment in accordance with such direction as may be given in that behalf by or with the approval of the Minister, the Minister may, if he thinks fit, notwithstanding anything to the contrary to any Order in Council, Royal Warrant, or Order, by Order direct that any pension or allowance to which that officer or man would otherwise have been entitled shall cease to be payable either in whole or in part for such period as may be specified in the Order.The right hon, Gentleman said that the Bill did not apply to officers, but in this Clause the words are "officer or man." It is a new dictum which is contained in this Clause in connection with medical treatment, and it is one which I think requires very careful consideration. Certainly I could not agree to it at all. Perhaps I may be allowed to give a little bit of history with regard to how this matter of the treatment of disabled officers and men after they leave the military hospitals arose. I think we all know that the first selection of doctors for the Royal Army Medical Corps in England and Wales is made by what I call the Central Medical War Committee, which was formed through the British Medical Association, and to which were added one or two men not in the association. That body was recognised by the Government as the body to whom to apply when they wanted doctors. Very soon the question of getting doctors from hospitals arose, and they were prepared to submit their case to the Central War Committee, with the result that a special body was constituted called the Committee of Reference. That body was instituted for the purpose of dealing with hospitals and other purposes of reference. It consisted of the presidents of the two Royal Colleges (Physicians and Surgeons) and of four fellows of each body. I mention the constitution of the 634 committee in order to show that it was a very important body, and that a better selection of men could not have been obtained—men of experience and judgment in these matters. A body of men like that, when they met, after getting through the business for which they were assembled, often enter into conversations on matters connected with their profession—as to the treatment of the wounded after leaving hospital, and other kindred subjects. Among the questions so discussed was what was to happen to patients after they had completed their term in a military hospital (eighteen months) and some of whom would be benefited by further treatment.We worked this matter out, and the committee made representations to the Army authorities, who took it up, and consequently the matter was placed, I assume, in the absence of a Ministry of Health, under the Minister of Pensions. In considering this question of getting the patients after leaving the military hospitals to undergo further treatment, at once we were faced with the difficulty that a good many patients would not submit to further treatment. Various suggestions were considered—for example, to extend the time of the patient in the Army or to penalise them in some way if they would not submit. We were unanimously of opinion that compulsion was impossible and that we must depend on persuasion—on showing cases in which continued treatment after leaving hospital had proved successful and beneficial to the persons concerned. We could advise as to the benefit to be derived from further treatment, but I submit that we have no right whatever to compel the patient's acceptance of it. Still, I must say that I have a great deal of sympathy with the right hon. Gentleman in what he proposes. He has evidently been up against this difficulty, hence the present Clause. But one must remember that medicine is not a fixed science, and one cannot always assure a patient that he will certainly benefit from the treatment, and I feel that the right hon. Gentleman, in view of the various difficulties, has no right to put this Clause in his Bill. The difficulties are of various kinds, and there are various reasons why a man will not submit to further treatment. For instance, a man may not want to go into the Navy or Army again; it is, however, only quite a small number who would refuse operation or other treatment in case it 635 would fit them for active service. Again, some men have a great objection to operations, especially after having had previous experience of treatment which has not been very successful. A number of these men are really children. They have got certain ideas into their heads about operation as being a bad thing, or they will not submit to operations because they are opposed to them. One can only explain to them that an operation would be to their benefit, but their refusal to undergo an operation on the ground that they were opposed to it is a ground that perhaps would not be accepted as an excuse by the Minister of Pensions. Again, a man may not want to go through further treatment, because he feels that once he escapes from the hospital he wants to go home. Again, a man who has not been very badly injured may have got a job which, along with his pension, will be very helpful to him. That man does not want to undergo further treatment. Then there are cases of men who have stiff joints, to treat which would prove very painful, and they would decline to go on with further treatment after leaving the hospital.
The question further arises whether we have any moral right to compel patients to undergo further treatment. The only condition under which such a power could be employed would be if we could promise that the patient would benefit by the treatment. I do not think it could be promised that a man could be cured. All that can be said is that if a man underwent a little longer treatment it would be the best thing he could do, but the promise could not be made that he would be cured. Take, for instance, a case of a divided nerve, and suppose it was proposed to the patient to sew the ends together. He would naturally ask what would be the result One could only answer that there have been a certain number of cases of recovery, but one could not say that every case would recover, or anything like every case, and the patient having had eighteen months of treatment in hospital, if recovery cannot be promised, will say "No, I won't have it." No one, I think, has any right whatever to use compulsion to such a patient. Then, again, there are cases of septic wounds where you could not compel a man to undergo operation. There are cases where an operation might prove unsuccessful, or even fatal, or lead to the 636 loss of a limb or increased deformity. I would press upon the right hon. Gentleman that it would be a very grave thing indeed to compel a man to undergo an operation which might end in making matters worse. Personally, I would never say that a man should undergo an operation unless it were a question of life or death within a few hours, when I would use every persuasion possible. But where that is not the case, the question of undergoing further treatment should depend entirely upon the man's own will and judgment, and there should be no compulsion of any kind.
§ Sir HENRY HARRISAs chairman of a local committee. I naturally take considerable interest in this Bill, especially with regard to what the last speaker described as the "minatory Clause." I have not read that Clause with the same pleasure that he has done, but as to that my withers are unwrung. I think the first proposal of the Bill, as to making the Minister responsible in connection with the administrative expenses of committees, and putting those committees under regulations with regard to administrative expenses, depends very largely upon policy and upon the efficiency of administration. The Local Government Board, upon whom at present rests the responsibility of approving of these Estimates, have no direct know-ledge of the work and no control over the administration. The municipal authorities likewise, through whom the estimates of local committees have to be submitted to the Local Government Board and who bear at present one-third of the cost, though they appoint the majority of the members of local committees, are not able to exercise any control over the extent or character of the work or the manner in which it is carried out, I think it is a sound principle that he who calls the tune should pay the piper, and that the Minister of Pensions is the best person to approve of the administrative expenses of local committees and to justify them to the Treasury and Parliament, just as much as the Local Government Board or any other Department at present.
§ Sir H. CRAIKThe Clause does not say so.
§ Sir H. HARRISI think my hon. Friend is wrong. I approve also very heartily of Clause 8 which makes it the duty of the Minister to provide for the care of neglected children. I should like to point 637 out in passing that that duty has not been entirely neglected in the past. I am very sorry my right hon. Friend the Minister did not refer to that voluntary organisation, the Children's Aid Committee, which, under the very devoted and able direction of Miss Douglas, has been doing that work ever since the beginning of the War, and which has at present under its charge 1,200 London neglected children, towards whose cost the London War Pensions Committee contributes under the sanction of the Special Grants Committee. But while I approve of those provisions of the Bill, I must confess that there are other provisions which do raise a very serious question in the minds of persons like myself who are actively engaged in the administration of local committees. There is a feeling, and there is no good in disguising it, prevalent amongst local committee workers, certainly in London, and I have reason to believe elsewhere, that the Minister of Pensions does not want their assistance and that he would rather be without them, and that he is aiming at a purely official organisation, and that he does not appreciate what I venture to describe after close observation as the valuable and certainly self-sacrificing efforts that have been made by thousands of local committee workers. Those committee workers consist largely of women who, without a uniform, without a badge or without even a pet name, have worked in the obscurity of their local offices.
I have always contended that my right hon. Friend the Minister did appreciate the work of the local committees and that though the appreciation may not always have been expressed as clearly as was desirable, yet that it was there. But I confess my belief has been shaken by this Bill, for a more pronounced vote of no confidence in the local committees, not in some local committees but all local committees, I really think it would be difficult to find. The instructions to the draftsman must have been that the local committees were so little responsible for their accounts and so obstructive that he was to prepare a straight jacket for them. I am bound to say that I think he has carried out his instructions even to the point of absurdity for where could you find a greater indignity imposed upon responsible committees than that contained in the Sub-section referred to by my hon. Friend. Who ever heard of a member of a local committee appointed by municipal 638 authorities being removed from his office by a Government Department on the ground that he is obstructive. To whom or to what he is obstructive is not specified, and another reason for has removal is because he is not carrying out his duties satisfactorily, though satisfactorily to whom is not specified. I really should like a definition of obstructveness in order that I may avoid this offence which is, I think, not unknown even to Members of Parliament. Would it be obstructive, for instance, to criticise my right hon. Friend or to doubt the wisdom of his policy. Is my right hon. Friend setting up the offence of lèse majesté. I cannot suppose that it is simply intended to prevent members of a committee talking too much. I would not have referred to this comic proposal were it not that it seems to give a sort of idea of the attitude in which the Ministry approaches local committees.
I do not at all take up the position that the Ministry do not need further powers. I quite agree that where you have negligent committees then by Sub-section (9) of Clause 2 where a committee is negligent or makes default in the execution of its duties the Minister should be able to suspend the committee or, if necessary, to bring it to an end. I say I quite agree that the Ministry should have any powers which are necessary to enable him to screw up to the full standard of efficiency any committees falling below that standard. It is essential that the Ministry should have powers, but this Bill goes a great deal beyond what is desirable and in effect would deprive the local committees of the discretionary power which they possess under the principal Act, and would really put the Minister in the position of absolute dictator. Local committees would not be able to decide what sub-committees they would have or how they should be constituted, or what powers should be delegated to them. The power to delegate, which they possessed under the principal Act, is expressly repealed. There is a provision by which apparently sub-committees might be imposed on the committees without being consulted, and they are not to regulate their own proceedings and their own meetings. The officers of the Ministry appear to be getting powers which certainly seem to be excessive. I really would ask seriously how it is possible for a local committee to maintain any authority over the sub-committees if those sub-committees can be brought into 639 existence and carried out of existence against the will of the committees, and if those sub-committees possess powers at the will, not of the committee itself, but of an outside authority. Perhaps it may be said that I am unnecessarily alarmed, and that the Minister will use these powers in a reasonable way and that it is not intended to put local committees in an impossible position. That is a point which I feel some doubt about, and it is one which I think should be cleared up.
There really are, I think, only two possible policies. One is to come forward frankly and say that the local committees had better follow the Statutory Committee and pass out of existence, as the conditions have altered. The other policy is to say that the local committees are a desirable part of the national system and that they ought to be encouraged and helped in every possible way. The hopeless policy is to treat local committees as if they were so many naughty children to be put in a corner and corrected by officers of the Ministry. The last seems to be the policy of the Ministry, but it really will not work. It is bound to cause endless friction, because you cannot treat committees appointed by municipal bodies in that way. I do hope that the Minister will face the fact—and I think it is the fact—that the public are in favour of having local committees, and for very good reasons. Local interest and local sympathy are needed in order to get the best, the most sympathetic, and the most practical care for disabled men, and that will be specially necessary when the War comes to an end. The only way to get that local interest and local care is to have local committees upon which yon get the best possible representatives of the locality. It is not possible now to get perhaps all the help one would desire, but after the War many representative men will be available. But it may be asked. If we are to have local committees, how are they to be made universally efficient? The answer of the Minister appears to be to apply a rod of iron. I think that is a mistake. Apply it, if you please, to negligent committees; but as regards other committees, which are not negligent but which fall below the standard, take pains to supply them with expert assistance and advice from people who know how local committees ought best to be run. Train your inspectors so that they will know, not only the theoretical but the 640 practical side, so that they may be able to give advice when needed to the local committees. Arrange, if possible, for the training of a paid staff, which will be available for the local offices. That is a great want at present. You could arrange, to place men in offices where the work is well done, with a view to transferring them to where it is not so well done.
5.0 P.M.
I come back to my original question: Dees the Minister want local committees or is he aiming at a purely official organisation? It is really essential, now that this Bill is introduced, that we should have a clear and unequivocal answer to that question. If local committees are desired, and I presume they are, then it is essential that the Ministry should get their loyal co-operation, and I doubt if they will get it if this Bill passes as it stands. The London War Pensions Committee, of which I am chairman, met yesterday and considered this Bill. Though they did not wish to take up an attitude hostile to the Bill, they did ask me to make the protest I have just made, and to make this suggestion, that the Ministry should, before proceeding with the Bill, consult with a few representative members from the local committees drawn from different parts of the country, in order that an agreement might be arrived at with regard to the powers the Ministry really needs in order that we may all go ahead with the desire to do the best possible service. After all, the Minister must realise that whatever powers he gets will be of little avail unless he has the trust and confidence of the local committees, but if that is to be obtained he must take them into his confidence, and he must consult with them as to the measures which are required for their improvement. The people who are working in the local offices very often know where the shoe pinches much better than those who survey the scene from the central office. I cannot think why this Bill has been introduced without some consultation with representatives of local committees. I cannot think there has been consultation, because I think the Bill would have been modified if that course had been taken. But I really make an appeal to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, who will probably reply, and to whose advice and assistance I have been much indebted in carrying on my duties, to realise the importance of making it clear that the Ministry is the friend of the 641 local committees and that it will do its best to make them appreciate that by not pressing its demand for these powers too far and trying to bring about that in the future we shall work together in the most harmonious manner.
§ Major H. TERRELLThe effect of this Bill will be to make the Minister of Pensions an absolute autocrat in the administration of all pension schemes. Under this Bill powers are proposed to be vested in him which would entitle him at any time, at his own will, without any control of anybody else, to deal in any way he pleases with all local committees and subcommittees dealing with pensions. The powers given by this Bill are so wide that he is not only entitled to deal with the committee, but he takes power by an Order to amend every Act of Parliament which has been passed with reference to pensions, and to amend this Act itself, so that if this Bill were passed it would be competent for the Minister of Pensions at his own sweet will to make Orders without regard to any Act of Parliament or this House—Orders which would absolutely reduce all local committees to an absurdity. There are, no doubt, a few Clauses in this Bill which will be useful, but they are minor Clauses. They are not the main object and intention of the Bill, but mere make-weights to make it appear that this Bill is going to serve a useful purpose. The real object is to place the whole control with the Minister of Pensions, and, of course, with the officials who act under him. I would ask the House to consider Section 2 of this Bill, for this is a matter of enormous importance to all the men who are entitled to pensions, and it should not be dealt with lightly or without the most careful consideration. Is the House or is the House not prepared to make the Minister of Pensions an autocrat? If it is so prepared, let us put it in a simple Clause and have done with it; but I do not think the House is prepared to do anything of the kind, and it is only by means of Clauses such as this, which do not in so many words say so, but the operation of which must be to have that effect, that such powers are hoped to be given to the Minister of Pensions.
Under Clause 2 of the Bill the Minister of Pensions takes power to order first of all county councils, borough councils, and urban councils to take into consideration any recommendation with respect to the amendment or modification of any 642 scheme. I do not know what is meant by requiring them to take into consideration. Does it mean requiring them to accept the modifications, or does it mean that they are to consider them and either in their discreton to accept them or not? I think it means, although it does not say so, that they are to accept the modifications suggested by the Minister of Pensions, because if they do not, then the Minister of Pensions can come down upon them or upon individual members as obstructive, or as not performing their duties properly, and either suspend them or dismiss them, so that when this Clause speaks of requiring the councils to take things into consideration, it means that they are to do it and to accept the modifications which the Minister indicates. Then he takes powers to require local and district committees to appoint sub-committees, powers to amalgamate committees, and powers to divide committees, all of which may, under certain circumstances, be very desirable. But what is not desirable is that it should be left in the uncontrolled discretion of the Minister to make these Orders. But when you come to Sub-clauses (g) and (h) you come to those Clauses which are the most obnoxious, and which must have the result of preventing any self-respecting man from serving on any local committee. Under Clause 2 (g) the Minister proposes to take power, after holding a public inquiry, to order that any committee who have been, in his opinion, negligent in the exercise of their powers, or have failed in the performance of their duties, may be suspended, or to declare that the existing members of the committee have vacated their office; so that if the Minister of Pensions finds an independent committee who will not do exactly as they are told, and it is reported to him by one of his sub-inspectors that the committee are negligent in the exercise of their duties, he can remove or suspend that committee at once. Do you think that any self-respecting man, any man of position in a county or a city, would accept duty on a local committee subject to a control of that kind?
The Minister of Pensions himself cannot deal with all these matters; he can only deal with them through his subordinates. He has, I believe, to-day a chief inspector, under whom there are sub-inspectors, and the Minister can only act through these officials. They will report that A, B, or the whole committee are not acting as they 643 think proper, or are negligent in the exercise of their duties, if they do not agree with the sub-inspector, and thereupon what is the Minister to do? Is he to go into the matter himself and go down into the locality and inquire into the matter? Of course not! He can only act through subordinates, and it is always important in these matters to remember that. A Minister who has great powers cannot discharge all those powers himself. He must be guided by his subordinates, and he always is. The result is that the local committees will be absolutely under the control of these sub-inspectors. Again I ask, Who is going to take office as a committee man under these circumstances? But it does not remain there. Under the next Clause the Minister is entitled, if he imagines that any member of a committee is obstructive, to remove him. The last speaker pointed out that he did not know what was meant by the word "obstructive." A sub-inspector would, no doubt, say a member was obstructive if he refused to hold the views of the sub-inspector in any matter. In any case, if the Minister thinks he is obstructive or is otherwise not discharging his duties in a satisfactory manner, he is to be turned off, or to be dismissed by the Minister declaring that the member has vacated his office. Once again I ask, would anybody accept office under these circumstances? What is likely to happen? The best people, the men and the women who are self-respecting and who are independent and who have strong views on these matters will have nothing to do with these committees. They will not be subordinated in the way in which this Bill proposes that they should be, and the result will be that these committees, instead of, as in the past, being filled by people of high character and of unquestioned position and integrity in the legality, will be filled by people who have ends to serve, political or other, and you will find that instead of having, as you have now, really reliable committeemen, energetic, patriotic, doing this great work, it will devolve into the hands of people with ends to serve and who wish possibly to acquire political influence and position.
I look upon this, if it were passed in this form, as a most mischievous precedent for putting into the hands of local persons, subject to the absolute control of officials, the most absolute and unrestrained power. I have always thought 644 that there is one thing which we in this country object to, and that is the putting of absolute, unrestrained power in the hands of any individual. It is rather the German system than the British system. I know of no Bill which has ever been presented to this House in which such wide and uncontrolled powers are proposed to be given to any Minister, and I do not think the right hon. Gentleman could point to any precedent for an act of this kind. But even if there be a precedent in other directions, this matter of dealing with pensions is one which requires to be dealt with, not by a Ministerial Department, not by officials who take their cue from the head officials in their Department, but by people in the localities, who know the circumstances of the men with whom they are dealing, who can deal with each individual case in an honest, upright, and, above all, in a sympathetic manner. If you are going to rest the whole power in the hands of a bureaucratic organisation, you will have the greatest injustice and an absence of all the local sympathy and knowledge which have been in the past and will, I hope, be in the future the salvation of the pensions scheme. It is well known that comparatively recently the Ministry of Pensions have been rather at loggerheads with some of the Committees, and I believe with the Special Grants Committee. This House in the Act of 1917, which set up the Special Grants Committee, gave that Committee certain powers, and provided that it should be appointed from amongst the individuals who formed the previous Statutory Committee, and the previous Statutory Committee have been most carefully selected by this House—not the individuals selected, but the qualifications necessary to justify a seat on that Committee. The Special Grants Committee have certain definite powers given them, and the Ministry of Pensions have rather resented the exercise of independent thought and independent action by the Special Grants Committees. That is one of the reasons it has produced the Bill.
But the one thing we should desire above all things, it seems to me, in a matter of this kind, is that there should be interposed between the individual man that asks for the pension and the Ministry some sympathetic body which should be above all suspicion, and should have the power of modifying, if necessary, the hard and fast rules under which all Departments must of necessity work. The whole 645 spirit of the Acts which have been passed with reference to these pensions has always been based on the principle that it was desirable to have local persons dealing with these matters, who could interpose between the authorities and the pensioner. This Bill is intended to remove those persons; this Bill is intended to make the Minister of Pensions autocratic, to take away from the pensioner the enormous advantage which he has hitherto had in this body of local people to whom he could appeal, and who were in some cases entitled to act without reference to the Ministry of Pensions. This Bill is not one, it seems to me, which is capable of amendment so as to revise the powers of the Minister of Pensions. It is based on a wrong principle. It is intended, I believe, to give effect to a principle which this House has always opposed. I therefore do ask this House not to pass the Second Reading with the idea that you will be able to put it right by Amendment, but rather to reject the Bill as it stands at present, and leave the Minister of Pensions to bring in a Bill in which will be contained those provisions of this Bill which will be of considerable use. But I beg the House not to pass the Second Beading of this Bill.
§ Mr. HOGGEThe Bill which we are considering the Second Reading of is a much larger Bill than any of the Members who have so far spoken to it have grasped, and, as a matter of fact, points in the speeches that have been made have been addressed to what one might really term alter all points that can easily be discussed in Committee and on which there may be legitimate differences of opinion. But this Bill is an attempt on the part of the Minister of Pensions to revise all the powers he has so far obtained by Act of Parliament as set out in Section 14 of the Bill which Members have in their hands. Therefore the opportunity it seems to me is presented of reviewing the points the Minister of Pensions takes in this Bill to deal with all subjects of administration, and I propose to ask the House, before they agree to the passing of the Second Reading of such a Bill as we are now considering to ask themselves the question whether or not the Ministry has succeeded or failed in using its existing powers, because, obviously, if the Ministry has not succeeded in using powers already given to it by Statute it is ridiculous on the part of this House to 646 entrust what I consider an already inept and inefficient Ministry of Pensions with further powers to put the whole question into a further muddle than it is in at present. I have an Amendment on the Paper which, I suppose, owing to the fact that the right hon. Member for Aberdeen and Glasgow University (Sir H. Craik) has been called to move the rejection, I must include in the speech for the rejection, but in my reasoned Amendment I give three reasons why this House should refuse a Second Reading to this Bill until certain other things are done. The first of these points, which I will dispose of very quickly, is the question whether or not a discharged soldier has a statutory right to pension. I would like to remind this House therefore, through you, Sir, that in our Colonies discharged and disabled men have the right to appeal direct to a stipendiary magistrate in regard to their right to a pension, whereas in this, the centre of the Empire, no man is entitled by any right whatever to a pension, and the fact that he may or may not receive one is entirely within the power and discretion of the Pensions Minister for the time being. In my view the time has arrived when we who represent these men in this House—and we all do, because everyone of us has a large proportion of discharged and disabled men in our constituencies—should insist upon the establishment of the statutory right of every man to a pension and provide the channels by which that can be decided.
That leads me direct to the second point in my Amendment, in which I suggest that we do not part with this Bill and give it a Second Reading until we have set up a board of appeal against the award of pensions. Now the question of a board of appeal for the award of pensions is one on which I hold very strong views. As a matter of fact, this House will remember that there is one class of pension which is paid to a man whose disability is not supposed to be due to, or aggravated by, service. That man may not draw a pension under any of our existing Warrants, and he is given a gratuity instead of a pension. As a result of agitation in this House there was set up some considerable time ago what was originally known as Judge Parry's Appeal Tribunal, and before that tribunal the man who had been awarded a gratuity had the right to go in order that his award of gratuity might be turned into a pension. Whit has been the actual result of that administration, which is 647 under the control of my right hon. Friend the Pensions Minister? I would beg the House to pay most urgent attention to these facts. As a matter of actual happening, there have been 50 per cent. or one out of every two cases that have been appealed to Judge Parry's Appeal Tribunal on the ground that they have received a gratuity, one out of every two cases has by order of that Appeal Court been put into pension. If that is true of the award of gratuities which are given to a man because his disability is neither due to nor aggravated by service, how much more true must it be of pensions which are awarded for disabilities which are due to service? Because we must bear in mind that the disabilities which are due to service are very much more difficult to determine than the disabilities which are not due to service. Take such an illustration, for example, as neurasthenia. Everybody knows that the medical profession is making its first acquaintance with that disease as a result of the War, and the whole question of the treatment of neurasthenia and the facts of neurasthenia are, as far as medical men are concerned, in the stage in which they cannot pronounce any definite opinion, and therefore it is very much more difficult to say in cases of that kind what the amount of a man's pension ought to be as compared with the gratuity for disability not due to service.
The point I am trying to make is this: If it be true that in the case of appeals to that board you have 50 per cent. proved wrong, then in the case of the award of pensions it is surely possible to say there will be an equal percentage—I put it no higher—of mistakes! What is the remedy of the discharged and disabled man in these circumstances? He is told by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Pensions that he has an appeal to what is called the medical referee of the local war pensions committee, but as a matter of fact he cannot get to that local medical referee without the consent of the local war pensions committee, and if the elected members of the local war pensions committee care to say to that man that in their opinion he has no right to appeal to the local medical referee they can prevent the discharged and disabled man who is in receipt of pension getting to a local medical referee. Supposing he gets to the local medical referee, what happens? The local medical referee re-examines the 648 man's disability. If his disability is proved by the medical referee to be higher than that for which his pension has been awarded by the original board from Burton Court, then he has the right of a new board also given him by Burton Court. So that the appeal which my right hon. Friend gives to a discharged disabled man to-day is the right to challenge his own appeal. That is a ridiculous Court of appeal. I maintain, and those for whom I speak maintain, that every man ought to have, with regard to pension, the same right of appeal as the man who is awarded a gratuity. The man who is awarded a gratuity has the right to go to an independent Board, presided over originally by Judge Parry, and subsequently by someone else when Judge Parry resigned, and they consider the facts afresh, and on that fresh evidence give an opinion. I suppose when one makes a suggestion of that kind, one ought to have a constructive suggestion. In the case of workmen's compensation, a man who is damaged has an appeal to the county court under the Workmen's Compensation Act. If he is unsuccessful there, he has an appeal to what, I suppose, is called the Court of Appeal, and, further, if he cares to, he can appeal to the House of Lords. There are three independent bodies which can give an opinion upon the amount of disability to a man under the Workmen's Compensation Act.
§ Mr. HODGEYou are quite wrong. They only have an appeal on legal points, and not on matters of fact.
§ Mr. HOGGEI expressed no opinion as to that. My right hon. Friend is rather too hasty in his interruption. All I pointed out was that a man had three opportunities of appeal. If, however, my right hon. Friend does wish to interrupt me, will he bear in mind that he does not even give the man who ought to have an appeal against a pension the right to contest the pension, either on legal grounds or in regard to facts? We have in this country a certain legislative legal procedure which could easily be erected for the purpose of providing this opportunity of appeal. We have in existence in every county court area a court of appeal. We have presiding in that court for the purposes of the Workmen's Compensation Act the county registrar, and, I understand—the Minister of Pensions will bear me out in this, because he has more experience than I—that the county registrar 649 is not unusually favourably disposed to the workmen as against the employer in these cases. Supposing you associated with the Registrar of a County Court an experienced physician and an experienced surgeon, and allowed the discharged man who had been refused pension, or whose pension was inadequate to his disability, to go before that Court just as the man who is discontented with what he has got under the Workmen's Compensation Act, and allowed him to be represented in the same way as trade unionists are represented now, by their officials, you would be going beyond the Pensions Ministry to an independent body, you would be utilising machinery which is there, which would not be costly, which would be at the door of every man all over the country instead of, as at present, having it here in London so far as the Ministry is concerned, and you would give that man free and full access to what I consider he is entitled to, a real opportunity of appeal over and above what the Pension Minister provides for him.
Having disposed of the two items in my Amendment, let me address myself more particularly to the position of pension administration. I want the House, if it will, to grasp the significance of this particular measure which we are considering to-day. This is a measure which is largely administrative, and the Pensions Minister seeks to take unto himself powers from the local war pensions committees, because if we are to believe the Bill, and if we are to believe his speech, these local war pensions committees are doing the work so badly that we require to put more power into the autocratic and bureaucratic hands of the Ministry. I am going to attempt to prove that the Ministry of Pensions is so hopelessly incompetent at the present moment, that the sooner we take all power out of its hands the better for every discharged man within its power. I will address myself to that argument on what, I think, are incontrovertible facts, and I shall be very glad if either my right hon. Friend the Pensions Minister or the Parliamentary Secretary will venture, in the course of the Debate to controvert the facts which I propose to give to the House. Obviously, the largest portion of administrative work under the Ministry of Pensions is that which is concerned with the Soldiers' Awards Department. That has hitherto been located at Chelsea, and now, I suppose, at what is known popularly as Burton Court. Now, 650 at Burton Court there are employed just now in that particular office no fewer than 2,000 employés, and, according to the replies given by the Pensions Minister, they are dealing with anything between 15,000 and 20,000 pension cases a week. That, I may say, includes new cases, cases of renewal and cases of revision, but right hon. Friend will not interrupt me when I say that he himself has said that they are dealing with 20,000 cases a week. That means that each employé at Chelsea, on an average, is dealing with only ten cases per week, or less than two cases per employé per day. That is the so-called efficiency of the Ministry of Pensions. You have 2,000 employés, 20,000 cases, 10 each per week, or less than 2 per day per employé, and yet the Pensions Minister comes here this afternoon and asks us to hand over to him, on account of the way he can do things, the work of other people.
If you consider that further, what do you find? Is my right hon. Friend the Pensions Minister right when he says that they are dealing with 20,000 cases a week? My right hon. Friend and his Ministry took over the control of the award of pensions in February, 1917, and if my right hon. Friend does a little sum in arithmetic he will find that if the figures he has given to the House are true, then his so-called efficient Ministry of Pensions at Burton Court must already have dealt with 4,000,000 cases. Now as a matter of fact everybody in the House knows that there are not a million cases awarded, so that one-fourth of that figure is round about the truth. As a matter of fact Chelsea at the present moment is in a state of absolute chaos, and it is due to the lack of system and the overstaffing by which you have 2,000 people dealing with two cases each per day, and centralisation, so far as soldiers' awards are concerned, is a hopeless, inept failure for which the Minister of Pensions and his Secretary are responsible to this House. The only way of solving that problem is by a system of decentralisation. Go a little further than Burton Court. Go to the Pensions Issue office in Baker Street, which is really somewhat more important than the Awards Office, because after a man has got an award it is surely important that it should be paid to him. What do you find? You find that there are more employés at Baker Street than there are at Burton Court. There are more than 2,000 people employed in paying out the 651 awards, and you have the same confusion at Baker Street that you have at Chelsea. Every Member of this House knows that one of his most frequent duties is to write to Baker Street, asking why the form which is necessary to a person to draw a pension award has not been forwarded to a certain post office.
The administration of pensions is not the only great scheme of administration in this country. Separation allowances are distributed which are five, six or seven times as great as the pensions. They are administered under the direction of General Sir John Carter, Paymaster-in-Chief, but he does not centralise his payment of separation allowances in the War Office. They are paid through the various commands in each part of the country, and I venture to say there is not a tithe of the delay, and there is not a tithe of the mistakes, made by the Paymaster's office, with five times the number of cases to deal with, that there are with the oases administered by the Ministry of Pensions. This problem is not going to be solved—and my right hon. Friend may take this into his consideration—unless you decentralise. After all, Wales, Scotland, England, and to a lesser extent, Ireland, have all contributed enormously in men to the Army. The problem is big enough in Scotland, of which I can speak personally, to enable us to deal with it there, without having any resort to London, and I do respectfully suggest to the House that if you are going to give satisfaction to yourselves, and bring satisfaction to the people who are concerned, you must decentralise Take another argument in favour of that point. Take the question of appeals. The Pensions Minister knows that a man can appeal to what I have called the Judge Parry Tribunal. Does this House know—and I am giving facts now which cannot be contradicted—that the average man who makes that appeal has got to wait six months before his appeal is heard by that tribunal? Is the House aware that to-day there are at least 3,000 men waiting to have their appeals heard? And will the House remember that one out of every two of those cases so far has succeeded? Because those men are required to wait for one perambulating tribunal, those men who have succeeded at the rate of one out of every two, are denied the opportunity of getting their appeal through, simply because you have a 652 scheme of centralisation. Yet you have the Minister of Pensions coming here this afternoon and heaping another scheme of centralisation upon the already clogged machinery at Chelsea.
Take again the further argument of the right hon. Gentleman which deals with the administrative work of the Ministry of Pensions. I would like my right hon. Friend the Minister of Pensions to be quite honest with this House and to answer me a simple question: "How many thousand cases are to-day awaiting the decision of the Special Grants Committee in London?" If my right hon. Friend will be honest to the House he will get up and say: "Very many thousands." Take a simple case, that of a widow with a couple of children. Her pension is 25s. 5d. on scale. She is entitled, under the alternative pension scheme, say to £2 or £2 10s., or whatever the figure may be. In theory and in practice she ought to be entitled to that from the moment her scale pension is paid, but she cannot get her alternative pension, although she has applied to the War pensions committee in her locality. Suppose it is Edinburgh. The committee there investigates the evidence, but cannot pay the money until my right hon. Friend and the Special Grants Committee approve.
§ Mr. HOGGEThe Parliamentary Secretary says "No!" Recently, of course, they have been given permission to advance the money; but the giving of this permission does not mean that the local war pensions committee do advance the money. Some of us have a fair amount of knowledge of the practice of the local war pensions committees, and, at any rate, my case remains sound, that the woman is entitled at the same moment that she has the scale pension to the alternative pension. That is true, as a matter of fact, and the delay in getting a decision from the Ministry of Pensions in regard to the alternative pension has been, up to the present moment, thirteen weeks or thereabouts. Because of the inefficient and centralised powers in London of the delay in the decision the widow with two children, who is entitled to that money, is denied access to it. My right hon. Friend comes here this evening and asks us to give him more power to make his Department more bureaucratic, and power to close down a great many of these local 653 war pensions committees in order that he may have that particular power. Why, everything apart from the scale has got to come to London—everything, from the Orkneys to the Channel Islands, from the West Coast of Ireland to East Anglia; everything from any war pensions committee has to come to London and get approval here before 1d. can be paid out.
§ Mr. HOGGEGeographically, yes! What I mean is this: Instead of my right hon. Friend seeking the powers he seeks in this Bill, he should propose the setting up of special grants committees in Scot land, Ireland, and Wales, leaving the existing machinery to deal with the position as we find it here in England. It is ridiculous to imagine that the machinery existing can in any way deal with the problem. There are one or two other points to which I wish to draw attention. Under the Naval and Military War Pensions Act, 1915, of which this is a corollary, one of the duties of the Minister of Pensions was "to make provision for the care of disabled officers and men after they leave the Service, including provision for their health, training, and employment." I want to ask the House and my right hon. Friend, before we give the Minister more powers than he has got, to review what has been done in regard to this statutory obligation. I submit that the position of the blinded and disabled officer and man is pitiable in the extreme. I do not think the House of Commons, if I may say so respectfully, has sufficiently addressed itself to that problem.
§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Mr. Whitley)I am afraid the hon. Member has for some time been travelling beyond the bounds of relevant discussion. It seems to me that Committee of Supply, when the Minister's salary is on the Paper, is the proper occasion to deal with the matter to which the hon. Member is now referring. This Bill deals with the machinery of administration; not with other questions.
§ Mr. HOGGEOn that point, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, the argument I propose to follow is this—quite briefly—to see whether I am wrong or not. I propose to show that the machinery already in existence is not being used by the Pensions Ministry, and I am therefore moving, or supporting, the rejection of this Bill on 654 the ground that until the machinery which is in existence is used we ought not to give the Ministry any further powers.
§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKERThe hon. Member is quite entitled to show that he has a better plan in regard to machinery than the one suggested in the Bill, but he is not entitled to discuss, for instance, the question of the Royal Warrant.
§ Mr. HOGGENo; I do not propose to do that. I shall avoid carefully the Royal Warrant. I have discussed it so often that I think it is about time to deal with something else. As a matter of fact, no single officer has so far been trained by the Minister of Pensions, although the Acts which are in existence give him power, as I have shown, for the words are "to make provision for the care of disabled officers and men after they have left the Services, including provision for their health, training, and employment." If I can show, and it cannot be contradicted as an actual and literal fact, that the Minister of Pensions has not yet trained a single officer, surely that is an argument in favour of not giving the Minister of Pensions any further powers than those with which he can deal! The reason he has not done so is that he has ceded the functions of the Ministry in this matter to the Labour Minister. I want incidentally to protest against that. I shall have to refer to that again before I have finished, for I am not sure that it is a legal thing for the Minister of Pensions to do. Some time I shall raise this question and ask for a ruling from the Chair as to whether it is legal, under an Act of Parliament, to do what has been done by the Ministry of Pensions. As a matter of fact there has been ceded to the Labour Ministry the training and employment of officers. Why? And we are to be told that the Ministry requires these further and greater powers to deal with the local war pensions committees. As a matter of fact the Ministry of Pensions has not been able to deal with one of the most important functions for which it was created by the House. Take the question of the training of non-commissioned officers and men. Here, I think, we are entitled to raise what in my opinion is one of the most serious indictments of the Ministry of Pensions I have yet known. The Ministry of Pensions has been entrusted with the training of disabled men. There are 500,000 discharged and disabled men to-day. I venture to say that the 655 Ministry of Pensions could not get up here and deny that there are fewer than 5,000 of these men trained.
§ Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWENindicated dissent.
§ Mr. HOGGEIf I am wrong I am sorry for the public statements of the Minister of Pensions, for we have been told that there are less than one in ten who have accepted training. As a matter of fact—
§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKERThat is just an illustration of what I was trying to warn the hon. Member against. The question he has put is not a proper one to be answered in the present Debate on this Bill, therefore it is hardly fair for charges to be made. The occasion for that is Committee of Supply, when the Minister's salary is under discussion.
§ Mr. HOGGEI only want to be clear on the point. Clause 7, for instance, deals with the question of the suspension of a pension if the recipient refuses to undergo treatment. That is one of the powers given to the Ministry. I am suggesting now in my argument that on the question of the treatment and training, which is part of the same argument I am going to develop, that the Ministry is seeking power to take certain action if certain men do not do what they want. I am trying to show, first of all, that the Ministry has no moral right to ask for that power, and that they are merely touching the fringe of the problem.
§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKERThe argument of the hon. Gentleman may be perfectly sound, but it is not justifiable, seeing that a reply is scarcely allowable. I am suggesting that he should not raise questions which cannot be properly answered in this Debate. What we are now discussing is as to the best kind of machinery for carrying out the Pensions Warrant, and not the various other functions of the Ministry.
§ Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWENOn a point of Order. Mr. Deputy-Speaker, may I ask, seeing the hon. Member has made a number of statements in regard to various aspects of the work of the Ministry—most of which statements are inaccurate—whether I shall be in order in replying to them in detail?
§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKERI think the hon. and gallant Gentleman is entitled to reply to any point raised; but it shows 656 that we must endeavour not to turn this opportunity more than we can help into Committee of Supply, which is a proper occasion for this kind of debate.
§ 6.0 P.M.
§ Mr. HOGGEOn that point, so far as I am concerned, I have no objection to any argument I have used being replied to. I am so sure of the figures I have put forward that I have no objection to a Committee of this House looking into them to prove whether I am right or wrong. I shall attempt, however, to keep within the four coiners of your ruling, Sir, and say nothing more on that question. In regard to training, then, as a matter of fact the Ministry has so far dealt with this question so adequately that it is futile to entrust them with any further powers to deal with this question. Until they have exhausted or made use of the powers they have got, they are not the people to come to this House and ask for further powers. So with the treatment of disabled men. For instance, 12½ per cent. of the discharged men are Buffering from tuberculosis. Power to deal with these men resides in the Ministry. Instead, however, of the Ministry dealing with them they are dealt with by the Local Government Board, and are located in the workhouse infirmaries of this country. I say again deliberately, and I can enlarge upon it if necessary, that for a Ministry to come and ask for further powers when, at the moment, tubercular soldiers are being dealt with both by the Local Government Board is wrong. I say I am not prepared to give them further powers to deal with any discharged men until they have approved themselves very much more able to deal with the question than they have so far proved themselves. So also the question of employment. It is the duty of the Ministry to deal with this matter. They are seeking for further powers in this respect in this Bill. What have they done in the matter of employment? They have handed that question over to another Department. The discharged man, to whom we gave the Pensions Ministry power in the original Acts to deal with, and to give preferential treatment to, has to-day to take his place in the Labour Exchange queue just as anyone else. There are 7,000 persons employed in the Ministry of Pensions. That Ministry has not trained a single discharged man for an occupation inside the Ministry of Pensions beyond the job of a messenger. 657 They have handed over to the Labour Exchange, functions which were given to them by us in the earlier Acts. There are other things I should have liked to have said but I will content myself with saying that I think, instead of giving a Second Reading to this Bill, we ought to create a Committee of this House, and in this respect I am in cordial agreement with the other Amendment on the Paper, which will go not only into administration, but will deal with the larger and more general and more important issues which appertain to the Ministry of Pensions. Unless that Ministry can prove—and so far they have not done so—they are an efficient administration instead of, as I believe, an inefficient and inept Ministry, this House should not give them any further powers to obstruct the flow of the duty and responsibility of the Government and the nation to the widows and dependants of the men who have fought in all parts of the world. If this question is taken to a Division, I shall support the refusal of a Second Reading to this Bill on these, which are to me the most important and necessary grounds.
§ Colonel ASHLEYRepresenting as I do a large body of discharged soldiers, I must say that I could not bring myself to vote for this Bill, owing to the unfettered and irresponsible powers which it places in the hands of a Government Department. I can quite conceive that it is necessary that some more powers should be given to the Ministry of Pensions than are vested in that Department at the present moment. For instance, the local war pensions committee's secretary in Dublin is at the present time a Sinn Feiner, and he is also the chairman of the local anti-conscription committee, and consequently you can imagine what treatment our soldiers would get in Dublin City with a secretary holding such views. I can quite see that it is necessary that certain executive powers should be given to the Pensions Department, in order that officials and members of committees who obviously do not carry out their duties as they should do should be replaced by people who will do so. I cordially associate myself with the protest made in so many quarters, that when once you have got an efficient local committee it should be allowed to run its own business in its own way, and should not be at the beck and call of any young inspector.
658 The House will surely agree with me when I say that English local government is a very efficient thing. It is efficient in our big cities and in our best-managed counties, where it is equal to anything in the world, and consequently it is unthinkable, once you have an efficient local committee having general inspection by the central office, that it should not be entrusted to carry out its work in its own way and should not be subject to the kind of interference to which hon. Members have referred. If the hon. Gentleman who put down the Motion for rejection goes to a Division, I shall vote with him on the ground that I am not prepared to give these unlimited powers to a Government Department. Most of us have had experience of the breakdown of this Department, and the hon. Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Hogge) has mentioned several instances. In the case of the organisation with which I am concerned it takes months to get cases through, and if that is so, imagine the position of a man in the country who has not an organisation to assist him, and this is the time that the Minister of Pensions comes and asks for greater and absolute powers for his Department, and asks that the powers of the local committees should be taken away. If the Minister of Pensions can come here in six months time and say, "We have now put our house in order," then, I agree, greater powers should be granted; but until he is able to make that statement good it would be insanity to give the extra powers which he now asks for.
The hon. Member for East Edinburgh, in the Motion which he has on the Paper, lays down three principles with which I am in cordial agreement. He states that the disabled discharged man should have a statutory right to a pension. The man has suffered for his country's sake and has been disabled, and, therefore, he bag gained his right to a pension. With regard to the right of appeal, I think that the assessments made now, generally speaking, are fair on the whole; at any rate, those who assess the pensions are doing their best, and I give them full credit for it. After all, they are only human beings doing their best, but I put it to the House that if these gentlemen make a mistake and they do, it is a very serious thing for the wretched man and his dependants, for he will have no reasonable opportunity of obtaining the proper amount of his pension. All we ask is that there should 659 be some independent appeal to which the man may go, subject to proper limitations and safeguards, so that he may have his case reconsidered. As to decentralisation, obviously that seems necessary, because the Pensions Department has broken down. There can be no question about that. It would be very difficult for the right hon. Gentleman to get it on a proper basis, because there is more work going through London than can possibly be done by one Department. The only alternative is decentralisation on a national basis for Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, and let the London headquarters look after England as hitherto. If that is done I think a great improvement will take place. Hon. Gentlemen not so much in touch as the hon. Member for East Edinburgh and myself with this question do not realise what real grave dissatisfaction there is amongst discharged soldiers. The discharged soldier is sometimes unreasonable, but on the whole he is in quite a reasonable frame of mind, and what he does ask for in justice is that what the State says he shall have he shall get directly the award is made, instead of it being hung up for weeks and often for many months. That is quite unreasonable, and it will be impossible to alter this if this Bill is passed. The only way to stop this unrest is to decentralise, so that what a man is entitled to have he shall be able to get without any further delay.
I shall vote against this Bill on one other quite different ground, which I do not think has been touched upon in this Debate, namely, the power which the right hon Gentleman seeks to take away any single man's pension unless he submits to the treatment which the right hon. Gentleman suggests. A man's disabled pension is his right, and he gets it because he suffered certain disabilities through having fought for and served his country. It is his absolute right to do what he likes with that pension, and it has nothing to do with the Minister of Pensions or anyone else. I quite agree that the Ministry of Pensions should do all they can to induce these men to submit to treatment calculated to bring them back to a state of health so as to enable them to take their place amongst the whole-time healthy workers of this country, but I would never consent to place the pensions of these men at the 660 mercy of some medical or other adviser of the Ministry of Pensions. They are entitled to these pensions, and by all means try to induce them to accept your treatment, but you have no right to penalise them by taking away their pensions, thus penalising as well their wives and families simply because they refuse to undergo your treatment. A friend of mine has been to three different medical men for deafness and they have all treated him in a different way, and if a man with this complaint refused the treatment offered him the right hon. Gentleman could refuse his pension. I would never consent to that proposal, and unless the Under-Secretary is able to outline serious modifications I shall very reluctantly vote against it.
§ Colonel Lord HENRY CAVENDISH-BENTINCKI rise to support those who have declared they are unable to vote for this Bill. As has already been pointed out by many speakers, this Bill is unquestionably framed on the wrong lines, and whoever drafted it is evidently impregnated with the ideas of autocracy and bureaucracy. There are two ways of dealing with this question, the autocratic and the democratic. The autocratic way is taking power to oneself and the democratic way would be to encourage and foster local effort and activity. I think it is a very anomalous state of things when we find a Pensions Minister who has been nursed in democratic principles assuming an autocratic role. Undoubtedly there are cases of the failure of local committees. Personally, I have no grievance against the one that looks after the soldiers in my own constituency, and I believe they are thoroughly active and fully alive to the situation and thoroughly sympathetic, and probably where failure does occur it is due to some lack of imagination and not lack of sympathy. I cannot profess to have had great experience in this matter, but I should have thought that it was possible for the Pensions Minister to go down to the local committee and give them some inspiration and some sympathy. I cannot help thinking that the Pensions Minister might have done a great deal more upon these lines than he has done. I have seen very few accounts of conferences with the Pensions Minister, and I cannot help thinking that he has been too anxious to play the part of a dictator. There was a very characteristic incident the other day in Birmingham when a conference was held. 661 The pensions officials were not allowed to attend it because it was Held without the Pensions Minister's initiative.
The hon. Member for East Edinburgh said that this Bill should not be supported because the Pensions Ministry is itself incapable. I am not going so far as to say that—I do not want to say anything to hurt the feelings of the right hon. Gentleman or of my hon. and gallant Friend the Parliamentary Secretary—but there is an undoubted failure to deal with the problem of treatment and training of disabled soldiers. I do not know any more sacred duty—nay, it ought to be a privilege—than to see that every disabled soldier has everything that science can offer for his restoration to perfect health and efficiency. If, when we see men limping down the street or suffering from a disabled or crippled arm, or obviously suffering from neurasthenia, we ask ourselves if we really have nothing that science can do for these men, I am afraid that the answer must honestly be in the negative. I know that it is a difficult problem, and the great activity in the labour market at the present moment makes it still more difficult. When we come to think, as the hon. Member for East Edinburgh said, that there are some 500,000 men discharged from the Army and that only some 40,000 or 50,000 have taken any treatment, we must confess that we have made a dismal failure of this question of treatment. That failure is due to the fact that the Pensions Ministry have not been able to cope with this huge problem themselves and have not made up their minds to allow sufficient local autonomy to enable the local committees to deal with it.
I saw in the "Times" of Friday a long article dealing with the activities of the Pensions Ministry. It was stated that the Ministry had arranged for annexes to be instituted in connection with all the orthopaedic centres. As far as I can remember, it was some twelve months ago when this question of annexes was first approached. I should like to know how many there are in existence at the present time? I shall be very much surprised if there are any considerable number in operation. Again, there is the question of the after-care of the tuberculous soldier. As everybody knows, there is great pressure upon the accommodation at the sanatoria, and men are discharged from them perhaps after two or three months' treatment and before they are properly 662 cured. Everybody knows that the efficient cure of tuberculosis depends upon aftercare. I am informed that some time ago the Treasury sanctioned the expenditure of £50,000 upon after-care treatment. What has the Pensions Ministry been able to do? I question very much whether anything at all has been done to institute any system of after-care treatment for tuberculous soldiers. The training question is equally if not even more unsatisfactory, because an infinitesimal number of men have taken any treatment at all. That failure is not due to the local committees. It is due to over-centralisation by the Pensions Ministry. I am told that every scheme that a local committee starts has to go up to the Pensions Ministry, and that it takes an unconscionable time before the local committee can get authority to start. There is the instance of the Kinson Farm Colony for tuberculous patients. It was over a year before the Pensions Ministry could be got to say whether they approved of that scheme. There is another matter which discharged soldiers have told me militates very greatly against the training scheme. The classes are much too centralised. For instance, a man from a town in the Midlands has to go to a town in the North to attend his classes, although the trade which he wishes to learn is very well represented in his own native town.
Another reason why we really ought to blame the Pensions Ministry rather than the local committees for the small number of men who have been either trained or treated is that there has been a definite failure to make the schemes known in the hospitals. I believe a man is handed a pamphlet when he is discharged from hospital, but there ought to be in every hospital plenty of literature for the men to see what is going to be provided for them when they are discharged. Again, local committees, instead of being browbeaten, should be encouraged to go in for propaganda work. Let them have conferences with discharged soldiers, and let the Pensions Ministry have more confidence in them. I should like to see both the local committees and the Pensions Ministry frankly inviting the co-operation of the discharged soldiers themselves. I am sure that they would respond willingly to any encouragement which the Pensions Ministry gave them for co-operation. There is the question of the officers. I have heard statements made that the Pensions Ministry adopts the 663 policy of deliberate obscurantism with regard to what the discharged soldier is entitled to. I will not go so far as to say that, but I do go so far as to say that it is almost impossible for the officer when leaving the Service to find out what he is entitled to. I asked the Pensions Minister yesterday if he could not publish some little book and he said that if he did publish it the officer would not read it. If he will pardon me for saying so, that is ridiculous nonsense. There is really great need for something of the kind. Although there are good schemes for training officers when they are on light duty, I believe there is nothing for officers when they have permanently left the Service. One reason why training schemes for officers are not popular is that they entail a very great sacrifice of money. A discharged officer only gets £175, and £2 per week is deducted when he is taken on under a training scheme. If he is a married man, that only leaves about £50 a year for the maintenance of his wife and family. This question of the officer when he has left the Service is a very serious one, and it requires much more consideration than the Pensions Ministry has yet given to it.
§ Sir A. MONTAGUE BARLOWWe have listened this afternoon to a discussion which has wandered a good deal wide of the Motion for the Second Heading of this Bill. I find myself in cordial sympathy with a good deal of that which fell from the hon. Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Hogge), especially when he spoke about the right of appeal. The work of Judge Parry's committee, as we know it, has certainly been put on an established basis, but the right of appeal has got to be developed. After all, however, that is not what we are here to discuss this afternoon. I cannot help feeling a little sorry for the Pensions Minister. I think he has been badly advised. Reference was made by my hon. Friend to the Jackdaw of Rheims and the curse. I remember something about the Jackdaw of Rheims and the curse, and I think the conclusion was
Never was heard such a terrible curse!But what gave rise to no little surprise,Nobody seem'd one penny the worse!That is not the case with this Bill, because if it goes through I am afraid that a good many people will be a good deal the worse, and it is from that point of view that I am compelled to criticise it. As 664 chairman of the Parliamentary Pensions Bureau I have been authorised, with others, to put a Motion upon the Paper. We have considered this Bill carefully, and the difficulty, which we appreciate, is that there are portions of the Bill which are undoubtedly not only desirable but necessary. Clause 1, for instance, making the grant of money, is one which anybody who is interested in the work of local war pensions committees will recognise is obviously necessary. Even my hon. Friend on my right, who spoke on behalf of the London War Pensions Committee, did not, in his severest moments of humorous criticism, take up the attitude that he did not gratefully accept Clause 1. We all of us know that the real difficulty with regard to the local war pensions committees is that their work is extremely unequal. Some committees, particularly the great one in London and others in the North with which I am thoroughly conversant, do their work as well as such work can be done. But admittedly in other areas, in which I have had experience of three detailed cases, the work is not done well. Cases are handed over to the local war pensions committees, there seems to be no machinery for handling them and the men get no satisfaction. That is not a satisfactory state of affairs. Therefore I am entirely with the Minister when he says he proposes to give money to the local war pensions committees to assist their work and that he or someone must have some greater powers of applying ginger to some of the unsatisfactory committees.Then, when we have got as far as that, we are faced with the Bill itself. Is that what the Bill docs? Does it give to the Pensions Minister merely the power to stimulate and assist local war pensions committees or does it give him the power in effect to kill them? I have perused the Bill with some care and considered it in the Joint Committee, and whatever the intention in the Ministry may be—and after all, as one of the old judges said, "The devil himself knoweth not the thought of man"—the words of the Bill as it stands in my view give much too wide powers to a Government Department—powers which may very easily be misused. The Minister, by Order, may appoint committees, may dissolve them, may amalgamate them, may suspend them, and he may remove that peculiar article—the obstructive member. Clearly, the obstructive member will be one who criticises the 665 officer of the Ministry when he comes to the committee. Then there is that extraordinary power to modify the Act of Parliament, and there is the general power to exercise the powers of any committees in their place. There is the further power of making Regulations, which also goes very far indeed, because it enables the Pensions Minister to make Regulations actually for the procedure of each committee. I appeal to anyone who has had experience of local government whether he would like to work on a committee where that state of things prevailed Would he willingly give of his best to a committee which had such relations with a Government Department as this Bill suggests? Clause 6 is in many ways one of the least satisfactory Clauses, because on many occasions the work of the Special Grants Committee has saved the Pensions Ministry from very serious discredit. I am very anxious that the Special Grants Committee should be properly protected, but under the proposals of this Clause apparently the tenure of its members, the arrangements as to their resignation, and so on, can all be settled by the Minister by a stroke of his pen, and that seems to me to put the Special Grants Committee in a position of uncertainty which is eminently unsatisfactory.
Then we have had a great deal said about Clause 3 and the question of treatment. I take it there is no doubt treatment includes operations, and, if so, I think really the native blood of an Englishman rises up in one if power is to be taken to compel a man to undergo an operation against his will. Persuade him by all means if you are certain he is going to secure better health as the result of the operation, though you cannot always be sure of that. Do all you can, nurse him back to life, cajole, persuade, induce in any shape, but the power of compulsion, subject to a threat of reduction of pension, is not a power which I think this House would willingly give the Pensions Minister. We are in this dilemma. Some of the powers under the Bill are good, and I should be very sorry to see it thrown out for that reason, because I want the Grant for the local committees, and I want more power for the Pensions Minister to put, not iron pressure, but gentle pressure on local pension committees. On the other hand, we cannot possibly vote for this Bill in its present shape unless we have some very satisfactory undertaking as to what is to be the future course of the Bill, because 666 I am satisfied, and I think most of those who have spoken on the subject are satisfied, that if the Bill goes through in its present shape not only will no benefit be done to the wounded soldier, which after all is the chief thing, but you would have a perfect uproar in the country from all the local war pensions committees. We hear the mutterings of the storm already, and I understand a meeting is taking place to-day, and we shall probably hear more rolls of thunder in the newspapers tomorrow morning. I am certain the Pensions Minister does not want to get at loggerheads with the whole of the war pensions committees of the country, and therefore I think what we might look forward to reasonably is something on the lines, though not quite in the shape, of the Motion which was put on the Paper by myself and others representing the Parliamentary Pensions Bureau.
I will quote, if I may, the Pensions Minister's assurance, on the political aspect of pensions, that he would always be quite willing to co-operate with a Committee of this House. It is part of the skill, tact, and knowledge with which he has conducted pension matters generally, to which I give most readily a cordial tribute, that he gave that assurance, and I crave it in aid at this moment. I am not so much dealing with the question of setting up a general Select Committee to deal with pensions in this House. I hope to raise that matter at another time. I think there is a great deal to be said for it, and it is a curious and interesting parallel that the Montagu-Chelmsford Report has recommended that very thing in the case of India, that a permanent Select Committee of this House should be set up in order to assist the Indian Minister with regard to Indian matters. If you take the paragraph in the Report and delete the word "India" and substitute "pensions" for it, you have the whole case which I submit to the House for setting up a Committee of the House to assist the Pensions Minister. But I am not going into that particularly at this moment, though the matter will be proceeded with, and over 300 Members have given their adhesion to that general principle. What I want is to assist the Pensions Minister out of a dilemma in which I think he is with regard to this Bill, because if he goes to a Division pure and simple on the Bill he runs a great risk of losing it in the present temper of the House, in view of what has been said. 667 The Motion standing in my name and that of my colleague is that the proposals of the Bill be referred to a Select Committee before the Second Reading. What I suggest as a reasonable way out of the difficulty—and I understand in various parts of the House that would meet with a certain amount of approval—is that assuming the Bill is given a Second Reading it should be referred to a Select Committee, assumedly composed of those interested in the matter in all parts of the House. I believe if that sort of line commended itself to the Minister he would get his Bill without very much difficulty and we might get on on reasonable lines. If he cannot see his way to that, I think a great many of us will find ourselves, much to our regret, forced to vote against the Second Reading.
§ Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWENI am sorry that even in my most optimistic moments I cannot flatter myself that this Bill has had an entirely good reception, but I sincerely hope that before I have finished I shall be able to remove some of the misapprehensions and that the House will see the necessity for the Bill and that it will be willing to give us a Second Reading. I will take as my text the very apposite question which was asked by my hon. Friend the chairman of the London War Pensions Committee. He asked, Do we want local war pensions committees to assist us in our work or do we not? I say, most emphatically, that we do, that we appreciate to the full all that they do, that we realise that without these bodies of public-spirited men and women, who were doing this work long before there was a Ministry of Pensions, our task would be infinitely more difficult than it is, and we are exceedingly grateful to that large band of volunteer workers who have stood up and befriended the disabled man and the children and the dependants, have looked after supplementing the separation allowance and also assisted in the way of pensions, and I realise that it would be a fatal error if anything we did was calculated to destroy these local committees and substitute a cold-blooded officialdom in their place. Therefore I wish to make it perfectly clear both that we appreciate the local committees and wish to preserve them. I will say the same thing about another body. We have on the Special Grants Committees, which are to some extent the successors of the Statutory 668 Committee, a number of public-spirited, able ladies and gentlemen who have been of the greatest assistance to our work, and if there is anything in Clause 6, which is the only Clause, as far as I know, which deals with the Special Grants Committees, to which they feel legitimate objection, which they think puts them in a false position, which subjects them unnecessarily to the Minister and his Regulations, we are prepared to reconsider that Clause in Committee.
But may I put to the House the real object of the Bill and the real difficulty of the Ministry? The local committees are invaluable. I do not think we could begin to do our work without them. From another point of view they are of the greatest value to us. They are a most valuable buffer between men or women with grievances and the Ministry, and from the point of view of self-preservation it would be most unwise to remove that buffer. But we have to recognise that local committees are most uneven in the methods on which they work. There are some which are admirable—they could not be better. We never have any trouble with them. They do their work in the most enlightened way and give the greatest satisfaction to the discharged men. There are others which are not so good, and there are some—I am sorry to have to say it, but, after all, it is much best to be perfectly frank—which are distinctly bad. Let me give an example which took place in a county committee, not in Ireland, but in Great Britain. It is a committee of about thirty members. The quorum is seven. It meets once a month. Its duty is shared up by a number of sub-committees, who have very small powers of their own and have to refer all important cases to the monthly meeting of the county committee. A few weeks ago that committee met, and there was not a quorum present. All these cases are held up for a whole month—cases where assistance was badly needed in many instances for deserving men and women—because out of thirty members seven were not willing to attend and look after the business they had undertaken to perform. When that sort of thing not only can but does happen it is absolutely necessary that we should take steps to bring up the bad committees to the level of the good ones, and that is the real object of this Bill. It is to serve the interests of the discharged men their widows, dependants and children, which we all have at 669 heart, and we feel we must have greater powers in some cases to look after these committees, for we have practically he powers now. A committee can absolutely defy us. It can refuse to do its work. We have no powers of coercion whatsoever. It may be that in this Bill we are taking too big powers. I am quite willing to consider that, but some powers we must have—otherwise the work is not done.
Take this case of separation allowance. Under the new scale, as I read it, a childless wife who cannot work is to receive an addition to her flat rate, to be paid by the local committees. It is to be obligatory on the local committee. But as things stand now we cannot compel the local committee to pay that rate. It is necessary that we should have coercive powers to compel local committees to do their work, and, if they refuse to do it, it is necessary to have the power given us in Clause 2 (g), after holding a public inquiry and discovering that the committee is in default, of suspending it and appointing other people who will carry on the work. I venture, therefore, to appeal to the House, in the interests of discharged and disabled men to give us some powers over local committees, because we are really in a position of absolute impotence at the present time. It is quite true that these committees are in the form of local self-government. We believe in local self-government. My right hon. Friend and myself are thorough democrats. We believe in local self-government for a democratic nation, and we believe there will be sympathy from people appointed in that way which you will not get from a Ministry. But these committees cannot claim quite the full powers that other local bodies have, because we pay the entire expenses. In the case of other local bodies part of the expenses, and in most cases the greater part of the expenses, fall upon the local rates. Under this constitution not only is all the money that is expended in grants and allowances paid by the State, and not out of the rates, but under this Bill the whole of the administrative expense is to be paid by the State. Therefore, I think it is only, reasonable that when the State pays the whole of the cost we should have a considerable voice in the way the money is expended. We have always heard in the old days that there must be no taxation without representation, but, unless we get some of these powers this will be representation without taxation, which 670 means going a very long way in the opposite direction. What we ask, therefore, is that we should have certain powers to control the committees and to compel the committees to do their work. I do not say there are many of them, but in a few instances they have not done their work. We think that the provision of Clause 3, which has not been criticised up to the present moment, enabling the Pensions Ministry to add members to the local committees, up to one-fourth is, when we are paying the whole of the expenses, very reasonable, and we say that a provision of that sort ought to be given to us by the House.
I do not think this is the occasion for me to occupy the time of the House by dealing in detail with the varied criticism which has been made of the Bill, and of other things which are not in the Bill; but may I point out one or two matters where I think there has been a misunderstanding? The right hon. Member for Aberdeen and Glasgow Universities—
§ Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWENI apologise. The right hon. Member for Glasgow and Aberdeen Universities (Sir H. Craik) says we are taking away from the Treasury the power of controlling the administrative expenses of local committees. That is not so. The administrative expenses now are not controlled by the Treasury but by the Local Government Board, and we are merely transferring the control from the Local Government Board, which, excellent body though it is, is not fully au fait with pensions administration, to the Pensions Ministry, which at all events thinks that it knows something about pensions administration. The distinguished junior Member for Glasgow and Aberdeen Universities—
§ Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWENI am afraid I have got the universities all wrong. The distinguished Member for Edinburgh and St. Andrews Universities (Sir Watson Cheyne) objected very strongly to Clause 7, in which we seek power to take the pension away if a man deliberately refuses to accept treatment. He said that that was a new principle. It is not a new principle. By Article 4 of the Warrant 671 to-day, we can halve a pension if a man unreasonably refuses treatment. All we seek to-day is that in cases where a man continues unreasonably to refuse treatment we should have the power, which we need not necessarily use, to take away the whole pension.
§ Mr. JOYNSON-HICKSDoes the Warrant include operations?
§ Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWENThe Warrant does include operations, but as a matter of practice we laid down the principle very early in considering how we should deal with the Warrant never to enforce that for refusal of operation, and we do not intend to do so. It never was intended, and if it is necessary to safeguard this Clause by the insertion of words that we will not enforce it in the case of refusal of operation, I am sure nay right hon. Friend will agree to such modification. There are thousands of men who ought to have treatment. The Noble-Lord the Member for Nottingham (Lord H. Cavendish-Bentinck) spoke about that. It is very difficult to get these men to accept treatment. What is the result? If a man unreasonably refuses treatment, he thereby gets a bigger pension than he otherwise would because of some disablement that might be removed, I will not say by operation, but by massage, electricity, orthopaedic treatment, and so on. Because the man refuses treatment the State has to pay a higher pension, which we think is unfair to the State. Apart from that I have always held, and I think my right hon. Friend holds, that health is of greater importance than any pension, and that it is most important that we should endeavour 10 get every man to make himself as fit as he can notwithstanding his disability. Some of our Dominions have a Clause similar to this. I cannot at the moment recollect which, but in one of the Colonial Warrants there is a clause that if a man refuses treatment his pension is reduced by the amount of extra disability which the medical people decide he has in consequence of his refusal. Therefore the principle is really not a new one. It is a principle accepted by several of our Dominions, and it appears in the Warrant at the present moment.
My hon. Friend the Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Hogge) made a long, slashing attack on the Pensions Ministry. 672 The burden of his song was this, that we are so hopelessly incompetent that it is no earthly good giving us further powers.
§ Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWENI do not think that is the opinion of the House, and I am sure the country does not think that. I am sure my right hon. Friend has so administered his office that it is realised generally in the country that, notwithstanding the difficulties we have had to put up with, on the whole we have vastly improved pensions administration. The hon. Member for East Edinburgh was inaccurate in other things. He made a long attack on the Special Grants Committee because he said there were delays in fixing alternative pensions. The Special Grants Committee has nothing to do with alternative pensions, so that the hon. Member was incorrect in that.
§ Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWENI am within the recollection of the House, and I am of opinion, and I think most hon. Members are of the opinion, that the hon. Member said that the long delay in regard to alternative pensions was due to want of businesslike ability on behalf of the Special Grants Committee.
§ Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWENThe hon. Member also said that a microscopic number of discharged men had been trained. It was difficult to follow his figures. He said that 500,000 men had been discharged disabled, and that only one-tenth of them had been trained, which meant 5,000.
§ Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWENThose are the words I took down.
§ Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWENDid you say 5,000?
§ Mr. HOGGEI said out of 500,000 discharged men, 5,000 had been trained by the Ministry. Then I was interrupted by my right hon. Friend, and I referred him to his own speech, in which he said that one out of ten had been trained, but, as he knows, that includes all the other voluntary agencies.
§ Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWENThe statement that only 5,000 have been trained is quite incorrect. Altogether between 17,000 and 18,000 have been trained. I admit that it is not as many as we would like. Nothing is more misleading than to say that 500,000 have been discharged disabled and only 5,000 have been treated, or that only 18,000 have been treated, because it must be remembered that we have only to train those men who by reason of their disability are not able to go back to their own trade. We hold that if a man can go back to his own trade that is the best thing he can do. Therefore the percentage of men who are, so to speak, eligible for training is an exceedingly small proportion. I have only dealt with this point because I think it unfair that my right hon. Friend and the Pensions Ministry should have this attack made upon them without having an opportunity of saying a few words in reply. I could controvert many more statements of the hon. Member, but this is not the occasion to do so.
7.0 P.M.
The hon. Member for Salford (Sir Montague Barlow) has suggested that as a way out of our difficulty the House should give a Second Reading to the Bill and then refer it to a Select Committee. I would appeal to the House not to adopt that course. I am a, very old Member of the House, and I have served on many Committees, including many Select Committees, and if you want to shunt a Bill or to put it off to the Greek kalends, or put it off to goodness knows when, I know of no better way than to refer it to a Select Committee. If the House refers this Bill to a Select Committee, which can summon witnesses and cross-examine them and go into every sort of detail, and introduce a vast number of subjects not always relevant, I do not believe we shall get this Bill this Session, probably not this Parliament. We have to contemplate the fact that, granting the excellent qualities of the majority of local war pensions committees, there are committees which are not doing their work, there are powers which it is necessary the Ministry should have, and there are men and women suffering because the work is not being done. I would, therefore, appeal to the House, in the interests of the gallant men who have suffered, to give us the powers we ask, which are necessary to enable the local committees to do their work properly. I wish to be 674 perfectly frank with the House. My right hon. Friend and myself have profited largely by the criticisms put forward to-day. I am quite prepared on his behalf to say that a good many of those criticisms are justified. I think that perhaps in seeking powers which are necessary we have in some cases gone too far. The Bill will have to be very carefully considered in Committee, and my right hon. Friend is prepared to make large concessions on those points to which special objection has been taken this evening. I will go further. While ray right hon. Friend cannot accept this suggestion to refer the Bill to a Select Committee for the reasons I have given—the reasons of delay he realises the admirable work done by the Parliamentary Pensions Bureau on which all parties are represented, and he is prepared to undertake that before the Committee stage is reached he will have a conference with that body and go through the points to which special reference has been made in the hope that we may come to an agreement on the Amendments to the Bill. I hope with that assurance, and in view of our great desire to get a strong Bill in order that we may do our work properly and efficiently, the House will consent to give the measure a Second Reading.
Colonel Sir J. HOPEI cordially welcome this Bill, and I do not gather that any arguments have been put forward which show that any other course could have been adopted. Of course there are, in connection with pensions administration, various kinds of committees, good, bad, and indifferent, and it is desirable that the Minister should have power to deal not only with bad committees but with indifferent ones. It has not been shown that the framework of this Bill is incapable of improvement. We have just been told by the Parliamentary Secretary that it does require modification and that the Minister is quite prepared to accept Amendments in Committee. It appears to me, for instance, that the power proposed to be given in the Bill to arbitrarily suspend a whole committee, is bad, and I hope that on the Committee stage the Government will consent, if they wish to retain this power, to allow any Order to enforce it to lie on the Table of the House for 30 days before it becomes operative. Further. I hope he will consent to modify the Clause which gives power to alter and amend an Act 675 of Parliament. One realises that the present pension administration has not kept pace with the increased volume of work. In many cases the work of administration has quite outgrown the local organisation. There are many districts where local sub-committees have not yet been appointed and where perhaps one or two of the old voluntary workers are doing their best under difficult circumstances to carry on their work effectively, without knowing what their exact position is. There are many cases where local committees have not given delegated powers to district sub-committees, and here again both district sub-committees and voluntary workers are doing their work under great difficulties.
As has been pointed out, many secretaries to local committees in the past have been appointed simply on account of their position and because it was thought that, as they could carry out the work of the local authority, they could also do the pension work. That, of course, is quite impossible. Some local committees have made mistakes in appointing secretaries and have found it very difficult to get rid of those appointed. The paid secretary to a local committee is a most important person, he should be a whole-time officer, preferably he should be an ex-soldier, he should have good knowledge of the work, he should be sympathetic and anxious to do his best for the discharged soldier. He should not take up too official an attitude, but should help these soldiers, their wives and dependants; he should explain to them what they are entitled to and assist them in getting it. We all welcome the advances which have recently been made to meet the cost of living both in pensions and superannuation allowances. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry has alluded to the case of the childless wife whose allowance remains at 12s. 6d.—the statutory allowance, I mean, whereas the amount which could be given under Regulation 71D has been increased from 4s. to 6s. 6d. There has been a great deal of outcry against the inadequacy of the amount paid to the childless wife, and that might have been avoided if this particular Regulation had been given effect to. Either the recipients did not know they were entitled to the increased amount or the pension committees did not understand the condition under which the amount was to be given. I hope the Pensions Minister will ensure that local 676 committees shall give the increased allowances to women who did not work previous to their marriage or previously to their husbands enlisting. Many local pensions committees have only been giving grants when they are satisfied the woman cannot find employment. It is very important that this should be put right, and I hope that the Minister of Pensions will see that this Regulation is very liberally and generously interpreted.
There is another Regulation 71A, with regard to contractual liabilities which admits of an increased grant. A good deal of discontent has in the past been caused because grants have not been administered by local and district committees. I do not wish to cast any reflection upon local committees, they have done excellent work, at any rate the majority have, but there are areas where the local committees have not done their work, and we must bear in mind that one discontented man makes more noise than a hundred men who have obtained their rights and are satisfied. I hope that when the Minister of Pensions gets this Bill through he will take steps to see that grants are given to these women and that the soldiers and their wives and dependants will have explained to them what they are entitled to. There is great danger that under this Bill a large bureaucracy may develope, and I hope that the Minister of Pensions will guard against it. We know that officials are rather apt to judge minor officials by the amount of money they save, and by the test as to whether their offices and books are in order. It is obvious that economy gains more credit from the official than extravagance, but I trust the Minister of Pensions will impress on his inspectors that when they go down to inspect local offices they must not be satisfied merely with seeing that the books are well kept and that there has been no breach of the regulations. The right hon. Gentleman should direct the inspectors to see that there is no discontent in the area of the office, and I would suggest for his consideration that he might issue an order to the inspectors not merely to visit the offices of the local committee but to advertise in the local paper the fact that they will be attending at a given time and be prepared to listen to any representations which discharged and disabled soldiers or their dependants may desire to make, and to investigate any complaint that may be put forward. Probably they 677 would get a number of unreasonable complaints, but, on the other hand, this plan would provide a safety-valve for those who are chiefly concerned when they know that they have an opportunity of making their complaint. The travelling inspector should report not merely on the state of the office and the books, but should be Able to show that he has been in touch with the people in the area, that the pensions are paid, and that the pensioners are sympathetically and efficiently treated.
There is another point to which I would like to draw the attention of the right hon. Gentleman, and that is the question of offices. We all know that the voluntary workers have done, good work, and we trust they will continue such good work in the future, in visiting soldiers' wives and dependants in their homes and giving them advice and assistance. There is no doubt there have been complaints that some of the wives and dependants object to being visited. This may perhaps in part be due to over-sensitiveness, but it may also be traceable perhaps to an unsympathetic attitude on the part of the visitor. I would suggest to the Minister of Pensions that it might be possible to arrange with every local committee and district sub-committee to open an office for two or throe hours once every week at which soldiers and their wives and dependants can attend and see a representative of the committee. I do not want small offices kept open for long hours on every day in the week, but it would be quite easy to arrange to open an office in every district for an hour or two one day a week, and possibly the parish council offices could be utilised for the purpose. I hope the Ministry will consider all these suggestions. Just before I came down to the House I was speaking to an ex-Army man, who is now honorary secretary to one of the voluntary regimental organisations. He has been in contact with a good number of soldiers, and has come to the conclusion that a great deal of trouble has been caused by the official attitude taken up by the secretaries of some of the local committees. They may not mean any harm, but the manner in which they tackle the discharged soldier and ask him to prove his case has given rise to trouble, and he suggests that the Ministry should do what he formerly did in his own business when he employed travellers to go out and sell goods. It should discuss with the visitors the best method of approaching people. 678 I would suggest that there might be a sort of training school for officials, not merely in Regulations, but also in attitude and manner in addressing discharged soldiers and their wives and dependants, and in their method of dealing with these cases. I commend that to the notice of the Minister of Pensions. I hope that he will not forget the question of local offices being opened for a short time and also that of travelling inspectors, who will give everyone an opportunity of having complaints heard. I hope also that he will have reports of these travelling inspectors laid directly before him and not allow too many ordinary official channels to interpose between him and the soldiers and dependants who are to benefit.
§ Sir G. TOULMINI agree very largely with the position taken up by the hon. Member for Salford (Sir Montague Barlow) in criticising this Bill. Our opposition, however, has been diminished by the statement which the Parliamentary Secretary has made, which suggests a willingness on the part of the Ministry to consider some drastic Amendments in the administrative previsions of the Bill. I expect that if the Second Reading be carried the House will desire to have full control, and that the Bill will be taken in Committee of the Whole House? Perhaps the Minister would give me an answer on that point.
§ Sir G. TOULMINI do not propose to curse entirely this Bill, as some of the hon. Members who have criticised it have permitted themselves to do. The minatory Clauses have already been dealt with severely, and I cannot help agreeing with the Noble Lord the Member for Nottingham (Lord H. Cavendish-Bentinck) in the opinion that they have been drawn up by the opponents of the system of local committees, as they imply an extremely critical attitude, and embody a power of centralisation which cannot but discourage members of these committees. They suggest a kind of control which will be very seriously resented. They give the Ministry power over individuals and over committees. Committees which do not meet the requirements of the Ministry may be taken over and the Minister is also to be able to remove a member whose conduct is not satisfactory. This description of a condition under which a member is to occupy a position on one of these committees is rather 679 nebulous. The Parliamentary Secretary said that Clause 3 had not been very much criticised, but I assure him that attention has been paid to it, and it has been pointed out that it enables the Minister to appoint more than a quorum of the committee. One-third of the present number of members is to be added, and that will make one-fourth of the total. I was very glad to hear the statement of the Parliamentary Secretary as to Clause 6 in reference to the Special Grants Committee, and his expression of willingness to work this Clause with the agreement of those who specially favour that committee. I assure the Ministry that there is a feeling of great repulsion to a cold, hard, official administration. I do not suggest it with regard to the heads of the Department, but in reference to the method of administration through officialdom and to the dilatory recognition of what are undoubted claims. I think that the Ministry would be wise if they would adopt the interposition of a Committee, entirely non-party in character, of this House, whom he could consult on principles in regard to the administration of pensions, and when the measure leaves this House we should rather seek to encourage than to check local committees. We should give the greatest possible encouragement and assistance to local committees, so that their local sympathy and knowledge may be applied to the cases of these men to whom we owe a debt which commands our overwhelming gratitude.
The Parliamentary Secretary said that the Minister wants local pensions committees. I think that we must accept his statement, and I do not doubt that the Ministry are indeed, as he said, profoundly grateful to them; but I am quite sure that some of these committees will not read that into this Bill. He claims as a reason for the Bill that there are negligent committees whose existence constitutes the reason for some of the most stringent provisions as to the government of committees. Clause 2, Sub-section (1) (g), applies after a public inquiry, and after proved negligence and default, but many of the provisions regulating these committees apparently are to be applied on the mere will of the Ministry alone. After joining in so much criticism, perhaps I may now come to a Clause which has given me a great deal of hope. I cannot say that I am entirely satisfied with Clause 8, but it does give me a great deal of hope and 680 pleasure. In that Clause we find the recognition of the duty of the Ministry to make provision for the care of some children of men who have died or are on active service, who, by reason of the mothers being dead or for any other reason, come within the Clause. I spoke in May on this point, but I claimed not merely for those who are under this Clause but for all these children who are included in the words which I have already read without the exception which is introduced by the words which follow. I claimed that all these children are the wards of the State. In the case of the children of these men who died or who are on active service, where the wives are perhaps dead or the mothers are dead, or perhaps, for some other reason, are unable properly to care for them, it is our duty to provide for them and to see that their future is properly safeguarded, but I hope that before the Clause leaves the House we shall make the Pensions Ministry undertake the guardianship of the whole of these children and the supervision of the whole of them, and that we shall not have to wait until there is suffering from neglect or want or proper care proved.
There may be much suffering undetected in cases where 10s. a week is simply handed out with no supervision. The form of the Clause makes it a punitive Clause. It is, as I read it, only to come into effect if children are suffering from neglect or want of proper care, and in that respect I think, that the Clause should be expanded to include all cases. We desire to secure the contact of a non-official influence on the individual, like that of some of the boarding-out committees in another connection, with some central control. I should like to know whether the Ministry has in view for that the Special Grants Committee which will undoubtedly accumulate a large amount of experience in special cases? I should like to know whether committees under Sub-section (2) of Clause 8 are to be connected with the Special Grants Committee, as referred to in Sub-section (3) of the same Clause? In this Subsection the Minister, after having given his confidence to the committee, seems, to a certain extent, to withdraw it, because the question in reference to "grant" is not for decision but for report. Why not for determination? It seems to me that it would strengthen the Minister if he had an absolute decision from this independent committee. Reading the whole Clause together, I really should 681 like to know whether these provisions suggest a limitation of the funds, owing to an intention by the Pensions Minister to perform the duties under this Clause by the means of private funds at his disposal, because, I think, that it is the duty of the State to make provision. If it looks in certain directions to private funds, well and good, but the main duty is a duty which the State owes to these children. Can the Minister assure the House that there is now no waiting list of tuberculous children? Is the treatment of these children to be limited by the amount of private funds?
We are lagging behind our neighbours in legislation in regard to this matter. Our neighbour, France, in July of last year, declared State guardianship of war orphans. That is the position which, I think, we ought to adopt. Our financial provision for these children is very much improved, but there are the delicate children for whom, I think, we ought to do more and for whom special provision ought to be made. There are too many mothers of children indicated in this Clause who have failed to secure the health and well-being of the children. I wonder if the Minister has any idea of how many such mothers there are? I am afraid that the number is large. These children require to be nursed back into full health. Then there are children of mothers in asylums, with bad hereditary history, children who require not merely months but years of open-air life, accompanied by appropriate education, for whom such a thing as an open-air school community is required. Under this Clause I suggest that the Minister has an opportunity of making a most magnificent social experiment if the State does its duty and is wisely directed. These children are here now. The powers of the Special Grants Committee are not so generally known as, I believe, they might be, and I hope that it is part of the intention of the Ministry to see that those powers are used more by the local committees. I do not propose to vote for the Amendment which has been moved, but I must say that the Bill requires considerable amendment before it finds its way to the Statute Book.
§ Mr. C. PRICEI congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on the Bill which he has introduced, though I think he has been too long in coming to Parliament with it. I listened to his description of his inability to carry out certain matters because of 682 what local committees had done or failed to do, and I think that he would really not have done his duty to himself if he had failed to come to the House of Commons for the powers which he now seeks. Never in my life have I known such great discontent amongst the women of the country as exists during the present time. During the last fortnight I have received a number of complaints in regard to this subject, and, unless something is done, the country will be face to face with a very grave condition of things. The Bill now before us is undoubtedly a very great advance, and I am glad that it proposes greater power of control over local committees in order to see that they do their duty. One of the gravest complaints, made by a deputation which visited the right hon. Gentleman last week, was that little has been done to make known to the people what they are entitled to. I say that the State has no right to keep men or women ignorant of what they are entitled to under the Act of Parliament. Numbers of cases have been brought to my notice where people did not know to what they were entitled, and a great many of the complaints arise from the fact that people have not been enlightened about what they are entitled to under the provisions of the Act. A deputation of the Scottish Federation of Discharged Sailors and Soldiers waited upon the right hon. Gentleman, and their greatest complaint, in regard to which they gave a large number of instances, was that the local committees had absolutely failed to hold meetings—in one case, I think, for twelve months. This Bill, I hope, will be some remedy to that complaint. I am very glad that the State is going to bear the expenses of the whole administration; and a second point of importance is that full-time secretaries are to be employed, while power is to be taken to add to the local committees ad hoc members, and I think these should be either discharged soldiers or sailors or their wives, because they have a far greater knowledge of the subject in regard to which complaints are received. At present there is far too much patronising by members of these committees. Instead of visitors being employed as voluntary officers to deal with the work of the committees, I submit that these committees should have a paid official to make visits, because in many cases people feel that with a purely official visitor they will get better consideration than is received 683 from persons who have been nominated. Of course this Bill does not in my judgment meet the great source of discontent, and that is the allowances which are made. The sum of 12s. 6d. a week is out of all proportion to the cost of living, though it may have borne some relation to that cost in 1914. When speaking on this subject in Edinburgh I got from some local representatives in the meeting complaints that 12s. 6d. is not enough. I secured returns of the cost of living from the Local Government Board of Scotland, and that statement shows the average weekly cost of living. The figures were real testimony in respect of certain important areas of Scotland to the real justice of the claim made by the people. In 1913 the whole average cost of living was 11s. 4d.; in 1914 it increased to 11s. 8d.; in 1915 to 12s. 5d.; in 1916 to 13s.; and in 1917 to 17s. 6d. I have not got figures for the whole of Scotland, but in one area the figure was 11s. 1d. in 1914, and I am told that it has risen to 18s. 8d. It is a perfect scandal that these poor people should have to buy the necessaries of life at so great a cost, and that the Ministry of Pensions should have done nothing for the wives and families of soldiers and sailors.
§ Mr. SPEAKERHow is that relevant to this Motion?
§ Mr. PRICEWith very great respect, Sir, my point is that the Ministry of Pensions has the administration of the Act, and I submit that I have a perfect right, or I thought I had a right, to call attention to the fact that the amount which is administered is not enough to meet the cost of living.
§ Mr. SPEAKERThat would be very proper on the Vote for the Minister, but it has no relation to this Bill.
§ Mr. PRICEThere are two other points to which I wish to refer. First of all, I submit that disabled men should be forced to learn a trade. That is a matter of very grave importance. The very fact that so many men now disabled can get easy work at good wages is a great temptation to take that work, but I submit that they should be induced to learn a trade in which they could in future obtain employment when properly qualified, instead of taking employment which is easier to obtain and where the wages are larger. I submit that something should be done by the Ministry to induce and help the 684 men to learn a trade by giving a larger grant during the time that they are learning it. They would thus be equipping themselves for future employment, instead of taking easy employment at a larger wage that may cease a few months later. I submit that there should be a legal right to pensions established by Parliament. It is absolutely wrong when a man becomes disabled in rendering service to his country that he should not have a legal right to pension. When the value of his services to his country has been assessed to pension, the man should have a legal right which would enable him to enforce its payment in any Court of law. These are matters which I trust will be seen to by the right hon. Gentleman in the course of this Bill through the House.
§ Mr. PENNEFATHERMy hon. and gallant Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions made a very conciliatory speech, which I must say has disarmed a great many of the criticisms which I had intended to make. He made a remark which rather surprised me, that the Ministry of Pensions were profoundly grateful to the local committees. If that be so, all I can say is that whoever drafted this Bill dissembled very cleverly and did their best to camouflage that gratitude; because nobody could read this Bill and could imagine that it was drafted by anybody who had any gratitude whatever to the local committees. That view is apparently taken by the local committees themselves. They had a conference to-day at Birmingham, and I would like to read a telegram which I have just received as to the result of the conference:
Conference to-day at Birmingham of war pensions committees of sixteen principal cities of England and Scotland urge that the Second Reading of the War Pensions Bill should be deferred to allow local war committees to have an opportunity to express their views.This is from a conference of sixteen of the best local war committees, and I must confess that I feel great sympathy with them, because the title of this Bill is very misleading. All these words representing the title of this Bill might be dispensed with, and the true intention of the Bill might be explained by simply saying that it was a Bill to enable the Pensions Ministry to do whatever it liked without reference to anybody, and without any Parliamentary control. I suggest that although my hon. and gallant Friend claimed to be a thorough democrat on this 685 subject, yet these are not democratic lines on which to frame a Bill. They are autocratic lines, or bureaucratic lines—anything save democratic. If this is his idea of a democrat, I think I can claim to be a better democrat than he is. I do not for a moment dispute the fact that there are some local committees that required what is called gingering up, and ginger, properly administered where required, may be useful. I have frequently endeavoured to inject the Ministry of Pensions, and in many cases with success, but it is one thing to administer ginger in moderate quantities where required, but it is another thing to dose every committee throughout the country with such quantities as would kill the self-respect of every good man on those committees. That would be a mere abuse. Although I am not what is called a temperance reformer, I would suggest to the hon. and gallant Gentleman that in this matter the draftsmen of this Bill might have been more temperate. I am very much disarmed by the proposal of the hon. and gallant Gentleman, made on the authority of the Minister of Pensions—if I understand him rightly; I hope he will correct me if I am making any mistake—that, if we give a Second Reading to this Bill to-night, a reasonable interval will elapse before the Committee stage is brought on, and that during that interval the Ministry of Pensions will discuss what alterations should be made in the Bill with the Parliamentary War Pensions Bureau, representative of all parties in this House, and, therefore, representative of all sections in the country. I would much rather that he accepted the suggestion of the hon. Member for Sal-ford, that it should be a Select Committee but if he is very firm on that point, and will not agree to that suggestion, then I certainly must admit, in turn, that I would not vote against this Bill in view of the arrangement which he has sketched out and which I have endeavoured to state definitely and in clear language. I do not know whether there will be a Division or not, but if there should be I should not feel justified, after what my hon. and gallant Friend has said, in voting against the Ministry; on the other hand, I do not at present feel justified in voting for this Bill in any form or shape, and, therefore, I shall abstain from voting altogether.
§ Amendment negatived.
§ Main Question put, and agreed to.
686§ Bill accordingly read a second time; and committed to a Committee of the Whole House, for Wednesday, 30th October.—[Colonel Gibbs.]