§ Whereupon Mr. SPEAKER, pursuant to the Order of the House of 19th October, proposed the Question, "That this House do now adjourn."
§ 11.0 P.M.
Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTI desire to call the attention of the House, and more especially of the representative of the Ministry of Pensions, to the increasing number of complaints that are being received by hon. Members in regard to the delay in paying arrears of pension. I have raised it on two occasions, and have received an answer which consisted of two parts. The first part was a denial that there was any increase in the number of complaints. The second part was a statement that a Committee was being appointed to inquire, not specifically into this question, but into the general question of local administration and 2104 machinery. This Committee will inquire into the general question without having its attention directed to this grievance; and we have an official denial that the grievance exists. I join issue with my right hon. Friend, the Minister of Pensions, as to whether this grievance exists. My own experience in my own constituency shows conclusively that there has been a remarkable increase in this class of complaint within the last six months. I think the denial is based upon a complete misunderstanding of the complaint to which I refer. It is based upon the total number of complaints, upon all subjects, received by the Minister. He denies that the total number of complaints has increased. I accept that denial. It is my own experience that the total number of complaints I receive on the whole field covered by the Ministry has diminished; but upon the particular item to which I refer, the arrears of pension, there is a remarkable increase in the number of complaints. I am informed by other Members, representing widely scattered areas, that their experience is the same. I am not bringing a general complaint against the Ministry, and I hope my hon. Friend (Major Tryon) will believe me that I have no hostile intention in raising this question. My experience is that the general machinery of the Ministry has steadily improved and that the total Volume of complaints has diminished; but I want to direct attention specifically to this particular question in regard to which I think some part of the machinery is out of gear. I have no complaint as to the way in which these matters are handled, when I have brought them to the attention of the Ministry I find that the complaint is promptly and efficiently dealt with, and I get a settlement in a reasonable time. The Ministry has been well served under the present Minister and the late Minister in the Department which deals with these questions. The hon. Member for Altrincham (Major Hamilton) certainly raised it to a very high state of efficiency under the late Minister, and from the hon. Member for North Dorset (Major Colfox) and the hon. Member for the Hexham Division (Captain Brown) I have received the promptest satisfaction. I know of no Department in which the difficulties are greater, and I know of no Department which is more efficiently served in this respect.
2105 The evidence on which I base my com plaint is the evidence in which I have received direct from my own constituency. I am not going to try to build up an indictment upon an individual case. I have selected seven or eight cases, particulars of which I have handed to the Minister. All these cases show a delay in payment of arrears of pensions varying from four months to three years. Since I sent in these others have reached me. These are not doubtful claims. They are claims which have been granted, but the persons are unable to recover arrears of pensions. It is almost as difficult to recover arrears of pensions as it is to recover overpaid Income Tax from the Income Tax Commissioners. This denial of redress is causing grave discontent which has been used in many instances against the Government. There must be some lack of cooperation between the central and the local organisation. The evidence shows that the blame is not always on the side of the local organisation. In some instances it rests with the central organisation. I do not know whether there has been the full devolution that was promised. Whatever the cause of delay it ought to be ascertained. Another matter to which attention must be drawn is the failure to reply to complaints which are sent up by the individual. In almost every one of these cases the story is the same. "I have written repeatedly to the Ministry of Pensions and can get no reply, or only a formal acknowledgment." In some cases registered letters are sent and not acknowledged. I know the volume of work, but if it is possible to secure prompt redress when a Member raises the case, it ought to be possible to secure prompt redress when the individual takes up the case. A Committee is being appointed to inquire into the question, and I want to secure that it is not a general roving commission on all questions of administration, but that the attention of that Committee should be specifically directed to this particular class of complaint. That, I think, will secure that the matter is at least fully and fairly investigated.
§ Captain BOWYERI feel diffident in expressing what I had in mind to say, because my views are somewhat different from those of the hon. 2106 Gentleman (Mr. MacCallum Scott). On the one hand, I cannot express sufficiently my admiration of the courtesy and kindness that have been extended to me by the hon. and gallant Gentleman (Major Tryon) who represents the Minister of Pensions. I should not be surprised if I have written him more letters on more cases than any other Member of this House. During the last long recess I visited 126 villages in my constituency and I met with many cases and sent them all, with a few exceptions, to my hon. and gallant Friend. What was I to do? These were men who served in my own regiment and battalion. Am I to be blamed because I took up their cases with keenness? In very many cases they have had an acknowledgment of their letters almost by return of post; but nothing else, and it is the further step after the acknowledgment upon which I rely to call my attention to the case; otherwise, I am afraid it gets lost and forgotten. In one or two cases I have not even had an acknowledgment and that applies to a letter dated 9th October. I would ask, first, that when a Member of Parliament writes to the Ministry, even though he is as great a bore as I am, the cases to which he calls attention should be taken up. If the Department finds that Members of Parliament have many cases brought before them, it is proof that there is something wrong with the system. I should have thought that if the Minister "made it hot" for those deserving of censure, matters would be speeded up and things would be put right. I receive letter after letter in this strain:
May I ask you to press my case re pension, as mentioned in my first letter to you. This terrible suspense of waiting is more than I can boar. I have not as yet had any reply to any of my letters, and have received no information now for eight weeks. All I have is 12s. weekly from the relieving officer for four of us. The relieving officer has written to the Pensions Office several times, but gets no reply. Will you kindly endeavour to get my pension through?That is a most tragic case, but beyond an acknowledgment I have had nothing from the hon. and gallant Gentleman representing the Ministry, although it was three weeks ago that I sent him the case. I have given him the name tonight. As a Committee is being set up I should like to emphasise the fact that there have been delays and gaps in the 2107 working of the machinery. I should like cases dealt with with a little more of the human touch of which we have heard so much.
§ The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of PENSIONS (Major Tryon)With regard to the particular case just mentioned, is it not that of a man named Nokes?
§ Captain BOWYERYes, it is.
§ Major TRYONWhat happened was that my Parliamentary Secretary explained matters to the hon. and gallant Gentleman yesterday. So far from his not getting an answer, the case was explained to him within an hour of my getting his letter. The difficulty in this particular case is not due to the Ministry, but is due to the fact that the pensioner has disappeared and his wife does not know where he is. It is impossible to give a pension to a man whose whereabouts we do not know.
§ Captain BOWYERI did not know that. I have not received your letter.
§ Major TRYONIt was explained to the hon. Member.
§ Major HAMILTONThe proposition put forward by my hon. and gallant Friend (Captain Bowyer) is not that a-verbal message should be given to him, but that there should be received by him from the Ministry a letter which he can show to his constituents. That would immediately allay the trouble.
§ Major TRYONWith regard to the statement of the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Scott), I would mention that all the seven cases he sent to us have been settled. At the same time, I agree that it would be very much better not to put Members to the trouble of making inquiries. We want to secure a system which will obtain justice for the pensioner without hon. Members and without the Minister having to intervene in individual cases. We do not grudge a moment of the time we devote to these cases, and I feel myself strongly how enormously these individual cases do matter. If a man has fought during the War and has been wounded, and by some mistake or through the address not being known or on account of there being several men of the same 2108 name, and if that man loses his pension for a time, no time which hon. Members or which the Minister can devote can be better spent than in trying to clear up those cases. Nothing is right as long as there are individual cases to be cleared up, and we must do all we can to clear them up. Every individual case matters vitally. But when we come to judge the system we must take care that we do not forget the enormous area covered by the work of the Ministry. I know a sergeant who was greatly distressed because he had not got an answer from the Controller, Pensions Issue Office, and I suppose he imagined that there was one single individual who opened all the letters and refused to send him an answer. The fact is that there are 80,000 letters per day. I know there were great arrears of work, but I know, too, that things are getting very much better. Last July, on stocktaking in the evennig, we found that there were 200,000 cases to be dealt with, letters and unfinished cases. The last available figures on Wednesday week—eight days ago—showed that the figure had been reduced to 81,000 cases in hand. It is a very great improvement to cut 200,000 down to 80,000.
§ Major TRYONI am referring first to the question generally. When the, number of letters coming in is 80,000 daily I think to have arrears of 81,000 in the evening is, on the whole, very satisfactory. I think it is a great credit to the work done by a number of devoted people at the Pensions Issue Office in working at and clearing off those arrears. The staff have done a lot of very hard work in securing that result. With regard to the payment of arrears, I think that is not getting worse. At one time we used to send the arrears in full, but it was found in many cases that the local War Pensions Committee had advanced considerable sums to the men, and these had to be recovered out of the small weekly pension. It is very much better to clear off the advances made against the arrears duo and start square. With that object, in almost all cases we write to the local War Pension Committee to ascertain the advances made. Very often long delays occur, and in one of the hon. Member's 2109 cases we have had to write three times to the local committee before we get an answer as to what amount of the arrears had been advanced. Quite lately, last May, we have made a change, and now there are comparatively few cases in which we make these inquiries, but I am not satisfied yet, I agree with my hon. Friend, and I think that we can get it better. We are considering a change, into which I do not think it is necessary to go until we have tested it, but which will considerably alter the system under which these arrears are paid. I am sorry the hon. and gallant Member for Buckingham (Captain Bowyer) has not got the letter, because I myself signed a letter on the 26th inst giving him the details about Nokes, which is partly why I was familiar with the case when it was brought up. When hon. Members write to us it is quite impossible to identify cases unless we are given the regimental number. I had a very natural complaint from an hon. Member, who said we had written back to ask for the regimental number when he had given the address. The people are not classified by addresses, which are continually changing. You cannot classify by names, because there are hundreds with the same name, and even with the same name and initial. They are classified by regiments in blocks, and having regimental numbers also associates the case with the original particulars which we get from the Army.
Therefore, any hon. Member in not giving the regimental number, very often not in the least through his fault, delays the matter. To show that is necessary, I may say that at the Pensions Issue Office there are 1,700,000 "live" files, and that may give some idea of the immense amount of work to be done in that office. It is colossal. It also shows how necessary it must be to classify these cases by regiments and by numbers. Furthermore, we are starting there on the work of classifying them by regions.' Here in London we are separating them into regions, so that if the system proves a success here we can develop and extend it and so decentralise. Moreover, we do realise that although things are improving there is room for further improvement, and we want to get it as good as we possibly can. For that reason my right hon. Friend is appointing a Committee to inquire into the system 2110 and methods of administration of the Ministry of Pensions, with special reference to the working of the regional and local committee system and existing arrangements for the issue of pensions. In reply to my hon. Friend's question, I can say the point of arrears is of vital importance and will be dealt with as one of the urgent matters by this Committee when it is sitting.
§ Major TRYONNo, it is just the same The issue includes the issue of arrears. Therefore we are realising the enormous importance of it, and the thing will not be perfect till we have got rid of any faults in the system which come to light. We must also remember the enormous area covered by the scope of the work. There is one further point, and that is the charge that orders have been issued to reduce, if possible, the award of pensions. No such orders have been issued. It has been suggested that orders have been issued to medical boards to cut down pensions, but if the hon. Member who gave notice of the question had been here this afternoon to put it my right hon. Friend would have told him that not only have no such orders been issued, but that no such orders will be issued as long as he is Minister of Pensions. Furthermore, the charge is obviously incorrect, because he has got the returns for four months a year ago, and for four months recently for the same period of the year, showing how very little change there has been in the rate at which ponsions are being reduced. But that pensions are being reduced in numbers necessarily follows from the fact that we are spending millions in a year in endeavouring to cure the pensioners. More than 50 per cent. of the pension cases exit mined are cases of sickness. Some of these men are in hospital, and we are doing our best to cure them. There is a perfectly steady improvement in these cases, attributable to the skill of the medical men. We have not had a Pensions Debate for some time, and I was anxious to clear up the these points.
Captain COOTEI should like to pay a tribute to the courtesy that we have always received from the Ministry, and, in particular, from the Controller of the Pensions Issue Office. Although I am 2111 glad that the Minister is going to appoint a Committee to inquire into these various matters of administration, I would point out that a Select Committee on the same subject has only recently concluded its findings, and that Select Committee gave its blessing to the system of regional devolution on the strict understanding that it was to be a real and not a partial or camouflage devolution. The reason for a great majority of these delays is that devolution has not been real and that work is still centralised in London to an almost intolerable extent. There is another point I do implore the Ministry to concentrate their attentions as far as possible on making the pensions which are paid to the men permanent. It has a very real bearing on the point of delay. I have knowledge of a considerable number of cases where men whose disabilities are obviously permanent—having lost a leg or an arm—and yet their pensions are not permanent. That appears to be a waste not only of the Ministry's time and taxpayer's money in holding medical boards on the cases, but also necessarily it has an irritating and aggravating effect on the pensioner. He may be better by treatment, but this is a scheduled liability. I do ask the Minister, for his own sake as well as for the sake of the taxpayer and the pen- 2112 sioner, to concentrate on getting the pension award settled instead of having it subject to revision from time to time. This is aggravating to the pensioner and creates a suspicion that there is some attempt on the part of the Ministry to defraud the pensioner.
§ Major TRYONPerhaps the hon. and gallant Gentleman will give me that case; it would be a mistake if the man has lost a leg.
§ Major MOLSONI wish to confirm the great attention I have always received from the Ministry of Pensions That does not alter the fact, which I think is perfectly right, that many of the soldiers had not had their pensions attended to when they apply to the proper authorities. I have had letters sent to me which have shown very great delay in that way, but it has been cleared up at once when the matter has been put into the hands of the Minister of Pensions when he has been asked to attend to it.
§ It being half-past Eleven of the clock, MR. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Order of the House of 19th October.
§ Adjourned at half after Eleven o'clock.