Commons Sitting of 13 May 1926

Preamble
The House met at a Quarter before Three of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
Ayrshire Electricity Order Confirmation Bill,
Read the Third time, and passed.

BETTING DUTY.
Mr. SULLIVAN: I beg to present a Petition on behalf of the Congregational Church of Uddington, and the United Free Churches of Bothwell Park, Aitkenhead, Glenboig, Shotts, and Airdrie, against the proposed Betting Duty, and "recording an emphatic protest against the retrograde proposal of His Majesty's Government to impose a tax upon betting, thus seeking to increase the national revenue by a means which cannot be lucrative without impoverishing and degrading many homes, and thereby giving fiscal sanction to a practice which has grown into a menace to the thrift, industry and moral well-being of the community."
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.

  PRISONS (DENTAL TREATMENT).
  Mr. PETHICK-LAWRENCEasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been called to the fact that persons in His Majesty's prisons cannot obtain dental treatment other than extractions unless they are prepared to pay for it themselves; and whether, in view of the hardships thereby caused to poor prisoners, he will consider amending the Regulations in this respect?
  The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Sir William Joynson-Hicks): No, Sir. In any case of acute pain, necessary treatment is
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  given. Apart from that, dental treatment, other than extraction, can only be given to a prisoner at the public expense if the medical officer considers that his health will be impaired by his waiting for treatment till his sentence has expired. The funds at the disposal of the Prison Commissioners will not permit of more being done in the prisons. At the Borstal Institutions regular dental treatment is provided for all the inmates.

  OFFICERS OF TAXES (STRIKE CIRCULAR).
  Mr. GERALD HURSTasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that three officers of taxes (D. N. Kneath, A. L. Houghton, and T. R. Jones) have, by circular, addressed from 95, Belgrave Road, S.W., and dated 4th May, sought to persuade all officers of taxes in Government service to give the maximum support to the general strike and to pay a levy for its support, and, this circular being a breach of these men's duty as civil servants, if he will state what disciplinary action will be taken in the matter?
  The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Ronald McNeill): The matter referred to by my hon. and learned Friend, which raises serious issues, is engaging the attention of His Majesty's Government.

  DRAINAGE ACT, 1918.
  Mr. NOEL BUXTONasked the Minister of Agriculture the number of statutory drainage authorities which have been brought into existence since the passing of the Drainage Act, 1918, and the number of drainage authorities established respectively before and after the passing of the Act which are regarded by the Ministry as having ceased to function?
  The MINISTER of AGRICULTURE (Mr. Guinness): The number of drainage authorities constituted since the passing of the Land Drainage Act, 1918, is 54, of which four have ceased to act. Drainage authorities which were in existence before the passing of the Act of 1918 include not only Commissions of Sewers, Drainage Boards and bodies

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  created by special Acts of Parliament, but also a large and unknown number of small drainage authorities set up under Inclosure Awards of ancient origin, and I am not in a position to state how many have ceased to act.
  Mr. PALING: Arising out of the last part of that answer, would the right hon. Gentleman say whether in that portion of the Doncaster area recently reported on by the Royal Commission, the authorities who are responsible may be said to have ceased to function in respect of that area, and, if so, what steps he is taking to put the Royal Commission Report into operation?
  Mr. GUINNESS: We are in communication with the various Departments concerned, and at the earliest possible opportunity I hope to announce the personnel of the Committee.

  RUSSIA (Mr. E. RIMINGTON).
  Mr. EVERARDasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has any information as to the cause of the imprisonment and expulsion from Russia of Mr. Edward Rimington, who is at present residing with his parents at 4, Gopsall Street, Leicester?
  The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. Godfrey Locker-Lampson): His Majesty's Charge d'Affaires in Moscow has made inquiries, but at the time of his last report had not been able to obtain information as to the reasons for the action taken by the Soviet Authorities. Further inquiries are being made.

  FLEETS (BRITISH EMPIRE AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES).
  Rear-Admiral BEAMISHasked the First Lord of the Admiralty if he is aware that the summary table shown on page 3 of the Blue Book, Command Paper No. 2590, Fleets (The British Empire and Foreign Countries) does not contain details as to the number of years over which the building programme of the different Powers was spread, and is he aware that this omission has led to misunderstanding; and can he make a statement in explanation?
  The FIRST LORD of the ADMIRALTY (Mr. Bridgeman): The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. The foreign portion of the Fleet Return is compiled for the benefit of the hon. Members when considering the shipbuilding programme in the Navy Estimates, and is an accurate and unbiassed statement of all the details known in the Admiralty at the date of compilation. The authorised programmes of the Powers extend over varying years. The periods of these programmes are shown in the body of the return and by footnotes in the summary, and, therefore, should lead to no misunderstanding. In the future it is proposed to show separately vessels which have been authorised or projected but for which no money has been voted, the date up to which a programme extends being given in the summary as well as in the text; footnotes, which are liable to be missed, will be reduced to a minimum. This should enable hon. Members to arrive at a true appreciation of the relative strength of foreign navies.

  INDUSTRIAL SITUATION.
  Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY(by Private Notice) asked the Minister of Labour whether he was aware that at a mass meeting of workmen last night in Hull it was decided not to return to work unless some arrangement was come to with regard to reinstatement, that work in the port is almost completely held up; and whether he was taking any action in the matter or had any information to give on the subject?
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of LABOUR (Mr. Betterton): I would refer the hon. and gallant Member to the statement issued by the Government, of which I am sending him a copy. I wish to draw his attention particularly to the proposal that the various trade unions and associations of employers concerned should meet, with view to reaching a satisfactory agreement.
  Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: May I ask the Prime Minister whether there will be an opportunity of discussing this and similar matters to-day?
  Mr. SPEAKER: There is another question on that subject.
  Sir WILLIAM DAVISON: In view of the appeal to which the Parliamentary Secretary has referred, will the Government also issue an appeal to employers throughout the country that any efficient volunteer workman who has volunteered to help the nation in the recent disturbance will not be discharged to make place for a returning striker?
  Mr. BETTERTON: I can add nothing to the answer that I have just given.
  Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: On a point of procedure. I do not wish to usurp the function of asking about the business of the House, except on this one point, but I want to reserve my rights.
  Mr. SPEAKER: It is for the Leader of the Opposition to ask the question about business.
  Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: With great respect, I am quite aware of that, and I had no intention of asking such a question, but I want to put it to you that I would wish to move the Adjournment of the House on a definite matter of urgent public importance if there is no opportunity for debate such as I have indicated.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.

  GENERAL STRIKE—DEBATE.
  Mr. RAMSAY MacDONALD: Would the Prime Minister kindly indicate the course of business to-day?
  The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Baldwin): At the request of the Opposition, it is proposed to report Progress in Committee of Supply, and to move the Adjournment of the House at 6.30, in order that a discussion on the situation may take place until 8.15, at which hour a Private Bill is set down for consideration.
  Mr. MacDONALD: Can we now have the business for to-morrow and next week?
  The PRIME MINISTER: The business will be
  To-morrow: Electricity (Supply) Money Resolution in Committee; Second Reading of Local Government (County Boroughs and Adjustments) Bill; Police
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  Pensions Bill; Lead Paint (Protection against Poisoning) Bill.
  Monday and Tuesday: Supply, Committee.
  Wednesday: Second Reading of Finance Bill.
  Mr. MacDONALD: With reference to the announcement just made, I understand that there has been an agreement that if it be necessary to adjourn the Debate to-night, and to continue it tomorrow, there will be no objection to that, course being pursued?
  The PRIME MINISTER: I hope in that case it may be possible to get one or two of the small non-contentious Bills through to-morrow.

INDUSTRIAL ASSURANCE
  (JUVENILE SOCIETIES) BILL [Lords].
  Read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Monday next, and to be printed. [Bill 112.]
ORDERS OF THE DAY.

  SUPPLY.
  [7TH ALLOTTED DAY.]
  Considered in Committee.
  [Mr. JAMES HOPE in the Chair.]

  SUPPLY.
    CIVIL SERVICES AND REVENUE DEPARTMENTS ESTIMATES, 1926–27.
      UNCLASSIFIED SERVICES.

        RELIEF OF UNEMPLOYMENT.
        Motion made, and Question proposed,
        "That a sum, not exceeding £536,100, be granted to His Majesty to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1927, for Relief arising out of Unemployment.—[Note: £610,000 has been voted on account.]
        Mr. LANSBURY: This is a Vote for Unemployment Relief, and we take the opportunity of raising the question of necessitous areas, and the general policy of the Government in putting the burden of the maintenance of the unemployed and their dependants on to the Poor Law guardians. I suppose most people's minds are elsewhere this afternoon, but it is necessary, even in the midst of a great upheaval such as this, that we should try to bring the Committee face to face with some of the facts in connection with the Poor Law guardians. There can be no doubt, from the answers given by the Minister of Health, that very great burdens indeed have been put on the boards of guardians, In the district, part of which I represent, the board of guardians during the half-year ending 31st March were put to the expense of at least an extra £50,000. I have no doubt the right hon. Gentleman is aware of that fact, because the board of guardian's for the Poplar district was obliged, I think, to go to him for permission or authority for further borrowing.
        In the case of Poplar, as the right hon. Gentleman is aware, the borough is not borrowing on the resources of the union, but on the resources of the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund. But even though the major part of that extra £50,000 will be paid in this way, I think the right hon. Gentleman will agree that it is a very extraordinary burden to be placed upon
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        one district of London owing, as we think, to the fact that the Government by the Measure passed last year have struck men off the unemployment roll and compelled them to go to the Poor Law Guardians. I think the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour will bear me out in saying that a very large number of men have been struck off in this way.
        Mr. HADEN GUEST: On a point of Order. It is exceedingly difficult, owing to the conversation which is going on, even for those who are seated immediately behind the hon. Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury) to hear what he is saying.
        Mr. LAWSON: May I also point out that, owing to the hon. Member for Bow and Bromley, we cannot hear what hon. Gentlemen opposite are saying?
        The CHAIRMAN: The obvious moral to be drawn is that nobody but the hon. Member for Bow and Bromley should say anything.
        Mr. LANSBURY: I should be very sorry to think that such self-denial was imposed upon anyone, but the hon. Gentleman the Member for South Kensington (Sir W. Davison), for instance, is really interested in the question which I am trying, under great difficulties, to raise. I can understand that nobody wishes to discuss anything but the crisis, and things connected with it, but the business of Parliament and the business of the borough councils and boards of guardians has to be carried on in spite of anything. I have been trying to point out that in our district we have been mulct in a sum of £50,000, the major part of which the constituents of hon. Gentlemen opposite who represent London divisions will, in all probability, pay. That does not get rid of the fact that, in our judgment, London should not be called upon to bear this burden, but the whole nation should bear it, and not any individual town. I was about to remind the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour—and he can confirm the statement—that a considerable number of men have been knocked off the unemployment pay roll, and have been treated as persons not likely to get insurable employment again. A number of these men are over 50, and many other

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        men and women, for a variety of reasons, have been deprived of unemployment benefit.
        It is the law of the land that no one is allowed to starve. That may be a good or a bad law, but it was passed in the time of Queen Elizabeth and there it is, and as a result—I am quite certain the right hon. Gentleman. the Minister of Health will agree with me that—in one way or another it is the duty of the boards of guardians to relieve destitute persons. Indeed, the Minister of Labour has said at that Box, that the Unemployment Insurance scheme is an insurance scheme and not a relief scheme, and persons for whom there is no employment which would come within the insurance scheme, must go to the boards of guardians. It is on that point we disagree with the policy of the Government. The man who, through no fault of his own but because he is getting old or because an industry is being reorganised, is thrown out of work, should have some future assured to him better than that which can be provided by a board of guardians. We also say that the fact that a man is so thrown out is no fault of the locality in which he happens to live. West Ham covers a very large residential area, and the part of Poplar which I represent contains a large residential area for people who work outside the district altogether. It seems to us the Government have no right to say that the people of a locality should bear the burden of economic consequences over which they have no control. For that reason we ask Parliament to make up its mind whether such burdens ought to have public assistance, and, if so, what is the proper authority to give such assistance or the proper purse out of which such assistance should be paid.
        I can quite understand the proposition of the old Charity Organisation Society that you should never assist anyone unless you can see that your assistance. will put the recipients on their feet and enable them to become dependant on their own exertions. That is a position which I have always respected, but with which I profoundly disagree. Parliament has never taken up that attitude, and the result of the policy that we are now carrying on is that when the Insurance Act has failed, and when the Government grants have failed, and there is no work available, the whole burden of
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        dealing with what I regard as an insoluble problem within the present system of commerce and capitalism generally, is thrown upon the localities. The old theory was that the individual must take care of himself, and those dependant upon him. That grew into the idea of the parish, and from the idea of the parish into that of the union, and I maintain to-day that the problem is so enormous and the cost of dealing with it so great, that the only authority which can deal with it in an economic or reasonable manner is Parliament.
        I would say, further, that I hold very strong views as to the form and the amount of assistance that should be given, and it is perfectly true that districts vary. The amount of assistance that a man will get depends on the district in which he happens to live. If it is board of guardians made up of Labour people, he will probably be treated, when he gets dealt with at all, rather more generously than he will be dealt with by a board made up of other classes, but I would say to the right hon. Gentlemen and hon. Members opposite—and I speak after a good deal of experience—that the average working man or woman on a board of guardians is much more careful to sort out the people who are styled undeserving than are people of the other classes. There is no one so hard as is the ordinary workman on the person whom he believes to be what is described as a waster, but it is equally true that if we do relieve, we relieve adequately, and here I think I can call in aid the Charity Organisation Society, who have laid it down as a cardinal principle that, if you do give any public assistance, it ought to be given in an adequate manner. The difficulty in which we now find ourselves is that, instead of the problem of dealing with what is called pauperism growing less, the problem increases.
        It may be that there is a bad kink in my brain somewhere, but I have never been able to distinguish immorality or the wrongfulness of giving a person 5s. in outdoor relief when over 60 or 65 years of age, which is called pauperism, as compared with giving 5s., or 10s., as it is now, when a person is over 70, out of the national purse. It does not seem to me ever to have made any difference out of which purse you took it, if it was a free gift. If, in the one case, you stamp the

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        recipient a pauper, I cannot see how he is not a pauper when the money comes out of the national purse. It may be that, there is a great deal of difference, but I have never been able to see it, and the reason why I do not see any pauperism about it at all—and here very few hon. Members opposite will agree with me—is that, in my opinion, the wealth of this country is produced by the collective labour of the working people who work with their hands or their brains, so that in the end you cannot give them anything, because they have done their share in producing, in the days when they could produce, and whatever they get in old age or when economically they are no longer needed by the community is only taken out of the common pool which they themselves have helped to create. Therefore, for me the question of pauperism does not arise, but what does arise is that the system on which we are administering to-day, which is a quadruple one, if not more than that, does differentiate and in the end does put the burden, when it gets very acute, as it is now, on the shoulders of the locality.
        I have said once before in this House that the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Health is in line with those who, long ago, sought to have dealt with this question on a much bigger and broader basis, because it was the late right honourable Joseph Chamberlain, who was the first President of the Local Government Board to break down the old tradition that only pauper relief should be at the disposal of people who were unemployed. I think the right hon. Gentleman will know that it was his father who sent out the first Circular calling upon local authorities to provide useful work for decent men who were out of employment. We have travelled a long way since then. It was also the late Joseph Chamberlain who, speaking, I think, from the back bench opposite, in the days when the Unemployment Bill was under discussion, and the question whether or not it would be passed was just in the balance—I sat under the Gallery, and heard him— made an appeal to the Government, in response to an appeal from Will Crooks on these Benches, to put the Bill through. The main part of his argument then, as it was in his Circular, was that decent,
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        honest men should not be driven to pauperism through no fault of their own.
        The position that we are in to-day is that a large number of men and women—and I am quite sure the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour will agree—are being put off the unemployment insurance scheme because of economic circumstances over which they have no control, and are being driven into the arms of the Poor Law guardians. I would not mind that if it were not that the cost of dealing with them was levied on the localities. I concede to the right hon. Gentleman at once that in London it is the whole of the County of London that is bearing the cost, but even so the poorer districts bear a certain proportion of that cost all the time. Then I want to call his attention to a further fact that I do not believe this House has realised one bit. We have prided and plumed ourselves on the amount of money that we have extracted from the various Government Committees that have been set up for granting money for schemes of public work.
        I did not know until a little while ago that I was to do what I am doing just now, or I would have got together the figures for my own district. We have done our level best to find men useful work. We have not made any parks, because we have no space for parks, but we have done a good deal of housing, even in that overcrowded district, we have put up baths and washhouses, and we have put electric cables down our side streets, but we have piled up a burden of debt, the interest on which is simply colossal for a district like ours, and in the end, to-day, we are in the position that, much as we would like to try to find more work, unless we dig up roads and put them down again, or unless we have power to sweep away every slum that we have got, there is nothing that we can do, and at the end of it we have got the problem still on our shoulders. The Government ought long ago to have taken this business in hand in a more effective manner.
        I do not know how far I shall be in order in what I am going to say, but you, as usual, Mr. Hope, will tell me if I am out of order. I would like to say, first of all, that I am quite certain that within the lines of administration the Ministry

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        of Health could have dealt at least with the young men who are unemployed in an infinitely better manner than that in which we have been obliged to deal with them during the last few years. I ask the Minister whether he will tell the Committee anything that he can about the doings at Hollesley Bay with the single young men and others who have been sent there. The only hopeful scheme which the present Minister of Labour has evolved, other than giving people money for nothing, is a scheme the foundation of which was laid by friends of mine and myself, when, years ago, we established the Hollesley Bay and the Laindon colonies, to which young men were sent to be trained for work in this country or work abroad. The Committee may be surprised to know that that was done in 1912. You got 1,100 acres, which, I am quite certain, could have borne a very much larger number of men than has been there, and had the training been carried out on the lines laid down by the Committee which existed before the War, we might have had numbers of men working, with a very little assistance, on holdings and on farms in various parts of this country. But all that part of the activities of authorities dealing with unemployment has been shut down. I am not aware why you do not utilise the place you have at your disposal, because I suppose there is some sort of liaison between the two Ministries, and that one does know what the other is doing. But, under the right hon. Gentleman, those 1,100 acres, instead of being kept apart from the Poor Law, have now become more or less a Poor Law institution. I feel very deeply about that, because I gave a tremendous amount of my time, which I could not then very well afford, in order to get that established on lines apart from what is called the pauper taint. But even under the system to-day, it is much better than leaving men on the streets, and giving them a few shillings a week on which to live.
        What I would ask the right hon. Gentleman is, whether he, in conjunction with the Minister of Labour, will not thoroughly investigate that experiment from the time it started to the time when the War began, and since the War. I went down last summer, and was amazed to find men from Shoreditch, men from Poplar, men from all over London doing
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        hard work as efficiently as any farm labourer could do it. The right hon. Gentleman and I do not agree on a good many things. I have said a good many hard things about him, and shall probably say them again under the same conditions. But he is descended from the man who first laid it down as a principle in this House, and put it on record, that decent, honest men should, as far as possible, be found decent, honest work at decent, honest wages. Now we have got in East London a great multitude of young men, and we do not know what to do with them there, except to keep them alive, and I am going to vote every time for keeping them alive, unless you give them work. I am not asking for an extension of the colonies on the lines on which you have forced Hollesley Bay. I want them to be on lines which will enable the men to be trained, and, when they are trained, to have outlets for them in this country. I believe the right hon. Gentleman has got power to do that through the Unemployed Workmen Act, which is still on the Statute Book, I believe. As a matter of fact, I know it is, because the Central Unemployment Committee still functions.
        The right hon. Gentleman, by a stroke of the pen, could set this Committee going, apart from the Poor Law, and apart from any vexatious regulations, and he could get land in all parts of the country, certainly all round London. Within 50 miles of London there are thousands of acres, north, south, east and west, which could be taken, and instead of these men being dealt with merely by doles, they could be trained for agriculture, or for other purposes. I am sure this Committee does not know the amount of training which was done at Hollesley Bay before the War, and I do not think it understands the number of men who were found employment after that training. If the right hon. Gentleman and the Labour Minister would put their heads together, I believe they could carry out the original scheme laid down for Hollesley Bay, and that is that, first of all, at that place, and places similar to it, you should train men and at the same time be preparing other places for small holdings, or for cooperative farming, or for farming in one way or another. Why I am interested in this is, first, for the sake of the unemployed men, which I think is most

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        important, but, secondly, and equally important, I am certain, sooner or later, a proportion of the industrial population of this country will either have to go out of the country or be found work on the vacant land in this country. I want them to be found work on the vacant land in this country, but I put it to the right hon. Gentleman, supposing at the end you were only able to find work for a small percentage of the men in the way I am suggesting, sooner or later there would be openings somewhere else, and is it not much better worth while that what money we do spend on these men should be spent in giving them a chance to keep themselves in health and strength, to keep their bodies fit and their minds fit, so that when opportunity arises they can fall into whatever work is available?
        I have said—and I shall not go back on it—that if you do not find them work I want to feed them, clothe them, house them, and so on. But it is a demoralising thing, whether in the West End or the East End of London, that anybody should have something for nothing. I do not take that back at all, but no one, as far as I can see, in either of the Departments really settles down to this business of work, and it is because I think that this would prove a very considerable opening to the right hon. Gentleman that I have put it up to him this afternoon. It is no use putting up schemes of public work through various Committees. Nearly every authority, I believe, has got to the end of its tether, and when you have reached that point, you have nothing to do but simply to give people money to keep them alive.
        There is here a whole pile of figures which, I expect, one of my colleagues will use in the course of the Debate. This, however, is not so much a question of figures as of something else. I remember the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) once when I went to him in the days when I was Mayor of Poplar on a matter of this sort saying, "Look at what it cost for these people, for these men, their wives, and children; look at what it is going to cost to do what you ask." He also said: "Look at what it costs for every single man," and so on. But you have to remember that there is a cost which is not measured
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        in pounds, shillings, and pence, and that is the cost in the loss of moral and character which comes to the young men and women, and to the old men and women too, who get their living without any sort of work. As I say, you may juggle with these figures. You may juggle with these costs. You may juggle and quarrel as to whether 100,000 more have been got off the unemployment pay roll or not. We may juggle as to whether the men who have been knocked off the unemployment pay roll still continue to register, and when we have done all that, at the end, you have to look the fact fair and square in the face that the number on pauper relief has considerably increased and the number living on unemployment pay is still somewhere about 1,000,000. I am saying all this in no spirit of antagonism. But let me tell the Committee, as an instance of the sort of thing which we wish to see better, of one man in an East End division, who, after four years of unemployment, has at last become lucky and because of the crisis has become a special constable! There you are. You have to face the resentment of the people of this country, both the young, the middle-aged, and the old for whom there is no employment whatever. I could put other propositions before the Committee, but I have contented myself by putting this one case.
        I have put the case to the Minister of Health because I know he has the power. Here may I say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, for the Minister of Labour has imitated what I myself and a few others on the Central Unemployment Committee before the War brought into being when we were upon that body. It is the experience that we gathered then which has taught us. That experience has taught us that there was always a percentage of men who came to London and, after a few years, perhaps one generation, got out of the work, lost their aptitude for work on the land though they had not lost their love for the country. Those who think that Londoners are people who do not care anything for a garden or anything for the land would do well to remember what London people did, old men, too, during the War. They cultivated what was really bricks and mortar up and down this Metropolis, and produced no end of really good food. If they could do that in the sporadic manner they did

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        then, if you could only take the young men and deal with them in the way I propose, and in the way some of them have been dealt with—I must safeguard myself by saying that I want them dealt with in a proper manner—as they were dealt with at Hollesley Bay, and under present conditions; if you do, under any reasonably decent conditions, deal with the young men who are at present getting unemployment pay or poor law relief and whom you are merely keeping alive, you would do much to preserve their moral, and they would be producing something in return for what they were receiving.
        Mr. H. WILLIAMS: I am glad to have the opportunity to take part again in a Debate dealing with the necessitous areas, and its allied subject really, Poor Law reform. When we discussed this subject some weeks ago on a private Member's Motion at 8.15 o'clock I had the opportunity of putting forward certain views, but I had not the opportunity of saying one or two things that I want to say this afternoon. I am certain that all of us who have listened to the hon. Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury) appreciate and sympathise with the spirit in which he has made his speech, although we may disagree with some of the arguments he has used. May I just for a moment deal with two of the points he raised? He did not, said the hon. Gentleman, see any fundamental difference between old-age pensions and assistance from the Poor Law guardians, as they both came out of the public purse. Therefore, he said, there is no difference. I think there is a difference. Broadly speaking, old age pensions are a right. I agree there are still certain limitations, but provided these limitations are fulfilled, the pension is a right. On the other hand, Poor Law relief is not a right. It depends entirely upon the circumstances, and it does involve inquisition. There is, of course, a prejudice against Poor Law relief which does not exist in respect of old age pensions. No one is ever injured in their pride because they are in receipt of an old age pension. Nine-tenths are injured in their pride if they have to seek the assistance of the guardians. We may say that is only prejudice, but it is so deeply worked into the souls of the people that we cannot ignore but must recognise it.
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        The other point was that the hon. Gentleman referred to economic circumstances over which the locality had no control. I must differ from that. Some of the conditions prevailing in some of the necessitous areas have arisen partially from causes over which the local authority did possess control. There is extravagant local administration, which has resulted in an appalling burden of rates, which has added so much to the cost of production, and has definitely driven trade out of these districts. It is notorious that Poplar has suffered peculiarly in that respect. [An HON. MEMBER: "No!"] I have to have known the district intimately for many years. [An HON. MEMBER: "I have known it longer!"] I quite agree, but the hon. Gentleman doss not suggest that I am wrong when I say that part of the unemployment is clearly because, in certain areas on Thames side, the rates have been forced up abnormally owing to the extravagant local administration. Contrast the attitude there with the attitude of a board of guardians in the Midlands, the members of which were pressed by local members who happened to be Socialists, to indulge in the same extravagant scale of relief as that at Poplar. I well remember mentioning this previously in the House. The attitude of the chairman of that board of guardians, who was a member of the local Labour party, was that he said he was not going to ruin the trade of that district by imposing an undue burden upon the manufacturers. I have always admired the courage of that individual, and if more courage of the kind had been shown I am certain that in many respects there would not have been the suffering there has been, however difficult the position.
        That, however, does not alter the fact that mistakes have been made in certain places; nor alter the sympathy we all feel with the districts under peculiar difficulties. I well remember the hon. Member for Bow and Bromley and some of his colleagues taking what they regarded as direct action, and in consequence spending some time as guests of His Majesty in Brixton Prison, in order to induce this House—in which they were successful—to pass legislation imposing on the Metropolitan Poor Law Fund certain charges in respect of out door relief which up to that time had

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        never been imposed upon that Fund. I thought at that time—I was not a Member of the House, but I had taken part in many discussions—that the Bill at that time was a mistake in the way it proposed to assist the guardians in the various parts of London where the burden was heavy. It gave them, in practice, an unlimited call upon that fund, it encouraged local extravagance in a way that was deplorable, it made it, in the long run, better worth the while of some people not to work than to work, and I have always thought that the evils in Poor Law administration which have developed in certain parts of London would not have grown up if Parliament had been wiser in 1921, and had framed the conditions on which it gave help to necessitous areas in such a way that the amount of help was fixed instead of being, as it has been in practice, almost unlimited.
        But let us not blind our eyes to the fact that the position of necessitous areas to-day is very much more favourable than it was 20 years ago. The Liberal Government, by introducing old age pensions and unemployment insurance, the action of subsequent Governments in extending those systems of aid and insurance, and the action of the present Government in introducing the system of widows' and orphans' pensions and modifying the conditions attached to old age pensions—I should say, rather, introducing modifications which will shortly become operative—have given a great deal of help to necessitous areas; because it is obviously the case that those districts have a larger proportion of their population drawing upon these various funds than have the better-placed districts. They are, in fact, getting a very wide measure of assistance from central funds—the funds are not, strictly speaking, from the Treasury, although the Exchequer contribute to them.
        Some hon. Members may remember the inquiry carried through recently by a body of persons, among whom Professor Bowley took a very active part, into the conditions under which people were living in certain representative towns. The investigation was based on an examination of the circumstances of, I think, one house in every ten. It happened that the town I represent was one of those which was surveyed. In all,
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        eight towns, I think, were surveyed, and they were selected so as to be representative of the conditions throughout the country. The conclusions of those inquirers were rather remarkable. The last occasion on which a full investigation had been made was in a year of good trade, I think 1907, whereas 1924 was certainly not a year of good trade, yet it was found, in fact, that the standard of living, even in the distressed towns, during a year of bad trade, was better than it had been some 15 years previously, and the explanation of the improvement, even in the necessitous areas, was found in the wide schemes of social legislation which had been passed in the interval. That legislation has eased their burdens enormously, and it would be wrong of us to ignore that fact in any consideration of the problem this afternoon.
        When last year we discussed Poor Law reform on a Motion submitted at 8.15 by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Seaham (Mr. Webb), I expressed doubts as to the desirability of having boards of guardians, or whatever they may be called in the future, operating over very wide areas. I still think some of those dangers exist, but if the boards of guardians or the local authorities, or the county councils, or whatever new body may be responsible for Poor Law relief after the Poor Law is reformed, operate over a very much wider area than do existing boards of guardians, then quite clearly many of the problems of the necessitous areas will be automatically relieved, because the better-to-do parts of a large town will be able to help the worse-off parts in a way that they cannot help them to-day. Also, there will not be the evils we now have in London, where there is a centralisation system in operation through the Metropolitan Common Poor Law Fund, but where the actual decision as to what is to be paid and to whom it is to be paid rests with those who have only a limited responsibility for raising the money.
        In discussing this problem of the necessitous areas we are discussing the problem of the relationship of national finance to local finance. I think I am correct in saying that the Exchequer in this country is more generous to local authorities than is the case in, perhaps, any other country in the world. Such

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        investigations as I made recently when trying to find out the relationship between national and local finance in the matter of education—I am debarred from discussing education, though it would arise on any question of the reform of the relationship of national and local finance—showed that in no country in the world is such a large proportion of the local expenditure borne on national funds as in this country.
        Mr. CONNOLLY: In Denmark.
        Mr. WILLIAMS: In the case of Denmark it is the fact, I think, that 99 per cent. of the cost falls upon the local units.
        Mr. CONNOLLY: What is the proportion spent?
        Mr. WILLIAMS: I am talking of money received for education, and in Denmark, I believe, it is the case that education is almost wholly a local charge, and not a national charge, though some portion of the burden may be borne by the national exchequer. These interruptions have come unexpectedly, and I have not fortified myself on that point, but I think that, broadly speaking, I am right.
        This is not a problem arising out of the period of bad trade. It is a permanent problem, and if it is to be solved it must be solved on permanent lines to suit conditions when trade is good, and not be made the subject of panic legislation to suit conditions when trade happens to be bad. The expenditure which falls upon any local authority tends, roughly speaking, to be in proportion to the population of the area. I say roughly speaking; as a matter of fact, in the poorer districts the tendency is for the burden to be rather greater in relation to population than in richer districts, became the proportion of those who attend public elementary schools, the proportion of those who ask for poor law relief, and the proportion who receive the various health benefits to which the Ministry of Health contributes, is larger in the poorer districts; but broadly speaking there is a tendency for those expenses to bear a relation to the population.
        The capacity of a district to pay depends upon the rateable value per head of the population, assuming that the basis of valuation is uniform throughout the
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        country. It was impossible to carry through any reform of the relationship of national to local finance until there was some uniformity of valuation, and the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Health took a great step towards clearing the ground by passing last year that very contentious Measure—as it was at the time—the Rating and Valuation Bill. One has only to contrast the rateable value of houses just behind Victoria Street in Westminster with the rateable value of houses in Poplar, taking houses of equal size. The citizen of Westminster who lives in a small house bears a very much heavier burden of taxation than the citizen of Poplar, and a very large proportion of the extra taxation the citizen of Westminster bears is not for his own benefit, but for the benefit of the workmen in Poplar, though both may be workmen employed in the same occupation and in receipt of the same wages. At the moment, the rateable value per head is the only measure we have of the relative prosperity of two districts. When we get a better valuation it will be a very much more valuable index than it is at the present time. I am one of those who wish we could discover the ideal formula for all local grants. The whole of the grants from the Exchequer to local authorities ought to be consolidated in one grant, irrespective of the purpose for which it is to he spent. I should like to see that; it is an ideal, but I very much doubt whether it is realisable. It would enormously simplify the problem of central and local administration, because there is an enormous amount spent every year in Whitehall and in every town hall in the country, in settling the relationship of local and national finance. If we could only consolidate on this matter and discover some proper formula, which contained an element of the population of the area and another element which made the grant depend not upon the rateable value—
        The CHAIRMAN: I am afraid that is a subject which could not be dealt with without legislation.
        Mr. WILLIAMS: I have not spoken very often upon Supply days, but I know there is a rule which debars me from pursuing my argument on the lines I desired. I hope, however, I shall be able to proceed and keep within the rules of Order. The

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        existing basis is certainly a confused one, and there are a great many grants administered by my right hon. Friend under the various Health Acts for maternity homes, and grants to assist the guardians and the police, although the latter come under another Vote. If the Rating and Valuation Bill leads in the future to any kind of reformation in regard to these matters, I am certain that the problem of the necessitous areas will be solved in a way it has never been solved in the past.
        I am convinced that any kind of percentage grants lead to unnecessary extravagance. We often hear of a meeting of a local authority or a local committee where some proposal is brought forward involving additional expenditure, and all of them may be agreed as to the desirability of the proposal, when someone draws attention to the fact that the rates are very high, that such expenditure is a very serious matter, and some doubt is aroused as to the advisability of going on with the scheme. Then, someone says, "After all, we must remember that for every pound we spend in this way we have only got to find 10s." The hon. Gentleman who opened this discussion made some comment upon the relationship of poor law relief to unemployment benefit, and he raised the point as to the extent of overlapping between the two services. It is by no means conclusive that an increase in the number of those in receipt of poor law relief is any proof of the state of unemployment in the district. If there has been disqualification of benefits, a large number of people may continue to register for unemployment benefit, but because they are not in receipt of that benefit, they will often go to the Poor Law guardians and receive help in that way, and then the statistics will show an increase in pauperism. At the same time, there may be a substantial decrease in the total number out of employment in that district.
        The hon. Member for Bow and Bromley mentioned that point, and that is why I thought it wise to put forward the same point again. It is not necessarily the case that a decline in unemployment statistics and an increase in the Poor Law statistics indicate that the unemployment figures are inaccurate, because I believe
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        the unemployment statistics are the most accurate we have ever had.
        Miss LAWRENCE: I represent a necessitous area, and this is a matter which is causing the greatest possible distress in that locality which I represent. In the borough the total rates are over 23s. in the£while in the borough of Westminster the rates are something like 9s. 9d. in the £ This difference is largely due to the heavy burden of the poor in boroughs like East Ham, and it is a burden which nobody can possibly remove. My district is almost wholly a residential district. In it there are few places of work, there are no great public buildings or railway stations, but the borough consists mainly of residential houses occupied by very poor people. On the other hand, at Westminster we have only to look about us to see the enormous number of magnificent buildings contributing to the rates, and they do not make any appreciable contribution towards the maintenance of the poor. I know the administration of the Poor Law is a great burden upon the people of East and West Ham, but if you took away the Poor Law altogether the discrepancy would still be enormous and you would find that it arises from the cause I have already mentioned. Owing to the fact that the borough of East Ham is full of moderate-sized houses, a penny rate only produces about £2,000 a year, and altogether the rateable value of the borough is about £4 or £5 per head of the population. The result is that no amount of prudence, economy or good management can prevent the rate in such a district being two or three times as high as the rates in boroughs which are more happily situated.
        There are many other towns which, owing to their initial poverty, are necessarily places where very high rates must obtain, and therefore prudence and economy have very little to do with the matter. In such districts the inhabitants have to pay two or three times more rates than those in some of the rich districts. That is an intolerable burden. In some of those districts the rates are altogether beyond comparison. What is more, a rate like ours of 23s. in the £ makes the rents of working class dwellings almost impossible for the people to pay. This has led to the taking in of lodgers, and

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        this practice has increased to a perfectly frightful extent. I do not think that in this respect there is any borough in the Kingdom more overcrowded than East Ham where I have seen as many as four, five and six living in one room, and I know one place where there were no less than seven people living in one room.
        4.0 P.M.
        This overcrowding arises because it is almost impossible for an ordinary working man to pay the high rent of a house and keep it for his family alone. Even the new houses which have recently been erected are already heavily sub-let and as regards the local shops there is something like ruin facing the small shopkeepers on account of the rising rents. These men cannot increase their prices in order to meet the rates. Everybody knows that in many branches of trade— tobacco, sweets, newspapers, and the smaller trades—the amounts charged are regulated, and even in the case of the drapery trades, where the amounts are not so regulated, customers have only to take a penny omnibus to get to the large shopping centres. These unfortunate shopkeepers find themselves planted in these districts with rising rates, and they are absolutely helpless. I know that this is greatly due to the Poor Law, but it is not wholly due to the Poor Law. My constituents have made the great mistake of living next to poor people. At my Election this matter was thrust upon me by every class of inhabitants, from our richest people, the shopkeepers, down to the very poor people who are paying rents which they cannot possibly afford, and I say that nothing can be done for these people unless the Government recognise the principle that it is unfair to call upon people in a certain locality to pay three and four times as much towards absolutely essential services as persons living in a richer locality—unless, indeed, the Government recognise what has been brought before them by successive Royal Commissions, the fact that necessitous areas need special help. I would define necessitous areas as areas where there is less than £6 rateable value behind each individual.
        It is indeed a very gross injustice that merely on account of the accident of your locality you should have to pay not only in your taxes, where you pay equally, but in your rates excessive sums out of all
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        proportion for the mere necessities of national life. It is a thing to which successive Royal Commissions have drawn attention, and a thing which cannot be remedied by any change in local grants. The question of proportional grants or block grants does not touch the question of necessitous areas. They need some special subsidy in order to place them more on a footing of equality with the ratepayers in happier and richer districts. These rates have been borne with grumbles for many years. The grievance was brought forward in 1914, when it was admitted by the Royal Commission on Local Taxation. People will bear injustice until that injustice becomes overwhelmingly too great to be borne, and the crisis for ratepayers has been reached on account of the present general unemployment and the present general demands of the Poor Law, which especially hit the poorer districts.
        I ask the Minister to give the matter his serious attention, because it not only leads to those evils of which I have spoken, but it means the starvation of all local services. No borough can do justice to its inhabitants when it is faced with a rate of more than in the £1 in the £. It means reduced lighting and that the health services and every necessity and amenity of local life are starved. I therefore say that, if local government as a whole is to be carried on and the services of local government are to be administered equally, we must have some special assistance for the districts who, through no fault of their own, are so unfortunately placed. The remedy is some special assistance based upon poverty, and I would define a necessitous area as an area where the rateabl e value behind each individual is something between £5 and£6. I do ask the Minister to give this matter his most urgent attention. It is something which is driving ratepayers into the greatest possible distress, and even honest traders into financial bankruptcy.
        Mr. LUKE THOMPSON: We have listened with a great deal of interest to the speech which has just been delivered by the hon. Member for East Ham (Miss Laurence). If I understood part of her speech correctly, it was that, if the element of unemployment were eliminated, it would make an appreciable difference to the rates of the borough.
        Miss LAWRENCE: The hon. Member misunderstood me. I said that even if we got rid of the Poor Rate there would still be a disparity in the rate for other services as between district and district.
        Mr. THOMPSON: Still it must bear some proportionate relationship to the rate that is levied. I wish to address the Committee in another direction and to refer to a matter which was raised, I think, by the hon. Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury), although, owing to the confusion in the House, it was somewhat difficult to hear the early part of his speech. He raised once more, I think, the question of the relation between the administration of the Unemployment Acts and guardians' relief, and I think he made a direct reference to the 1925 Act. If he did not, it has been done time and again in this House and also outside, with the endeavour to show that nearly all the increase in Poor Law relief had been due to the legislation of this Government. I want to see whether that is true or not. The Committee will bear in mind that I was one of the Members who viewed the 1925 Act with some disfavour, and the Amendment I put up was the only Amendment accepted by the Government. I have therefore watched with great interest the operation of that Act, and I must say that I have come definitely to the conclusion that it is not responsible in any large degree for the increase in Guardians' Relief during the past six months. I want as far as possible to give my reasons, because I have paid some considerable amount of care and attention to the matter.
        It is interesting to note that the 1924 and 1925 Acts were administered, in the first place, under statutory conditions, and then under the discretionary power of the Minister. The first of the four statutory conditions under the 1924 Act that regulated the disallowance of unemployment benefit was "Not normally employed in an insurable occupation," and of the total disallowances that accounts for only 1·2 per cent. Under the second condition, "Insurable employment not likely to be available," we have a still less percentage, namely, ·07 per cent. The two statutory conditions under which the disallowance of unemployment benefit has been heaviest are "not a reasonable period of employment within
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        the last two years," which account for 5·9 per cent., and "not making reasonable efforts to find employment" which accounts for 3·6 per cent. Therefore, the disallowances under the statutory conditions of the 1924 Act total 11·4 per cent.
        When you come to the 1925 Act, you find that it is responsible for only 5·6 per cent. of the disallowances. It is interesting to analyse that 5·6 per cent., because the Committee will remember that the discretionary power of the Minister was divided. Of the 5·6 per cent., 3·8 per cent. are disallowances under the head "Single persons residing with their relatives," and I think the Committee will admit, inasmuch as there is a certain income coming into the house, that a large proportion of those who have been disallowed under that head, have never come on to guardians' relief. We have left 2 per cent. under the other headings allowed for, and it is very evident that of the disallowances which would react on guardians' relief only a very small proportion can come out of the 1925 Act.
        I have been trying to find out how far the other Act is responsible. I want to be entirely fair, because the Committee will admit that the longer unemployment exists in any industrial area the disposition or tendency is for an increase of disallowances due to the working of the 1924 Act. It is due exactly to the prolongation of unemployment that a larger number of men have been thrown on to guardians' relief.
        I want to raise another point, which, possibly, will interest the Minister. A year or a little more ago, the expectation was that unemployment would gradually decrease, but in certain industrial areas at a certain given period it increased, with the result that a larger proportion of men were thrown on to unemployment benefit and guardians' relief. I believe it is because in those specific areas they did not make provision for this increased unemployment that we have suffered within the last few months, an increase which should have been distributed over a previous period. In confirmation of that, I tried to get information regarding my own constituency. I find, taking the returns for 12th October, 1924, that we had 14,404 unemployment persons, and that a year after, in October, 1925, there was an increase of 5,000, bringing

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        the number up to 19,242. It will be very evident to the Committee that a proportion of that extra 5,000 that was flung out of employment must necessarily have fallen on to guardians' relief, due to the natural operation of the Act. I think that is one of the reasons why guardians' relief has increased.
        Mr. R. RICHARDSON: Will the hon. Gentleman give us the experience of the Chairman of the Sunderland Board of Guardians after the 1925 Act came into operation?
        Mr. THOMPSON: I think it is scarcely fair to discuss the position of the chairman of the Sunderland Guardians, but I may say that I have raised this question with the chairman of the guardians, and he is satisfied that it is not entirely due to the 1925 Act. As a matter of fact, I was coming to that point. The truth is that in that area and in other areas there has been, I believe, in many directions an extension of benefit of guardians' relief to persons of 16 years and over.
        Mr. RICHARDSON: May I again interrupt the hon. Gentleman, because I know that, like myself, he wishes to be correct? Did not the chairman of the guardians say at the annual meeting that because of the coming into operation of the Act of 1925 he would have to ask for £700 odd per week, as against £70 during 1924?
        Mr. THOMPSON: That is a very interesting point. I raised the whole question with the chairman, and he made a statement to me somewhat similar to that immediately the Act came in, but the curious thing is that the increased numbers thrown on the guardians practically correspond with the number of young persons under the Act of 1925, and it is evident that those whose benefit has been disallowed under the Act of 1925 would not come on the guardians. Although, therefore, it is a moot question how far and in what proportion they have come on the guardians, my own opinion is—I am not discussing whether it is right or wrong—that there has been a generous extension by many boards of guardians in including persons of 16 and over for relief in their various areas. The question has been raised by the hon. Member for Bow and Bromley of the method of training young men and of
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        dealing with this question of unemployment.
        I do not know whether I should be permitted to branch out into the subject of shipbuilding in my own constituency. It is all very well to talk about training young men, and I entirely agree with it, but what we really want is work of a specific type—not simply work of an extraneous character, but work that is suited to the needs and abilities of people in the heavy industries. It is because we have not enough shipbuilding in certain areas that we have the unexampled unemployment that is in our midst, and I think the House of Commons should very carefully look into the question of the heavy industries to-day. British shipbuilding is reduced to 45·9 per cent. of the world's output, due largely to the fact that there was an over-production of ships during a certain part of the War period, and also to the fact that during that period no scrapping was going on. Today, therefore, we have an excess of shipping over and above what is required for the carrying needs of the world, and we have to face this question of unemployment until, through natural processes of wastage, we come to a state of normality, unless the Government would be prepared to anticipate that state of normality in a certain direction. I would be the last man, to advocate a subsidy at the present day, but it might be worth while looking at the capital cost that would be involved in judiciously withdrawing the extra tonnage held in this country and restoring a state of normality in the shipbuilding industry fairly quickly, so as to place the industry on an economic basis and enable shipowners to place orders in the ordinary way, thereby relieving unemployment. I do not know how far such a proposal would commend itself to the House or to the Government, but we shall have to tackle the heavy industries of this country, the depression in which is responsible for the greater part of the unemployment that exists, and one of the most important of those industries is, undoubtedly, shipbuilding. If shipbuilding once regained its position, it would react on the iron industry and on the mining industry, enabling them in turn to find employment for many who are now out of employment, and it would affect the distributing trades as well.
        The CHAIRMAN: I am afraid that, under the terms of this Vote, it would not be in order to discuss a subsidy to industry rather than a Grant-in-Aid to an authority.
        Mr. THOMPSON: I am much obliged, Mr. Hope. I was careful to say that I did not advocate, a subsidy, but, anyhow, I think the House will be prepared to consider the question of the heavy industries of this country, and I trust that, when we get over the difficulties with which we are just now faced, we shall seriously contemplate an endeavour to place those industries on a firm and abiding footing.
        Mr. SCURR: I should not have intervened in this Debate, but I had occasion just now to take exception to a statement of the hon. Member for Reading (Mr. H. Williams), in which he followed what seems to be a favourite practice of his, namely, to select Poplar as an example of extravagance and bad administration. I do not think we are going to get along with any solution to our troubles by simply selecting this or that particular area, because it happens to be controlled by persons whose political views are opposite to our own, as being a place to be held up to contumely. The problem of Poplar is not a problem which has arisen during the last year or two. It has not arisen since Socialists and Labour men were in control of the local authority, because, if hon Members like to go into the Library of the House, and refer to those monumental volumes of Mr. Charles Booth on "The Life and Labour of the People of London," they will find from those volumes that the problem of Poplar was in existence as far back as 1887. Mr. Booth's investigations, which will be within the memory of all hon. Members of the House, were undertaken in order to prove that the statements made as to the Socialists of that day were wildly exaggerated. Mr. Booth, who was both a Conservative and a shipowner, undertook a most magnificent investigation into the life and labour of the people of London, and the result was to show that practically two-thirds of the people of what is now the borough of Poplar were living in a state of poverty, the poverty line being fixed at that time by Mr. Booth at £1 1s. per week.
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        Our great problem, and the great problem of the neighbouring boroughs of Stepney, West Ham and East Ham, is bound up, not in the extravagance of local administration, but in the fact that we are a dock area, and that we still have casual labour. No serious attempt has as yet been made to tackle this problem of casual labour. It attracts people to the area, and yet, while attracting people to the area, it throws upon the local authority the responsibility of having to feed these labourers and their wives and children. The consequence is that everyone connected with the administration of the Poor Law there is simply appalled by the problem that we have to face. I submit that the whole question of unemployment and under-employment has got to be taken into consideration more seriously, if I may say so, by His Majesty's Government than it is at the present time, and that we have got to devise some means whereby the whole charge of unemployment is thrown on the country as a whole, and not on the local authorities.
        The CHAIRMAN: I think that that would require legislation.
        Mr. SCURR: I thought that possibly I might make a suggestion to the Minister which he might think of some value. When we come to the question of administration in these East-end boroughs, and the question that was raised by the hon. Member for Reading in regard to the different houses and the question of rateable values and assessments, I can assure the hon. Member that, so far as Stepney and Poplar are concerned, they can take equal credit with the borough of Westminster—which is probably the best in regard to rating—in regard to assessing their properties up to the very highest possible amount. It would be impossible for us to increase the assessments any further, and the burden, therefore, is being borne to the highest possible degree. It is not due to wrong assessments so far as Poplar is concerned, and I am speaking with knowledge, because I have been in the borough since I was six months old, and have lived in the same street during the whole of that time. Therefore, I know it, and have seen it throughout all its fortunes and misfortunes. When the hon. Member for Reading says that today there is bad trade there, he is abso-

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        lutely wrong. So far as regards the great industries that can be carried on in the district, we have in Poplar, despite these high rates, not a single factory to let at the present time, and yet I remember that in 1892, when I first went out into the world, working in an office in Poplar, right round the whole district at that time there was factory after factory empty, and wharf after wharf empty, because of trade depression. To-day that is not so. Despite Socialist administration and high rates, I only know of about a dozen shops in all the area at the present time that are empty, and some of these could be let, but their landlords insist on offering them for sale.
        There is no depression in trade so far as employers of labour are concerned; the problem is the conglomeration of a large number of people of practically the same social position, without any people of higher social position at all. At the present time in the borough of Poplar, wit h 71 schools administered by the London County Council, of all their enormous teaching staff only six persons live in the borough of Poplar itself, while of its municipal staff only one, the Deputy Town Clerk, lives in the borough. Everyone else clears out as soon as they can in order to get better houses. Even the Nonconformist clergy do not live in the borough now; they come in and minister to their flocks, and go away either to Greenwich or Wanstead. I do not blame them; those are much better places to live in than Poplar. The shopkeepers do exactly the same thing, and go away very largely to Wanstead, which includes what used formerly to be the higher society of Poplar. It is amusing in a way, and I do not blame them, but it continues to throw upon the borough of Poplar, in whatever way it is regarded—whether from the point of view of those who possess the factories or of the people who live in the area—a greater and greater burden, because we are left simply with the residue of the poorest section of the population. I must not go into what the legislation should be in regard to this matter on the present occasion; I only rose because I do resent very strongly anyone getting up in this Chamber and simply talking about municipal extravagance. A few years ago, the Municipal Reform party in Poplar, led by a very distinguished gentleman, went on to the
        1010
        board of guardians and the council determined to show that we had been wrong, but they found that they could only carry out exactly the same policy as the Labour party had been carrying out. Despite all their investigations, they found that they were simply faced with a problem which overwhelmed us and overwhelmed them, and until Parliament comes to the rescue of areas like this, we shall have an increasingly higher burden and a greater responsibility thrown on the authority, and our people will get deeper and deeper into the mire.
        Sir WILFRID SUGDEN: I wanted to make one or two comments on the speeches of my hon. Friend the Member for Reading (Mr. H. Williams) and the hon. Member for Bow and Bromley (M. Lansbury). Those of us who have been intensely concerned and interested, both municipally and nationally, with the great question of industrial areas which, by reason of their unemployment, are not able to function to the best degree, feel that the problem has become so acute that the decision of the Prime Minister and his Cabinet that nothing is to be done in this matter calls forth from those of us who represent some of these areas a very distinct call for duty—I use the word deliberately—not only of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, but of the Government and those of us who claim for ourselves to he democratic representatives of the working people. Let us be perfectly frank and plain in these matters. For the moment there has been no solution brought forth from any section or centre of opinion, either Socialistic, Conservative or Liberal. Five schemes were put before the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and a third Minister—I am not sure whether it was the Minister of Labour or the, Minister of Health. We waited upon the Prime Minister and his two colleagues in the Prime Minister's room and put the said five schemes before them. They were debated by the hon Member for West Middlesbrough (Mr T. Thomson), by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Stockton (Captain MacMillan), and one or two others of us. Quite a powerful and sympathetic consideration was assured us from these three Ministers, but we waited, and waited, and waited, and our people—let us be perfectly frank—starved, and now at the end of a few

        1011
        weeks we get a non-committal and abrupt reply without any assurance that anything is going to be done in the matter.
        Let us all understand that this is a non-political question. We say we have put before you, Sir, five schemes. We are quite prepared to admit that they may not stand the perfectly critical, economic survey that they perhaps should but has it been proved that no section of public opinion has been able correctly to diagnose and understand the application of finance by a proper and equitable system of taxation—the correct equipose between direct and indirect? So to give the answer that it cannot be proved economically sound, to my mind is not a sufficient answer for us to go before those of our people who to-day are in a position of poverty. I shall quote figures presently and shall not apologise for so doing, for in these matters the quality of word production in this Chamber does not always prove that the words are presented to the best purpose of proof of case. We next had a conference on the North Eastern Coast, which the Lord Mayor of Newcastle called, representative of every section of industry in the North, both organised and unorganised, and such ladies and gentlemen as considered they had specialised experience in these economic and social questions. There for several hours we debated pro and con how and in what fashion this matter should be dealt with and some of the thoughts considered I include in this speech.
        Let me at this stage present a few figures bearing on this question so that hon. Members may get some concrete view of what a necessitous area stands for and means, what is its bearing per head of the population in cost, what is its bearing in respect to industry and the acquirement and the progression of coordinated commerce and craftsmanship so that we can get really a clear viewpoint of the matter. Let us, first of all, take the consideration of what are the unemployed at the present moment in these great industrial areas. I give you the figures taken from the Minister of Labour's report from some of these areas. In respect of my own constituency of West Hartlepool 87·5 out of every 1,000 of population are out of work. In Hartlepool itself, another section of the constituency, 124·7 per 1,000 of insured people
        1012
        are out of work. That means to say that there are in these two boroughs that I represent nearly 9,000 unemployed insured people. Those are craftsmen. If one takes in comparison some other boroughs of a similar type—I shall give you these figures so that when we consider the monetary value on the rates it will have its bearing—Scarborough has 29·1 per 1,000 unemployed; Harrogate, 14·7; Blackpool, 29·6; and Brighton, 21·4. If it is suggested that I am including only delightful seaside areas, Coventry has only 11·4.
        Let us see how these figures bear in respect to rateable value and relief works that are put into operation, and how such relief works are bearing on local rates and killing the opportunity of getting work in the great shipyards and rolling mills of not only my constituency but also that of my hon. Friend the senior Member for Sunderland (Mr. Thompson). Let us take Hartlepool, which is generally in my thoughts in these matters. I find that the assessable value of Hartlepool is £419,439. I find that relief expended during the year from April 1st, 1925, to April 1st, 1926, amounted to £11,930. I made it my business to inquire how it was spent, in view of the need of the township and the corporation finding work for these unemployed I also had in mind what my hon. Friend the Member for Reading seemed to question, that such unemployed relief work was vitally essential for the well-being and the social amelioration of the town itself and was not spent in any profligate manner for the mere matter of spending and giving money to people who could work but would not. What was the result of this £11,930 which was spent last year in relief of able-bodied unemployed? It had the result of putting on the rates 7d. in the £ and when I tell you that iron masters in my constituency are prepared to book orders for plates for only 3d. a ton profit in order to find employment for their workers, you can well understand that that alone means that there is a huge bulk of unemployed that need not be if some other areas which are well placed in respect to their "unemployed cost" contributed in some agreed manner, which I am not able at the moment to suggest and were I able to do so I should probably be called to order for suggest-

        1013
        ing legislation. But it does not absolve the Government from the responsibility of dealing with the question, for they must legislate for the well-being of all; we have put forward our proposals planning to them.
        Let us take some of these salubrious areas that I mentioned. Let us take Scarborough. Scarborough has an assessable value of £308,463. They have the enormous number of 181 unemployed. The cost of their relief work is nothing at all. Although my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland speaks with great clearness and splendid sincerity for his borough the cost of his unemployment relief amounts to not more than 2¾d. in the £ assessable value. We say in the Hartlepools that we have a greater claim than many boroughs which at the present moment do not, feel the necessity of stressing this matter. But I want to compare figures again from another standpoint. I want to compare the rates heavy unemployment. I find that in Hartlepool our rates have risen since 1913–14 from 9s. to 15s. 4d. Where in my constituency in respect to either ship-building, making of munitions of war or distinct war service the public spirit of masters in industry and craftsmen and employés in certain industries led them to take up shares in firms which expanded to meet the national call they now are left in the lurch with these huge ship-building plant, and iron rolling establishments, risen some of them as a result of heavy contributions by employers of labour, in other cases by shares taken up in those times, the workers themselves now are being penalized in respect of these matters by cost by cost of upkeep, etc. Some of the residential areas of the great cities and towns of this country which have expanded nothing for these purposes are so advantageously placed that these high rates due to unemployment relief schemes do not rest upon them. It may be held in some quarters of the House that a formula should be drafted, a sort of cast-iron method should be adopted to cover the country generally without differentiation, but I contend that that would not be fair and equitable, and that we should remember the position of the great necessitous areas.
        The Ministers of Health very correctly and public-spiritedly have brought his trained and municipalized experienced
        1014
        mind to bear upon this problem, and has given to his House and the country magnificent housing schemes. He has also done much in support of schemes of town planning without schemes. He has also done much in support of schemes of town planning without which housing cannot proceed to its best and uttermost application. If it be that certain towns and cities in this country have taken their courage in both hands and have proceeded courageously with schemes of housing and town planning, are they to be penalized because others have not been so public spirited? I say without hesitation that I would put an extra rate upon those towns who have lagged behind, and I would make those people who have lagged behind pay to assist those communities who have displayed public spirit from the standpoint of housing of housing and other social amenities, and have thereby increased their local rating. You cannot have good health in a district unless you have good housing and proper health provision for the people.
        The CHAIRMAN: What the hon. Member suggests could not be done without legislation.
        Sir W. SUGDEN: I, like others, err in regard to points of order. I suggest that a community should not be penalized for this public spirit in regard to town planning and housing by having to bear the excessive burden of rates. There can be no question that this problem must be dealt with. We have heard nothing in this House as to what is going to be done, for instance, with those industries which have received aid under the Government Trade Facilities Schemes. These schemes have penalised unaided firms in industries which on their own merits could have carried their responsibilities efficiently and well, but by reason of the competition which has resulted from the undue assistance given to their competitors in the same industry, they have been compelled to put out of employment men who have worked for them a score of years.
        The CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member is now discussing the Trade Facilities Act. I do not think is in Order on this Vote.
        Sir W. SUGDEN: I accept your ruling, but I must suggest that the necessitous areas have to some extent been brought to their present position as a result of that Act. However, I will leave that

        1015
        matter where it stands. On the broader issue, may I say that I have read with great pleasure in the Sixth Annual Report of the Ministry of Health, of the magnificent work that is being done in the Department in regard to the treatment of the blind. Here, again, I must point out that we are being penalised. In my constituency we are well ahead in respect of the treatment of the blind. It was my privilege in 1920 with the assistance of the hon. and gallant Member for Central Hull (Lieut.-Commander Ken-worthy), Mr. Devlin—whom we miss very much—and other hon. Members, to have enacted and placed on the Statute Book a Measure which has done something to help the blind in a way which every self-respecting blind person has a right to demand. Boroughs which one could enumerate who have been well forward in respect of the institutional treatment of the blind in comparison with certain places where in some cases there were more people attending the blind in the institutions than there were blind inmates. Those of us who have been well forward in the matter of the institutional treatment of the blind are to be penalised compared with those who have not been so forward. In some of the northern towns we have also been progressive in regard to the treatment of tuberculosis. I am sorry to read that the deaths from tuberculosis have increased in 1924 over those in 1923, which are the latest official comparative figures I can procure. In this and other matters I maintain that the time has come when the great industrial areas should receive special consideration. This country has accepted its position as a great. industrial nation rather than an agricultural one, and those of us who are in the very centre of speed-lusted industrialism and are giving our flesh and blood for the production of industrial competitive power in the nation, have a right to demand special treatment above the residential, aristocratic districts who are not faced with the problems of health and distress which are so pressing in the industrial areas, particularly the necessitous areas. The well-favoured residential districts should help to pay for the treatment which is required as a result of our speed-lusted industrialism. Some of us who represent these great industrial areas are not
        1016
        satisfied with and do not intend to accept willy nilly the announcement of the Prime Minister that this matter is finished. The hon. Member for Reading suggested that we should spend some of the money which we now use for the relief of unemployment in a less profligate fashion. On that point I would draw attention to the fact that according to the Report of the Ministry, the average amount spent in the country for a standard type of house is £495, whereas in the Hartlepools we provide houses for an amount varying from £300 to 350, and we make good jobs of them. Yet we are a necessitous area. There is nothing profligate in our district. I challenge any hon. Member to bring forward any figures of any scheme of housing that would compare with the Hartlepools scheme in economy, efficiency, excellence and suitability of designs.
        I appeal to the Minister of Health and to the Government that they should give their very serious attention to this problem. Many of us who represent industrial areas have a. very intimate knowledge of industrialism in all its phases, and have been cradled in the work, and have worked with the men "at the bench." We know the wonderful heroism of these men who, by their craftsmanship, have made us the greatest producing nation in the world. I see men struggling to keep body and soul together. Employers, faced with underpaid labour abroad, taking orders without profit to keep their workers together. I well know that the extended benefit has been refused, and that work cannot be got. I feel very strongly that there musty be equipoise of consideration between these men and those who have retired to the surburban areas and beautiful townships, and are living in comfort. If there is to be no differentiation in adopting a formula of treatment between one community and another, then I say this matter must not rest where it is. There is no man who has greater knowledge of municipalities than the Minister of Health. I was very proud when he was put into his present office, and I do appeal to him that, while we are doing, and continue to do, our best to help him, he should help us and the poor folk who cannot help themselves.
        Mr. MARCH: I, like other speakers, represent a distressed and necessitous area. The hon. Member for Sunderland (Mr. L. Thompson) made reference to

        1017
        averages. I do not think the averages will be very much use to the necessitous areas. We must have regard to the numbers who have been turned off the unemployment register in respect to the receipt of unemployment pay, and who have become chargeable to the guardians. In reply to a letter which I sent to the clerk of the Poplar Board of Guardians in March last asking him for particulars of the number of men who have been taken off the unemployment register and have become chargeable to the guardians, I am informed that, from 5th September to 24th October, 1925, eight weeks, the number was 828, an average of over 100 a week. To 21st November, four weeks the number was 298; from 21st November to 25th December, 153; from 5th December to 6th January, 316, and from 23rd January to 13th February, 251, a total in six months of 1,846 able-bodied men taken off the unemployment register and placed under the board of guardians. That meant an increase of the numbers already in recipt of poor law relief of nearly 2,000. It is all very well to talk about averages, but averages will not help an area like that very much.
        For many years in that area there has been a good deal of under-employment and casual employment. There has been much casual employment owing to the loss of shipping work in the docks and we are continually having men getting relief from the guardians, with the result that in the period 5th September to 24th October there were 4,829 able-bodied men not receiving unemployment pay who were chargeable to the guardians, whereas on 13th February there were 4,722, a reduction of only 127 in that period. That is an evidence of what is happening in our necessitous areas. Poplar has done its level best to provide schemes for the relief of unemployment, and our expenses have gone up accordingly. There is a considerably increased charge placed upon the district by the interest on repayment of loans. The relief of the unemployed which has been placed on the guardians has caused an increase in our rater of 2s. in the £
        5.0 p.m.
        They are now 25s. as against 23s., and that is being handed oil to the ratepayers. The result is that they often find considerable difficulty in their paying their rents. We have done all we can to increase our housing accommodation. We have
        1018
        built some houses, and have done our best to get them occupied, but it is very difficult to get the rents, because the occupiers have been accustomed to paying low rents in overcrowded areas. An attempt has been made to get the permission of the local authority to sub-let. Up to the present that has been refused, but it means that many of these people are paying rents which they can ill afford. So many are receiving low wages as the result of casual employment that they are bound to come to the board of guardians. The Minister of Health knows all about this, because he gets the returns from the clerk to the board of guardians, but the figures I have given proves the fact that these people are going on to the board of guardians. I hope he will take this into account and will include the area as a necessitous area.
        Commander WILLIAMS: Although we have had a considerable number of really interesting speeches, the most interesting in this Debate so far is that of the hon. Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury). This afternoon he has suggested, as he has done before, that the best way of dealing with overcrowded necessitous areas is to try and get the younger people in these areas to go into the country districts. If that is possible, it would be a very great help, but, unfortunately, like many sentimentalists, the hon. Member has got hold of the wrong end of the stick. What is wanted is not only to get. the people who are already in the towns out into the country —do that if you can—but what is much better, and far more likely to succeed, is to keep the people, and especially the younger generation, in the country districts and not let them crowd into the towns. This is a point worth consideration by the Minister of Health. While he knows the town subject inside out, he still takes a great interest in the country districts as well, and I think some country Members taught him a good deal about country affairs during the course of a Bill last year when it was in Committee upstairs.
        I would suggest to him, in dealing with these necessitous areas, that he should tarn his attention more closely to the housing conditions which orevail in many of our country villages. It would be well to develop not only small holdings but also very considerable building schemes.

        1019
        Many of the older houses in the villages could he rebuilt, and rebuilt much cheaper and more efficiently than is possible in the townships. If this could be done it would do a great deal to keep the people in the country districts, There is another point to which I should like to call his attention. You cannot deal with a congested area, whether it is a small one in a little county town, or a big urea in one of the large cities, or in the East End of London, by the action of the Ministry of Health alone or the Ministry of Labour alone. These Ministries should co-operate together, and should call in other Departments as well—the Board of Education. I should not be in order in going any further into this proposition at the moment, but if you are to keep people in the country districts it is essential that education should be developed in such a way that the people in the various localities will be led to take an interest in their own district, and will, therefore, be less attracted by the glaring lights of the towns. This is a way in which I think closer Government co-operation might be of great advantage. Let me deal with the question of necessitous areas. The hon. Member for West Hartlepool (Sir W. Sugden) told us that West Hartlepool as time goes on, and as they have the good fortune of having a thoroughly efficient and capable Member, will be one of the most prosperous villages on the East Coast of England.
        Sir W. SUGDEN: It will not be my fault if they are not.
        Commander WILLIAMS: That is what I say. I entirely disagree with the idea that where you get a necessitous area you must widen that area, if it is a part of London by taking in the whole of London, and that you must finally come to the nation and ask the nation to receive these areas. I do not agree with that position. It is not the right way of dealing with the subject. It is utterly and absolutely wrong. The nation is bearing an immense burden of taxation at the moment. I believe the national burden of taxation—in this I disagree entirely with many of the leading economists of the day—is having a far more direct effect in creating unemployment than the rates. If a factory is to be built then it will naturally be built in a place where the rates are low rather than where they are high.
        1020
        We all know that, and we can understand it. What we do not know and what we do not sufficiently realise is the appalling burden of direct taxation, which is pressing on the development of the whole industries of the country, and the tendency to widen the area of these distressed and necessitous areas is in my opinion the wrong policy.
        The Government through unemployment insurance, through relief to local rates, is doing its share, and I think it is absolutely essential that the Ministry should press on local authorities the need for the closest possible economy in administration, should see that they are developing their localities properly, and should certainly not allow them to do what they are doing in many places, grossly over-borrow and pay out far too much in this or that form of almost needless expenditure. They should reserve and conserve their forces, and put their administration on the soundest possible basis. I know it is difficult, in some cases almost impossible, but until you get the soundest and most thrifty form of local administration this trouble will grow, this evil will expand. If you want to do away with the evil, with the trouble, you will have to have the closest administration in local areas, the closest administration of Government funds, and in addition the natural development of the district, by which alone you will do away with the terrible burden of unemployment.
        Mr. J. JONES: It is very interesting, while listening to this debate, to find that the youngest Members of the House seem to know all about the problem. When one finds an hon. Member like the hon. Member for BOW and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury), who has spent the who la of his life in the administration of one of the most difficult districts in Great Britain, and who has spent many years in Parliament as a representative of that district, being lectured by the hon. Member who has just sat down, it only makes one feel tired of public life. For 30 years the borough I have had the honour to represent have been pointing out their position. It is not a new one, and places which used to sneer at us 30 years ago now find themselves in exactly the same position as West Ham. We deny that we are careless in our administration, and I would suggest to the hon.

        1021
        and gallant Member for Torquay (Commander Williams) that we cannot borrow money recklessly. We have to go to the Government for permission to borrow money, and the Government Department sends down an inspector to inquire as to the justification for the loan. What we object to is being called upon to shoulder burdens which the nation ought to shoulder.
        What is the history of London during the past 35 years? The City has become more and more a place of offices and warehouses. The people who used to live close to the City have been forced out to the outer ring of London, and West Ham has had to bear its share. Whenever we have had any industrial depression or any industrial crisis, what has happened? The men who were skilled mechanics, and unable to find employment, gravitated to the docks, because there was a possible chance of an occasional day's work. Not only did they gravitate to the docks, but they came into our ordinary dwelling-houses, and the result was overcrowding and an intensification of the problems of overcrowding and casual labour. We also had to feed and keep these people; and I say we ought not to be called upon to do this. There are 80 other boroughs in the same position as West Ham, though, perhaps, not so badly placed as we are. Are we not therefore entitled to come to this House and say that problems of this character ought not to be the burden of a particular locality because of the fortune of industrial circumstances.
        We are not responsible for the economic position, or for the fact that trade and commerce compels certain circumstances to arise. Our rates are 25s. in the £. We do not know what they may be next year. All we know is that the tendency has been for the rates to increase year by year. I do not care who have the administration; they will be faced with the same problem. During local elections I have seen playcards posted "Vote for So-and-So and reduce the rates." They did vote for So-and-So, but the rates went up in spite of So-and-So, because he was not the master of his own destiny any more than we are. We have to carry on our administration. All that we have ever done was to say that in the employment of labour we would lay down a decent minimum wage. If that is extravagance
        1022
        I hope that hon. Members will go to their constituents and explain what they mean by economy. We want to know where we stand in this connection. As a result of this industrial trouble we have, not the men on strike, but people who have had their work stopped because of the strike, people who because of the cutting down of the power ration have been compelled to apply to the guardians. During the past week we have had 5,000 fresh applications. The thing is not settled yet. Places like Brighton and Bournemouth and the more wealthy parts of the country have not these troubles, although some of those who make their money in the congested areas live in Bournemouth and such places in order to escape responsibility. Always the poor must keep the poor.
        The Minister of Health knows this subject from A to Z. Birmingham is in almost the same position as West Ham, although it is much richer than we ever hope to be. We are "cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd"; we cannot build any snore houses because there is not room to build. The last speaker said that boys and girls should be dissuaded from leaving the country for the towns. When he and his party are prepared to solve the agricultural problem, he will have a right to talk to us. His party is in power and it has the majority. Men do not leave their homes because they want to do so. The average workman would like to stay at home, if he could. Thousands go into the Army, not because they want to, but because hunger is a good recruiting sergeant; not because they are military men, but because economic circumstances compel. We say that England wants re-organising. We want to know why it is that we have been turned down after all the appeals that have been made. Why should not taxation be more equally borne? Is there any reason why the people living in West Ham should pay 25s. in the £ and those in Westminster pay only about 10s. in the £? Westminster can even afford to sell us a workhouse, if we want one. The City of London sold us an infirmary a short time ago. It is, getting rid of its burden of outdoor and indoor relief, and asks us to pay £40,000 for one of its old institutions. We have not only to keep the poor that it sends down to us, but also its derelict institutions. Instead of the rich bearing their own burdens, they are transferring

        1023
        them day by day to the shoulders of those least able to bear them. The Government say the nation is in great difficulty. What difficulty? We are only asking you to equalise the burden. West Ham has a low rate able value. If it were as high as that of Westminster, our rates would be lower than Westminster's, in spite of our so-called extravagance. Their rates in the £ are higher than ours if value for value is taken into consideration.
        For nearly 30 years we have been taking part in this movement, and the only pleasure we have received has been in finding that other places are placed now where we have been so long. This is not a party matter, I am pleased to note. On deputations to Ministers all parties are represented because constituencies of various kinds are faced with exactly the same problem. The Government should give consideration to the subject. There has been appeal after appeal. Committees have reported on the problem, but, in spite of everything, we can get nothing. Who bears the biggest burden of national taxation? Those people in districts where the greatest industries are conducted bear the biggest share of local and national taxation. They are the mainstay of the revenue of the country. We ask, not for favours, but for equality. My friends in Poplar are better placed than we are in West Ham. We are just outside the ring, but Poplar shares in the Common Poor Fund. We have had to borrow £2,000,000 since this industrial depression set in. The time will come when someone will say "Halt!" What are we to do then? We shall have thousands and thousands of people thrown on oar hands and fared with starvation. I would then like those who talk glibly about each place looking after itself to come down and administer the affairs of West Ham. The problem is not local, but national, and the localities are breaking under the strain.
        Sir JOHN PENNEFATHER: Representing as I do a constituency which is included in a necessitous area, I naturally feel a great deal of sympathy with the arguments brought forward in favour of something being done to relieve the exceptionally high rates in such areas. The Minister of Health may remember that I was one of many who
        1024
        went with a deputation to him on that subject, not many months ago. I certainly would be in favour of any fair and reasonable proposal which would be effective and help to relieve the burden upon necessitous areas. But having said that much, I must add that I have pondered this question very carefully for a very long time, and I have never yet seen my way through the difficulties which arise in connection with the application of that principle. First of all, there is the difficulty as to which areas should be regarded as necessitous and which should not. The hon. Gentleman who has just spoken mentioned that there were something like 80 areas which could be classed as necessitous. But in addition to those, there are many more areas which would say that they were necessitous.
        It would be a very difficult task for any Government to lay down hard and fast rules and to say "All on one side of this line must be assisted because they are necessitous, and all on the other side not only will get no assistance, but they will have an additional burden put on them because they are non-necessitous areas." There is the additional fact that even in necessitous areas the rates are not the same. In some cases they run up to 25s. in the £; in other cases they may be only 22s. or 20s. or 18s. But still they are high. I cannot see how it is to be arranged to draw a line and to say that if the rates in a certain district are over a certain amount, then they are necessitous, but if below that amount they are not to be relieved. That would at once give an impetus to extravagant expenditure, a competitive extravagance in an area, in order that the rates might rise above a certain level and secure the relief which would then become automatically theirs.
        There are further difficulties of a technical nature, which would occupy more time than the House would like me to devote to them. One difficulty which does not seem to have been fully recognised in this Debate, although it has been recognised on previous occasions, is this: How can you combine the free administration by local hoards of guardians with money paid to them by the Treasury? There is an old saying that "he who pays the piper calls the tune." It seems almost inevitable that if the Treasury collected from the general body of tax

        1025
        payers sums of money and handed them over to the local bodies to administer them, the Treasury must couple with the transfer of those sums conditions which would prevent the boards of guardians from exceeding certain scales of relief. That really is a most serious point. It is practically impossible to combine local administration with a free grant of that kind. I have put it to friends of mine who are connected with boards of guardians, "Are you prepared to relinquish your local control and submit to the dictation by rules and regulations of the central body if you get this grant?" and they have said, "No, if that is the alternative, we prefer our freedom to administer our own rates, unhampered by any new and extra regulations imposed upon us."
        Suppose that all these difficulties could be got rid of, suppose that it were possible to draw these lines and spread this expenditure on the rates more widely, or transfer it from the ratepayer to the taxpayer. That does not help the country as a whole. The ratepayer and the taxpayer are all concerned with national prosperity, and to relieve one at the expense of the other, though it may help individuals, would do nothing to restore the country to prosperity. The great remedy for all the unemployment which we deplore, and which is the main cause of high rates, is better trade. I believe that any policy which will assist in making trade better will be a sound policy for relieving the cause which creates these high rates. I hope the Government will do their utmost, and that Members on both sides of the House will do their utmost to create that confidence which engenders the spirit of enterprise, which enables the people of this country to put their backs into their work, and which enables the captains of industry in this country to go forward adventurously in the work of bringing prosperity to this country. In that way, by avoiding any hindrance to trade and by giving every encouragement to trade, we can all do something to relieve the state of affairs which we now deplore.
        May I touch upon one other point which was brought forward by the hon. Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury)? We might do much to relieve the causes of these high rates in this country by assisted migration. I wonder whether
        1026
        anybody in this House has made a calculation as to the position which will have to be faced in certain of these localities in a few years' time. Let me put it in this way. If our population continues to increase at the present rate, if our emigration or migration does not increase materially, unless we have an immense revival of trade giving employment to a great many more people than we have now the right to anticipate, then within a period of it may be five years or it may be 10, but within a very short time we shall be confronted with the problem of how to find the means of subsistence for an extra million or so of population. That is a point which I submit to the consideration of hon. Gentlemen opposite who are, like myself, so distressed at the present high rates. What will the rates be in the future? What will be the position of the necessitous areas in the future, if we have to find employment or subsistence for another million people. I am not proposing any new legislation, but I would again draw attention to the fact that under legislation which was passed in 1922—the Empire Settlement Act—£9,000,000 was authorised by the House of Commons to be spent for the purposes of overseas settlement, and it has not been spent. The House of Commons authorised the spending of £3,000,000 a year in connection with overseas settlement, and only a fraction of that sum has been spent. Therefore I hope I am not out of order if I suggest as one means of assisting to reduce the size of the problem with which we are confronted to-day and, still further, to reduce the size of the problem in regard to rates which we may have to face three years hence, that we might to unite, Government and Opposition, to do everything that can be done to help our people to get better opportunities in the less-peopled portions of our Empire overseas.
        Mr. MORGAN JONES: Most members of the Committee will agree that we are discussing this subject with a Minister who is fully aware of all the difficulties attendant on the problem. The right hon. Gentleman himself, on one occasion, headed a deputation relative to the same problem and, therefore, we are in one sense, carrying coals to Newcastle when discussing this subject with him. The fact, however, that he is to be found on the Treasury Bench as the Minister

        1027
        in charge of this Debate encourages us to anticipate a more hopeful reply than we have been able to extract from him on previous occasions. It has been repeatedly remarked in the course of the Debate that there are some 80 local authorities whose areas may be regarded as necessitous areas in the usual acceptance of that term. That calculation, I think, is perfectly correct, but it is interesting to observe, according to the Report of the Ministry of Health for 1924–25, that the number of Poor Law authorities which were authorised to borrow under the Local Authorities (Financial Provisions) Act, 1921, was 24, a number which has since been increased to about 33. These 24 authorities between them, were authorised to borrow something like £6,907,500 in the year 1924–25 as compared with £6,676,500 in the year 1923–24. Of those 24 Poor Law unions, eight alone account for some £6,000,000 in loans out of the £6,900,000, and that fact seems to indicate that the problem pertains particularly to a relatively small number of Poor Law authorities. Commenting upon that circumstance, the Report of the Ministry of Health states:
        "It will thus be seen that while the area affected by financial difficulties is being restricted, the intensity of those difficulties is not being reduced, and the tendency is for a definite line of cleavage to manifest itself between those unions which have been able to weather the storm and the few which have not yet done so. It is satisfactory that nearly all the unions which have suffered financial difficulties are now improving their position, but the financial position of two or three of those unions is becoming more acute."
        Those are the observations of the experts of the Ministry in the Report for the year 1924–25. Perhaps I can better direct attention to the contrast between necessitous areas and what may be called non-necessitous areas, if I give one or two figures. My own constituency happens to lie in the Merthyr Tydvil Poor Law Union, and I have compared the incidence of this problem of unemployment and Poor Law burdens in the Merthyr Tydvil Union, which is an industrial area, with that in an agricultural area such as Cardiganshire. On 29th March, 1924, in the Merthyr Tydvil Union the number of persons per 10,000 in receipt of Poor Law relief was 612. The corresponding number in the Cardiganshire Union, which is
        1028
        purely agricultural, on the same date, was 187. On 28th March, 1925, in the Merthyr Tydvil Union the figure was 894 per 10,000, and in the Cardiganshire Union it was 180 per 10,000. On 26th September, in the Merthyr Tydvil Union, the number of persons in receipt of Poor Law relief per 10,000 of the population was 1,037, and in Cardiganshire the number had gone back to 187. It will be seen that in the agricultural area the figure is practically stationary, but in the industrial area, part of which I have the honour to represent, it has risen to almost double what it was on 29th March, 1924.
        Two things seem to impress themselves upon local authorities in these necessitous areas. In the first place they live laid down what I regard as a just claim, namely that the special problem which has made their areas necessitous is a problem for which they are not primarily responsible. They say that unemployment has come upon them, not because of any lack of good administration in their own areas, but because of the depreciation of trade with which local authorities have very little concern and over which they have no control. The other thing which alarms them is that not only is their present position extremely alarming, but their prospective position is even worse. I daresay the Minister will not subscribe to what I am about to say, but I feel that time will justify the statement that the tendency of some of the legislation which has received the approval of this House within the last six months, has been to increase in some measure the burden upon the local authorities. I think that statement cannot be controverted, but I take one illustration to make good my point. It is true that the right hon. Gentleman has, in some measure, relieved the burden of the Poor Law authorities by taking from their books, as it were, a certain number of people because of the operation of the Pensions Act. It is also true, however, that by the operation of the Unemployment Insurance Act a large number of people have been deprived of unemployment benefit and have gone on to the Poor Law, and figures which I have seen in recent times indicate that the ultimate balance, as between the benefit on the one side and the further burdens on the other, is against the local authorities rather than in their favour.

        1029
        Therefore not only is the present position extremely grave but the prospects are graver still.
        I put another proposition to the Minister on behalf of these authorities. The last speaker, in quite general terms, said the remedy for this problem is increase of trade. We can all say that but the people in these areas find themselves in a vicious circle. I take my own constituency which is a mining area. There has been for two years or longer a phase of extreme and acute depression in those areas which has meant the closing of collieries. In those areas when collieries are closed it means a direct loss on the rateable value of the area, because the rateable value depends upon output in some of those places. When the output of the pits has been reduced, it means that an extra burden falls upon those who have to pay the rates. What is the experience of these local authorities? Not only are the manual workers themselves very heavily hit by the incidence of this problem, but even business people now are applying in hundreds and thousands to the overseers, begging and praying that they may be relieved of their half year's rates. That means that, with the increased call upon the local residents because of the removal of the call from the colliery companies, it makes it extremely difficult for them to maintain their business intact. Reduction of business facilities and heavy local rating create unemployment, more unemployment creates higher rates, and so we go on in a vicious circle, round and round and round, until at last these local authorities are sucked down in the vortex of industrial and financial depression. Not only that, but I would like to put this further proposition. I will not discuss it, but I wish just to make an allusion to it.
        In the Memorandum presented yesterday. relative to the industrial crisis and its solution, there is a paragraph dealing with housing. The rates of my local authority are at this moment, not the happy figure of 20s. or 21s., but 28s. 2d. It has heavy calls for local government progress, it has demands for new roads, it has demands for maternity centres, and its has demands for all sorts of elements in social progress to be provided. I am not saying that the Minister is not entitled to take these things into considera-
        1030
        tion, but we ask the Minister to allow us to build a certain number of houses for our people, and he, in the execution, as he thinks, of his proper duty, tunas to these local authorities and says: "Oh, no; I cannot lend money to you, nor can I give you authority to build houses, because your rates are too high." The consequence is that the industrial problem, itself the creation of the unemployment problem, has landed these very authorities in a condition of affairs where social unrest is bound to develop by reason of the unjust and harsh social conditions prevailing there.
        I wonder if the right hon. Gentleman does not feel, having regard to all that has been said this afternoon, that a good case has been made out for special consideration. At one time be told us there was a case, and I wonder what has caused him to change. These problems are more intense than they were when he headed the famous deputation. I think that we are at this moment discussing a problem which lends itself more than anything else to the creation of social unrest. We have been discussing recently, on both sides, the great question of loyalty to democratic institutions, and, after all, the democratic institution which is nearest to these people is the local government machine. We are far removed from it. They see their district councils and their county councils in operation, and if these people feel, and have it borne in upon them repeatedly, that the local authorities which they know so intimately, can do nothing for them, does not that, of itself, tend to weaken the confidence of these people in the efficacy of democratic institutions? Personally, I have every faith in democratic institutions and would like to see that faith developed among other people as well, but I feel that this is a great menace to the confidence of the people in the efficacy of these institutions.
        I know that the right hon. Gentlemen's Department is in touch with and knows these local conditions in various parts of the country fairly intimately, but I rather suspect—I may be wrong, and I am open to correction—that the Ministry itself rarely expresses a view upon a particular proposition from a local authority until that proposition is put up to it by the local authority itself. Would it not be a good thing if the Ministry itself, of its own free will,

        1031
        voluntarily undertook some sort of survey in these particular areas? I know there has been a sort of survey done by the Committee recently sitting, but, after all, that is not as intimate a thing as can be undertaken by officials on behalf of the Ministry on the spot, and if such a survey were undertaken, I think the Ministry would feel far more strongly than is now the case that there is an overwhelming case for special consideration for these exceptionally hard-hit areas.
        An hon. Member for one of the South of England divisions made a point, with which I cordially agree, to the effect that there ought to be some sort of co-ordination of effort between the Ministry of Health and other Ministries in regard to this problem of meeting the heavy burden that falls on the local authorities. For instance, is there any reason why the Ministry of Health, in co-operation with the Department of Woods and Forests, should not make a survey of an area like my own, where there are thousands of acres of common land absolutely unused and running absolutely derelict? Is there any reason why they should not survey that area with a view, let us say, to providing useful work in planting and in various other forms of activity, so that this heavy burden which the local authorities are called upon to bear alone may be mitigated by the provision of useful and productive labour? I beg the Minister not to repeat the somewhat discouraging reply which we had from the Prime Minister the other day. The local authorities which appeared before the Committee did not do so without suggestions. Some five or six proposals were put before the Committee, the West Ham scheme and other schemes were adumbrated, and surely all those schemes cannot be absolutely futile, utterly and absolutely useless. There must be some common element of good in them. Anyway, can we hear from the Minister this afternoon some word of comfort or encouragement for these local authorities, which are called upon to bear a burden, which they are bearing right courageously, on behalf of the nation, and which national politics has thrown upon their shoulders?
        Mr. HARNEY: I wish to say a few words, because I represent what I sup-
        1032
        pose should be regarded as a necessitous area, by which phrase I understand a place where the rates are higher than the rates would average if spread over the whole of England. I am sure there is an answer, though I have never heard it, but why should an area like mine, with coal-miners and ship builders, suffer particularly when they are thrown out of employment, not by reason of any lack of administration or anything peculiar to that area, but because the export trade in coal has fallen, because substitutes have sprung up, because oil and lignite and so on are used? South Shields is no more responsible for that than is London, and it does seem pretty hard that the shopkeepers and the householders there should have to carry on their backs a financial burden for which they are in no respect specially responsible. I can understand in the olden times bow this placing of the poor of the district upon the rates arose. It was quite natural that, when the towns in this country were very isolated from one another, and when they all lived a particular life, the persons in an area who became destitute should be looked after by the authority of that area, but that time has completely gone. The large increase of unemployment and the interconnection that has sprung up between all the industries of the country really make the maintenance of the unemployed in the form of Poor Law relief a matter of national concern. While the hon. Member for the Kirk-dale Division of Liverpool (Sir J. Penne-father) was speaking, I came in, and I did not intend speaking myself, but I do so in order that my constituents may know that I do enter my protest as well as others. The hon. Member said the objection to the Government helping is that, if the Government does give a grant to these areas, it will have to exercise control. I think that is quite reasonable, but does it not exercise control already in many cases? In education does it not exercise control? If money is wanted for any of the requirements of health, has not application to be made to the Ministry? I am sure there would be no objection at all to allowing a control to be extended that was commensurate to the grant given. The thing seems to me so very obvious that really I feel there must be some answer that I. have failed to appreciate. The right hon. Gentle-

        1033
        man probably knows it, but we have not so far heard it, and in the absence of an answer I do ask with confidence why it should be that industrial areas in this country should bear the burden of unemployment that is not characteristic of those areas, but that is due to the general depression which has fallen upon the whole country. If the burden falls upon the whole country, why should it not be borne by the taxpayer?
        The MINISTER of HEALTH (Mr. Neville Chamberlain): I have listened to a great many debates in this House upon this subject of necessitous areas. In fact, I should have supposed that the ground had been so thoroughly worked that it would have been almost impossible for any new arguments or expositions to have been put before us, and I must say that, when I observed that my hon. and melancholy Friend the Member for West Middlesbrough (Mr. Trevelyan Thomson), who has ploughed this furrow with so much persistency and with such barren results for so many years, had given up the struggle, I realised that the case must be in a hopeless condition. Nevertheless, I must say that I think the Debate this afternoon has ranged over a wider field and has been remarkable for an absence of party spirit, a moderation in statement, and an evident desire to make constructive suggestions, which have made it rather remarkable and have afforded me, at any rate, a great deal of interest.
        6.0 P.M.
        What is the general argument which has been put forward? I say the "general argument," because some of the speeches to which I listened put the argument in slightly different form. I would like to put it in the form in which, I think, it is generally understood, and I suppose I have as good a right to put it as anybody, as I myself have been among the advocates, as hon. Members opposite remind me on these occasions. It is said that the unemployment, from which we have suffered since 1921, although it has varied in intensity from time to time, sometimes being more and sometimes less, nevertheless, all through that period has been of a totally abnormal and exceptional character. The exceptional severity of unemployment, while it is due to causes which are national, and, perhaps, even international, has nevertheless been felt with exceptional hardship
        1034
        in certain particular areas which have not contributed in any way to that situation. Then, it is said, these areas are industrial areas, and the very fact that the rates have been raised in consequence of this exceptional unemployment, has handicapped the industries in those areas, so that they are less able to withstand the competition of other places, whether in this country or abroad. Consequently, again, unemployment is increased, and that again raises the rates once more, and so you get the vicious circle.
        Now, what is the remedy proposed? The hon. Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury), who opened the debate, took rather a different line from that which is generally taken on this subject, and he said that what he wanted to see was work found for the workers, and with great sincerity he dwelt upon the disadvantage of allowing men to slip back into pauperism and to become demoralised, contrasting that with the more profitable method of finding useful work for them, and their consequent reintroduction into the ranks of the self-respecting and independent artisan. I think everyone of us will agree with that in theory. It is when you come to try to put it into practice in times like these, that you run up against difficulties which are not confined to the present Government, but which have been experienced by every Government that has been in office since these difficulties began. Then the hon. Member gave us an instance, the Hollesley Bay colony and the colony at Laindon, and he seemed to attribute to me the change which he said had taken place in the conditions under which the Hollesley Bay colony was carried on. He said he felt very keenly about my conduct in this matter, because he himself had given a good deal of time, and taken a good deal of trouble in the establishment of that colony. But I have made no change whatever in the administration of the colony, which is carried on upon precisely the same lines as it was being carried on under the Government of 1924.
        Mr. LANSBURY: I think the right hon. Gentleman is under a misapprehension. The colony was started under the Central Unemployment Committee, and no man had to go near the guardians to get there. The men have to be sent

        1035
        through the guardians, and questions arising such as clothes, allowances, and other little things—pinpricks—make all the difference from what it was under the central body.
        Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: That may be so. I agree there has been a change, but what I said was that I did not make the change.
        Mr. LANSBURY: Either you or one of your predecessors.
        Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: The hon. Member must not put down everything which he does not like to me. The colony was carried on by my predecessor on exactly the same lines as it is being carried on to-day. I, personally, have made no change whatever. I may, perhaps, remind the hon. Gentleman that the colony was established under the Poplar Board of Guardians, but the Poplar Board of Guardians put an end to it as a colony, and turned it into a workhouse for old people, and so, undoubtedly, the Board of Guardians themselves are responsible for the change which the hon. Member so much deplores.
        Mr. LANSBURY: I am speaking within the recollection of everyone who heard me when I say that I did not lay any blame on the right hon. Gentleman with regard to Laindon, and did not, in fact, put Laindon on the same footing as Hollesley Bay. I should not be so foolish as to say that Hollesley Bay was not started by the guardians, but it was turned into what it is now by an Order of one of the right hon. Gentleman's predecessors, and that mainly because of the period of the War.
        Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I do not think we need handy words about who is responsible. The point I want to make is that in the case of Laindon, it was quite evident the guardians themselves thought it was not satisfactory to carry on that colony on the original plans, and with regard to Hollesley Bay, the difficulty found there by my predecessor, as well as by myself, was the difficulty, not merely to get men trained there, but to find men jobs when trained, and only a small proportion of men trained there have been able to find employment in agricultural pursuits. At this particular colony I believe there are about 350 persons employed at a time. It really is, I think, obvious that although you
        1036
        might multiply colonies of that kind, you could not find in institutions of that sort a sufficient outlet for all the people who are unemployed in the great centres of which we have been hearing to-day, and you have to look somewhere else to find a remedy.
        That was the hon. Member's proposal, but, of course, the more usual suggestion that comes to us is the one which was put forward by the hon. Member for East Ham North (Miss Lawrence), who wants a special subsidy for necessitous areas. That is a suggestion which has been put to successive Governments, and each Government, in turn, has found it impossible to comply, first, because it was not a remedy which the Governments themselves thought was likely to effect a cure, and, secondly, because of the extraordinary difficulties of finding anyway of making any sort of fair application of a national subsidy. Let me quote a passage from a speech made by the late Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour (Miss Bondfield), on the 10th March, 1924. I am not quoting this in order to make any party point of it, but merely to indicate what is very much the position in which this Government is. This is what the late Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour said:
        "A very interesting point was raised by the hon. Member for West Middlesbrough (Mr. T. Thomson) in relation to the grants made to necessitous areas, and I should like to give him a definite statement of our policy on that point. The hon. Member dealt with a deputation which went to the Ministry of Health with a proposal that special assistance should be given to necessitous areas by means of a grant based on a complex formula."
        As a matter of fact, this particular formula was that known as the West Ham scheme.
        "After careful consideration, the Government has not been able to accept this. The formula, if applied, would give rise to the most grotesque differences in the grants to the various necessitous areas. It is very difficult to find a formula which would be fair. The general policy of the Government is to extend the unemployment programme, and in this way greatly to relieve the local authorities of some of their burden. That is definitely the policy of the Government on that point."
        Then the hon. Member for West Middlesbrough asked in that Debate:
        "To what extent is the Government prepared to increase the grants to local author-

        1037
        rities in these necessitous areas with regard to unemployment work?"
        To that, Miss Bondfield replied:
        "I think I must stick to the reply I have given, that it is very difficult to find a formula which will be fair. I cannot go beyond that.—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 10th March, 1924; cols. 2086–7, Vol. 170.]
        The hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Morgan Jones) and the hon. Member for the Hartlepools (Sir W. Sugden) have referred to this formula. They have said there was not only one scheme, but no less than five schemes mentioned in the course of a deputation which came to see the present Prime Minister. What was the Prime Minister's reply to that deputation? He said that the Ministers responsible, particularly myself, had hitherto not been able to find in those schemes any practicable solution of the difficulty, but that, as there seemed to be some sort of idea that the Departments were prejudiced against them, he would set up a Committee to inquire into those schemes and see whether they could be made to work. That Committee has now reported. I understand that the Report is not now in the Vote Office, and I very much regret it, because, obviously, it is of importance, and I had hoped that all hon. Members could have had the Report in their hands before we discussed this question this afternoon. But they will understand that, owing to the difficulties, into which I do not propose to enter at this moment, printing has not been going on as usual, with the result that the Report is not generally available. I have here the Report of the Committee, the Chairman of which was Sir Harry Goschen, and it contains a careful and exhaustive examination of every one of these five schemes. The hon. Member for Caerphilly did not believe that you could have as many as five schemes, and not one of them any good. Surely there was something good common to them all? I am sorry to say the Report of the Committee shows that the only thing that is common to them all is that they are all bad. All of them, on examination, turned out to be either inequitable or impracticable. Although I am not, of course, going to weary the Committee by reading long extracts from this Report, I think I ought to give an indication of the sort of thing the Committee say about the various schemes.
        Mr. MORGAN JONES: The Report says:
        "Certain Members of the Committee wish, however, to record their opinion that it is not impossible to adopt some of the principles embodied in these schemes."
        So that there is some good in them, anyhow.
        Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I will come to that later on. The most elaborate scheme, the one to which the Committee gave most attention, and the one which has been most often put forward, was a scheme prepared by the Borough Treasurer of West Ham, and it is based upon a rather complex formula. I do not think it would be advantageous to attempt to explain to the Committee now exactly what this formula is, or how it would work. My hon. Friend the Member for the Hartlepools (Sir W. Sugden) said that ho did not want a formula at all, but something that would satisfy the Hartlepools, and provided that was done, he did not see why the Government should be tied up with cast-iron formula; but in considering the expenditure of public money we have to look over rather a wider area than that. When we are going to put a new burden upon the taxpayer, the taxpayer ought to be satisfied that, at any rate, his money is going to be spent upon some established and defensible principle, and that it will not go to people who are not deserving of it, that, it is not to be handed out to authorities who have no greater claim upon it than any other authority. Again, the taxpayer is also a ratepayer, and in any relief of the rates we want to be certain that the relief is going to be fairly placed. In paragraph 66 of the Report, the Committee sum up their conclusions upon the particular scheme which is known as the West Ham Scheme. They say:
        "We have, therefore, to report that in our opinion this scheme cannot be recommended as a basis for the distribution of Exchequer assistance to necessitous areas. We would only add that we have throughout our deliberations paid special attention to the possibility of introducing into the scheme any Amendments that might render it acceptable."
        And I would call the attention of hon. Members particularly to this:
        "Regarding, as we must, the system of excess numbers as the essential feature of the scheme, we see no possibility of meeting by Amendments or safeguards the objec-

        1039
        tions to which we have called attention in this Report."
        There is another scheme referred to in Paragraph 78, put forward by the guardians of West Bromwich, and they say:
        "In our view, therefore, this scheme, apart from the impossibility of obtaining the basic data necessary, fails in its main tests to provide a satisfactory basis for the allocation of any measure of State assistance."
        There is the scheme put on record as that of the City of London Union. In regard to this the Committee say:
        "We are unable to regard it as at all adequate for the purpose of distributing assistance to necessitous areas, and in these circumstances we do not propose to enter into any discussion of the proposal to levy an equalisation rate."
        Again, there is the scheme put forward in the name of the hon. Member for Attercliffe (Mr. Cecil Wilson), and of this the Committee say:
        "We are unable to see any opportunity of founding an equitable scheme upon the basis proposed by Mr. Wilson."
        Finally, there is the scheme submitted on behalf of the parish councils of Scotland. In relation to this the Committee say:
        "After careful consideration of this scheme as a whole, we are unable to recommend it as providing an adequate basis for the distribution of Exchequer assistance to necessitous areas."
        It would seem to me that these five schemes have all been condemned by the Committee either as inequitable or impracticable.
        Mr. MORGAN JONES: But will the right hon. Gentleman note the conclusion of the Report, in which the Committee said:
        "We would only add that if our detailed Report inclines to stress the defects of the schemes to the exclusion of their merits, this arises from the scope of our inquiry."
        Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I am coming to that point; it is true those words occur in the last paragraph, and that it is stated that certain members of the Committee wish to record their opinion that it is not impossible to adopt some of the principles embodied in some of the schemes; but. I wish to call the attention of the Committee to two points in the Report which have to some extent this afternoon been dealt with in several speeches, and which appear to me to require more attention on the part of
        1040
        hon. Members than has hitherto been given. I refer to the question of the relationship between national and local taxation which my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkdale Division of Liverpool (Sir J. Pennefather) touched upon. In paragraph 55 of the Report of the Departmental Committee it is pointed out:
        "Other than through the district auditors, there was at present no effective central check upon the expenditure of the respective areas in each case, Mr. Johnson thought it would almost be a necessity for a Government Department to fix scales of relief varying with the class of area, and he agreed that such a step should be a condition precedent to the bringing into operation of any scheme of assistance. It is only fair to add in this connection that he emphasised the urgency of the need for interim assistance …."
        That is significant and very important. In this matter it is suggested there is the necessity for a most carefully thought out scheme before giving assistance to necessitous areas.
        "And he himself is of opinion before the scheme can come into operation that it will be necessary for the Minister of Health to arrange scales of relief for every area in the country before any relief can be given."
        Personally, I should deprecate very seriously a policy of that kind; it would be directly contrary to the past practice of boards of guardians. It would mean depriving boards of guardians of the power of exercising their own discretion and initiative which has been in the past, in my judgment, to the good, and would go in an exactly opposite direction to that I desire to see. If we are to encourage pride in local government we want, not to increase centralised control, but, if possible, to diminish it. I want to decentralise responsibility, and to give greater and not less power to local authorities in the general understanding and control of these matters. The other point to which attention has been called, and which is in the earlier stages of the Report, is one in which the Committee point out that this subject is brought up almost entirely from the point of view of Poor Relief. They say, and they justly say, that when you are considering the position of these so-called necessitous areas you cannot deal with poor relief quite apart from the other burdens of expenditure. You must consider the expenditure of the areas as a whole, and in relation the general policy. That seems to me to be another principle which

        1041
        ought to be borne in mind when you are trying to devise any scheme for dealing with what I admit is a problem. The Committee, I think, will see where I am coming to now.
        Last year we passed an Act, the Rating and Valuation Act, which was designed to establish a uniform valuation throughout the country. At the present time there is no such uniformity. We cannot compare the rates in one area with the rates in another area because the system of valuation may be entirely different in the two areas, and cast an entirely different burden upon the individual because of the difference in valuation. I hope that will gradually right itself, or come right, under the operations of the Act passed last year. It is not permitted to discuss future legislation, but there are proposals before the country which in future may have the effect of the transferring the functions and duties of the board of guardians to the local authorities. When that has been done we will then be equipped for undertaking a scheme which, I believe, will be equitable and fair, and which will have the double effect of taking into account the whole of the expenditure in the whole of the area, the whole burden of expenditure of the area qualified by the policy to be pursued, and at the same time by a system of block grants release the local authorities from the detailed control now necessary. That appears to me to be the proper policy, and it appears to me, in dealing with this question of necessitous areas, it would be a mistake in view of the fact that we are rapidly approaching the time when it will be possible to carry out a policy of that kind now to initiate any different policy in a contrary direction.
        After all, whatever difficulty the situation may present to some of these necessitous areas, there are many, many things to show that, so far from getting worse, the situation is really less acute than, in fact, it has been in any of the previous periods since 1921. The number of persons in receipt of domiciliary relief has gone down by over 80,000 during the first three months of this year. On the other hand, the number of persons in employment this year, as compared with last year, has increased by 180,000. Do not let us forget figures of that kind. But I think there is no
        1042
        danger of bankruptcy, or the falling to pieces of the areas concerned. I quite agree that there are a certain number of cases where the Minister of Health is nursing the authorities and making it possible to carry on. It is true that the hon. Gentleman the Member for the Hartlepools, in a moment of enthusiasm, said they were sick of formulae, for the constituencies where the people were starving. I beg to differ from him, and to say that no one is starving.
        Sir W. SUGDEN: I give the right hon. Gentleman an invitation to come to the Hartlepools and see for himself.
        Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I desire no one to starve. The Ministry of Health is giving careful attention to all these cases. What has happened in the case of some boards of guardians and local authorities is that they are having considerable sums under the recommendations of the Goschen Committee, or in other ways. The Ministry of Health is giving careful consideration to all these cases, and in some instances, where we have thought it necessary, we have eased the situation in the matter of the payment of interest. I believe that our policy, although it is only a temporary one, is the best policy to pursue in the present circumstances. I have indicated what I believe to be a, permanent policy. I hope it may not be very long before arrangements for that permanent policy will be able to be made.
        Motion made, and Question, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again," put, and agreed to.—[Mr. Chamberlain.]
        Committee report Progress; to sit again To-morrow.

  GENERAL STRIKE, MR. MACDONALD'S SPEECH.

    PRIME MINISTER ON DANGERS OF PRESENT SITUATION.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Commander Eyres Monsell.]
    Mr. RAMSAY MacDONALD: I rise to continue to another stage the statement and speech made by the Prime Minister yesterday. This morning an Address was published to the nation from a source still nobler, and in a spirit and temper

    1043
    still more magnificent. Will the House allow me to remind it verbally of the essential part of that Address?
    "At such a moment it is supremely important to bring together all my people to confront the difficult situation which still remains. This task requires the co-operation of all able and well-disposed men in the country. Even with such help it will be difficult, but it will not be impossible."
    It goes on:
    "Let us forget whatever elements of bitterness the events of the past few days may have created, only remembering how steady and how orderly the country has remained, though severely tested, and forthwith address ourselves to the task of bringing into being a peace which will be lasting because, forgetting the past, it looks only to the future with the hopefulness of a united people."
    I pray that not a word, not a sentence, will fall from my lips this afternoon that will do anything but help to promote the spirit and the words of that Address. The Prime Minister spoke yesterday. There is, unfortunately, a great contrast between what he said yesterday and what is in the "British Gazette" this morning. I think it is a great pity that that should be so, a profound pity. It is not helpful, it is only provocative, and I am rising to ask whether a change cannot take place. Let there be no mistake about this: The strike, whether one agrees with it or not, which was terminated yesterday, was purely an industrial struggle. It was started, rightly or wrongly, with one idea, and one idea only, to support the miners in resisting a threatened reduction of wages. Those responsible for calling that strike, those responsible for conducting it, said before it began, and said whilst it was on, that the moment certain industrial securities came over the horizon, that that moment they would be satisfied and declare peace. That happened. According to programme, according to intention, from which they never deviated by a hair's breadth, the result of yesterday took place. Nobody knows better than the right hon. Gentleman, after all that has happened, how much courage it requires to do what was done yesterday. Nobody knows better than those who
    1044
    have been engaged in industrial disputes what risks were run by those who took the step that was taken yesterday. I think it was the right step, and I think it was a step that ought to draw from everybody, from every class and from every section of the community, a determination to help to make this step effective in the establishment of peace.
    What has been the result? We have had industrial disputes before; we have had people threatening to crush out trade unionism; trade unionism has had bad smashes; contracts have been broken, bad temper has been raised, and at the moment of peace the most optimistic of us have felt that such great disasters had overcome, not the industry of the country, but the mind of the people, and that peace was only to be a whited sepulchre, a mere simulacrum. But common sense came over them, the common sense of both parties, so that when peace came, and the fight was over, the first thing that the combatants on both sides did was to shake hands. That has not happened now. That has not happened in the newspapers, it has not happened in the streets, it has not happened in some wild and heady demonstrations, it has not happened regarding the conditions imposed upon the men who have presented themselves for work.
    I ask the Prime Minister, is that what he meant by the words that he spoke yesterday, is that the programme of application that is going to carry out those gracious words I have just read out to the House? It is not. To-day, I am informed, there are more men out than there were yesterday. I am informed that to-day men have come out who went in, not because they want to hold up the community—believe me, and do not be resentful if I use a hard word, that is sheer rubbish. Those men are out to-day because they believe that after peace the conditions that are being attempted to be imposed upon their fellows who want to go back after peace are such as will make it impossible to continue in industry under peaceful conditions. The right hon. Gentleman will understand what I am driving at. We are not begging, we are not craving. Happily, Sir, we will have to be very much further down than we are before that happens. But I am asking, asking with great sincerity, whether advantage cannot be taken of what has

    1045
    happened to establish good relationships on a broader and even firmer foundation than they have been, unfortunately, for a good many years in the industry of our land.
    Can the Prime Minister supplement his general statement of yesterday with specific information regarding what is being done to carry it into effect? Threats are the last thing I should think of, but let there be no mistake about this. If there is any attempt to smash up trade unionism, if any section of the country, or any foolish person in the country, thinks that after the events of last week and yesterday he can scrape the faces of trade unionists in the dust, he is very much mistaken. We want a settlement. We want no guerilla warfare to begin, and to go on and on and on. We want no resentment left behind. But if that is going to be avoided, it has got to be avoided by treating men as independent, self-respecting working men, who are not going to crawl back, and have not got to be treated as human beings with the yoke of absolute subordination riveted on to their necks. If it is crush, let us know. My desire would be that especially this House, with all its political enmities and its political divisions, and with its very deep and fundamental diversities upon the meaning of what has happened during the last eight or nine days—that this House should now., first of all, make a declaration to the whole of the nation that it wants no crushing, that it wants no humiliation, and that it lifts up its voice and makes its appeal on behalf of healing, restoration and restitution.
    The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Baldwin): I think it is quite right that an opportunity should have been given at an early date with a view to discussing the very difficult situation which exists to-day, and although I have been rather fully occupied during to-day, and shall be in the evening, I, for my part, welcome this opportunity of saying what I have to say. I am not one of those who ever expected that whenever the end or however the end might come to the great upset of last week, it would or could straighten itself out in a day. I always felt that the few days following on a settlement of this kind would be by far the most difficult days through which we should have to pass. In the first place, although the
    1046
    behaviour of everybody has been, on the whole, admirable, yet on all men concerned there has been a strain, and when that strain is suddenly removed or people think it has been removed, the first reaction is always a very edgy and nervous one. I am sure the Leader of the Liberal Opposition will agree with me when I say that, in regard to problems of this kind, with which he has in the past been confronted, the first few months of peace are far more difficult than those he had to face during the war itself.
    There are obvious reasons for that, into which I need not enter. The supreme interest of this country to-day requires that the largest body of men possible should be brought back to work at the earliest possible moment. I take that as my starting point. I repeat now in other words perhaps what I have said more than once, that this is neither the occasion for malice nor for recrimination, nor for triumph. Our duty is to escape as soon as possible from the consequences of this unhappy controversy, and the less we talk about it at the present moment, the better are our chances of success. I will explain what I mean a little further on. There is, however, a real difficulty to which I wish to allude before I come to speak on the specific points which have been raised by the Leader of the Opposition, which I must put plainly before the House. I am going to do it in a completely unprovocative way, but it is essential I should put this point in order that the House may understand it. Whatever the intentions of those who brought the men out last week, in effect had those efforts been wholly successful, it would have meant the complete cessation of the Press and of transport.
    In these circumstances, supposing any Government in power at that time had been completely unprepared for a crisis of that kind, what would have happened none of us can tell. I cannot tell those responsible for calling the men out could not tell, but had the Government not been prepared, there would have been in this great democratic country a condition of things approaching anarchy. I know that was the nightmare behind many of the men concerned. It is no good blinking the fact, because it might have had to be faced by the Leader of the Opposition or by the right hon. Gentleman

    1047
    sitting over there (Mr. Lloyd George), but it was my misfortune to have to face it. In these circumstances—I think there will be general agreement on this point in the House—we could not in any way nave declined to take upon ourselves the duty of providing for these vital services which might have been stopped. I am sure everyone in the House will agree with that statement.
    How have those services been provided? They have been provided partly by men who remained at their work and partly by volunteers, but a large majority of them are not people directly concerned in the strike. I have given no pledges at all during this conflict except one, and that is, that those who help the Government should not suffer for having done so. I put this point to the House. I believe that my word stands for something in the country. I hope it always will, although I am going to go through the most difficult time during the next week or two that ever a man has had to go through. But let me ask this question. If ever I went back on that pledge who would ever trust me again? Not only that, but who would ever trust a Government again? Therefore there is a real difficulty in reconciling a pledge of that kind and the taking back of all men to work. That is exactly one of those very difficult points which I have had in my mind in my broadcast message which must be thrashed out between the unions and the employers' associations. It calls for real statesmanship, and I do feel that any prolonged discussion on a matter of this kind where perhaps full and accurate information is not always available, and where a sense of responsibility may be lacking, will hamper those who at this moment I believe are now beginning these very difficult negotiations. I want to put that point first, and then I want to come to what I have tried to do within the last 24 hours, and how the situation stands according to the latest authentic reports that I have.
    During the last week of course there has been a good deal of propaganda on both sides. I have an instinctive dislike to propaganda and I dislike it very much. The particular piece of propaganda I am referring to I am only going to use to illustrate what I am going to do. There has been a propaganda that has told the men on the railways that there was an
    1048
    attack going to be made on their wages, and that there had been a movement on the part of the Government against wages in a great industry where they had been settled on what was hoped to be a permanent basis. So far as I know there was not a word of truth in that. What I want to say is this. I will not countenance any attack on the part of any employers to use this present occasion for trying in any way to get reductions in wages below those in force before the strike commenced or any increase of hours.
    We must remember another danger with which we are faced and it is this. You cannot have a general hold-up of the business of the country even for a week or a fortnight without dislocating and disorganising the trade of the country. Of course I have no knowledge of the extent to which this may have happened but indisputably foreign contracts will have been cancelled, and there will have been either a cessation of or a great diminution in fresh orders. The coal stocks have of course shrunk to very small dimensions and in many industries and on the railways they must necessarily suffer a very considerable curtailment of their services owing to the shortage of fuel. In these circumstances with the best will in the world, unemployment must be greater for a time in consequence of what has happened. That will be one of the difficulties we shall all have to face.
    Now what have I been trying to do during the last 24 hours? I recognise that a responsibility is attached to me in a peculiar degree, partly because I hold the office that I do, and partly because of the message which I broadcasted on the first day of the strike. I stand by every word of that message. If I fail in carrying it out to everyone's satisfaction it will not be for want of trying. Last night I heard that a certain large employers or a large group of employers were unwilling to meet the union concerned. I lost no time in putting on the broadcast that I thought it was essential that the associations of employers and the trade unions concerned should meet immediately and get to work. I forget the exact words which I used, but I think I told them to discuss the many difficulties that had arisen in the present dispute with regard to getting the men back to

    1049
    work. I am glad to say that that particular authority has now consented to do what I asked them to do, and a meeting is already arranged to take place tomorrow morning, and it would have taken place earlier but for the fact that the negotiator who will be meeting them in the morning is engaged this evening with another great authority. I may add that there is another body of employers who had an agreement with their men which agreement was broken by the men coming out. The first instinct was to say that a new agreement on less favourable terms must be negotiated if they were going to take the men back. I am glad to say I heard that at a meeting this morning, they decided they would not put forward a proposal to terminate the agreement, or to alter the conditions of employment. The railway companies who, in many cases, have the most difficult task to negotiate—because there, I am afraid, the unemployment for a time must be considerable because of the decline of work consequent on these struggles—are, I am glad to say, to meet—my information is—this evening. My right hon. Friend the Member for Derby (Mr. Thomas) will tell me if that is correct or not.
    Mr. THOMAS Mr. THOMAS indicated assent.
    The PRIME MINISTER: That is the information which has just been sent to me. On that I wish to warn the House not to accept on face value all the stories that fly about in the Lobby. They do nothing but harm, and what I dread very much about protracted Debates, during the two or three critical days of negotiations, is Members of this House, without a sense of responsibility, just repeating what they have heard or been told by some chance acquaintance, which carries weight, possibly, because it is said in this House, which merely confuses the issue and probably turns out to be based on a complete fabrication.
    One instance came to my notice just before I entered the House to-night. It has been said that the railway companies are proposing to take this opportunity of reducing wages and that they propose in taking men back into the service to take them on as new entrants, as a result of which the men would receive lower rates of pay as well as lose the benefits of their seniority. I
    1050
    telephoned at once to find out if that statement was true. I had a message from the chief general manager of the London and North-Eastern Railway saying, "Both these rumours are entirely without foundation. Men in employment go back at rates of pay they were receiving before the strike and without loss of service" I may say my right hon. Friend has been getting for me on the telephone within the last few minutes some information from the London General Omnibus Company about whom the same statement has been made, and it has been contradicted. I only quote these to show the type of rumour that is flying about and the foundation that really exists. Do let us remember that to-night and to-morrow morning the responsible people—the employers' associations and the union negotiators—are meeting, and will be meeting, as I have said before, in some of the most delicate and most difficult work they have ever been called upon to perform. Let us do nothing in this House to hamper them in their efforts. There is only one other subject on which I desire to say a word or two. I am sure the House will recognise that this is no occasion for me to make a long speech. I wish just to put before the House the conditions, as I see them, and the things that are in my mind.
    The Leader of the Opposition devoted a portion of his speech to saying that he hoped there would be no attack on trade unions as such. I cannot imagine that there will be such an attack. I should not countenance it. There must be, human nature being what it is, for a few days, at any rate, on both sides, I daresay, a certain soreness, a certain difficulty of recovering in a moment that friendly spirit of negotiation. There can be no greater disaster than that there should be anarchy in the trade union world. It would be impossible, in our highly organised and highly developed system of industry, to carry on unless you had organisations which could speak for and bind the parties on both sides. If you had not that, you would have sporadic outbreaks, difficult to deal with, and far more interruptive of ordinary industry. One of the dangers, as I see it, of this situation, if allowed to last, is that it may well be that on both sides such organisations will lose their power and

    1051
    that you do run a risk of anarchy in the organisations on both sides. We know that in all these great organisations there are some who are of little help. At a time like this there are some who like fishing in troubled waters. Let us get the waters calm as soon as we can, lest their work spoils the work of half a century. I have made my position, and the position of the Government, clear. We have no power to coerce, or to order. The whole of our influence is being exercised, and will be exercised, in the letter and in the spirit of whatever I have stated either on the broadcast or otherwise during the last 10 days.
    Mr. J. H. THOMAS: The object of my right hon. Friend in raising this matter was his anxiety to enable this House, through the Prime Minister, to make some contribution towards smoothing the difficult situation now existing. I think there will be common agreement that the speech of my right hon. Friend and the speech of the Prime Minister himself, whilst maintaining their respective party points of view, were certainly both directed in a helpful rather than in any other manner. I want to say that it is exactly that sentiment, that spirit, not so much the letter, the spirit behind what the Prime Minister said, that has got to be interpreted it we are to get out of this difficulty. The House ought to know the exact situation at this moment. I am afraid they do not. Yesterday a big thing was done by the Trade Union Congress. I am not now, and do not intend, to say a word about the merits of the dispute, but there must be common agreement that with all the responsibility and the consequences that may have followed, with 4,000,000 men and women having answered the call without consultation, without knowledge of any sort, they promptly took responsibility and said, "We call this strike off." There are people on that side of the House who know it required a big effort to do it. They certainly on that bench know it is the case. Why did they do it? They did it because they knew —no one knew better than they—when the Government made this question constitutional issue, not only that Government, but no Government that could dare sit there could budge from the position they took up. Do you think I
    1052
    did not know it? Do you think any leader did not know it? Of course we knew it, and we know it, not because we agreed with it—because we joined issue with it—but knowing that was the issue you laid down we had to say: "What now is our responsibility?" I will tell you in a sentence what we said. We said: "This is not a constitutional issue." We never allowed anyone to dare to raise constitutional issue from beginning to end, and anyone who did it was repudiated by us. We said more than that. We said: "These men are out, called out, not dragged out, as has been alleged, but called out, and they responded because rightly they believed that they were helping the miners." Immediately they satisfied themselves that that was accomplished they came straight to the Government and the Prime Minister. Here let me say he met us yesterday in a manner we expected him to meet us, and I have no complaints whatever; none whatever. But when he met us in that spirit and we accepted it, our task then commenced, our difficulties then commenced. Our responsibility was then greater than ever. It was to say to this great disciplined army: "Whatever you folks may think, everyone of you in your hearts will admit that such a responsibility as that was not only wonderful, but it was the greatest tribute to any leader that could possibly be imagined."
    Therefore, our real task commenced, and we said to the Prime Minister, "This is where you can help us." He said, "Yes, I will help you." This morning, when we saw the official organ, we were not only sore. I do not know who is responsible, but I would ask the House to remember that, when the official publication of the Government was issued, with "Total Surrender," and so on, that went to 2,000,000 men who refused to surrender to the Germans. That was hurled at 2,000.000 men who said, "The Germans shall not make us surrender," and you can imagine the bitterness that followed. We immediately issued a statement on that, and we said, "Never mind, we have got the Prime Minister's word." That was the position when we first met, but this morning, when we arrived at the general office, what did we find? The first thing we found was that the Government themselves were not carrying out

    1053
    what the Prime Minister desired. The Prime Minister has said to the House to-night, and I agree with every word—I will deal with it in a moment—"Please remember the dislocation that must follow." It would only be a blind, ignorant fool who could assume that all that has taken place could be rectified in a day. You cannot expect to get the wheels of industry and everybody started to-day or to-morrow; no one in his senses believes that you can; but we do believe, and we do know, that the first to set an example ought to be the Government. I refuse to believe that the Prime Minister is aware that the Government themselves have broken, not only the spirit, but the letter of his broadcast speech, of his statement yesterday, and of his statement to us to-day. This is a copy of the Admiralty Order:
    "Following is Admiralty decisions as regards men on strike. Established men are not to be allowed to enter, but are to be suspended until further notice."
    Do not let us get angry; we are going to state the facts. Even if the House agree with that—which I refuse to believe they can—even if they agree with that document itself, how can they square it with the Prime Minister's word? Not only is it not the spirit, but it is not the letter. That is the Admiralty. This is the War Office, and the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State is here:
    "Notice to employés at War Office Department Establishments. Men who have remained at work and men who have returned to work by Wednesday, the 12th May, will be given preference of employment, irrespective of their former length of service."
    That, of course, means—I am only drawing the attention of the House to the first paragraph—that anyone who came in supersedes those that went out. Do not talk about that not being victimising. But that is not the most serious part. Let me read on:
    "Attention is drawn to the provision of the Regulations that all awards under the Superannuation Acts are subject to the condition that discharge at a person's own desire, or due to his own default, forfeits all previous service."
    That may be true, but, I ask, is that the spirit of good will?
    The SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Sir Laming Worthington-Evans)Will the right hon. Gentleman an say what is the date on that?
    An HON. MEMBER: It does not matter.
    Sir L. WORTHINGTON-EVANS: Then the right hon. Gentleman need not mind giving it.
    Mr. THOMAS: It is the 10th May. [Interruption.] My object is to help. Does that mean—because I am thinking of the men—does that mean that this is withdrawn?
    Sir L. WORTHINGTON-EVANS Sir L. WORTHINGTON-EVANS indicated dissent.
    Mr. THOMAS: Very well; my right hon. Friend says that it is not withdrawn. Then what becomes of the question of date? I am certain that the Prime Minister would never have made that speech if he had been aware of this. Therefore, I say we must face that fact. I accept in its entirety what the Prime Minister said, and I say that his first duty is not merely to give expression to those words, appreciated as they are here, and accepted as they are, by me at least; his duty as head of the Government is to see that so far as the Government are concerned they are immediately translated into practice.
    Now let me come to the second point. The second point is that the Prime Minister himself broadcast his speech last night, intimating a magnificent spirit and a good suggestion. This is how it is responded to by one big employer. This is Tilling's Garage at Bromley Road:
    "Drivers and conductors who are willing to resume work will, until further notice, be paid at the same rate as volunteers, namely, 15s. per day for drivers" —
    so much for conductors, and so on, and then it says:
    "This arrangement will only be continued until further notice …. The union having broken this, they should understand quite plainly that we do not propose to make a further agreement with the existing union."
    Let us go on. For the moment I am only stating the facts; I will draw some conclusions from them in a moment. Carter Paterson and Company have given a notice that their men can only resume duty with a reduction of 4s. per week. Bath tramwaymen—but I have so many that I need not go into any more. It is sufficient for me to say that there is not at this moment a town in this country where all these incidents are not enacted. I will say only one word about the rail-

    1055
    ways, because I think that as regards a solution of that problem I can deal with better with them than I can even in this House, notwithstanding all that has happened during the past week. I am only going to say this about that. I do not know who is responsible for the statement that they propose reducing the wages. Immediately I heard it I repudiated it, because, whatever else may be done, I am quite sure they would not be so foolish as to do that; I know them too well. I have much that could be said on the railway side, but, having regard to the meeting that is taking place, we at least have done much better ourselves without any intervention, and therefore I do not propose to say one word.
    I now come to this curious situation, to which I want to draw the attention of the House. Let the House keep in mind the phrase "Total Surrender." No one on the other side of the House who has the facts dare deny that at this moment there are over 100,000 men more unemployed or on strike at this moment than there were when we declared the strike off yesterday. Even I realise—and I am quoting authoritatively, and not from my own side alone—that owing to what has taken place there are actually men who have come out that had gone back. The result of that is that you have 4,000,000 men at this moment out of work. This House is not deceived by a few omnibuses running. No business man in this House is influenced by a few trams or omnibuses. The life-blood of the nation is stopped, and they know perfectly well that paralysis must follow. I want to stop that atmosphere; I want to see it started, and I ask employers in this House, and every Member of this House, not only to follow immediately the words of the Prime Minister, but to give effect to them. I made a speech to the Prime Minister on the negotiations a fortnight ago, and nothing has happened in this strike to prevent my adhering to every word of it. I was under no misapprehension as to what would follow. I will tell you what will follow unless there is an immediate change. The docker, for instance, attaches a different meaning to strikes from what is understood by the railwaymen and others. After the first week or fortnight he merely tightens his belt. He does not ask what strike pay
    1056
    is there; he does not bother about that; he merely sits down for a week or a month. That is his attitude. The miner is unlike the railwayman in his attitude towards disputes. When I hear my mining friends talk about 12 weeks', 13 weeks', or 20 weeks' stoppage, I get horrified, but they calmly accept the situation. I deplore that attitude. To me it is horrible, because I know the consequences. But there is something even worse than that. What I dreaded about this strike more than anything else was this: If by any chance it should have got out of the hands of those who would be able to exercise some control, every sane man knows what would have happened. I thank God it never did. That is why I believe that the decision yesterday was such a big decision, and that is why that danger, that fear, was always in our minds, because we wanted at least, even in this struggle, to direct a disciplined army.
    Those are the cold, hard facts of the situation. I hope I have not said a word of recrimination about the origin of the dispute; I hope the House will believe me when I say that every member of the General Council, who are responsible for that decision yesterday, took it, not only knowing that it was the right thing, but believing honestly—and. I had something to do in persuading them to believe—the Prime Minister's word, not because they doubted it, but because they did not know him so well as I thought I did. I said, "The Prime Minister of this country has given this message, and he will respond to it." I therefore conclude by saying that the position to-day is worse than it was yesterday. If there is no change, no man can predict what is going to happen. There are four million men and women who are angry and bitter. When I, myself, saw an omnibus running into a crowded district this morning with "Total surrender" in front, I was waiting for the news of a riot, because these people do not and will not tolerate that kind of thing. We honourably did the right thing. You responded in the right way. Men and women have shown themselves loyal and law-abiding, and it is to stop the paralysis, to stop what may follow, that I Ask every Member of this House who is an employer, or who has any influence, to join in substantiating the plea of the Prime Minister, with

    1057
    which I heartily associate myself, and which I endorse.
    Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: The Prime Minister has appealed that no controversial words shall be introduced which will in the slightest degree embarrass the great task of pacification. I think in every quarter of the House there will be a sincere desire to respond to that appeal. No one knows better than those who have had the difficulty, not merely of settling strikes, but of making peace after strikes, how very great those difficulties are. It 13 for that reason that I. welcome the very wise and calming words the Prime Minister has used to-day. I especially welcome the assurance he has given that he will not countenance any attacks upon the powers of the trade unions as the result of what has happened. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"]—well, upon trade unionism as such. I should have been very glad if he could have gone further. After all, what defeated the general strike was not so much legal action as the action of public opinion, and when the Prime Minister gives that assurance, he will strengthen the public opinion which will make impossible any organised effort for the purpose of forcing upon the community any decision that is contrary to the public interest. That is why I welcome his statement. The second statement I welcome is that he deprecates any attempt on the part of employers to take advantage of this opportunity to reduce wages or to increase hours of labour or in any way to worsen the conditions before the strike.
    I should also like to say I am in entire agreement with him that it is essential that the pledges he gave during the strike should be redeemed. Anyone confronted with such an emergency as the Government had to encounter had to take action for the purpose of carrying on the life of the community. They could only do so by encouraging men to undertake tasks which had been deserted by others. In order to do so, pledges had to be given both to those who remained at their tasks and to those who were prepared to come in, and I cannot see how any Government, or any employers, can fail to carry out pledges of that kind without dishonour. We had to give similar pledges in the great strike of 1920, where the transport of the country was broken down in a great industrial conflict. We felt it an oblige-
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    tion of honour on the part of those who represent the nation to do our best to carry out every pledge we gave on that occasion. No one knows better than those who have been engaged in these difficulties that it is something with which every employer is confronted in every industrial strike. Those who have to carry on their tasks have to induce men to remain. They have also to engage other men. The difficulty is not a new one. Always, after a strike, employers have to stand by the men who stood by them. But it is not a new difficulty. It has never been insuperable. The Government is bound to see that there is no victimisation on either side, but this is not a new difficulty which is insuperable in practice provided there is good will on both sides. First of all there must be good will on the part of the unions. They must not in the slightest degree make the lives of those who have disagreed with them on this occasion impossible, otherwise it would be quite impossible for the other side to carry out their bargain. On the other hand it is the duty which the employers owe to the country, the supreme interest of which is a real peace, to do all they can to make it clear that, on their part, they are not engaged in any task of vindictive operation against those who deserted at the order of the union to which they belonged last week.
    It has always been overcome. There are some cases where there have been failures, but in the main these difficulties, with good will on both sides, have been solved, and I am sure the same thing will happen on this occasion. I very much regret to see the news which is in the stop press of one of the evening papers that there is a strike going on on three of the greatest railway systems of the country at present, and I sincerely wish—and I am sure that is the wish of the House—that my right hon. Friend and the railway directors will be able to find some means of getting rid of the difficulties which have created that state of things. The country wants to get to peace as quickly as possible. There never was a time when it could less afford a prolongation of this kind of industrial controversy.
    The trade returns for April that appear in the scraps of newspapers which we still enjoy in London are very serious—that great drop in imports and the still more

    1059
    startling drop in exports. They are very startling. We cannot afford it. I am very delighted that the Prime Minister, with great courage and with great sanity, indicated the path of peace, because, above everything, that is what we want. Everyone rejoices in his heart that the main part, of the strike is over, but we must not forget that we have over a million miners still out. I am not going to press the Prime Minister at this stage because I know he has good reasons why he has not made an announcement, but there is that still to be settled. The House knows nothing about the terms the Government are prepared to offer now the general strike has been withdrawn. It knows nothing about the conditions, but I trust the Prime Minister at an early date will be in a position to enable us to do so, because unless the 1,200,000 men return to work, the fact that there is no coal being produced in this country will, in itself, throw another 1,500,000 or 2,000,000 men out of work. That was the effect of the coal strike of 1921. [HON. MEMBERS: "Lockout."] —of the coal dispute of 1921. The trade of the country was paralysed. I therefore trust that the appeal that is made on this occasion to all sections of the community—to employers, to unions and to others—to work for peace in a spirit of goodwill and cooperation will have the effect not merely of restarting our industries but of introducing a new temper into our industries after they have been started.
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Commander Eyres Monsell): I ask leave to withdraw the Motion.
    Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
    Mr. SPEAKER: Business being appointed for a quarter-past eight, I will leave the Chair until that hour.

  BERMONDSEY BOROUGH COUNCIL (STREET TRADING) BILL (By Order).
  Order for consideration, as amended, read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill, as amended, be now considered."—[The Chairman, of Ways and Means.]
  Major TASKER: I beg to move, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day six months."
  This Bill confers certain powers upon the Borough Council of Bermondsey, and is based upon a Bill by which Parliament granted certain powers to West Ham. But there is this difference, that West Ham is outside the metropolitan area of London, whereas Bermondsey is within that area. I submit that if these powers were conferred upon one borough council, the other 28 metropolitan boroughs would be compelled, in self-defence, to apply to this House for a similar Bill with similar powers. This Bill is an attempt to get this House to confer certain exceptional privileges on one borough council. The House will realise the difficulties with which the various borough councils would be confronted if this Bill were passed, and those 28 other borough councils had each and all to come here. There are places where a street market lies partly in one borough and partly in another borough. I know of a street market about half of which is in Lambeth and the rest in Southwark. Each borough council would apply for powers which it regarded as suitable for its needs, and you would have 29 different Acts of Parliament.
  If legislation is necessary to control street trading, the report of the Departmental Committee should be adopted. The Departmental Committee pointed out that the street traders are as a class industrious and supply a felt want, especially in the poorer districts, and are in a favourable position to take advantage of gluts in such commodities as fish and fruit. They stated that the law with regard to street trading should be the same throughout the whole of the metropolitan police district, and that the differences which exist should be swept away. They further recommended that, both in the interests of the street trader and of the general public, all street traders should be registered under some central authority, and that the most suitable authority for the purpose would be the Commissioner of Police. That would commend itself to the House. But this Bill is an attempt to ignore the Departmental Committee's recommendations, and it is far reaching in its consequences. Among other things the

  1061
  Borough Council of Bermondsey seeks power to determine what each trader may sell. A man may no longer sell what he likes. Clause 4, Sub-section (2), says that the Council shall grant or renew a license, and it may refuse to grant or renew a license if of opinion that the applicant is unsuitable to hold such a license. Members of Boroughs Councils are not immaculate and it would be easy to discover reasons for refusing a license. Experience gained under the Act in West Ham shows that street traders have had their licenses refused without any reason having been given. The result is great hardship a man may be deprived of his means of livelihood and have no chance of redress.
  It is true that under the Bill the street trader may appeal to the magistrate, but street traders are not people who can be described as being in affluent circumstances—it is common knowledge that often they have to pawn their things on a Friday to buy their stock for a Saturday—and it is very easy to create a vague suspicion. No street trader would have a very great prospect of success on appearing before a stipendiary when his opponent was a learned advocate. All kinds of suggestions have been put forward as to why this Bill should be passed. Under another provision of the Bill the Borough Council may say to these street trailers where they shall sell, when they shall sell, and what they shall sell. That is an impossible proposal. Clause 8 says that the Council shall make by-laws prescribing the day on which, and the times during which, articles shall be sold. Is the street trader to have no soul? I am in earnest about this matter. I am defending some of the poorest men in this country.
  Dr. SALTER: Not a bit of it.
  Major TASKER: It is not a laughing matter to these men; it is a matter of life and death to them. They themselves realise the hardships which this Bill will impose and but for them I should not venture to address the House upon it. Those who know anything about the subject know that these people do in the words of the Departmental Committee Report supply a want and bring within the reach of the very poor, in times of glut, food which otherwise the poor would not obtain. It is true that this Bill got
  1062
  a Second Reading and went upstairs to the Local Legislation Committee. I ask the House to remember that in the inquiry before that committee there was on the one side the Bermondsey Borough Council supported by the ratepayers' money, employing very excellent Parliamentary agents and a very learned advocate and also that the Committee could only hear one side because it was impossible for the street traders to be represented by Parliamentary agents and counsel. The learned advocate who represented the Borough Council, was, however, subjected to very searching questions by various members of the committee and some of his answers were, to say the least of it, exceedingly unsatisfactory. As one who believes in arbitration, I am glad to pay a tribute to the manner in which the proceedings of that committee were conducted. Its inquiry was a model of what such an inquiry should be.
  It was alleged that the Bermondsey Borough Council had called a town meeting, and that 145 men and women attended that meeting and that the Council got a petition signed by 314 people praying for this Bill because it had been read and explained to them and they had examined it and understood it. Of these 314 I think there are 15 people who signed their own names and my objection to the petition is that it was signed by many men under a threat. They were threatened that the borough council were going to get the Bill and that if they did not sign the petition they would lose their pitches. That was indefensible. One man who was so threatened took upon himself to go round and get a petition against the Bill and of the 120 signatories which this man obtained, every man and woman signed in his or her own handwriting. It is a genuine petition. While it was represented by the council that this Bill was favoured by every street trader, we have this definite evidence that there are at least over 100 who object to it. The plea was introduced into the speech of counsel that this Bill would prevent the exercise of tyranny. Tyranny by whom? The street traders have never alleged that any tyranny has been exercised towards them and if they do fear tyranny, it is the tyranny of the Borough Council.
  It. has been stated that the tyranny which the Borough Council think the

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  street traders fear, is the tyranny of the police, and the hon. Member for Bermondsey (Dr. Salter) in a letter indicated that these men welcomed the Bill because they were bullied by the police. I submit that is a wrong and unjust statement. Here and there, it may be, you will find a policeman who is not immaculate, but one would not condemn the whole police force on that account. You may find a doctor who will conduct an illegal operation, but because of that you would not condemn all the noble men and women who practice the medical profession. Looking through this evidence I find that the petitioners called two people, one of whom admitted that he was a greengrocer. His evidence was to the effect that he welcomed the Bill among other things because it would facilitate the clearing-up of rubbish. He said the borough council would send round little carts and clear up the debris at short intervals. Then he made the curious admission that he also had a stall, and he alleged that he took two-thirds of his money from the stall. I would not describe him as a typical street trader. Then the borough council called to their aid another man, who gave remarkable evidence to the effect that there was not a single street trader in Bermondsey opposed to the Bill. I have already given evidence that there are over 100. He was asked by the Chairman:
  "Do you know that there is a Clause in the Bill which gives the Council the right to prescribe on your licence what you sell?"
  And his answer was:
  "I know all about that."
  It was also put to him:
  "They will prescribe on your licence the only articles you are to sell."
  And he said:
  "I quite agree. If they said I could sell fruit, I could sell fruit or fish."
  That was queer evidence and the learned counsel sought to cover up the confusion by saying:
  "This gentleman is a general dealer, and would be licensed to deal generally, I think."
  If that is the best material which the borough council can get in support of the Bill, is it to he wondered at that street traders and those who really know what street trading is, are opposed to it?
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  I am appealing for a class of men who earn an honest living but who are charged with using violent language. I do not deny it, because I daresay the costermonger does use a variety of words which perhaps enrich the English language at times, but if he is guilty of no worse crime than that, he is not a bad type. I ask that this Bill be rejected by the House.
  Mr. GREAVES-LORD: I beg to second the Amendment.
  I do not know that I agree with every argument that has been addressed to the House by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for East Islington (Major Tasker), who moved the rejection of the Bill. The street trader is a very estimable person, even if he had no other claim than the last one which the hon. and gallant Member has made for him, that he sometimes enriches our vocabulary, and that is a very excellent claim, but he has other claims. Undoubtedly, in some boroughs in London, he is a very excellent agent fur keeping down the price of essential foodstuffs. He is certainly a very sure protector of the poor against the profiteering of some traders, and for that reason alone he is a person who ought to he protected, and protected very carefully. On the other hand, I quite agree with those who say that entirely unrestricted street trading may be a very great hardship upon the shopkeeper who pays his rates and who cannot quite carry on his business in the same way as does the ordinary street trader, and it may very well be—and I think it is true to say that it is—in the interests of most municipalities that street trading should be controlled to some extent.
  Indiscriminate street trading is not the most desirable thing, but while I agree that there should be control, I think, where you are dealing with an area like the Metropolitan area, it is essential that there should be uniformity throughout the whole of it. I assume that Bermondsey is moving in this matter because its immediate neighbour—I forget whether it is the East or West Ham—[An HON. MEMBER: "Bermondsey is on the other side of the river."]—a short time ago promoted a Bill, and actually got an Act of Parliament enabling it to control the street trader. I notice that Bermondsey has made some alterations on the other

  1065
  Bill, and that is a very easy thing to come about. At the same time, it may very well be that the traders from such part of Ham as it was that got a Bill dealing with street traders have gone to the other side of the Thames, to Bermondsey, and said: "We will find a happier pitch here," and, therefore, Bermondsey says: "We must have a Bill, and have it a little different from the Bill that became an Act of Parliament." That policy can go on. You have started the policy now in the London boroughs, and there are 28 London boroughs, plus the City.
  I suppose the next thing that would happen, if this Bill passed, would be that another London Borough would say: "Bermondsey has got a Bill; we must have one too", and one can see very good reasons why they would want one, because this sporadic trader, driven out of Bermondsey by this Bill, would go to some other London borough, where there was as yet no process of control, and the second borough would bring forward a Bill, which would be just a little different from the Bermondsey Bill, and then, when the second borough got its Bill, the sporadic street trader from that borough would go to yet another London borough, which, finding itself troubled not only with the sporadic traders from Bermondsey, but also from the second London borough that had done this, would say: "We also must have a Bill, and we will improve upon the other two Bills that have been promoted for London." So it would go on throughout the whole of the 28 London boroughs, and I suppose it would be a very excellent thing for those Members of my profession who practise before Parliamntary Committees, but it would be a very disastrous thing for the Metropolitan area. The idea that, in an area which has so much in common as the whole Metropolitan area, you should have, on a simple matter of this kind, 28 different Bills promoted, with the expense which is necessary to promote 28 different Bills, when the whole matter could be dealt with by one Bill promoted by the whole of the London boroughs acting together is absurd. The waste of money would be so appalling that I venture to think that in these days it is something that the ratepayers of the Metropolitan area would not desire to contemplate. I notice that the hon.
  1066
  Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson) seems to think that this is the sort of thing that should take place.
  Mr. LAWSON: It would put money in the pockets of the lawyers, at any rate.
  Mr. GREAVES-LORD: I venture to think you may pay too much to the lawyers, who may very well waste your money. If you employ 20 where one will do, it is obvious that you waste your money, and if you have the opportunity of doing by means of one Bill that which you can only otherwise do by 28 Bills, it is far better to incur merely the expense of one Bill. That is not a point without substance, because that position has already been recognised by the Metropolitan boroughs, and it is because this Measure is brought forward, I do not say contrary to the opinions of some of the officials and councils of the Metropolitan boroughs, but certainly contrary to the feelings of the ratepayers in the boroughs, that I oppose it.
  The borough, one division of which I have the honour to represent in this House, has, I understand, made a proposition to the Metropolitan Boroughs Standing Joint Committee. That proposition is that the boroughs should consider together the promotion of a Bill on the lines of the Report of the Committee which inquired into street trading, and that that Bill should apply to the whole of the Metropolitan boroughs. In those circumstances, you would have no injustice, you would have uniformity throughout the whole of the Metropolitan area, you would merely have the expense of promoting one Bill, you would get rid at once of the possibility of the undesirable street trader going from a controlled borough to an uncontrolled borough, you would have a position where there was equal justice as between one borough and another, and you would secure that which you never can secure by a Bill of this description, namely, you would have a reasonable ant proper control without the slightest possibility of evasion or of one borough suffering by reason of the action which had been taken in another borough.
  I venture to think that that position is really unanswerable. I understand that that Resolution has gone before the General Purposes Committee of the Standing Joint Committee, and that it is

  1067
  receiving, or is likely to receive, favourable consideration. In those circumstances, it is very much better that this Bill, at the present stage, should go no further, but when those authorities have agreed there should be one Bill promoted for the whole of the Metropolitan area, that that should be put upon the Statute Book, and then, undoubtedly, you would get a system which would be far better than anything that could be obtained by the piecemeal legislation of each borough in turn trying to promote its own Bill, and trying to be a little better than the other borough which promoted one the year before. Beyond that, I have nothing further that I desire to urge against this Bill, but I do think to pass one Bill is to encourage an extensive waste of public money. The best thing to do in all these matters is to see to it that the Metropolitan boroughs should not be encouraged in this type of piecemeal legislation. Let us have in things which are common to the whole Metropolitan area, uniformity, and by means of uniformity a great saving in expense to the ratepayers of the Metropolitan area.
  Dr. SALTER: I rise to ask the House to reject the Amendment, and to assent to the Third Reading of the Bill. I would like to say, at the commencement of my remarks, that the promoters of the Bill understood this was an agreed Bill, and not until the Bill was actually before the Local Legislation Committee had we the remotest idea that there would be any objection sustained or put forward by anyone. To give the House some idea of the measure of agreement, I may say, first of all, that no petitions were presented against the Bill, and no evidence was tendered against the Bill before the Local Legislation Committee. All parties who are affected by the Bill are in support of the Bill. The Bill is promoted by the Borough Council, with the assent of every representative of the Council. Liberal, Conservative and Labour members unanimously support the Bill. The street traders of the borough are unanimous, as far as I can ascertain, in favour of the Bill. They petitioned in favour of it; 314 out of about 320 actually signed the petition in favour of the Bill. I myself live in the district. I have inquired from at least 100 traders, taken indiscrim-
  1068
  inately, and I can find no one who is opposed to it. On the contrary, I find that, without exception, they are exceedingly anxious that the Bill should receive the assent of the House.
  A town's meeting was called, the Bill was explained, and the vote in favour of the Bill was absolutely unanimous. The local shopkeepers are unanimous, because the local shopkeepers are not antagonistic in our borough to costermongers and street traders. They believe the costermonger brings trade to the street and the district. The regular shopkeepers support this Bill, and, as far as I am aware, not one of them in the entire borough has raised any objection. I am given to understand that the London and Suburban Traders' Federation is in favour, and that the London and County Retail Fruiterers and Florists are in support. Certainly the local police are in support of the Bill. I do not know whether the noble lord the President of the Board of Education is representing any Department here tonight, but I understand that the Home Office supports the Bill and that the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Transport, and certainly, also, I understand, the London County Council support the Bill.
  Major TASKER: No.
  Dr. SALTER: I have the authority of the hon. Member for Greenwich (Sir G. Hume), who is the Chairman of the London County Council. He informed me this afternoon that that is the case, and that he greatly regretted he would not he able to be present to-night to support the Bill.
  Major TASKER: As a member of the London County Council, I can assure the hon. members that this has not been considered by any committee of the London County Council for three years.
  Dr. SALTER: I believe that the hon. Member is speaking in good faith, and he believes I am also speaking in good faith. My information is different. There are 28 Metropolitan boroughs, and not a single one has expressed any objection to this Bill. They have all been invited to give their opinion on the subject. Eighteen of them, including the more important boroughs, have expressed strong support.

  1069
  The remaining ten boroughs have either not yet considered the matter, or have not yet found any reason for expressing any opposition to the Bill, and, apart from the Street Traders' Association, which has either no members, or practically no members, in the Metropolitan Borough of Bermondsey, I have failed to find any single group of organised thought which is opposed to the Bill at all. I say at once, in the Metropolitan Borough of Bermondsey we not only desire not to penalise or persecute the street trader, but we desire to encourage the street trader. Street trading is an integral part of the social life of our particular borough, as of many other industrial districts. It is an integral factor, and plays an exceedingly valuable and useful part in the social life of the people. All that we desire is to regularise it, to bring it into some kind of order, to bring it into some kind of system which will be of mutual benefit to the trader himself and to the local public, and this Bill is exactly on the lines, with two or three trivial modifications, of the West Ham Corporation Bill, which was approved by this House last year.
  Another important point about the Bill is that it merely seeks to give legislative sanction to a voluntary arrangement which has been in force for the last nine months, to the complete satisfaction of all parties concerned. We have a voluntary arrangement, which is akin to an arrangement also in force in the Borough of Camberwell and several of the East End Boroughs, whereby street traders register in their appropriate Metropolitan borough, and are given a number and fixed place paying a small license fee, and also a weekly sum towards the collection of their refuse.
  Sir W. SUGDEN: Do they pay anything to the rates?
  Dr. SALTER: Not if they are street traders only.
  I understand that in six or seven Metropolitan boroughs a voluntary arrangement is in force, and works admirably from every point of view, the difficulty being that if one or two persons prove themselves cantankerous, and decline to fall in with the others, it may upset the arrangement, and cause a great deal of friction and trouble.
  I would ask the House to visualise exactly what takes place at an ordinary
  1070
  street market, if they would understand the hardships of it. The street trader is subjected at the present moment to hardships which will be obviated if this Bill is carried. I am quite sure if hon. Members care for the interests of the street traders at all, they will unite in rejecting the Amendment. Let me give the House an exact picture of what happens. The street market begins about. 8 o'clock, but in order to secure a pitch the costermonger has to be on the spot about 5 o'clock, and sometimes earlier; indeed some of them begin to congregate soon after midnight. They have to be there in all weathers. In pitch darkness, and all through the winter months they have to stay on the spot and never move away for a moment, otherwise they lose the claim to their particular pitch.
  During the last few weeks one particular street trader arrived about 5 o'clock and took up his stand, and went away at 5.30 to get some breakfast. On his return he found somebody else had overthrown his barrow and taken his pitch from him. He was arrested by the police for obstruction because of his overturned barrow in the road. That kind of struggle and fight for pitches takes place every day when there is a street market. A man who has occupied a certain pitch for 20 years has no guarantee whatever, less he is there in the small hours of the morning, subjecting himself to unnecessary hardship and exposure, that his place will not be taken from him.
  9.0 P.M.
  As a matter of fact, I have one particular man in mind who has for 27 years occupied the same spot. He was taken ill with an attack of bronchitis. Some man entirely unknown before to the district took his place, and the man to whom I refer for the time being and some time afterwards lost the advantage which his endurance of years had secured for him. Another case I know is one where a man was taken ill, and in order that, he might not lose his pitch his wife, a woman of 65 went every morning at 5 o'clock and stood all day by an empty stall in order to keep the place of her husband against his recovery, and so that he might be able to resume his job. These are hardships that are irremediable under present conditions, but these hardships should be and could be relieved by the operation of this Bill. One exceedingly objectionable feature of

  1071
  the present street trading arrangements will be removed also, or probably so, by the passage of this Bill, and that is the farming out of stalls. I venture to say with great respect to the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for East Islington (Major Tasker) that it is this particular type of man who has been most energetic in promoting opposition to this Bill. That is, as I say, the man who is not a genuine street trader, does no sort of trading himself, but simply owns a number of barrows and hires men at 1s. 6d. or 2s. to go down to the street market area in the morning at 5 o'clock and secure pitches, so excluding the genuine street trader, and later selling the stand or pitch for £1 per day-to some unfortunate person who has failed to secure a stand, or who does not possess a barrow. That particular type of man, the barrow-farmer, will be eliminated by this Bill, and I am quite satisfied that when that is done there will be great delight amongst the costermongers and street traders, and also great satisfaction amongst all who believe in this form of street trading.
  The advantage to the public health, I venture to suggest, will be incalculable. The hon. Member who introduced the Amendment suggested that it was a monstrous thing that the Borough Council should seek to restrict the activities of the street trader, and to say when he should sell, where he should sell, and what he should sell. I challenge each one of those suggestions. In the first place as to what the street trader can sell. As a matter of fact in the street market in a borough adjacent to Bermondsey there are openly exposed for sale contraceptives and appliances and a good many indecent accompaniments. I venture to say that it would be in the public interest, and in the interest of public morals, that the Borough Council should interfere in that particular case and refuse a licence for the sale of these things. This, the Borough Council will be empowered to do under this Bill. They will be empowered to take action of that sort. There is the question of the precise locale as to where the street trader shall purvey his goods. I suggest that it is entirely wrong from the point of view of public health that men selling or collecting rags, bones, bottles and dirty refuse,
  1072
  Secondhand clothes, and so on, should expose them for sale within a few inches or feet of another man who is selling butcher meat, and other perishable articles of the sort. This Bill will at least give the power to the Borough Council to interfere appropriately in those circumstances. I could take any hon. Member of this House to street markets at the present time where great dumps of exceedingly filthy textile refuse and material are exposed alongside butchers' meat, margarine, and other comestibles.
  By the regulation of these stalls and by allocating the places where the street traders in the different parts shall sell their goods, we shall be making a great advance from the public health point of view. The interests of the ratepayers are materially safeguarded by this Bill. The House, I am quite sure, will understand that if you have a large street market where immense quantities of vegetables and fruit are sold, that there must necessarily be a considerable accumulation of refuse, cabbage leaves, stalks, rotten tomatoes, and so on. What happens under the existing system? As a matter of fact in many boroughs the street trader simply takes the refuse and dumps it down a side street when the police and no-one else happen to be looking. If he does not do that, he throws it into the roadway in the area of the street market itself. Bermondsey Borough Council has for years past had a proper system of the collection of street refuse on the spot. There are small barrows perambulating up and down the road, and collecting the refuse from time to time, and you get it disposed of in an appropriate fashion. That has been going on for long, and that work alone costs the borough £1,660 per annum, very nearly equal to a halfpenny rate. It is clearly appropriate and just that those responsible for putting the refuse there should pay for its removal.
  Under the Public Health Act the Borough Council have power to remove trade refuse, but can only do so and charge for its removal if the person concerned actually asks them to remove it. If the trader simply dumps the refuse in the roadway and does not ask for its removal, the Council have no power to charge him for its removal. Under this Bill the Borough Council will be em-

  1073
  powered to make an appropriate charge, and as a matter of fact, under the voluntary system, a charge has been made for the last nine months. The maximum charge is 2s. a week in cases where there is a large quantity of refuse, and it is as low as 6d. where the quantity is small. The whole cost of the work is almost covered by these payments, and the cost of the market inspector too, relieving the general ratepayer of an impost of approximately ½d. in the pound. The charges are borne cheerfully and willingly by the street traders, because of the assurances they get in return. No longer are they under the temptation to make surreptitious disposal of the refuse in a by-street and expose themselves to penalties, and, as a matter of fact, many of them have personally told me that it costs them far less to pay the Borough Council charges than it cost them previously in bribes to the police.
  I come now to a point mentioned by an hon. Member opposite, who said certain charges of tyranny had been made against the police in a private letter which I had sent to someone, and that it was a very serious charge and ought to be repudiated. No general charge against responsible police officers was made or ever has been made, but it is perfectly certain that individual constables, irresponsible officials, irresponsible individual policemen, have been in the habit of extracting gratuities regularly from the street traders, and I believe the higher police officials are perfectly aware of that fact and are most anxious to put it down, but everybody realises the great difficulties they would have in putting it down—the very greatest difficulty. No countenance is given to such a system by Scotland Yard or any of the higher officials, but that the practice prevails is absolutely certain, and much complaint has been made by individual traders. All that will be abolished by this Bill. At the present time the individual trader is absolutely at the mercy of an irresponsible policeman. A policeman can come along and say, "What are you doing here? You have no business here. Your stall is half an inch wider than the police regulations allow. The distance between your stall and the adjacent one is one and a half inches less than is permitted by the police regulations. Out you go." The man has no appeal at the present
  1074
  time. He is utterly at the mercy of the police; and the street trader who has been working under the voluntary system looks forward to coming under the operation of this Bill, because he knows it delivers him from the irresponsible blackmailing policeman, even though that blackmailing policeman may be only an occasional visitor or an occasional offender, and is without any sanction from headquarters. That is the situation, and I say the trader rejoices to know that there is a prospect of final deliverance from impositions of that kind.
  With regard to the main objection of the hon. Member for Norwood (Mr. Greaves-Lord), that this is piecemeal legislation, and that it is undesirable that one Metropolitan borough should promote legislation of this kind without reference to all the other boroughs, I have to say that Bermondsey Borough Council regret very much that they are under the necessity of promoting a Bill on their own account. They would have preferred that the matter should be dealt with by the London County Council as the general Metropolitan authority, and that the county Council should, under their General Powers Bill, enable either this Council or any other Council to proceed along these lines, or themselves introduce legislation applicable to the entire Metropolis. We were informed, on inquiry, that it was impossible to carry a majority of boroughs in support of legislation of this kind. There are boroughs in London where the majority of the inhabitants desire that no street trading should be permitted, and those boroughs will not agree, and, therefore, there is no prospect of agreement for general legislation for the whole of London; but I am authorised to say, on behalf of the Bermondsey Borough Council, that if any such legislation is contemplated or is carried they are quite prepared, in another place, to insert a Clause in this Bill making it subservient to the major Bill, the general Bill, and making this Bill of no effect as soon as the general legislation has been carried. They are perfectly prepared to do that, but they do suggest that it is very unfair and very hard on a metropolitan borough that has worked a voluntary scheme with great success and without friction, to the satisfaction of everybody, and now seeks to give legal sanction to the arrangements in force, that it

  1075
  should now be told, at the last stage—not at the Second Reading stage, but at this stage, when they have expended their money, and when the Bill has been passed through the Local Legislation Committee—"Oh, your Bill must go by the board until such time as some hypothetical or problematical legislation is introduced by the Standing Joint Committee of the Metropolitan boroughs."
  As far as we can learn, there is no prospect whatever of getting agreements among the boroughs to introduce legislation common to the whole of London. Many boroughs desire it, and what I believe will happen is that if this Bill is passed and put on the Statute Book, other boroughs will immediately ask the London County Council to insert Clauses in their General Powers Bill to make the terms of this Bill applicable to their respective areas. I suggest that would be a very desirable thing, and that there can be no substantial objection to that course. I venture, then, to ask the House to reject the Amendment and to support the Bill on the grounds, first of all, that definite order is introduced into what has hitherto been chaos; that the street traders are helped and protected, are guaranteed pitches and are saved from hardship and waste of time; that the public health is safeguarded and food contamination and disease are prevented; that the duties of the police will be materially lightened, because certain work which is now performed by them will be taken over by the Borough Council; that the ratepayers are protected and that their interests are met; and, finally, that every section and every interest that is in any way affected by the provisions of the Bill is thoroughly satisfied and is supporting it.
  Mr. RAINE: As one of those who supported this Bill during the Committee Stage I should like to say a few words in support of it. The hon. Member who has just sat down has dealt very exhaustively with the objects of the Bill, and I need not go over that ground again. I will, however, try to rebut some of the statements which have been made in opposition to this Measure. When this Measure was before the Committee counsel appeared, and that was the real time to have the opposition which has
  1076
  been raised to-night. If on the Committee Stage they had not succeeded in getting what alterations they required then they would have had a strong case for coming to this House and opposing the Third Reading. There was, however, no opposition to the Second Reading or the Committee Stage, and I think it is a little unfair to come forward now and oppose the Third Reading. A statement was made in the document which has been quoted that 100 street traders had refused to sign the petition in favour of this Bill, and that a certain number had signed it under pressure. I think that is a very unfair statement to make. I believe there are about 350 street traders in Bermondsey, and 314 have signed the petition in favour of this Bill and only two or three have expressed themselves as not being altogether in its favour so that it is substantially unanimously supported by the street traders of Bermondsey.
  The evidence of witnesses was rather called into question, and I should like briefly to refer to some of the evidence to show that the witnesses knew what they were talking about, and they are unanimously in favour of this Measure. One of the witnesses said that he did exactly two-thirds of his business from the stall, and if he had not this stall in front of his premises he would not be able to do any business at all. He was asked whether he would rather have this Bill or continue trading without it, and he said he would rather have this Measure and come under the authority of the Bermondsey Council because he felt that they would give him fair play. He pointed out that if he did not get fair play he had the right to appeal to the Petty Sessions and afterwards to the Quarter Sessions. These street traders knew all about the Bill, and they understand that the County Council might be compelled owing to London traffic considerations to move some of them to another place, and they were quite prepared to submit to that. There was no opposition during the Committee Stage where the provisions of the Bill were fully gone into. We protect the right of the London Traffic Committee in this way. The people in Bermondsey seem unanimous in favour of this Bill, therefore I have much pleasure in supporting it.
  Mr. Naylor:I very much regret to find myself in the position of opposing the hon. Member for Bermondsey, and I shall support the rejection of this Bill. In this matter we have to consider the interests not only of the street traders of Bermondsey but the street traders in every other part of London. Certainly they are much greater in number, and at least they are entitled to claim the consideration of this House, so far as their interests are affected by the proposals of this Measure. This Bill confers a privilege upon the street traders of Bermondsey, and we rarely confer privileges upon any section of the community without coming in opposition to the interests of all other Members in the same trade. I represent a division where street trading forms a very large proportion of the occupation of the people living in that locality, and they tell me that this Bill, if passed, will operate very seriously against their interest.
  With a good deal of what the hon. Member for Bermondsey says I am in perfect agreement, and the fact that this Bill is being opposed does not, in my opinion, affect many of the principles that the hon. Member would like to see imposed with or without this Bill. The hon. Member said that the street traders of London were so well satisfied with the voluntary system that they would not part with it for all the money in the world. If the conditions of street trading in Bermondsey is so satisfactory under the present voluntary system, and if they are so well satisfied with the conditions now imposed by the Borough Council without the assistance of this Bill, why does my hon. Friend think that this Bill is necessary?
  Dr. SALTER: When there is no legal sanction one or two persons not associated with the neighbourhood may suddenly come in and upset the arrangement of everybody else.
  Mr. NAYLOR: My hon. Friend says that without this Bill there is always the danger of some cantankerous person coming in from outside and upsetting the whole position in regard to the street traders of Bermondsey. Is that the reason why this Bill has been introduced? If it is then I think it forms a very good reason why this Bill should not be passed. After all, London is London, and what is good for any particular part of London
  1078
  should be good enough for the whole of London. Therefore, I sympathise with my hon. Friend, who is supporting this Bill, in the disappointment that he must feel that the promoter of the Bill has not been successful in securing a measure to cover the whole of London. The hon. Member for Norwood (Mr. Greaves-Lord) dealt with that aspect of this question, and he pointed out the great expense if f every borough council were to apply separately for a Bill conferring the same privileges upon the members of each of the 28 borough councils of London. I think that is an argument which cannot be answered, and I was surprised at the self-sacrifice made by the hon. and learned Member for Norwood in advocating a method by which lawyers might be dispensed with, because he had in mind the possibility of increased legal expenses on account of the announcement made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Spen Valley (Sir J. Simon) in reference to possible legal action in connection with quite another matter—
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: (Captain FitzRoy): I must point out to the hon. Member that this is a Bermondsey Bill.
  Mr. NAYLOR: I will not refer to that matter any further, and it was simply a word by the way. I was trying to impress you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, with the fact that this Bill is a direct interference with the existing interests of street traders in other parts of London in this way, that the passing of this Bill will give Bermondsey Borough Council the power to exclude any street trader it chooses for any reason it chooses.
  Dr. SALTER: I would like to say that the Borough Council is quite prepared, in order to meet that objection, that a Clause shall be inserted in another place to this effect:
  "but shall not refuse to grant or renew a license or revoke a license on the ground only that the applicant for or the holder of the license does not reside in Bermondsey."
  We are prepared to put that in, and we understand that will meet the objections of members from other Boroughs who feel that the trader who traded in one Borough on one day, another Borough on another day, and a third Borough on still another day will have his livelihood

  1079
  removed. I venture to suggest to my hon. Friend that this Clause will meet the whole of his objections.
  Mr. NAYLOR: It certainly meets my objection to a very great extent, but it does not exclude the whole of my objection, for this reason. If, as the hon. Member has already suggested, other boroughs as soon as this Bill is passed, will be coming to this House for similar Bills, it means that all the conditions as well as the advantages of this Bill will be imposed on every street trader who attempts to trade in any of the districts protected by these Bills. What does that mean? A street trader is not necessarily occupied in earning his living in a single market. It depends very much upon the articles in which he is trading. There are street traders who go from market to market and have to set up their stalls, possibly in half-a-dozen different markets in one week.
  Sir W. SUGDEN: Does he contribute to the rates of any of them
  Mr. NAYLOR: I think it is understood as regards payment of rates that every street trader pays rates as a resident wherever he may be. If the laughter of my hon. Friends means to suggest that the street trader does not honour his liabilities in that respect, then it is not seemly.
  Sir W. SUGDEN: I did not suggest any improper motive. All I want to know is do these men moving about from place to place contribute to the civic protection of the place as the shopkeeper pays his rates. The ordinary shopkeeper must meet his obligations to one town.
  Mr. NAYLOR: No one would suggest that we could compare the street trader with the shopkeeper in regard to the payments of rates. Surely you are not going to set up a special rate-paying system for men who earn their living by setting up stalls in the street. This Bill does not say that. It would be unfair if you expected the costermonger to pay special rates because he sets up his stall in the market place. We believe the street trader is a necessity to the community. He has always fresh stuff for sale, and brings it at the lowest possible price, making it the smallest profit in the transaction, and it will be a bad
  1080
  day for London and other towns when the street trader is eliminated. When I was interrupted some time since I was proceeding to point out the difficulty of the street trader who happens to pass from market to market. Supposing he has to trade in half a dozen Boroughs which have secured Bills in this House it means he has to go to Bermondsey, to Southwark, to Norwood, to Whitechapel, to half a dozen separate Boroughs to take out, a license to trade. This Bill insists that before a man can trade in Bermondsey he must take out a license. If all the other boroughs, or a certain number of them make the same imposition upon the street trader, it means that the trader going from one Borough to another has to have licenses granted to him by the Borough Council. That means he has to pay for each of those licenses for each day of the week.
  Dr. SALTER: Five shillings for the whole year.
  Mr. NAYLOR: It may seem a small sum, but my hon. Friend knows that the street trader is not a millionaire even in the happiest of circumstances; not even the street traders of Bermondsey. I suggest that the majority of the street traders are men who would miss the money that is required for the payment of licenses under the conditions that compel them to go from place to place. Therefore I suggest that if, as may be, legislation of this kind is necessary in order to protect the interests of the street trader, we ought to wait until London as a whole can unite on a common Bill so that we may move together as one in the interests of the street trader. The hon. Member for West Bermondsey (Dr. Salter) mentioned organisations supporting the Bill. I want to point out that the two organisations that represent the street traders proper the Costermongers' Union and the Street Traders' Federation are not in favour of this Bill, and therefore those of us who attach any importance to the standing and opinion of organised bodies, representative of certain classes or sections of the working community, should at least pay some respect to the working class organisations representing the street traders of London and elsewhere. Organisations quoted by my hon. Friend do not directly represent the street traders, with one exception, and even that

  1081
  exception does not cover the actual class of street trader which would be most affected by this Bill. On these grounds, while admitting that there is a good deal in what my hon. friend, the Member for Bermondsey has said, there is also a good deal to be said on the other side, especially with regard to the good influence this Bill will have with respect to health services and inspection. My hon. friend is perfectly well aware that these services are well looked after by the Borough Councils to-day, and it is only a question of the personnel of those Borough Councils as to whether or not that careful regard for health and cleanliness is or is not observed. Therefore I suggest that this House should reject this Bill in the hope that at some future time we may have a more comprehensive Bill and one acceptable to the people whose interests are concerned.
  Sir WILLIAM PERRING: I do not want to take up very much of the time of the House, but I wish to speak on behalf of the retail traders of London, and say that the retail traders welcome this Bill and give it their all round support. There is a feeling prevailing in some circles that the retail trader is hostile to the costermonger. That is not true. I happen to be the only member in this House who sat upon a Departmental Committee set up by the Home Secretary in 1921, and therefore I enjoyed the distinction of having heard all the evidence submitted to the Committee, and I want to say that that evidence bears out in every respect the arguments advanced by the hon. Member who speaks for Bermondsey.
  If there is one point more than another that I wish to emphasise, it is the fact that it is the essence el good local government that local authorities should be able to regulate and control their own street and street markets, and one of the most important effects of this Bill will be that it will stop trafficking in stalls or pitches, and will gave the same advantage to the poor trader as to the more wealthy class—and there are some who are fairly well off. It will stop pitches being sold, as was given in evidence before the committee, for as much as 20s. for a Saturday, and a man who is a legitimate bona fide street trader will enjoy the privilege and opportunity of trading in his own district without interference from anyone. I desire to
  1082
  express the hope that the House will give this Bill a Third Reading, because venture to suggest that it is not only in the interest of all concerned, whether the consumers, the traders or the borough council, but is in the interest, primarily, of public health.
  As regards the argument of the last speaker as to the poor street trader having to take out a licence in every borough, and be under great disadvantages, even if there were the Bill for the whole of London, he would still have to take out a licence under each borough council, because the Departmental Committee recommended, and I think the Government support the view, because they did introduce a Bill in the House of Lords embodying the recommendations of the Departmental Committee, that the borough council should have the control and regulation of their street markets, and should be entitled to make a small charge for the clearing up of streets. A man, therefore, travelling from borough to borough as suggested by the last speaker, would still have to take out a permit or licence in each borough in which he might trade, and would still have to pay a small sum in each borough, as it is right that he should do, for clearing away the refuse that he makes in that particular borough. I venture, to think the House is quite prepared to give this Bill a Third Beading. It has the hearty support of the retail traders of London, and I hope it will receive a Third Reading and will be followed by the granting of the same powers to other boroughs.
  Captain GARRO-JONES: I sincerely hope that the House is not prepared to give this Bill a Third Reading, and I would say with all respect to the hon. Member for West Bermondsey (Dr. Salter) that he is something of a crank on the matter of street trading. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] I do not say it in any offensive way at all. We all know how much the hon. Member has at heart questions of hygiene, and so on, and some of us think his interest in those questions has rather obscured for the moment the proper merits of this case so far as they concern the street trader. I have every reason, at any rate from the representations I have received from outside bodies, to support this Bill. My borough council of Hackney, a body to whose representa-

  1083
  tions I generally pay considerable attention, has urged me to support the Bill, and so have the retail traders, the Chambers of Commerce, and so on. But, after all, those are not the people primarily concerned. The people primarily concerned are the many thousands of costermongers who live in all parts of London, and I think their interests ought to be put before the interests of a limited number of street traders in Bermondsey who have developed a certain vested interest in the Borough of Bermondsey, and who know that their applications in that borough will receive preference, whatever provisions may be made there or in any other place.
  The complaint has been made that no objection was taken to this Bill at an earlier stage. The hon. Member for West Bermondsey said that the borough council of Bermondsey has been put to great expense in engaging counsel and solicitors, and yet nothing has been heard about the opposition until now. There is a very simple reason why we have heard nothing of it.
  Mr. PALIN: A petition was promoted, but it was found that it was not in conformity with the rules of the House.
  Captain GARRO-JONES: There is a very simple reason why the opposition has not developed strongly.
  Major TASKER: It was certainly sent round to Members of the Committee.
  Captain GARRO-JONES: If the complaint has not developed strongly until now there is a very simple reason for it. The Association of Street Traders is not a wealthy body like the Bermondsey Borough Council, and I very much doubt if their funds would stand the expense of counsel. They are not a very strongly organised body who are able to engage counsel, solicitors and Parliamentary agents, and go to the great expense that is necessary to oppose the Bill. That is an additional reason why hon. Members who have open minds on this question should oppose the Bill. I do not intend to detain the House for very much longer, but I should like to reply briefly to one or two points that were raised by the hon. Member for West Bermondsey. He complained that costermongers were
  1084
  great offenders in the matter of exposing articles of an indecent character upon their stalls.
  Dr. SALTER: I venture to suggest that the hon. and gallant Member has misunderstood me. I never said anything of the sort. What I did say was that I knew of a definite instance in a borough adjoining my own where contraceptives and contraceptive appliances were exposed for sale in a street market.
  Captain GARRO-JONES: I know of shops in the West End and other parts of London where these articles are sold, and we do not advance the argument that any special regulations or legislation should be passed to deal with them. I do not think that costermongers are any greater offenders in this matter than any other class of traders, whether in this or in any other part of London. Complaint was made that the costermongers do not pay anything towards the clearing away of rubbish, and it was urged that this Bill would enable the Bermondsey Borough Council to charge certain sums for clearing away rubbish. The Bermondsey Borough Council already, I believe, collect sums from costermongers for this purpose up to a certain amount per week.
  Dr. SALTER: By voluntary arrangement. They have no power to do it.
  Captain GARRO-JONES: If the voluntary arrangement works well, I do not see why we should advance that as an argument for making it compulsory. At any rate, the expense is more than covered by the voluntary contributions now made by costermongers I only wish to make two more points, with regard to one of which, perhaps, the promoters of the Bill will be able to give me some explanation. It is said that this Bill will destroy the bad practice of farming-out stalls, which is carried on by some costermonger capitalists. I entirely fail to see how it will do that. Under Clause 10, a licensed costermonger in Bermondsey is entitled to employ assistance and I do not see anything in the Bill to limit the number of licences which one costermonger can take out in Bermondsey or anywhere else, and even if he can only get one in Bermondsey, these men who know the ropes can go about to other Borough Councils and get licences from them. If this Bill be passed, it will not

  1085
  prevent the capitalist costermonger, if we may so describe him, from going to other borough councils, getting one licence from each and farming them out. The Bill does not apply to one Borough Council only, and there is nothing in the contention that the Bill, if we pass it, will abolish the evil of farming out costermongers' stalls. I object to this Bill on a ground which I believe will outweigh every other consideration, and that is that it is an attempt, supported naturally by the shopkeepers in every part of London, to impose irritating restrictions on a class of men who have done more to keep down the cost of living in London than any other single factor in this country in the last 10 years. I think the House ought to consider very carefully before it gives a Third Reading to this Bill, which proposes that they can be closed down at seven days' notice, that they shall pay 5s. a year for a license and that they shall conform to a large number of other restrictions which will bear heavily upon this class of men. I know a large number of these costermongers, and have many of them in my constituency. They come to me, men who are out of work, and say, "I want to start as a seller of chestnuts or something of that sort," and I know of dozens of cases where men were down and out who, owing to the fact that there has been no restriction on this class of trade, have started in business and made a decent living for themselves and their families. No real case has been made out for this Bill, and I say with all respect that the arguments which have been adduced are outweighed by the dominant argument, which ought to be that this is a class of men who, although unable to make their voice strongly heard, have kept down the cost of living in London.
  Mr. PALIN: This has been the most. astonishing discussion I have ever heard. It has been very useful from the point of view of relieving the strain of the past few days. The greatest city in the Empire allows its people to go on and have unrestricted and uncontrolled use of its streets. There is so little regard for the public health that they have never found it necessary to provide a market where food can be purveyed under something like decent conditions. To hear it suggested that the Bermondsey City Council has done something wrong
  1086
  in asking for power to regulate this matter in the interests of their ratepayers is a most astonishing thing. I question if there is a city in the world which would submit to the garbage and the smell and the indescribably filthy streets after the street market has been cleared away, except London. It is most astonishing to me. When one goes through the main streets and sees the wonderful care taken to keep them clean and then turns down the side streets even in Westminister and sees the indescribable squalor and filth, it passes my comprehension.
  Furthermore, I think it would be a very foolish thing for the house to allow its rules and regulations to be set at defiance in this way because, all said and done, the mover of the rejection has admitted that the Committee conducted the inquiry in a fair and impartial manner and it is not necessary for anyone to come before a Committee of the House and appear by Counsel. If some of these gentlemen expressed themselves with the ability and the force that the witnesses in favour of the Bill did, their proceedings would be very greatly enlivened and they would not suffer by the absence of counsel. I would sooner hear a costermonger who can express himself in clear language than the interminable arguments of some counsel. This organisation of the costermongers must be very formidable. I was rather surprised to hear the support it can command. In a few weeks' time, we shall be discussing matters involving millions of pounds with far less force than this pettifogging Bill of the Bermondsey Council. I sincerely hope we shall regain our sense of proportion.
  Mr. GILLETT: The speech we have just heard shows how little a Member living in the country understands the real local government problems of London. The hon. Member said how extraordinary it was that the Bermondsey City Council should want to have control of the streets, and he compared it with some other town. It is no comparison at all. It is just as if you took a piece of Liverpool and said, this ward was to have certain special legislation, and the rest of Liverpool was to be left entirely untouched. To my mind this is one of the fundamental objections to the Bill. One of our greatest difficulties in London is

  1087
  that you are cutting it up, and you are dividing things which really have no division at all. In the borough I represent we have three market streets, and I have been asked by the costers in those streets to oppose the Bill for the very reason that the hon. Member for Hackney (Captain Garro-Jones) has given. One of these streets is right on the edge of the borough of Finsbury. You have only to walk a few yards, and you are away over in the borough of Islington. Supposing a man living at present in Finsbury is turned out of his house and is compelled to go and live a few hundred yards away, and goes over to Islington, my hon. Friend is going to insert a Clause in which he claims there is going to be some safety against prohibiting the borough council from preventing a man like that going on trading in a borough in which he is not resident. As a matter of fact, it would not necessarily be any safety at all if the borough council decided to limit the use of the streets to their residents.
  The objectionable feature of the Bill, to my mind, is that we are being committed to a policy in regard to the costers, whilst the whole matter has never been fairly placed before those interested in the Government of London. If there had been a conference and the question had been considered by the borough councils and the different interests concerned, and they had turned the whole thing down, it would have been quite justifiable for Bermondsey to go on, but Bermondsey lays down all these principles and hardly anyone hears anything about the Bill or is in any way consulted until it has got fairly well through the House, and then it is that an organisation, not strong financially or otherwise, discovers that the Bill has got to this stage. I do not see that the Bermondsey Council have anything to complain of in the opposition. There is a very large number of men employed in these trades in my borough, and they have specially asked me to oppose the Bill. The hon. Member opposite has given, to my mind, one of the reasons why possibly they are afraid of it. He has stated that he very strongly supports the Bill on behalf of the shopkeepers. It may be for that very reason that many of the costers are not anxious to have control of the matter placed in the hands of the borough councils, which in many
  1088
  parts of London are dominated by the very interest the hon. Member represents. It happens that in Bermondsey that class is not very strongly represented.
  Sir W. PERRING: Then you have nothing to fear.
  Mr. GILLETT: In Bermondsey you are making a precedent. Bermondsey may legislate for things that suit the people concerned with the trade in Bermondsey because the compleion of the borough council is quite different from the complexion of the borough council in the constituency I represent. That may be the very reason why the costers in my constituency are not anxious to be placed under the control of the borough council. In any case this piecemeal legislation for London ought to be strongly condemned. Any hon. Member who represent country towns and support this Bill have no idea of the way in which it is adding another item to the confusion of local government in London, of which many of us are only too painfully aware. On those grounds alone even if I had not been asked to oppose the Bill on behalf of the costermongers in my constituency, I should have felt inclined to oppose it, because I think that the local government of London is sufficiently confusing to-day without adding further to it by this Bill.
  Mr. VIANT: As one of the supporters of the Bill, I would ask the House not to attach undue importance to the statement made by the hon. member for Finsbury (Mr. Gillett) when he argues that this Bill will introduce piecemeal legislation into the County of London. The precedent is already set. The principles of this Bill are already in operation in one of the boroughs of London.
  Mr. GILLETT: No.
  Mr. VIANT: Yes. On the outskirts.
  Mr. GILLETT: Not in London. I said that in the County of London there is no precedent for this Bill, and the hon. Member cannot mention one borough council in London where these powers have been taken. He, obviously, does not know of what the County of London consists.
  Mr. VIANT: I have no desire to misrepresent my hon. Friend, but I am not so remote from London, having been a resident in London for the past 25 years, that I do not know something about it,

  1089
  and also the existing difficulties. My point is that the principles of this Bill are already in operation in the Bermondsey area, and that the hon. Member's argument that this is giving piecemeal legislation to London hardly holds good. There is nothing in this Bill which will prevent the London County Council from applying the principle generally to the whole of London.
  I represent a constituency on the outskirts, and when I was a member of the local council we had considerable difficulty with street trading, because we had little or no control over it. This Bill gives a measure of control which will not only safeguard the interests of the inhabitants of Bermondsey, but also the interests of the street traders themselves. Hon. Members who heard the statement of the hon. Member for Bermondsey (Dr. Salter)
  Bill, as amended, considered accordingly; to be read the Third time.
  The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.
  of the conditions that exist, must agree that it is not advisable that they should continue. One has only to see in the early hours of the morning the street traders literally fighting for pitches for their stalls, to realise that some means are necessary to control street trading in the interests of the community as a whole. The provisions of the Bills would make conditions of that kind impossible. As far as the Street Traders' Association is concerned, I can readily appreciate their desire that Members for certain constituencies should oppose the Bill, because they desire to go from constituency to constituency and area to area; but from the hygienic point of view I think this Bills is worthy of hearty support.
  Question put," That the word 'now' stand part of the question."
  The House divided; Ayes, 81; Noes, 26.

  Division No. 220.]

  AYES

  [10.0 p.m.

  Acland-Troyte, Lieut.-Colonel

  Grenfell, D. R. (Glamorgan)

  Potts, John S.

  Agg-Gardner, Rt. Hon. Sir James T.

  Hall, Lieut.-Col. Sir F. (Dulwich)

  Raine, W.

  Allen. J. Sandeman (L'pool, W. Derby)

  Hall, G. H. (Merthyr Tydvil)

  Rees, Sir Beddoe

  Ammon, Charles George

  Harland, A.

  Remer, J. R.

  Atkinson, C.

  Hartshorn, Rt. Hon. Vernon

  Richardson, R. (Houghton-le-Spring)

  Attlee, Clement Richard

  Harvey, G. (Lambeth, Kennington)

  Robinson, Sir T. (Lancs., Stretford)

  Barr, J.

  Henderson, Rt. Hon., A. (Burnley)

  Rose, Frank H.

  Batey, Joseph

  Hudson, J. H. (Huddersfield)

  Slesser, Sir Henry H.

  Birchall, Major J. Dearman

  Iliffe, Sir Edward M.

  Stephen, Campbell

  Brocklebank, C. E. R.

  Jenkins, W. (Glamorgan, Neath)

  Storry-Deans, R.

  Buchanan, G.

  Jephcott, A. R.

  Strickland, Sir Gerald

  Buxton, Rt. Hon. Noel

  John, William (Rhondda, West

  Sugden, Sir Wilfrid

  Cadogan, Major Hon. Edward

  Jones, Morgan (Caerphilly)

  Sutton, J. E.

  Campbell, E. T.

  Jones, T. I. Mardy (Pontypridd)

  Thom, Lt.-Col. J. G. (Dumbarton)

  Clayton, G. C.

  Kelly, W. T.

  Thurtle, E.

  Crawfurd, H. E.

  Kennedy, T.

  Tinker, John Joseph

  Crooke, J. Smedley (Deritend)

  Lawson, Lawson, John James

  Viant, S. P.

  Dalton, Hugh

  Leigh, Sir John (Clapham)

  Watts-Morgan, Lt.-Col. D. (Rhondda)

  Davies, Dr. Vernon

  Lindley, F. W.

  Williams, Herbert G. (Reading)

  Davies, Rhys John (Westhoughton)

  Lloyd, Cyril E. (Dudley)

  Wilson, C. H. (Sheffield, Attercliffe)

  Dennison, R.

  Luce, Maj.-Gen. Sir Richard Harman

  Wilson, R. R. (Stafford, Lichfield)

  Dixey, A. C.

  Mitchell, Sir W. Lane (Streatham)

  Wise, Sir Fredric

  Duncan, C.

  Nall, Lieut.-Colonel Sir Joseph

  Woodcock, Colonel H. C.

  Edwards, John H. (Accrington)

  Newman, Sir R. H. S. D. L. (Exeter)

  Wragg, Herbert

  England, Colonel A.

  Newton, Sir D. G. C. (Cambridge)

  Young, Robert (Lancaster, Newton)

  Fremantle, Lieut.-Colonel Francis E.

  Palin, John Henry

  Gault, Lieut.-Col. Andrew Hamilton

  Perring, Sir William George

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—

  Greenwood, A. (Nelson and Colne)

  Pilditch, Sir Philip

  Dr. Salter and Mr. Womersley.

  NOES.

  Alexander, E. E. (Leyton)

  Gillett, George M.

  Pilcher, G.

  Bourne, Captain Robert Croft

  Harris, Percy A.

  Pownall, Lieut.-Colonel Assheton

  Bowyer, Captain G. E. W.

  Henderson, Capt. R. R. (Oxf'd, Henley)

  Samuel, Samuel (W'dsworth, Putney)

  Butler, Sir Geoffrey

  Hopkins, J. W. W.

  Sandeman, A. Stewart

  Cluse, W. S.

  Hutchison, Sir Robert (Montrose)

  Stott, Lieut.-Colonel W. H.

  Cowan, Sir Wm. Henry (Islington, N.

  Little, Dr. E. Graham

  Vaughan-Morgan, Col. K. P.

  Croft, Brigadier-General Sir H.

  Moore, Lieut.-Colonel T. C. R. (Ayr)

  Everard, W. Lindsay

  Naylor, T. E.

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—

  Fraser, Captain Ian

  Nicholson, O. (Westminster)

  Major Tasker and Captain Garro-Jones.

  Gibbs, Col. Rt. Hon. George Abraham

  Oakley, T.

  Main Question put, and agreed to.

  ADJOURNMENT.
  Resolved, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Captain Bowyer.]
  Adjourned accordingly at Eight Minutes after Ten o'Clock.