§ Sir A. POWNALLI beg to move, in page 8, line 37, to leave out the words "out of moneys provided by Parliament."
This is rather a technical matter and, therefore, I hope the Committee will allow me to explain the purpose of the Amendment. Travelling expenses in the past have been allowed under Section 30 of the Act of 1920, but this Section of the Act of 1920 refers to Section 2 of the original Labour Exchanges Act, 1909, under which the Exchequer were enabled to pay travelling expenses to a person who travelled to a place where work had been found for him. There was no provision for paying travelling expenses in eases where work had not been found. The present Bill provides for the payment of travelling expenses to persons even in cases where work has not been found, and in the Third Schedule, Section 30 of the Act of 1920, which allowed these expenses to be paid, is to be repealed. The question obviously arises, what does the Bill mean when it says "out of money provided by Parliament"? How are they to be provided? Under what Act, in view of the fact that the Act of 1920 is not now in force? There is a further point with regard to those for whom work has not been found and for whom no provision has been made. I think it important that the right hon. Lady should clear up the point as to where the money is coming from in view of the fact that she is taking power to cancel Section 30 of the 1920 Act, under which this money has been paid in the past. The Employment Exchanges Act does not provide the answer, and the right hon. Lady must produce other methods for finding the money to pay these travelling expenses.
§ Miss BONDFIELDBriefly the position is this. That under Sub-section (1) of this Clause I am making arrangements so that money can be paid out of the Unemployment Insurance Fund, and the Exchequer shall be reimbursed to that extent. Therefore, I see no object in deleting these words. The hon. Member has further Amendments to this Clause, but if it is amended in the way he pro- 150 poses it would leave us in this position, that in the case of the people who do not get work a sum could be repaid from the Unemployment Fund, but not in the case of the people who do get work. That is not what the hon. Member desires.
§ Amendment negatived.
§ Sir A. POWNALLI beg to move, in page 8, line 42, to leave out all words from the word "may," to the word "repay" in page 9, line 1, and to insert instead thereof the words
if that person, through no fault of his own, has not obtained employment at that place.The Clause, as it now stands, I submit, opens the door to fraud. It allows travelling expenses to be paid in cases where a man goes to another place in search of work whether he finds it or no. It is possible that a man in the North of England, hearing that a cup-tie is being played in London may think it necessary to come to London to look for work, or vice versa. I think there should be some check, some conditions imposed such as the Minister may prescribe. Therefore, I suggest that these words should be inserted in order to stop the possibility of fraud on the lines I have indicated.
§ Captain CAZALETThere are one or two points about which we are not yet clear. What is the authority that sanctions these payments? Is there any limit or control? Are they revised or sanctioned by the Minister? During the last five years under the Conservative Government there were, I believe, Supplementary Estimates to cover expenses which had been incurred by moving families from their own localities to places where work had been found. Will this Clause in any way alter the procedure or does the Minister intend to continue the same policy as the last Government?
§ Miss BONDFIELDThe purpose of the Clause is that it shall be possible to obtain out of the Unemployment Fund the repayment of part of the expenses so incurred. We do not wish to limit that repayment to the cases of those who have found work; in other words we want to be in the position to obtain part payment of the expenses of the man who is sent out for a job and has found it or not found it, as the case may be. In 151 all cases where men are sent out "on spec." we want to be able to obtain a repayment from the Unemployment Fund.
§ Captain CAZALETThen you leave to the Employment Exchange full authority where they think there is a reasonable expectation of getting work?
§ Miss BONDFIELDIt is under very careful supervision and under strict rules.
§ Mr. FOOTI would like to ask whether there can he any reasonable possibility of the trouble to which the hon. Member for East Lewisham (Sir A. Pownall) referred ever arising? I think that on reflection the hon. Member will realise that the illustration he gave was very unfortunate.
§ Sir A. POWNALLWhy?
§ Mr. FOOTIs it conceivable that the machinery of the Exchanges would be such that a man who wanted to go from London to Newcastle for a Cup Tie would be able to satisfy the insurance officer just at that time that he was going to Newcastle simply for the purpose of inquiring for work? The man could not go without inquiry being made. No insurance officer would allow the Government to be made responsible for the pounds of expenditure that would be incurred simply upon a conjecture, simply upon the suggestion of the man himself. When the hon. Member thinks of the situation he will realise that his suggestion is rather unfair. At all events I think better of the unemployed than the hon. Member does. He has suggested that a man would go through a system of fraud in order to get the money for his journey. I think the suggestion should be withdrawn as being a reflection on the unemployed.
§ Sir A. STEEL-MAITLANDThe hon. Member animadverts very severely on my hon. Friend. There is no question of my hon. Friend wanting to cast aspersions on anyone. [HON. MEMBERS: "He was doing it!"] If any hon. Member really wishes to pretend here or in the country that we do not here and there get a case of fraud amongst unemployed people, just as we do amongst the people of any other class, then, of course, I cannot understand him. What my hon. Friend referred to was merely the possibility of some quite 152 exceptional case arising, and in the illustration that he gave he probably spoke more for amusement than otherwise. All the same, if anyone imagines that these cases do not sometimes occur, he is wrong. They do sometimes occur. The percentage is a very small one, and we are all agreed that it is small, but I am not going to sit by and hear my hon. Friend criticised, for, while the percentage is small, the Minister knows as well as I do that such cases do occur. I have personal knowledge of one or two cases that have occurred—where a man has been transferred from the North to the South after a long railway journey. He did not happen to be met when the train arrived and he did not take the trouble to go on from London to his destination, which was comparatively near London. I have not the least doubt that in the Department there are details of that particular case with the name and dates and every thing connected with it. In that case, as I have said, a man did not trouble to go on to his destination from London. I do not say that that was because he wished to attend a Cup Tie. Although the hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Foot) got up in a state of indignation and attacked my hon. Friend, he must realise that sometimes cases of this kind have occurred and that Members of this Committee are right in calling attention to them.
§ Mr. ALPASSDoes the right hon. Gentleman think it really necessary, in order to secure protection in one or two cases out of several millions—that would be about the percentage—there should be inserted in this Clause an Amendment which casts aspersions on the character of the unemployed?
§ Sir A. STEEL-MAITLANDThe answer to the hon. Member is simple. If, as he says, the danger is practically negligible, why have the Clause at all or the Amendment? It is perfectly right and proper that provision should be made to meet the occasional cases of malpractice in this respect, as in any other respect in any other class.
§ Captain HAROLD BALFOURDo the travelling expenses include an allowance for meals in cases where a man is sent to find work? In commercial life the traveller receives his salary 153 and a definite allowance during the time that he is travelling on a firm's business. Is there any scale laid down which will allow a man to buy food on his journey? If not, such a Regulation should be made.
§ Sir A. POWNALLIs it not the case that on an average of years several thousands of cases are investigated by the Department, where fraud is alleged, and in hundreds of cases is it not brought home to the people concerned? I agree that the number of such cases may be very small out of the many millions of insured people, but it is an appreciable number in the course of a year.
§ Amendment negatived.
§ Mr. GOSSLINGI beg to move, in page 9, line 4, at the end, to insert the words
Provided that where such expenses are incurred at the request of an employer and the employer fails to provide employment for the insured contributor the expenses so incurred, together with wages at the recognised rate for the time, given by the insured contributor, shall be recoverable from the employer.We are often being urged that capital and labour shall get together. In some instances national agreements between employers and employed are in existence, and these agreements provide that where workmen are sent to a job the employer should pay their travelling expenses and such lodging allowances as are necessary. There is, however, a tendency on the part of some employers, instead of sending men from their works to a job, to apply to an Employment Exchange to send men. Such employers do not always ask for the number of men that they require, but ask for more than they can employ. Men are sent from the Exchange, they get to the job, and they are refused work. In some cases they have travelled many miles from their homes. Sometimes they are told to call again in the morning. They go and get lodgings, present themselves at the job the following morning, and then are told that there is no work available for them. A man in such a case as that returns to his own town, and under the existing provisions he can, I understand, snake a claim on the Exchange for payment of his return fare, because he has failed to get a job to which he was sent. My Amendment suggests that the employer who asks for men to be sent to a job and then fails to employ them, should be called upon to pay reasonable expenses incurred, and that neither the Exchequer 154 nor the Insurance Fund should be used for that purpose. It is only fair and right that people who carry out national agreements should be protected against the unscrupulous employer who wishes to escape an obligation.
§ 8.0 p.m.
§ Mr. LAWSONThe case put forward by my hon. Friend in this Amendment is one that will secure considerable sympathy in the Committee, especially from those who have had some experience of men being sent from one part of the country to another in search of work. The actual words of this Sub-section provide that where any payment has been made on account of the expenses of travelling to any place for the purpose of obtaining employment, the Minister may, whether employment has been found or not, repay out of the Unemployment Fund such part of the advance as may be prescribed. In reference to the point put by my hon. Friend, however much we might desire to give effect to it, I think his Amendment would not achieve the result which he desires. I think we ought to be quite clear on this point. If an employer definitely asks that a man should be sent from the Employment Exchange for certain employment and asks the Exchange to advance the money for the man's expenses, he undertakes to recoup the Employment Exchange; but if the man is entitled to any part of his fare from the Unemployment Fund as a result of going there, it is paid back to the employer. In that particular case the employer accepts financial responsibility. There is, of course, the other case to which the hon. Member has referred. If the employer fails to provide employment, the Department can hold him liable for repayment of the full fare unless, as a matter of administration, it is decided not to press for such repayment, say, on account of errors of selection on the part of the Employment Exchange. Generally speaking, it would not be wise to press for the repayment of this money from the employer in the way proposed in the Amendment for the simple reason that it would make employers more cautious as to whether they engaged men through the Employment Exchanges or not.
§ Mr. GOSSLINGMay I submit to the Parliamentary Secretary that this is not 155 only a question of making employers cautious about engaging men through the Employment Exchanges. I submit that it would make employers cautious about asking for more men than they can employ, if they have to bear the travelling expenses. I could quote numerous cases of men who have been sent on journeys involving anything from 15s. to £1 in railway fare. A man may be told to go on such a journey and bring his tools with him. When he reaches his destination he is told to see the employer in the morning. He gets lodgings for the night and presents himself next morning to the employer, who informs him that there is no work for him. It is to prevent abuses of that character that these words are intended, and I think that the Parliamentary Secretary and the whole Committee, if this matter was given the true interpretation, would desire to stop abuses of the kind I have described. I am certain there are not many employers who would act in this way, but there are some who do so, and there is a tendency for unscrupulous employers to evade the responsibility which honourable employers undertake.
§ Mr. LAWSONI agree that it is very undesirable that the type of employer described by my hon. Friend should ask for men to be sent from one part of the country to another if there is no employment for them, but in that case the man is recouped out of the Unemployment Fund.
§ Mr. GOSSLINGThey are not recouped.
§ Mr. LAWSONI submit to my hon. Friends that if this Amendment were accepted it would interfere to some extent with the average employer throughout the country notifying vacancies through the Employment Exchanges. It would impose a certain risk which employers would not be desirous of accepting. Everyone must sympathise with the case put by my hon. Frind and no one desires that men should be sent long journeys and then left in the lurch by the employers to whom they are sent. As regards that case, the Ministry keep in constant touch with those employers who sympathise with and desire to facilitate the work of the Employment Exchanges and on the other hand they are desirous of avoiding contact with employers who try 156 to use the Employment Exchanges for their own purposes. But the main point against the Amendment is that it would tend to lay average employers, and particularly the good employers, open to a certain financial risk which they would not be inclined to take. I admit that there are individual instances of the kind which the hon. Member has described but that is a matter which has to be met on its own merits according to the development and perfection of the Employment Exchanges. It seems to the Government that the way proposed in the Amendment would be the wrong way of dealing with the matter, because it would hinder rather than help what we all desire to see extended, namely the process of notification through Employment Exchanges.
§ Captain CAZALETI have only one comment to make on the speech of the hon. Member who moved the Amendment. We were charged a few minutes ago by th hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Foot) and by hon. Members opposite with making insinuations against the unemployed. Here we find an hon. Member on the other side making exactly the same kind of insinuations against employers. Surely that is a case of political hypocrisy if ever there was one. We said that the cases to which we were referring were very few and the hon. Member opposite has had to admit that the cases of employers to which he refers are also few in number. As I understand it, if the employer applies through the Employment Exchange for a certain number of men and those men are selected to go to the locality of that employer, they draw their expenses from the Exchange before they set out on their journey.
§ Mr. LAWSONThat is where the employer asks the Department to advance money for their fares. Then he accepts responsibility for recoupment.
§ Captain CAZALETI am much influenced by what the Parliamentary Secretary has said about the effect of this Amendment. The Amendment commands sympathy to a certain extent particularly in the case of an employer who asks for more men than he knows he can employ. On the other hand, it would have an effect upon employers asking for men through the medium of Employment Exchanges and that would be disastrous to these schemes and to any schemes for dealing with unemployment.
§ Mr. LINDLEYI support this Amendment on several grounds. Some of us here have had experience of Exchanges sending men very long distances, and, although the employer may be responsible in the first instance for the advance, in the final instance it is the employé who is called upon to repay the money even if no work has been found for him. We have had instances of men being sent from northern counties and from Scotland to London. We referred these instances to the Ministry of Labour and asked that these men should not be pressed to refund the money which had been advanced to them. There was one instance in which men were sent from Carlisle to London. They spent seven days waiting for work which was not forthcoming and the Employment Exchange now insists upon those men refunding their fares. If it were true that in cases where an employer has asked that men should be sent to him payment of the fares was his responsibility, we would have no need to move this Amendment; but, it is precisely for the reason that the employer is not so responsible that we ask for the insertion of these words.
No hon. Member would care to do anything which would retard or restrict the employers in regard to the use of the Employment Exchanges—indeed I think it ought to be obligatory on every employer to use them—but neither should we do anything to retard or restrict the employés. If there is an obligation resting on the operative to accept any job offered to him, provided he is fit to do the work, there ought to be an obligation on the employer that he must not use the Employment Exchanges to provide surplus labour. That is the whole gist of the matter and I submit that there is nothing unreasonable in the Amendment. It provides that where expenses are incurred at the request of an employer, and the employer fails to provide employment, the expenses, together with wages at the recognised rate, shall be recoverable from the employer. The operative cannot recover from the Exchange officials or the Ministry. To whom then is he to look for the reimbursement of the wages lost during the time he has been endeavouring to get this work? I cannot see any reasonable, tangible objection to the Amendment and the very reasons advanced by the Parliamentary Secretary seem to me to be 158 reasons in support of and not against the Amendment. He has said that it is desired to do nothing injurious to the operative. We desire to protect the interests of the operative and to make him feel that, if he is sent to a place from the Exchange, work will be there for him when he arrives. Surely there is nothing unreasonable in that proposal. Regarding the comment of the hon. and gallant Member for Chippenham (Captain Cazalet) I would say that there are some employers unscrupulous enough to use the Employment Exchanges for their own purposes. I admit that they are few and far between, but we have to legislate, not for the ordinary fair-minded employer but against unscrupulous employers, and, because there are uncrupulous employers, there is need for the Amendment and I hope the Committee will support it.
§ Mr. MARKHAMI hope the Committee will accept the Amendment because it tends to equalise the chances the unemployed man has compared with tile chances of the professional man in similar circumstances. In the case of positions such as those which hon. Gentlemen opposite would apply for when their turn in Parliament is finished, if applicants are put on the "short list" it is an absolute and understood obligation that their expenses will be paid, even if they are eventually unsuccessful candidates. All that this Amendment asks is that the same conditions that they enjoy shall be enjoyed by the unemployed man who is not so well off, and probably never will be, as they are themselves. Let us have justice all round. The Parliamentary Secretary has admitted the justice of the Amendment, but his defence is that it is not in a form of words which he can approve. Therefore, I ask him to give us now a line as to the way in which this Amendment can best be worded to meet the wishes of the Department.
§ Mr. LAWSONThe Clause definitely says that
the Minister may, whether employment has or has not been found for that person at that place, repay out of the Unemployment Fund to the Exchequer in such manner as the Treasury may direct,and so on. As a matter of fact, I think that rather meets the main point as to the possibility of the man being left in the lurch, but there is another point that 159 I think ought to impress itself upon the Committee, and particularly upon my hon. Friends on this side, and that is the difficulty, in a Bill dealing with unemployment insurance, of compelling wages to be paid. There are certain real difficulties in the way of accepting this Amendment, which may raise an important question from the point of view of my hon. Friend the Member for Yardley (Mr. Gossling), but it can find no place in an Insurance Bill. There are other technical difficulties, and I ask the Committee to come to a decision on this point now. I regret that the Government certainly cannot accept the Amendment to meet the somewhat distressing cases that have been raised, but that have really nothing to do with the object of this particular Bill.
§ Mr. WOMERSLEYCan the hon. Gentleman give us the records of any cases where employers have actually asked for men in excess of their requirements?
§ Mr. LAWSONI could not say what records there are in the Department, but during my short term of office I have come across one such case, and in that case the employer voluntarily himself repaid the fares, to my own knowledge. I do not think, however, that there are numerous eases of the kind in question.
§ Sir A. STEEL-MAITLANDI wish to take exception to the speech made by the hon. Member for Chatham (Mr. Markham). It is not a question of justice or injustice or of whether people in one class have their expenses paid and in another class do not. The whole of the Debate for some time before this particular question was dealt with drew attention to the fact that there was a growing practice, by the Exchanges and otherwise, of helping the transference of workmen who were out of work. I say this at once, because the hon. Member for Chatham has charged us with unfairness, and I have been the person who, during the last four year and a half, have developed a system of transference by which we paid the expenses of the person who went away and helped his family with moving. We gave them more help than they have had at any time in the history of this country, and I am bound to make that quite clear, because it was a perfectly unwarranted charge on the part of the hon. Member.
160 I am sure hon. Members opposite will not mind my making plain the difficulty which the Exchanges have in the matter of placing men. I find myself in a strange position, and at the same time I am honestly anxious that the system by which men are enabled to get work by transference or by helping them with their journeys should be made as efficient as possible. There are two separate kinds of difficulty which hon. Members opposite have in mind. One is where many men were sent, exceeding the number of the jobs to be filled, men who were asked for by the employer, and the other case is where, when a man was actually sent, he was not given the job, quite irrespective of there being an excessive number. Perhaps I might have the attention of the Parliamentary Secretary here, because I am making an additional speech on his behalf and on behalf of the system, so far as making it a good system is concerned. As a rule the Department endeavours to make sure that not more men are sent than there are places to be filled, though they may make mistakes occasionally.
I have instances in my mind where, in order to provide employment for men in distressed areas, where jobs were few and far between, and where it was a boon to an enterprising man to get a fresh chance in life, we canvassed a number of employers in order to see whether, in those districts, they would give a certain number of places, very often on some job of construction. In those cases, of course, we were often given a comparatively short notice, and we were once asked whether we could supply 12 good men in 36 hours. We did it, and they gave satisfaction and did their work well, but, as hon. Members will realise, mistakes occasionally occur in matters of that kind, and that without any fault truly, either on the part of the employer or on the part of the Department. Broadly speaking, the policy is to try and fit the numbers to the actual numbers wanted, and it is as much likely to be the fault of the Department, being human, as that of the employer if this is not always properly worked out. The hon. Member for Yardley (Mr. Gossling) may have some instances in his mind—
§ Mr. GOSSLINGI have several.
§ Sir A. STEEL-MAITLANDIf he has several, it is a different matter, but from 161 the experience that I have had the instances where a conscious attempt has been made to get more men than were required are not often met. The question of the single man who is not kept stands on a different basis, and I will ask the Parliamentary Secretary whether he would correct me here. Stress has been laid on the use and development of the Exchanges for the placing of men. I am not always certain whether that meets with approval on the benches opposite. I think the hon. Member for Yardley preferred national agreements.
§ Mr. GOSSLINGWe have been urged on many occasions to get together, and I think that it is obviously the duty of the Exchange, when employers ask for men, to ask them if they observe national or local agreements.
§ Sir A. STEEL-MAITLANDWhat I understood the hon. Member to say was that in certain cases with which he is familiar, the national or local agreement provides for jobs being given and places filled by consultation between the employers' side and the trade union side, and what he objected to was certain employers trying to get men from the Exchange instead and getting behind the national agreement.
§ Mr. GOSSLINGI have here the national agreement of the building industry, and it makes certain provisions, to illustrate which I will give a case in point. You might have a building job going on in an isolated district, where anybody knows perfectly well that the labour is not available. National agreements are made to meet a situation of that character. An employer gets a job which obviously means that he has to take men there, and the agreement provides that he has to pay their travelling expenses, lodging allowances, and fares back. In some cases you get an employer with a job of that description where the labour is not available, and he will apply to the nearest Employment Exchange for the men to be sent to the job, and so escape his obligation to pay travelling expenses or any lodging allowances; and if the men refuse when sent by the Exchange, their benefit is stopped. It is to prevent things of that character that the Amendment is drawn. In a par- 162 titular instance which I have in my mind, the employer specifically asked for 20 men to take their tools and to start on a job. They went, and 12 of them were employed, and the others were refused. All this Amendment asks is that when the employer asks specifically for a number of men, and he cannot employ them, he should reimburse the men for the expenses that they have had to incur.
§ Sir A. STEEL-MAITLANDI am all for national agreements being observed, and I have always endeavoured to put nothing in the way of their being observed. The hon. Member on the other hand, may have some cases, and the one which he cited may be one of them; the facts may be as stated—I am not for a moment suggesting that they are not—but I found that when I went into matters in the Department, there was usually another side of the tale. I should say, however, that if a case like that ever occurred, it is not common, and I can imagine that, if the facts are as the hon. Member stated, there was some negligence on the part of the local Employment Exchange for not realising more accurately the number required.
I would like to make this point to the Committee and to emphasise it: what really is needed is, as the Parliamentary Secretary has said, not to discourage the actual placing of men through the Exchanges. It is not possible for an Exchange to be quite as sure about a man being suitable for a job as they can humanly speaking be sure that he gets the full standard local recognised rate. When I got people transferred in my time, we used always to make sure—certainly with miners' transference—that anyone transferred was paid at the full local recognised rates, and that, from the point of view of the man, was the greater part of the suitability of the job. From the point of view of the employer, it is not nearly so easy to make sure that the man is suitable. I am arguing this from the point of view of not prejudicing the placing of men by Exchanges. We have all, whichever party has been in power, been anxious to develop the placing of men by the Exchanges, and Exchanges have, also, quite naturally been anxious to see that the man who has been out for a long time got a chance.
163 These two are really competing motives in the mind of the Exchange manager, and of the people working for him, and very often one is driven to the conclusion that the first duty the Exchange is to offer the most suitable man, if they possibly can. If the Minister of Labour and the Parliamentary Secretary dissent from me, I hope that they will say so. That means that occasionally the Exchange make a mistake, and in fairness to the employer it should be said that he cannot quite say whether a man is suitable or not until he comes. That is not because of a failure on the part of the employer, but because the shape of the peg and the shape of the hole cannot possibly be known from a distance. That is at the bottom of 95 per cent. of these eases, and it may be amazingly difficult to draw any form of Clause which will distinguish between these and the odd case or two where, I do not deny an advantage has been taken. Possibly the Minister might devise a form to meet the difficulty, but there is the great drawback that if you try to meet the odd case, you may do more harm than good over 95 per cent. of the whole field.
§ Question, "That those words be there inserted," put, and negatived.
§ Mr. MARKHAMOn a point of Order—
§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill."
§ Mr. MARKHAMOn a point of Order. The Chairman ruled—
The DEPUTY-CHAIRMANWhen the hon. Member wishes to raise a point of Order when the Question is being put, he must do so covered and remain seated.
§ Captain BALFOURWith regard to the question of travelling expenses, when they become chargeable to the public fund, are they confined to just the railway fare or is there a definite amount for meals for the unemployed man?
§ Mr. LAWSONNo; they are just travelling expenses, and there is nothing in addition to that.