§ Order for Third Reading read.
§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the Third time."—[Mr. Lawson.]
§ Major ELLIOTAre we to have no statement from the Government before the Bill is given a Third Reading?
§ The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY of the MINISTRY of LABOUR (Mr. Lawson)It is very often the case, if it is not the rule, that Bills pass Third Reading without any discussion at all. We had a long explanation of the Money Resolution in Committee, and we had a Debate, I think, on the Report stage, and then we had a Debate on the Second Reading and Committee stage of the Bill itself. The position, as the House well knows, is this: that the Bill raises the borrowing powers of the Unemployment Fund from £70,000,000 to £90,000,000, and that if it be not passed there will not be the money to pay unemployment benefit up to the end of the summer. In its second Clause the Bill extends the period during which men can remain on transition benefit; if that Clause is not passed their rights would begin to be exhausted by the end of April. I do not think it is necessary further to explain the provisions of the Bill, but if any hon. Member has any questions to ask I will, with the permission of the House to speak again, do my best to answer him.
§ Major ELLIOTIt will be in the minds of hon. Members that the position is that if this Bill were here and now to be rejected a serious situation would arise. That is the fault of those who insisted that nothing short of the full period for which they asked and which was laid 1897 down in the Bill would be accepted. I would like to point out once more that, if the Amendment which we moved had been accepted, it would have enabled the House to review the position at a future date. In my opinion, this Bill will inflict a great hardship on many people, and the House cannot possibly contemplate the administrative confusion which will arise. This Bill casts a burden upon the public purse at a most inappropriate time, and it makes very little attempt to deal with the problems which have arisen. It ignores altogether the explicit assurances of reconstruction which the Minister has given more than once to obtain these vast sums at an earlier stage. A Bill like this cannot be permitted to pass in a merely formal way after a protest has been made on a previous occasion.
I do not propose to go over the arguments which have been advanced before as to why the Government are not justified in asking the House to adopt the long period with regard to unemployment insurance which is contained in the proposal now made. Those of us who have had the problem under review must greatly regret that no Minister with any authority is present this evening to defend the Third Reading of this Measure. I do not claim to be anything more than a humble Member of the House of Commons.
§ Mr. TILLETTPoor "Dear Brutus."
§ Major ELLIOTNo man has spoken more eloquently of the necessity of keeping the period under review than the hon. Member for North Salford (Mr. Tillett) when he was in Opposition, and now when the Labour Government is in office no Member is more anxious to burke the problem. It is exactly that type of half-hearted condemnation that we wish to expose. It is the attitude of the hon. Member opposite that we resent more than the attitude of almost any other Member in the House. The Minister is anxious to stop Debate—Ministers are always anxious to stop Debate. The Minister is anxious to get this Bill—Ministers are always anxious to get their Bills. Hon. Members of the Labour party rent the welkin with denunciation of us when we were on that side of the House, and explained what they would do if they were there. Now they sit mum, and anxious only that 1898 nothing more should be done—[Interruption]. These are the people whose hypocrisy we cannot forgive—[Interruption]—and whose hypocrisy the country does not find it possible to forgive either.
The difficulty before the House will not be got rid of by merely passing this Bill. The difficulty which the Minister has Lurked for the time being remains. The Royal Commission, which is sitting and issuing these inconvenient questionnaires, will make its report, we are told, in time for new legislation to be brought forward, and then the Minister will regret that she has not given the House any indication of her attitude towards these problems which she proposes to bring up at an early date. The House is asked to pass this Bill to-night without any indication from the Minister as to what attitude the Government desires to take up on these important questions, without any indication from the Chancellor of the Exchequer as to what attitude he desires to take up on these important questions, and without any indication from the Prime Minister—but that goes without, saying. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has spoken bold words, and has run away from them. We shall see later on what the Royal Commission reports, and whether the Government Bench is going to follow his example or not. This Bill is, as I have said, a Bill of postponement, of shuffling, of shirking the issue, and for this Government, of all Governments in the world, to take up that attitude, is betraying the whole campaign upon which it obtained power, and on account of which it occupies those benches to-night.
§ Mr. BOOTHBYI hope that the House will divide against the Third Reading of this Bill. The Government really have no excuse for asking the House of Commons to pass the Bill at the present stage. The situation is nothing new; it has been developing for the past 18 months, and the Government might well have foreseen what was bound to happen. They have not lacked advice from either side of the House. Hon. Members behind them have constantly warned them of what was going to happen, and hon. Members below the Gangway, at any rate, have been just as emphatic as we on this side of the House in the questions they have been putting to the Government for 1899 the last two years, asking how they proposed to deal with the problem of the unemployed, as apart from the problem of unemployment. For 18 months the Government took no action of any sort or kind; they did nothing to grapple with this problem; and, if there was any subject upon which a Labour administration might have been expected to hold some views, it surely should have been the question of how to treat and how to handle the unemployed themselves, quite apart from the intrinsic problem of unemployment.
At long last the Government set up a three-party committee to investigate the question under conditions of secrecy, which were grossly violated the other day by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. What was the result of that committee? As soon as it began to get down to the facts, as soon as it came within sight of presenting to the Government a report on the facts, the Government ran away in an absolute panic and dissolved the committee altogether; and, in order to set up a further weapon of delay, they instituted a Royal Commission, which is still sitting, and the report of which they are anxious to avoid for as long as possible. In the meanwhile, after having hurked all executive action, after having hurked the whole function of Government, after having turned this vitally urgent problem over, first to one committee and then to another, and finally to a Royal Commission, the Government' come down and invite the House to vote £20,000,000 and they do not tell us what they propose to do, or how they propose to handle this question in the long run. They give us no indication as to what their views are about this question of how to handle the unemployed, and on the Third Reading they send down no responsible Minister to give us any further statement than we have been vouchsafed.
The present situation is really a disgrace, and hon. Members opposite know that it is a disgrace. whether you look at it from the point of view of a Socialist or a Conservative or a Liberal. [An HON. MEMBER: "Or an Englishman!"] The English are past praying for. From whatever point of view you look at it, there is one thing about which 1900 we can all agree, except the occupants of the Treasury Bench, and that is that it is a good thing to have in any country a Government that is prepared to govern, against one which is not prepared to put forward any constructive suggestions of any kind on any question. At least the Government might have made up their minds about this two years ago and decided what action they were going to take and informed the House of Commons. In the meantime we are slopping out £100,000,000 a year. [HON. MEMBERS "Not true!"] That is the figure that was given on Saturday by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I hope we shall divide against the Third Reading if only to show the country that we, at any rate, believe that the Bill is only brought before the House because the Government have failed hopelessly either to deal with the fundamental problem of unemployment or with the practical and urgent physical problem of how to handle the unemployed.
§ Mr. O'CONNORI hope, also, that this party will register its feeling about the Bill by dividing against the Third Reading. There is one small reason why I should like hon. Members opposite to consider whether they ought to allow this system of dribbling out public money to maintain the unemployed to go on. It is a point of view which has not been sufficiently noticed, but they are maintaining one of the worst vices of the capitalist system by this drenching out of the dole. [HON. MEMBERS: "What is a dole?"] It is a dole. A year or so ago, when you had standard benefit, towards which people contributed, you could speak about it as insurance, but now that you have this transitional benefit, which is not contributed to at all, but which is handed out to all and sundry, it is a dole. They are maintaining an over-supplied labour market. Instead of causing industry to pare its requirements of labour down to an economic limit, they are keeping a floating pool of labour going. [Interruption.] That is exactly what ought to be done if industry is to be run efficiently and economically. We all desire to see a reserve of work and not a reserve of personnel. We desire to see a reserve of work to be drawn upon in bad times and not a pool of stagnant personnel among whom the employers 1901 can pick and choose when bad times come. I remember that the right hon. Lady is directly encouraging those employers who would like to see a very much larger number of labour personnel waiting for work than the economic condition of the country justifies.
Take, for instance, some of the new industries which have established themselves in the South of England. I know of one not 70 miles from London. They engage vastly more people than they can possibly employ. They turn them off work and engage a new set of people, and the result is that you have something like two or three times the quantity of labouring people trained and ready than the industry can, according to reasonable anticipation, ever require. The remainder are thrown upon unemployment insurance relief. That position is reproducing itself all over the country. You are getting the employers and the workpeople co-operating to keep a mutt: larger pool of labour than is necessary to keep them available in the areas for capital to dip into just as it likes. That position is being maintained simply because we are prepared to come to the House of Commons time after time and repeat this borrowing process.
§ Mr. BUCHANANIf they were not taken into this fund, what would happen to them?
§ Mr. O'CONNORThe hon. Gentleman puts a perfectly justifiable point. We have to face the increased fluidity of labour in this country. The chairman of the Economic Committee of the League of Nations issued a very important report a little while ago pointing out that one of the greatest economic difficulties which this country had at the present time was the lack of any fluidity of labour. You stagnate labour and keep it concentrated in those districts, and upon a job in which it cannot maintain employment by the method adopted of doling out these large sums of money.
§ Mr. HAYCOCKCan the hon. and learned Gentleman tell me of any place to which labour can float at the moment?
§ Mr. O'CONNORI can tell you places from where it cannot float. It cannot float from places where there is twice as much labour as the local industry can employ. As long as you play into the hands of the local industries by doling 1902 out money, you are sustaining a wholly improper and uneconomic structure in your economic organisation.
§ Mr. TILLETTMay I ask the hon. and learned Member whether or not concentrated capitalism has had more to do with our position to-day than in any other country?
§ Mr. O'CONNORIt is quite possible, but the policy of the Government seems to be to subsidise, as I am pointing out, some of the very worst features of capitalism in this country. It is true that in this Bill the Government are simply doing what other Governments have done before. Ever since 1920, Governments have asked for further borrowing powers for the Unemployment Insurance Fund, but that is no excuse in the mouth of this Government, because they came here to alter all these things. They came here saying that these things were not to be permitted any longer. The right hon. Lady made a very bold show when she first came down to borrow money, and said that it was a dishonest course, and that she had no intention of doing it again. It was really for that very reason that transitional benefit was placed wholly upon the Exchequer, so that this intolerable drain should not be put upon the fund itself any more.
Notwithstanding those boasts, those promises, and the altered procedure, whereby the whole cost of transitional benefit was passed on to the Exchequer, we find that they are coming down now to borrow, not only what is now a sort of precedent sum, because £10,000,000 can be accepted as the amount which the taxpayer will pass without murmuring, but twice the amount. It is not fair, as has been pointed out on previous occasions, to the insured contributors in steady work, to allow them to go on paying into a fund which is insolvent, and getting more insolvent every day. Nobody would permit that in any ordinary insurance system. It is because we feel that it is neither one thing nor the other, neither fish, flesh, fowl nor good red herring, neither insurance nor public assistance, that I, for one, hope we shall divide the House against the Third Reading of this Bill.
§ Mr. MAXTONI am very interested to hear that the young Tories are in action on the question of Unemployment 1903 Insurance, and I hope that they will carry out what they have indicated, their intention of voting against the Third Reading of this Bill. It will show us that the young Tories, as distinct from the older Tories, are anxious that labour should be made to move more freely around the country, driven by the goad of starvation. That seems to be the moral to be drawn from the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Luton. [HON. MEMBERS: "Central Nottingham."] It was for holding views of that sort that he ceased to be the Member for Luton. We are discussing the Third Reading of the Unemployment Insurance Bill, which does not entitle me to review the whole problem of unemployment in this country. The necessity for the Government coming forward and asking for the additional money at this time arises quite definitely out of the Unemployment Insurance Act which was passed by the hon. and learned Member's own Government in 1927. Do not let us leave that fact out of mind. Hon. Members talk about the Bill being actuarially unsound. The actuarial basis of the Act under which Unemployment Insurance is operating to-day was laid down by the Government of the hon. and learned Member opposite in 1927. At that time, as the hon. and gallant Member for Kelvingrove (Major Elliot) said, the back benchers fought strongly on the Unemployment Insurance Bill on the assumption that we were to have 600,000 or 700,000 unemployed workers in the course of a month or so. That was described as a fantastic fallacy. The right hon. Gentleman who was Minister of Labour at that time knew better. He had the best possible advice at the Ministry of Labour, and he said that there was a silver lining to the cloud.
§ Sir BASIL PETOBecause we had a Conservative Government in office.
§ Mr. MAXTONYes, and the Conservative Government in office saw, as the Coalition Government before it saw, and as the present Labour Government sees, the sun rising behind the heavens. I am not blaming any of the previous Governments for devining that optimistic view, because whatever Government was in power the same power was operating behind it at the Treasury and at the 1904 Ministry of Labour. We were told then, as we are told to-day, that we must economise. We must make the workers a little bit poorer, and then trade would come right. It is going steadily worse. The position that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has to face is very grave, it is the result of 12 years persistent following of the Treasury policy of economising and cutting down the standard of life of the working classes. When the Bill was going through the House in 1927 the hon. Member for Camlachie (Mr. Stephen) moved an Amendment urging that the actuarial basis of the Bill should be reviewed not at the end of five years, as was suggested by the Government of that day, but at the end of one year. There was the most preposterous piece of gagging that I have ever seen. When ray hon. Friend was moving that Amendment complaining that the actuarial basis of the Bill was wrong and that we should have to come month after month for fresh grants the Minister of Labour got up and moved the Closure, and when I protested to the Chairman of Committees in somewhat stronger terms than is allowed by the Rules of the House I was heaved out into Palace Yard by the votes of the hon. and gallant Member for Kelvingrove, the hon. Member for Aberdeen; and if the hon. Member who once sat for Luton had been present I have no doubt that he would have cast his vote in the same way.
§ Major ELLIOTThe hon. Member will not forget that we had had 16 days of Parliamentary discussion on that Bill, and that he would never have allowed the Third Reading Of that Bill between the hours of 10 o'clock and 11 o'clock at night.
§ Mr. MAXTONNo, because that Bill was actuarially unsound. Notice the difference between that Bill and the present Measure. This Bill is merely to make good the bad finance of that Measure, an entirely different thing. My vote against the Third Reading of that Bill would have been a vote to put it on a sound actuarial footing and in conformity with the probable economic happenings in this country. What hon. Members opposite are doing to-night is to refuse supplies to unemployed fellow citizens. That can be the only possible 1905 meaning, and I wonder whether the hon. and gallant Member for Kelvingrove will go to his constituents and tell them this.
§ Major ELLIOTI said during my speech, and I say again, that our Amendment was for the specific purpose of having this matter reviewed by the House of Commons at an earlier date. I do not intend to vote against the Third Reading—
§ Mr. TILLETTYou want to starve them.
§ Major ELLIOTNobody would argue with the hon. Member for Salford North (Mr. Tillett) at the moment. I am discussing the matter with an hon. Member who really does think about it and who takes it seriously to heart.
§ Mr. TILLETTI have given 50 years of my life to my people, and I have no emnity against your class. I have fought for my own people, and it is hon. Members like you who are anxious to starve my class.
§ Mr. SPEAKERrose—
§ Mr. TILLETTI am sorry.
§ Major ELLIOTIf I have been led into an interjection which I should not have made I apologise to the hon. Member and to the House.
Our Amendment was intended to reveal the position as it will be in a few months' time, and to accuse me of wanting to starve the unemployed in such circumstances is a suggestion which is totally alien to the whole of my speech and to the whole tenor of our discussion. I will say no more on that subject. The hon. Member for Bridgeton should know that our Amendment was designed to review the matter at a three months' interval instead of six months, and it is a travesty of language to say that it was an attempt to starve the unemployed. I said that I did not desire to vote against the Third Reading of the Bill because it might have the effect of causing hardship and injustice to the unemployed, and for that reason I was counselling my hon. Friends not to divide. In such circumstances I hope the hon. Member for Bridgeton will reflect whether he has not, in his turn, spoken harshly of me and that the suggestion that I desired to bring hardship to the unemployed was not in my mind.
§ Mr. MAXTONOf course I accept the explanation of the hon. and gallant Gentleman. I did not hear the whole of his speech. I made my way to the House as soon as I knew that Unemployment Insurance was the topic for discussion, and I arrived only in time to hear the conclusion of the hon. and gallant Gentleman's remarks, and I was misled into believing that the Young Conservative Party was united.
§ Mr. CAMPBELLIs your party united?
§ Mr. MAXTONI am very glad to say that the group to which I belong has a higher percentage of unity at the moment than any other group that I see in the House. But I advise anyone who is a political leader in these days, however small his band may be, not to boast himself too much; you never know how long the position will be maintained. But I make this point in reply to the hon. and gallant Member, that while it may be true that what he has urged here is a review of the situation in three months, I have listened, at all stages of this Bill, carefully and in silence, to hear what speakers opposite have said, and they all have laid emphasis on the necessity for economy in this matter of Unemployment Insurance. Although challenged by my hon. Friend the Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan) on two occasions, never one would say specifically what he proposed to do in the way of putting the fund on a sound basis. They talk about removing anomalies, about not pouring out this large sum of Treasury money, but they never come down to specific proposals, because they can think of no specific proposal that is going to economise on the fund, unless it means taking money out of the pockets of people who are very poor at the present time. And they dare not say it. I suggest to them that if they were in office to-day they dare not do it.
I say to them, "Do you want to duplicate in this country the position in the United States?" The hon. and learned Member for Central Nottingham (Mr. O'Connor) suggested that it was necessary to reduce the stagnant pool of labour. Is he suggesting that it should be done by the revolver and the river—the United States method? What other proposal has he? Is it to be done by the meaner weapon of starvation? How 1907 are hon. Members opposite going to reduce the stagnant pool of unemployed people? [HON. MEMBERS: "By Protection!"] We have been trying in this House genuinely for 10 or 12 years to find work, and every Government in succession has failed to find work. The very small group with which I have been associated has come forward again and again, and has said, "You are starting at the wrong end in looking for work. You have looked for work and found unemploymen." We say, "Start looking for an income for the people, and make that a means towards the end. When the income is going into the homes and is being expended in the shops, then the work comes along." Hon. Members start at the wrong end. They start looking for work, and every year that goes by they find it more difficult to find schemes of work for the people.
§ Mr. SPEAKERThe hon. Member is being carried away. He must confine himself to the Bill on the Motion for the Third Reading.
§ Mr. MAXTONI apologise. I draw to a rapid conclusion The wise thing for this House to do in this matter of Unemployment Insurance is to recognise that the Unemployment Insurance Fund on its old basis should not be asked to cover ever 2,000,000 people. A scheme which was devised to carry 600,000 people should not be asked to carry over 2,000,000. The State should fearlessly, frankly and honestly shoulder the whole financial responsibility for the maintenance of all the unemployed on a more generous basis than they are being maintained to-day, and should recognise that the condition in which we are to-day is not a responsibility that rests upon the shoulders of the unemployed; it is not a responsibility that rests upon the shoulders of the captains of industry. It is a responsibility that rests mainly on the financiers of this country and upon the successive Governments. It is the duty of a Government to govern, and government always means compelling some section of the community to do something that that section does not want to do in the interests of the whole. As it was always the duty of Governments in the past to make the working class do something disagreeable and keep them 1908 under, it is the duty of a Labour Government to face up to the financiers and to make them do something they do not want to do, to make them subservient to the general welfare of the body politic, instead of making them tyrants over the nation as a whole
Sir NAIRNE STEWART SANDEMANI agree with a great deal that has been said by the hon. Gentleman opposite. Nobody on this side of the House wants to starve the unemployed, but one must utter a note of warning. We know what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said about the finances of the country. Those who are engaged in the City and in commerce know perfectly well that w hat he said is true. The country is getting to the state when it does not know where the money is to he found to finance all these schemes. It is all very well for my friends from the Clyde to say that a new loan came out and was subscribed four times over by 10 o'clock. What happened was that people, who wanted £1,000 of the loan, knowing it was going to he oversubscribed, applied for 10 times that amount. That gives the impression that there is any amount of money in the country. But there is not the amount of money to finance these schemes in the way the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton) would like to see them financed. What happens to a shipwrecked crew? They get on board a boat and have a certain amount of rations. They have to divide the rations in the most economical way possible so that there is some sort of chance—
§ Mr. MAXTONIn the most equal way.
Sir N. STEWART SANDEMANIn the most fair way possible. I quite agree with that. Everybody is more or less rationing. I do not know anyone who has the money to throw about that my hon. Friends on the other side seem to think there is. I have gone closely into this question of unemployment insurance and, as far as I can see, any man who is now working and paying his unemployment insurance while getting a full week's work is contributing something like 9d. a week towards the unemployed. I do not believe that there is a man who minds paying this 9d. to the unemployed, but he does object to paying it to anybody who does not need the 9d. Every single penny paid to someone who does not need it 1909 helps, more or less, to keep somebody else out of a job. It is all very well for the hon. Member for Bridgeton to, shake his head and look wise. His needs, like mine, are very small. He does not want very much as long as he has a good audience and he is one of the lucky persons who can always command a good audience with his wonderful voice and his wonderful way of getting it off his chest. I am only a poor simple man, but I speak of what I know and I know the workingmen, perhaps just as well as hon. Members opposite. I know how generous they are and I know that they do not want to draw the dole unless it is shoved at them but you cannot blame anyone who has it shoved at him for taking it. Hon. Members opposite know of all the married women who are drawing the dole and who, if they were genuinely seeking work, would not be drawing it. We have to do something to see that they do not continue to get it. I am not afraid to go to my constituency and say so, and I have done it. Most of the people there may be getting the dole, but they are people who have earned it and who are genuinely seeking work and cannot get it. We want to keep out the people who are not really badly off. I had an instance the other day of a woman who had bought a new fur coat for £40 and she said she had saved the price of it out of the money which she had drawn from the dole. [Laughter.] I know that hon. Members opposite do not like to hear these things.
Sir N. STEWART SANDEMANIt is true and I can produce proof of it quite easily. Is a person in those circumstances justified in drawing the dole? Hon. Members know that there are any amount of eases just as bad as that.
§ Mr. TILLETTThat story has barnacles on it.
§ Mr. KIRKWOODIt has grown a beard.
Sir N. STEWART SANDEMANNo, it is a perfectly true story and my point is that the 9d. a week which these working men have to pay, goes towards giving doles to people who do 1910 not deserve them. Every person who is taking the dole and who does not need it, is helping to place the country in a worse position and is keeping somebody out of a job.
§ Mr. MacLARENLike the Duke of Westminster.
§ Mr. SPEAKERThe hon. Member must keep to the subject before the House.
Sir N. STEWART SANDEMANI am very sorry, but these interruptions have rather distracted me. However I am in the fortunate position of being one who hardly ever speaks here and when I do speak, hon. Members generally allow me to tell them the truth. Personally I am sorry that we are not going to divide against the Bill because I think it absurd to give the Government a, free hand for such a long period. This sum will not last long and we do not know what proposal they will come back with, but we know that there is going to be a Budget which will increase unemployment. I hope that my hon. Friends will reconsider their decision and divide against a Bill which gives this absurd amount of latitude to the Government.
§ 11.0 p.m.
§ Captain CROOKSHANKThe hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton) told us that for the last 12 years the Treasury view had been that the country should economise, but that unemployment had gone up and up. But he did not make the logical deduction, which is the fact that we have not economised and that is why unemployment has gone up. If we had accepted the Treasury view that economy was necessary, we should not have got the result that we have to-day and such a colossal number of unemployed, which has gone up in proportion to the extravagance of the present Government. The hon. Member used a very dangerous argument when he said to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for East Nottingham (Mr. Birkett), "What would you have done?" We should not have done what his own Front Bench did in Nottingham, and that is deliberately to throw out of work a lot of hands in the lace industry. To that 1911 extent we should have improved on the position in which we find ourselves today. That is my answer to the hon. Member for Bridgeton.
§ Mr. MAXTONIt is not an answer at all.
§ Captain CROOKSHANKIt is an answer. I want to protest that the Minister of Labour was not here during the first half hour of this Debate and that the Parliamentary Secretary did not get up to move the Third Reading until pressed to do so by my hon. and gallant. Friend on the Front Bench. It is a Bill which possibly they did not want to say very much about, because the right hon. Lady earlier, the first time she introduced one of these borrowing Measures, called it a vicious thing to do, the second time she called it dishonest, the third time she called it monstrous, and this time, I imagine, her adjectives have run dry, and so she preferred not to be here when the Third Reading was called. I hope she will, before the Debate ends, amplify something which she said on the Second Reading. The unemployment register stands at 2,600,000, which is an increase of 1,500,000 since the present Government took office, and in the course of her speech in Committee on the Money Resolution, the right hon. Lady seemed to be inclined to the view which was prevalent about 100 years ago in this country, that owing to the growth of machinery unemployment automatically increased. She particularly instanced something which happens to be made in my constituency, and that is a cigarette machine which turns out—I think she said—1,200 cigarettes a minute. She said:
Not more than three employés are needed to attend to the machine, and its productive capacity is equal to 700 hands; that is to say, 700 hands used to be employed in turning out cigarettes which are now turned out by three persons."—OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th February, 1931; col. 908, Vol. 248.]The implication is that, as a result of the invention of that particular machine, 700 less three, that is to say, 697 people are to-day out of work. If that were going on all over the country, and if that were a true reading of the facts, the unemployment figures would rise rapidly to a colossal extent. Is there any reason 1912 for that argument? Is it really true to say that a machine which is capable of doing the work of 700 hands actually displaces that number of people? The right hon. Lady may have a 60 horse-power motor car, but it would not be true to say that because she has that horsepower, she is not using 60 horses, because I do not suppose that it would have entered her head to use that number. The House will see what a ridiculous argument that is, but it is the logical conclusion of what she told us on the Committee stage. The lighting of this Chamber might be 20,000 candle-power, but that does not mean that if we had not this system of lighting, we should have to have 20,000 candles. It is an absurd argument, and has nothing to do with the number of people who might have been employed if a particular machine had never been invented. The right hon. Lady told us that 10,000 less people were employed in bread making, and that she had not been able to track out what had happened to those people in the last 10 years. Of course she has not been able to track them out, but she must take into account what new industries have been growing up.Has she taken into account the number of people who have gone into the wireless industry or into any other form of recent industry. Foolish as many of their arguments are, I hope that Ministers are not going to add this idiotic one to their repertory, but will devote themselves to trying to find better ways of employing the people. I trust that the Minister will see that as many of these up-to-date machines are employed, because in that way she will improve the employment in the constituency which I have the honour to represent. I hope that the Minister will also give up the economic blizzard argument, because it has gone quite out of date. We have heard it repeated again and again, and it comes very ill from the right hon. Lady, because we have it on record that the Labour party declines to accept the placid assumption that in the 20th century the recurrence of involuntary idleness is to be regarded, like tempests and earthquakes, as an act of God. The Labour party declines in its publication, "Labour and the Nation," to accept that. They declined to accept that argument two years ago, but to-day, when 1913 the figures are 1,500,000 more than when they took office, they find it a handy refuge in time of trouble.
§ Mr. TILLETTWith reference to the displacement of men by machines, unemployment is bound to increase when efficiency increases. I would like to give a case from Germany, where 88 furnaces are supplied with brown coal scooped out from a quarry, supplied at the rate of 2s. per ton, loaded by automatic machinery in trucks, then into hoppers automatically controlled, and passed on by belts to the 88 furnaces. One individual controls the whole of the furnaces. The debris is watered and sucked in by machinery, and loaded up also by mechanical means. Without this great miracle of man's ingenuity, there would have been 150 persons employed. Thyssen's—formerly a Scottish family—produce 1,000 tons of iron from their blast furnaces per day with the aid of 30 men. In the ordinary course of things it would need 300 men. They supply the heat and the electric energy with the aid of 30 men, where formerly 300 or 400 men were employed.
The tendency of rationalisation is to dispense with labour. I say quite frankly that we accept the inevitable, but we do not accept the inevitability of poverty arising as a result of greater efficiency and greater production. If one family can now produce what 100 families were needed to produce formerly, we say that every one of those 100 families has the right to enjoy the benefits of this revolution in industry. Shall all the benefit go to the great financiers? When it is said that we are spending £100,000,000 a year on the unemployed, I would remind the House that the country earns £4,200,000,000 a year, and that 15,000,000 persona and their families receive £1,750,000,000 of it and 2,000,000 persons with their families receive £2,000,000,000. The great financiers have not been sent to the poor house, they have not been on the dole. The families with great incomes have been on the dole for hundreds of years, And we do not grumble at that: but the man who says that the rationalisation of industry—which we accept—does not bring poverty and unemployment has not read or thought, at least he has not suffered. In the great German iron and steel industry a reduction of the number 1914 of men from 356,000 to 290,000 was accompanied by an increase of 50 per cent. in production—even 100 per cent.
I am not here to be angry, because the moment is too serious to be angry, but if you do not have war to murder us, why do you murder us by starvation? Why will you not accept your responsibility? If there was a danger to-morrow you would call upon us. There would be no sneers or jeers; none of this meticulous nonsense would be talked about poverty not increasing with evolution and development. It is bound to increase under the capitalistic system, and as poverty increases the Empire weakens in proportion.
§ Mr. SPEAKERThe hon. Member will agree that he is going outside this Bill.
§ Mr. TILLETTI bow to your Ruling, but I hope that the logic of the position may appeal to the other side. I am very sorry. I did not wish to transgress any usage or procedure of this House, but I do feel that the other side has not honestly met us with a sense of patriotism and community. I fully realise the absurdity of their arguments, and it is their lack of logic which compels me to emotion which probably I ought not to possess, but I am very human, Mr. Speaker, and I wish you to forgive me. When the argument is used that increased efficiency will bring prosperity and that low wages will bring increased efficiency then hon. Members are not telling the truth, and their economics are baseless.
Lieut.-Colonel MOOREEveryone, I think, must rise to the sincerity which has been shown in the remarks made by the hon. Member for North Salford (Mr. Tillett), but I would like for a few minutes to dissociate myself entirely from some of the remarks of my hon. friends on the other side of the Gangway. It is obvious that the Bill must be passed. It is obvious that the Third Reading must take place. It is obvious that these men must live. It is obvious that they have been put out of employment by first one Government and then another, and they have been, unfortunately, put out by the present Government. They must be fed, and they must live, and it is the duty of this House to see that they do live. On that point, we are all agreed. We naturally dislike 1915 the idea of forfeiting our right to control the expenditure of this money for six months, but at the same time we realise that this Bill has got to such a position that we ought to safeguard the interests of those poor devils who are out of work and that the Third Reading must pass.
It seems to me that we are tackling the whole problem from the wrong point of view. While we admit that the money must be found, we are facing the problem from the wrong side. On the other side, the Government believe in doing the work of the physician, but we believe in doing the work of the surgeon. It is like a body with an evil cancerous growth, and the Government apply a piece of sticking plaster. As the growth spreads with its vicious force the plaster is increased. That is the method of the Government in dealing with Unemployment Insurance. As the cancer of unemployment grows so the fund is developed to meet it, and the sticking plaster is increased. But the cancer is there underneath and those on this side of the House and some hon. Members opposite would like to devote their energies to the task of finding a method, a knife that will cut out this cancer and thus bring hack work and prosperity to the people. There are many solutions of this problem before us. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), who is not here now, would apply a good strong tonic—
§ Mr. SPEAKERThe particular solution that we have to discuss to-night is the Third Reading of this Bill.
Lieut.-Colonel MOOREI bow to your Ruling, but the argument I was trying to develop was that, instead of giving these millions of money towards feeding these unfortunate people, we should be doing far better by applying ourselves to the production of work for them, so as to avoid the necessity of paying them unemployment benefit.
§ Mr. SPEAKERThat would not be in order on the Third Reading of this Bill.
Lieut.-Colonel MOOREI will only say, further, that there is, of course, the solution which we advanced—I will not go into it now—which has been backed up by the Trades Union Congress, by the 1916 bankers, and by industrialists, and, therefore, there is nothing for me to say about it; but I would ask the trade union Members on the other side of the House, who feel, with us, in spite of the inactivity of the Government, that there is something that can be done other than "dishing out" money, that there is something bigger and better to do than dealing out millions—I would ask them, what are they going to do? Are they going to sit still while the Chancellor of the Exchequer lets drip bitter words which mean the death of British trade; or are they going, like a Greek chorus—[Interruption]. It is all very well to say that this has nothing to do with the unemployed, but, if hon. Members would think more of the unemployed and less of the words they say in this House, they would be doing far better. The trade union Members are the people who are concerned. They were elected to safeguard the rights and standards of life, the pay and the wages, of the members of their unions; they are the people who are really concerned. Are they going to allow matters to go on like this, with the House meeting again every three months, or every six months, and voting further money for the unemployed Are they going to set their energies to finding work for the unemployed, or are they going to follow their Government down the slope of incompetence, like Gadarene swine rushing down into the pit?
§ Sir BASIL PETOBefore this Debate closes, I wish to bring it back to the very few introductory remarks made by the Under-Secretary. He began with what I hold to be an entire mis-statement. He said that, if we did not pass this Bill to increase the borrowing powers of the fund from £70,000,000 to £90,000,000, there would be no money left from which to find unemployment benefit for those who are out of work. Anyone who has followed these Debates and the Amendments in Committee will know perfectly well that that is not a true statement. We know from all the precedents that the proper amount for the Government to ask for at a single time, in these times of stress, is £10,000,000, and not £20,000,000, and, therefore, I think the House is entitled to hear, before the Third Reading of this Bill is passed, some really valid reason why we should pass a Bill giving away 1917 the control of this House for double the usual period, and giving the Government power to raise a further £20,000,000.
We know the sort of reasons that have been given. The Committee failed; the Royal Commission is sitting; and so on. But that has nothing whatever to do with the Bill. This proposal would only have been justified if the Government could have come to the House and said, "We recognise that there is only one cure for unemployment, and that is to find work for people in the industries of the country. We have definite proposals. They will take more than three or four months to work out. Give us six months in which to show how our proposals are going to work, and give us the necessary finance meanwhile." There is no Member of this House, if any such proposal had been put before us, who would have refused, or thought of refusing in those circumstances, to give them these great powers to borrow another £20,000,000.
We have waited here for over 20 months, and we have never had a single suspicion of any idea from the Government Benches, or from the back benches opposite, even including the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton), or from any of the sections or small groups into which the party opposite is divided, which would give us the smallest indication that they have any proposals whatever for really dealing with this great problem, and it was in order that they might deal with it, that the country gave them its votes at the last election. In view of that, we are utterly wrong to give them more than the very briefest breathing space, to yield our control of this constant repetition of borrowing, which leads us nowhere except into further financial difficulties and further unemployment. I recognise that it is too late to oppose the Third Reading. We should, so to speak, revise the whole of this policy, but that cannot be done. Our protests have been effectively made on the Second Reading and in Committee. What hon. Members below will have to say for their part in these Debates I leave to them, but I should like to say a word in answer to the hon. Member for Bridgeton. He was dealing with the origin—
§ Mr. SPEAKERI called the hon. Member to order for using arguments 1918 that were irrelevant; I cannot allow the hon. Baronet to answer him.
§ Sir B. PETOYou have misunderstood me, Sir. I wish to deal with the earlier part of the hon. Member's speech on which you did not call him to order. He said it was because of the Act of 1927, and that, therefore, it was our responsibility, and he pointed to the fact that at that time we had put certain Estimates before the House which showed that we were justified in passing that Measure. Surely the hon. Member is wrong in arguing that if, several years ago, a particular method of dealing with this problem was right, therefore it must necessarily be right now under utterly altered conditions. He said that we, like other Governments, said there was a silver lining to the clouds. At that time unemployment was not increasing. Up to the day when we left office it was constantly decreasing. There was more and more silver on the lining, until at the end it was almost a golden lining. We had almost reached the million level and, if we had been left alone to continue our work, there would have been a very different tale to tell and our finance would have been justified. The Government came in and sat still for 20 months without a single idea how to deal with the problem. We have now come to a wholly different set of considerations. The hon. Member always interests the House but, when he assumes the roll of prophet, he is not always successful.
§ Mr. MAXTONThe hon. Baronet says this Government came in and for 20 months did nothing. During that period the policy that was governing the general conditions of this country, assuming that the Government did nothing, was the policy which had been imposed upon the country by the previous Government. [An HON. MEMBER: 'Oh, no!"] Oh, yes, surely. For four years and a-half the Conservative Government were in power. They brought in their big ideas of derating and electricity supply. These were in operation and the Labour Government did not remove them. Therefore, it was the Tory policy which was operating during the first twenty months that the present Government were in office.
§ Sir B. PETOThe hon. Member is trying to lead me on to dangerous ground. 1919 Year by year we produced different methods of dealing with the essential cause of this question. There was derating and so forth, and, among other Measures, Safeguarding. What have the Government done? Simply reversed them.
§ Mr. SPEAKERThe hon. Member must not attempt to go over that ground.
§ Sir B. PETONaturally, I bow to your ruling, Mr. Speaker. Those were interruptions which I really thought had to do with the argument which I had put before the House, which was simply on the finance of this Measure. I hold that we were justified in acting upon the basis of the finance introduced into the 1927 Act. It was working and was within measureable distance of showing a balance. If it had been allowed to go on working under the then conditions it would have been fully justified. We have had no justification for the proposal put before the House at the commencement of the Debate other than that we must pass the Bill, because otherwise there will be no money available for payment. I cannot imagine a more complete admission of absolute and utter failure on the part of a Government who have come to the House three or four times and have said: "All we can propose is to borrow, borrow, and to hand on to posterity the burdens which should be borne to-day in an entirely different manner—to hand on to them now burdens in double measure Why? Because throughout the time we have been in office we have been unable to produce a single idea to deal with this problem."
Vice-Admiral TAYLORI should like to refer to the extended benefit, which is at the present time attached to the Unemployment Insurance Fund although the Exchequer is bearing the whole of the cost. The people who are on extended benefit and who pass completely out of the Unemployment Insurance Fund are receiving from the Exchequer exactly the same benefits and in exactly the same form as if they were paying contributions to the fund. That, in my opinion, is fundamentally unsound and wrong in principle. They have no right whatever to be treated exactly on the same basis. Those who are subscribing to the fund 1920 will naturally argue: "We are subscribing to the fund, and we receive certain benefits, and there are others who have passed completely out of the fund and are receiving exactly the same benefits in exactly the same manner. Why should we subscribe? Why should there be a contributory insurance scheme at all if those who have once subscribed and have passed beyond the scheme are still receiving exactly the same benefits as we are receiving? "That is a principle which cannot possibly be continued. It would cut at the very root of unemployment contributory insurance. It really is carrying out in practice the theory of the Socialist party of work or maintenance. I think that it is agreed by all parties in the House that a non-contributory insurance scheme is an absolute impossibility. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] The country is not able to afford it.
§ Mr. SPEAKERI am afraid that the hon. and gallant Member is getting rather wide of the Debate. We are not discussing a non-contributory scheme now.
Vice-Admiral TAYLORThe Government will have to face the fact that the benefits which are given to those who have passed out of the present unemployment insurance scheme and who are to-day receiving exactly the same benefits as those who are contributing to that scheme, will have to be put on a different level and will have to be paid in a different manner. There can be no doubt about that. The Government have not the courage to face up to the facts. It is unpleasant for any party which is in power to face the facts, and tell the people that it is necessary that this thing should be done.
There is another point, and I hope that I shall be in order in referring to it. In order to obtain the necessary finance and to continue to get these enormous sums of money, which the country is bound to find in one way or another, and which at the present time are crippling industry, for ultimately this money has to he found by industry, we shall have to adopt different methods. One hon. Member spoke about rationalisation, and he blamed rationalisation for the present condition of things. The Minister of Labour also blamed rationalisation. Every party has been saying to the employers: "Why do you not rationalize, in order that you may em- 1921 ploy more people, eventually? Your machinery is out of date. Your producing methods are obsolete. Everything is wrong with your industry. You do not know how to run your industry. If you would rationalise your industry you would do well, and we should not have to come again and again to the House of Commons to ask for immense sums of money for the unemployed."
Immediately industry is rationalised, hon. Members find fault. They cannot have it both ways. At the present time the output of industry is very small and the employers are unable on that output to sell their goods cheaply, to employ more people and to prevent the Government from having to come and ask for these enormous sums of money. In order to deal with the situation there should be some positive scheme for employing our people, which would render it unnecessary to keep coming to the House for these votes of money. If I am in order, I would suggest that the way to obtain the necessary finance is to tax the foreign product that is coming into this country.
§ Mr. SPEAKERThe hon. Member would not be in order in discussing that.
Vice-Admiral TAYLORI thought that on the question of obtaining the finance, I might suggest one way of relieving the Exchequer, of employing more people, and of obtaining better and greater production, thereby reducing the cost of the article, increasing the number of people employed and making it less necessary to come to this House and ask for these large sums of money, of which apparently, there will be no end.
§ Mr. TINKERThere is one point in the speech of the hon. and gallant Member which I would like to refute. In this Bill there are two grants, one for transitional conditions and the other for standard benefit. The last speaker and other speakers have stated that those who are getting standard benefit are complaining that those who are getting conditional benefit have no right to it. The hon. and gallant Member and the right hon. Member for Spen Valley (Sir J. Simon) made that statement. I want to refute it. I have never heard any complaint from those who are receiving standard benefit against those who are receiving transitional benefit. Those who are receiving standard benefit know that at any time that they may pass to the transitional conditions, and consequently they recognise that their poor brethren are as much entitled to benefit as they are. I do not want it to go forward that the statement made by the hon. and gallant Member and other hon. Members is the feeling of the country. The unemployed are quite willing to share the burden equally so that everybody shall get the same.
§ The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.
§ It being after Half-past Eleven of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
§ Adjourned at Eighteen Minutes before Twelve o'Clock.