CLAUSE 5.—(Interpretation, application and short title.) (Hansard, 15 July 1931)

§ Miss BONDFIELD
I beg to move, in page 4, line 19, at the end, to insert the words: Sections one and two of this Act shall continue in force until the thirtieth day of June, nineteen hundred and thirty-three, and no longer.

§ Sir ARTHUR STEEL-MAITLAND
There has been such on oft-repeated request from some hon. Members on the other side of the Committee for a little light or leading from the official Opposition, that I thought I would comply with that request. But, of course, as it is written in Holy Writ, there is a time to speak, and there is a time to refrain from speaking. I want to say one word before the finish. Of course, we do not particularly approve of this Amendment, at the same time, we do not propose to divide the Committee against it. [Interruption.] If 13 Members of this House can keep it in session for 17 hours or more, it is clear that seven Members of this House can keep it in session for some time if they wish. On the other hand, we have no wish to keep hon. Members here long, and one reason why we do not propose to divide against this Amendment, and one reason why we have not spoken in the course of this stage of the Bill, is that we take no responsibility for this Bill at all. It is a poor one, but it is the Minister's own. [An HON. MEMBER:" Were you here when it was called?"] My hon. Friends beside me and behind me have listened with deep attention to the whole of this Debate. It has been exceedingly instructive to us.
In the first place, while we consider the Bill a poor one, yet as an administrative development and precedent in constitutional matters which may, of course, have important consequences in the future, we have had a deep interest in it as it has gone through its Committee stage. At the same time, we realise and appreciate the fact, as no doubt do hon. Members opposite who have spoken more often than we have, and as, indeed, the Government now realise, as is evident from this Bill" that the present system of insurance needs considerable Amendment. The only thing upon which, I think, we should have agreement from those hon. Members who have proposed other Amendments earlier in this Debate is that, as the Bill has now gone through the searching criticism of the Committee, it is quite clear that, before we can get a good scheme of unemployment insurance, the whole system will have to go through some much more organic change. It will probably be a change not founded on the interim report, but, after all, we 737 hope that by then there will not be an interim Government.
There is one other thing that I should like to say to the hon. Members for Glasgow in reply to the charge that we did not vindicate more the rights of Members of this House. We should have done our best to do so had it not been apparent that their rights had not been infringed, for their oratorical ration has been on the whole ample for the number of Members taking part in the Debate on that side. There is one thing that is remarkable as a result of this Debate. It is always exceedingly interesting to stand by at any domestic tiff and to hear the truths that come out in these domestic differences. I will not weary the Committee now with more than just mentioning one thing. During the four years when I occupied the Minister's position I was subjected to constant criticism of the same kind that I have heard during the night, from the same hon. Members who have subjected the Minister to criticism on this occasion and from others as well. Hon. Members then had not the same monopoly of criticism that they have had during the past few hours. At the same time, it is some solatium, though not compensation, to know that, although it was said that we were not sympathetic, at any rate we were not so callous as the present Ministers are in the eyes of their hon. Friends. Though we were open to criticism and blame, at any rate we did not meet with the same wholehearted condemnation as have the present Ministers.
I am sure that, as hon. Members read the Official Report on this Debate, afterwards, they will find, as people in the country will find, that it was extra ordinarily interesting. I remember the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. A. Bevan), saying that the party opposite had come to power through exploiting the poverty of the people. He said that they are right in doing so and his condemnation of the Bill was that they were not exploiting it further. We have had a similar criticism from the hon. Member for Stoke (Lady Cynthia Mosley)—

The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN
The right hon. Gentleman has sat silent so long that I am very reluctant to call him to order, but we are considering an Amend- 738 ment to Clause 5 on a narrow point, and general observations are not really in order at this stage.

§ Sir A. STEEL-MAITLAND
I will come strictly back to the point and content myself my saying once again that while we do not very much approve of this Amendment, we do not think it makes much difference to the Bill, and therefore we just give it this valediction before the Report stage.

§ Mr. MAXTON
I think the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Tamworth (Sir A. Steel-Maitland), who has just sat down, made one very serious mistake when he said that this was the Minister's Bill. He is quite wrong. It was the Minister's Bill when originally introduced, but having gone through a Second Reading and completed its Committee stage, it is now the responsibility of the whole House. The right hon. Gentleman cannot wash his hands, like another great historical figure, and say, "We have no part or lot in this at all. Go on and crucify the unemployed. We stand by." That will not do, because, in my view, what we have had to-day is a great coalition of the three principal parties in the State, all united to save public money, because that was the original bond, to save £5,000,000. "It docs not matter how you do it, but save it—at the expense of the unemployed." There has been a great coalition—[Interruption]. Supposing I never do another thing in public life, I am glad that I have had the opportunity of standing here through the night exposing that great united attack on the poor people—[Interruption]—to whom I made the same promises as did the hon. Members who are now interrupting me—[HON. MEMBERS: "Rubbish!"]—and I have carried through my promises—[An HON. MEMBER: "Sheer hypocrisy!"] The right hon. Gentleman, in washing his hands, is doing a cowardly and despicable thing. The Tory party drove the Government into this position. In my view, the Government's one big mistake was to submit to the mean propaganda that was carried on by hon. and right hon. Members opposite and their Friends. They cannot now, having brought about this position, wash their hands of it and 739 say they have no responsibility. The responsibility is primarily theirs, and no one else's.

§ Mr. MILLS
Like many other hon. Members who have supported the Government through the night, I have sat quiet under a series of insults and innuendoes, which we have endured largely because we felt that some of the people who were uttering those innuendoes had a certain amount of sincerity behind them. The two principal offenders have been the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton) and the hon. Member for East Leyton (Mr. Brockway). I have known them both for a period of years. Both of them belong to professions that have never known the menace of unemployment and the menace of suspensions without pay, which have been regarded as holidays. They have belonged to professions which get a holiday with pay over the whole period of their existence, and when they use the phrase, as the hon. Member for East Leyton did, by inference, that we regard the unemployed as social outcasts, I fling it back in his teeth, and I say this, that the great proportion of Members of this House who have sat through the night and have supported the Government have all gone through unemployment which he never knew.
Everybody knows that the majority of our people resent more bitterly even than do our political opponents any "wangling on the dole," as we call it, and he knows, and they know perfectly well, that this Bill is an attempt to deal with abuse. It is not a question so much of economy as an attempt to deal with abuse, and the movement which used to be regarded as the Independent Labour party, which can now be 740 accepted as the party that has adopted as its slogan, "I love publicity "—

The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN
The hon. Member must keep to the Question before us. A general discussion is not really in order on this Amendment.

§ Mr. MILLS
I want those hon. Members to read this morning's papers about a certain case, which is one of countless thousands that we have had to endure in the matter of trying to keep the name of our workpeople clean. Here is the case of a man doing a buying business of 150 tons of coal a month, with two railway coal wagons, employing several men; he has drawn unemployment benefit amounting to £23 16s. 8d., and his defence was that he was not working for wages. That is the kind of abuse that every decent man wants to stop, and that is the object of this Bill, and I fling back in their teeth the suggestion that we are a mean, contemptible, and cowardly crowd who have given up all regard for the class to which we belong and that that regard is the sole monopoly of hon. Members below the Gangway on this side.