UNEMPLOYMENT (TRANSITIONAL PAYMENTS, LANCASHIRE). (Hansard, 27 June 1932)

§ Mr. TINKER

I wish to raise a question of which I gave notice on Tuesday last. It deals with the position as regards the means test in the Lancashire Administrative County. I put down a question to the Minister of Labour in reply to which I got certain figures, and arising out of those figures I desire to draw the Minister's attention to what I regard as an unfair state of things. The applications which have been before the public assistance committees in the whole of Great Britain for transitional payments number 5,880,729, and the number for the Lancashire Administrative County is 324,945. Out of the number for the whole of Great Britain, 3,258,970 or 55.4 per cent, were granted the maximum benefit rates. The number of cases in which payment was allowed at lower rates was 2,107,969 or 35.8 per cent., and the number of cases in which the needs of the applicants was held not to justify payments being made was 513,770, or 8.7 per cent. That was for the whole of Great Britain, but for the Lancashire Administrative County we find that the number granted full benefit was only 18.6 per cent.; the number granted partial benefit was 61.6 per cent., and the number wholly extinguished was 19.7 per cent.

These figures naturally cause one to wonder why that treatment is being meted out to one part of the country. In reply to my question, I was referred to an answer given on 22nd March. In that answer the Minister said that, owing to the different conditions obtaining in different parts of the country, there would naturally be some difference in the transitional payments. That statement seems very good on the face of it, but I would point out that Lancashire Administrative County is only one-fourth of Lancashire. It is about 24 per cent. of the whole, and we find that the figures for the remaining part of Lancashire are quite different from the figures for the administrative county. There is an 8 per cent, difference on the total disallowances, and that fact must be taken 1608 into account in considering the Minister's statement as to varying conditions in different parts of the country being an explanation of why a greater number had been excluded from full payment in one place than in another. If that bore any relation to it, Lancashire as a whole would bear a similar relation to the administrative county.

Further, to strengthen my case, my hon. Friend the Member for Ince (Mr. G. Macdonald) had a question down last week for two parts of Lancashire, namely, Wigan and St. Helens, and again we had a striking difference for those two places as compared with the administrative county. Wigan had only 6.8 per cent, of total disallowances and St. Helens about 6.6 per cent., while Lancashire Administrative County had 18.3 per cent., so there must be something else to meet this case than the point put by the Minister of Labour. To prove this, in Lancashire this matter has been receiving the earnest attention of people who have seen the differences in payments. When on the borders different treatment is being meted out in exactly similar circumstances, you can understand the strong feeling that prevails. To try to get over that, the Lancashire Miners' Federation, with the textile workers, formed a joint deputation to meet the officials at Preston representing the Lancashire Administrative County so as to clear up the differences. The only answer they got was that they were carrying out the regulations of the Ministry of Labour.

Only last week the mayors and chairmen of the administrative counties and urban district councils administered by the Preston officials had a meeting, and anyone who has read the accounts of that meeting will understand the feeling of grave discontent prevailing because of the difference of treatment in various parts of Lancashire. Last week the Minister of Labour, in explaining this matter to the House, made this statement when he was replying to the Motion of Censure: So far as those on transitional benefit are concerned, I would remind the House again that we are spending no less than £41,750,000 on transitional payments, and altogether we are providing for the relief of those unemployed a sum not less than £100,000,000 a year, which is equal to the whole Budget of this country at the time when some Members now in the 1609 House first entered it. These transitional payments are, in fact, relief paid out of public funds."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd June, 1932; col. 1394, Vol. 267.] It is on that statement that I base my case. If they are public funds, then equal and fair treatment ought to be administered all round. If they were going out of the rates of the area, there might be some difference of payment, but if they are going out of public funds, we have to satisfy the people that equal treatment is being given all round. We of the Labour party are against the means test, but some of these mayors and chairmen and others agreed with the means test, and yet were protesting against this unequal treatment. If the Government believe in the means test, and want to convince the people that this matter is being fairly dealt with, it is the duty of the Minister of Labour, if he comes across a county that is carrying out the wishes of the Government too effectively, to say to those county officials: "You are too rigid in your treatment of these people, and you must relax a little." I look upon these Motions for the Adjournment as a privilege, and should not have raised this question on this occasion but for the importance that I attach to it, and my desire to get an answer that will satisfy the people whom I represent.

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of LABOUR (Mr. R. S, Hudson)

I do not think I can object in any way to the action of my hon. Friend in raising this matter, and I should like to thank him for his courtesy in putting off the raising of the question so as to enable me to be here. I confess that when the question of publishing these figures for individual areas was first raised, when an hon. Member opposite put down a question in the early days of the needs test, asking if we could give figures for an individual area that he represented, I was in very grave doubt as to the advisability of giving these figures. I was perfectly certain that in the long run they would be bound to lead people to think that considerable discrepancies existed in the administration in various part of the country, if the figures were looked at coldly without knowing what was behind them. It was clear, however, that the House and the country had a right to know the figures, and therefore we have made no attempt to conceal them.

1610 I venture to refer the hon. Member again to the answer that was given on 22nd March. There is no doubt that when we consider the figures in detail we must remember the varying conditions of the country, and not only the varying conditions between different parts of the country, but the varying conditions between different towns and parishes in an individual county. The hon. Member could not have taken, for my purpose, a better case than that of Lancashire. It is quite clear on first sight that people can legitimately come to the conclusion that there is a considerable difference in practice between Lancashire and the rest of the country if they take the figures which the hon. Member has just quoted, but it must be remembered that the position in Lancashire is not the same as that in the rest of the country. The industrial conditions are not the same. In other parts of the country, in the coalfields for instance, when the head of the household falls out of work there is very often no other income coming into the house but in Lancashire it is the exception for the only breadwinner in the household to be the head of the household.

In a majority of cases many members of the household, especially the female members, may be at work, and are at work, even though the male breadwinner is unemployed. For the purposes of benefit the individual employed person is the unit, but for the purposes of transitional payments the unit is the household, and you have to take into account the whole of the money going into the household and not merely the amount which the breadwinner has lost by being out of work. If you look at the matter from that point of view, you find that Lancashire is in an entirely different position from the greater part of the country. There are one or two other towns, such as Birmingham, Huddersfield and Leicester, where there is a tradition of women working, but Lancashire is pre-eminently an area where women members of the household also work. It must also be remembered that the greater amount of the improvement in employment that has taken place in the last few months has taken place in Lancashire. The percentage of unemployment in the last six months in Lancashire 1611 has decreased from 29½ to 23½, and that improvement must be reflected in the increased amount coming into the household.

Therefore, taking the household as a unit, you would expect to find that the number of determinations given at full rate would be less than the number of determinations given at less than full rate. We find, in fact, that the number of determinations at full rate is less than the average for the country, and the number of determinations given at less than full rate is greater than in other parts of the country. It is not sufficient to take these figures. You must analyse the amounts that are given when a determination is made at less than full rates. In Lancashire in the case of application by men on the average when a determination is made at less than full rates, the average amount paid is 80 per cent, of the full rate. In most other areas in other parts of the country it will be found that, whereas the total number of determinations at less than the full rate is smaller than in Lancashire, nevertheless these determinations are 50, 60 or 70 per cent. of the full rate, as against the 80 per cent, in Lancashire. So that, taking the country as a whole, it will be found that there is not the discrepancy in dealing with the actual needs of the persons concerned as the bald figures by themselves might lead one to believe.

My right hon. Friend and myself naturally have this matter under continual consideration. We are having the figures, I might say, daily, and certainly weekly, examined, as far as it is humanly possible to do so, and we are satisfied that a much greater approximation to an average level is gradually taking place all over the country. There are one or two areas, I do not want to specify names, but one of them is a county borough in the County of Lancashire, which are often held up to us, and we are asked, "Why should people living in X get less favourable terms than those living in Y?" The answer is that that one particular county borough is not in our opinion carrying 1612 out the law as it was meant to be carried out. We are continually making representations. The last representations were made only a short time ago and we are still living in hopes that they will see the error of their ways and conform more closely to the practice in the vest of the county.

The hon. Member made a further point as to discrepancies between the treatment of persons living on the edge of one area and those on the edge of another. I think that a good deal of the misapprehension that exists on that point is due to people merely looking at the scales. Each authority has its own way of arriving at results. If you examine only the scales, it certainly does look as though there were serious discrepancies in practice, but when you come to examine the facts you will find that the scales work out very much the same in the long run. Let me give one illustration. Some authorities say they disregard the first 5s. of a man's earnings and take the whole of the rest into account. There are other authorities which say they disregard the first 15s. That looks a tremendous discrepancy, and it would appear as though the family whose member has 15s. disregarded is much better off than the family in which the 5s. is disregarded, but in actual practice exactly the reverse may be the case, because the local authority which says, "We disregard the first 5s. and take the whole of the rest into account," regard the man himself as one of the household when they come to reckon up how much is required. In the case of the authority which says, "We will disregard the first 15s. of the man's earnings," they do not regard him as a member of the household and consider that he has the use of the whole of that 15s. for keeping himself. The net result in the case of a man earning 30s., is that, assuming a maintenance scale of 12s., in the first case the man is left with 17s., and in the second case with only 15s. It is therefore perfectly wrong, and gives an entirely misleading impression of the whole situation, merely to look at the scales. If you take the scales merely, it certainly looks as if there is a wide discrepancy in what is paid. The scales work out, so far as we can see, at much the same thing in the long run.

1613 If there are any individual cases where the hon. Member thinks that anything does not tally with the facts as he knows them, I shall be glad to consider that with him, on another occasion. So far as Lancashire county is concerned, I am satisfied, having regard to the par- 1614 ticular circumstances of industry in that area, that the results are not very different from those of the country as a whole.