HC Deb 15 November 1932 vol 270 cc957-89

Order read for resuming Adjourned Debate on Amendment to Question [14th November], "That the Bi11 be now read a Second time."

Which Amendment was, to leave out from the word "That," to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof the words: this House, realising the widespread public resentment created by the injustices inherent in the present system of transitional payments, cannot consent to the Second Reading of a Bill which fails to abolish the means test and does not remove the system from all association with the Poor Law."—[Mr. Grenfell.]

Question again proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."

Mr. KIRKWOOD

The Minister of Labour, in introducing the Bill, twitted these benches because I had moved at the Labour Conference at Scarborough that there should be no means test. I am in the proud position to-day of being able to announce that the Labour party's position is, No means test of any description whatever. That is definite. It ill becomes Members of the present Government to twit this side with having changed their opinions. It is ridiculous for men in the Government who have surrendered all the principles that they ever stood for. You have only to think of that great Free Trader, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the President of the Board of Trade, who represents generations of Free Traders. His father before him was a Free Trader. I have heard him boast in this House that that was the way they made their millions. It was as a result of Free Trade. You will note that it was millions for the President of the Board of Trade and the Runciman family. Many Members have changed in order to be on the Government Benches. I notice the Secretary of State for Scotland. There he is. They are great Free Traders all part and parcel of the greatest Protectionist Government that this country has ever produced. Yet the Minister of Labour stands there, and in his nice, suave, English gentlemanly manner tries to poke fun at my comrades because they have seen the error of their ways. But they have had the manhood to admit—and it takes some courage—that they have made a mistake.

Why were the Labour party in favour of the means test? It was because they honestly believed that there were individuals who would obtain benefit when they were not entitled to it. An atmosphere was created by the spokesman of the present Government which made the Labour party think that there was a great number of individuals with plenty of money who would take advantage of the Employment Exchange. Therefore, my comrades stated that they were not in favour of the State maintaining people who were able to maintain themselves. But the working-classes are generous and not suspicious. I am naturally suspicious of the ruling classes of this country, but that view does not hold good with my comrades. They did not realise, but they realise now, that the means test is being operated in a manner which they never expected. The Minister of Labour, who evidently took the pains to read my speech at Scarborough, might have given my comrades on this side of the House the benefit of the doubt, because what I moved against, and what they were against all the time, was that which is now in operation—they were against it at the Scarborough Conference—namely, the Poor Law. The Labour party did not anticipate that it would be a Poor Law scheme and scale which would be put into operation. This is not the first time that a Tory Government, a treacherous Tory Government—for it is an act of treachery—have done the same thing. In 1924 during the Labour Government that atmosphere was created in the country, and along came the not-genuinely-seeking-work clause. The right hon. Member for Preston at the time assured the back benchers that the not-genuinely-seeking-work Clause would be sympathetically administered. The means test would have been sympathetically administered if Labour had been the Government. That was the difference. It ill becomes men of the calibre of the Minister of Labour to stand up in the House and try to make capital out of the position which the Labour party occupied at that time and twit them always. If the case of the Government is sound, they do not desire to descend to personalities, nor does anybody else.

4.0 p.m.

The present Minister of Labour has a conscience. I have had a good deal of talk with him and have obtained many concessions from him, and I know that he has a conscience. He tries to make the House believe that all the speeches and appeals which we make are not having any effect upon him. But they are, because he knows that the case which is being put from this side of the House is correct and that the means test is being worked in a brutal and callous fashion throughout the length and breadth of the land. The House has heard the means test debated from all the different angles, and I believe that if it was left to a free vote of the House there could only be one decision. I challenge the Government to take the Whips off and allow the House to vote for or against the means test, when, I believe, it would turn down the means test. I have been here for 10 years and I have mixed with all manner and conditions of men and women and I am satisfied that there is not a single individual in the House who personally would mete out those conditions. I have reasoned with many of the most dyed-in-the-wool Tories, men who are supposed to have hearts of stone and to be as immovable as a rock. When you put the case to them and reason with them they admit the hardships, but when they come here together, what happens? They bow down to the party machine. They agree to vote with the Government when they know quite well that in the country there is not a Tory Member—they may call themselves Nationalists if they like— a rose By any other name would smell as sweet. but they are Tories, and in heart Tories, and that is more serious than speaking as Tories, because it is actions that count, and by their actions they will be judged—there is not one representing an industrial constituency in this House who can go to that constituency and justify the means test. That being the case, it has come to a fine pass that in the British House of Commons men are casting their votes here, some of them representing thousands if not tens of thousands of electors—the Minister of Pensions had about 60,000 majority, and is therefore representing tens of thousands of votes here—when they know perfectly well that the people they represent do not want them to vote in that direction. If it were a light affair it would not matter, but this means food, clothing and shelter to the poorest of the poor. Why, if the Germans had won the War, they could not have instituted a more debasing, more degrading form of imposition upon my fellow-countrymen. Think what they are doing by this means test! Who is being penalised? Those who have struggled all their lives.

May I be excused if, for one moment, I make a reference to my own constituency, particularly Clydebank? This is the situation which arises there. We have been fairly fortunate with employment up to the beginning of this year—a careful, frugal, indulgent working class that will compare favourably with the very best in Britain in educating their children, and in the results. The labourer struggling to make his son a clergyman; the tradesman struggling, his wife starving in many instances, to make the son a member of one of the professions, and largely successful. But with the stopping of the building of the Cunarder, thousands were thrown out who have contributed to the Unemployment Insurance Fund since its inception—never unemployed, and never drawing anything from the fund. When the first 24 weeks during which they have drawn benefit are up, they are treated the same as individuals who have been for years unemployed. They have been frugal, and because they have been abstainers, not simply abstaining from drink but abstaining in all things, temperate in all things, and they have saved. When we speak about the working class saving, it does not mean as individuals with an income of £1,000 a year. It means that they have done without something that they should have had. They put it by for a rainy day. They have used it for the children, and educated them, and now to those individuals who have sacrificed, who have always been the boast of our country, the backbone of the British Empire, this means test comes along and automatically says that it would have been just as well if they had wasted their substance in riotous living or anything else.

This great National Government with a great collection of brains, good-feeling and Christian outlook on life, men with a broad outlook, men who made big sacrifices during the War, some sacrificing their money and some sacrificing their position, because the country is in difficulties, which means that they are in difficulties, sees only one way out of those difficulties, and that is to harass and worry the poorer section of the community. That is the difference betwixt the present Government and a working-class Government. The working class are always up against it. This is no new phase. We of the working class—I have been in this all my life, and never was anything else, and my father and grandfather were never other than on the verge of bankruptcy. It is no new thing for the working class to be on the verge of bankruptcy. If it had been a working-class Government with a working-class point of view, the situation which has arisen would not have driven terror into their hearts. They would not have flown off at a tangent and attacked the widow and the orphan. Here are a Government capable of stealing a blind man's penny. That is what they are doing.

It is a terrible danger to have a Government composed of men who have the feeling which the present Government have, because in my opinion they are still all-powerful. Never before has there been a Government with such power, and yet with all that power, it uses it in this panicky fashion. The serious point about it is not so much the means test locally, as the indication of what the Government are capable of doing because they are panicky. When they are capable of doing this to their own kith and kin, their own countrymen, when they are panicky, what is going to happen when they get up against the foreigner? We shall be landed in war. Those who are controlling Britain to-day, because we are in trouble, crush down the poor working class in their own country in order to try to get out of the difficulty, and reduce the standard of life not of Chinese but of Scottish, English, Irish and Welsh as we have every evidence.

The hon. Member for the Scotland division of Liverpool (Mr. Logan) to-day in this House raised a question with the President of the Board of Trade about a ship that had 16 British officers and 60 Chinese. That was a British ship under the Union Jack. We are not objecting to the Chinese as Chinese, nor to any other countrymen. Everyone knows that I am Scottish. I have never changed my tongue to suit an Englishman, an Irishman, or any one else. I have said that an Englishman, an Irishman, a Welshman or a Chinese may be as proud of his country as I am of mine. The point is, that these people are prepared to employ anybody. [An HON. MEMBER: "And then they say: 'Buy British'." Yes, buy British but employ Chinese. They shout "Buy British," but they do not put it into practice. We find that men who have paid their contributions for years and have never been out before become unemployed for 24 weeks, and when they go before the public assistance committees in Scotland they find that in many places those committees are made up of Tories, who have the same idea as the Tories in this House. Their idea is to economise, to cut down expenses. That is how they operate the means test when anyone goes before them. They find out how much money the applicants have in the Co-op, in the savings bank, etc., and because they have been careful, they are turned adrift and told that they will get nothing.

What about the young men? My comrades have covered all that ground. They have told the House how family life is being broken up, how boys and girls are leaving home, how the young men do not want to be living on their father, their brother, or, as I know in cases, on their sister. This great Government, this powerful Government is breaking the hearts of tens of thousands of mothers at the present time. If they think that the working classes are going to tolerate it much longer, they are making a great mistake. We have got in this Bill what the Government consider to be a concession. I consider it an insult. It is not only with the Communists that the Government have to deal. It is not a case simply of gaoling the Communists, as they did Wal Hannington, after giving him a farce of a trial. That will do no good, but a great deal of harm. This Bill is the outcome of the great many complaints with which the Minister of Labour has been deluged. A petition is coming from my constituency, Dumbarton, which has been hard hit, a place with a Tory town council. They are sending a peti- tion calling for the abolition of the means test. That is not a revolutionary Socialist centre by any stretch of the imagination. The Minister of Labour knows that six months ago, when the General Assembly was sitting in Scotland, under Sir Ian Colquhoun, I asked him, in a Supplementary Question, whether it was not a fact that the means test was raised and protested against at that sedate Scottish Assembly. We have had petitions from all over the country, arid not only from the West of Scotland. The Minister of Labour knows that perfectly well.

The Prime Minister stated in Edinburgh, when he had been the Prime Minister in charge of the Tories for only three weeks, that if it was found that the means test was irksome to work they would go into the matter very carefully and if necessary remove the means test. Therefore, it is not that this Government in any kind of philanthropic mood, after having sat down and carefully considered the situation, have produced the present Bill. We have had agitations all over the country, demonstrations and riots. I know what it is to be in riots. I have led a riot. I know what it is to be batoned by the police. My poor head carries a mark that I shall take to my grave. I do not want any riots, but I want the Minister of Labour and his understudy to consider well what is happening. What is it that the working class, my class outside—it is outside that matters, not here, where folks are well fed, well clothed and well slept—are thinking and saying? They are watching this place and they are saying that there is nothing in this Bill. The Bill was heralded before it was produced as a great concession to the working classes. The working classes are saying that the House of Commons is not worth a button. Look what they did in Belfast. They had a not and they got concessions. At Birkenhead they had a riot, and they got concessions.

We appeal to the Government to exercise their power in the right way and not to crush the workers. Let them try another way. The method of the ruling class in this country has always been to crush the workers. Whenever there was anything to be done they reduced wages. If the Government think that they are as great a Government as they see them- selves, with all the wealth and power of Britain behind them, let them attempt something else. Let them see if they cannot act as a Government in the way they would act as individuals. Cannot they be generous for once? Generous with English, Scottish and Welsh men and women; their own kith and kin. No. They are going to do nothing of the kind. They give us this Bill, which reminds me of one of Aesop's Fables. They heard a great rumbling in the mountain, and the people went up into the mountain to see what was making the terrible din. When they got up, what did they discover? They discovered that the mountain had produced a mouse. I liken this Government to the mountain, and all that they have produced is this poor little Bill. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.

4.30 p.m.

They are always talking about the ex-service men. They go to the Cenotaph and stand with long, solemn faces, but that does not cost them anything. Moreover, it is fashionable. Let it be fashionable to extend the right hand of fellowship. Let those who are well off, those who are comfortable, extend the right hand of fellowship. Where is all the cameraderie that they talked about during the War. Where is all the equality of sacrifice? It is all so much nonsense. I can assure the House that the Labour party—and I am speaking here on behalf of the Parliamentary Labour Party—say that there should be no means test and that as soon as we get the opportunity we shall take it right out of the Statute Book; we shall repeal the Act root and branch. The only means test that should be applied to a man or woman when they go to the Employment Exchange is that they should be offered a job, and if there is no job for them then it is the duty of the community to maintain them and their dependents in comfort, not simply the subsistence allowance which they are getting just now. I remember extracting from the right hon. Gentleman who is now the Dominions Secretary, the information that there were then 1,250,000 unemployed for whom neither the Government nor the employers could find work. The number now is over 3,000,000, and we say that as neither the employers of labour nor the Government can find work for them you have no right to treat them as an army of criminals, they should be treated with justice and respect. That is the Labour party's position, and we shall fight this means test just as we shall fight unemployment. Whatever Government is in power unless it tackles the problem along the lines I have suggested unemployment will bring down every Government that assumes office.

Mrs. SHAW

In the short time that I shall detain the House I have no wish to follow the hon. Member for Dumbarton Burghs (Mr. Kirkwood) down gloomy paths. I could do so, but I do not care to make political capital out of the sufferings of other people. If I do him the credit for being sincere I hope he will also do me the credit for being sincere when I say that the courage and fortitude with which the people have borne the hardships imposed by the means test is beyond all words of commendation. I welcome the Bill because it gives a certain amount of uniformity, and I shall go into the Lobby in support of it. But as one who has worked for some considerable time on a local authority I feel constrained to say a word or two on at least two points. I appreciate the fact that the task of drawing a line of demarcation between just and proper legislation whereby the State provides for and guards the welfare of the old, the weak, and the unfortunate and still does not put an unjustifiable load on those who thrive by their own industry and toil, is not only an extremely difficult one but requires a great deal of political courage. Indeed, it creates a situation in which it is extremely difficult to hold to one's own position firmly and at the same time show sympathy with the people.

There is no doubt that Sub-section (2) of Clause (1) which deals with those applying to the Poor Law will mean a very heavy addition to local rates. It will add not only to the cost of the Poor Law but to the cost of administration. I find myself asking the question, why do this now, particularly when the Government is pressing local authorities to economise. They cannot possibly economies and put this Bill into practise. Naturally I want to put the case of Scotland. Last night the hon. Member for Maryhill (Mr. Jamieson) put the case very clearly as regards the operation of the Poor Law in Scotland and I shall not waste the time of the House by going over the points he made. We have been treating the poor in Scotland along two lines, under the Act of 1845, and under the Act of 1921, whereas in England, as I am informed, they have only operated under one Act. The hon. Member for Maryhill last night spoke of Glasgow and I hope I shall not be considered too self-contained if I mention the county with which I am more immediately concerned—Lanarkshire. The hon. Member said that the probable increase in cost would be £75,000. I have no reason to doubt his figure and, therefore, taking that figure as the basis of my calculations I have worked out the figure, and I find that it will mean an increase of £25,000 in the rates of Lanarkshire, or 4d. in the pound on the rate.

I do not exaggerate when I say that the county of Lanarkshire cannot stand that increase. The industries of the county are very hard hit, coal pits are closing down, many of them never to be opened again, and hundreds of people are being put out of employment. I have the figures but, unfortunately, they are almost nine months old. At the same time they are not exaggerated because there has been an increase since then. In the iron and steel works there are 10,153 unemployed workmen and in the coal mining industry, 13,085 unemployed. These are an extra burden on the ratepayers. I do not wish to weary the House with figures but I should like to make one comparison, and it is this. The figure for the county of London for the Poor Law per 10,000 of population is 316, for Lanarkshire it is 658, and in my own immediate neighbourhood it is 706. That gives some indication of the weight of local rates which ratepayers in Lanarkshire have to bear. It is not only in Lanarkshire but the same thing applies in a lesser degree to many other counties. Small wonder is it that the industries of Scotland are suffering so much. There was a time when one could have said that the magnetic call of the "land of brown heath and shaggy wood," made a great claim on the foreigner. Nowadays with the weight of local rates Scotland has lost all attraction for the industrialist. I hope when the Bill gets into Committee that the Minister of Labour will give us some assurance that he will have regard to the part of the Bill which applies to the Poor Law in Scotland.

The other point to which I desire to draw attention is the case of the ex-service man. I am sorry that the Minister has not seen it possible to be more generous in this connection. I should like to have seen disability pensions disregarded altogether, or treated in a category by themselves, but the Minister's reassuring answer to the hon. and gallant Member for North St. Pancras (Captain Fraser) has raised my hopes that probably he will be more generous at some future time. There is one point in connection with disability pensions which has been referred to frequently during the Debate. It is said that the pension is given partly in recognition of services rendered and partly for subsistence. In this connection I am guided by the principles laid down for awarding pensions which says: The amount of compensation is therefore determined, not with reference to the individual pensioner's capacity, or failure of capacity, to earn a livelihood either in his former occupation or in another, but with reference solely to the effect of his war service on his physical condition. And it goes on: It is not the function of a war pension to meet impairment due to the circumstances of the man's civil life, or to advancing age; nor can such extraneous questions as the state of the labour market and consequent facility or difficulty of obtaining employment be taken into account. If that is the principle upon which war pensions were awarded it should be the guilding principle when a disabled man applies for any form of relief. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will take that aspect of disability pensions into consideration, and if it is too late for him to do so in this Bill that he will keep it before him for future consideration.

Lieut.-Colonel CHARLES KERR

I would like the hon. Member for Dumbarton Burghs (Mr. Kirkwood) to justify the abolition of the means test in the division I represent. Let me give him one or two episodes which occurred during the by-election that I contested. I found that a great many of the unemployed men who were receiving the transitional payment were in favour of the means test. There was a very simple reason why. The easiest way to understand it is to put oneself into the position of, and to visualise, the man who spoke to me on the subject. He had been in really good work and receiving splendid wages, but through his works being shut down he had fallen on evil times, and had gone down and down until he came to the transitional payment. There he was, and the transitional payment meant life to him. He knew quite well that some people were receiving the payment when they really did not need it. That is the answer to the hon. Member. Many thousands of people, and far more than hon. Members on the Opposition Benches appreciate, are in favour of the means test, and for the reason I have stated.

It is undoubtedly the duty of us all to protect the unemployed and to watch over them, not only now, but, what is still more important, in the future. We must think of the future in this matter. The Opposition well know what danger there was a year ago in this country. They know perfectly well that it was touch-and-go whether the unemployed were to receive anything at all. That is the point. The country was in great danger. [HON. MEMBERS: "Nonsense!"] Never mind whether it was nonsense or not; it was a fact. When hon. Members appreciated the danger that the country was in they left the ship, and the National Government took the ship over when it was very nearly on the rocks. [Interruption.] I am stating what actually took place. I am not making any attack on hon. Members. There was a danger in the future of these people about whom we are so concerned to-day, and, as I have said, the National Government took over the ship when it was practically on the rocks. The unemployed had already had a warning. They had had cuts in the benefit. They do not want any more; they do not want to feel that there is danger of more cuts in the future.

I have heard references more than once to the relief of taxation at the expense of the poor. It is well known to anyone who studies present financial conditions that the goose has ceased to lay golden eggs, or that the eggs have become smaller. Before he left office Lord Snowden told us very wisely that it was not the duty of the Chancellor of the Exchequer so much to think of what he could get out of people by taxation but of what was left behind for future taxation. That is what we have to consider to-day. We know perfectly well that if we put more taxation on the taxpayer we shall get less than we get to-day. Therefore I feel that any legislation which tends to reduce any unnecessary expenditure is the right legislation for us to pass. The question of getting the money is what is worrying everyone. We know quite well that to implement the Anomalies Act it was necessary to have a means test. There is no question whatever about that.

I would like to add a few words to what was said by the hon. Lady the Member for Bothwell (Mrs. Shaw) as to the disability pension of ex-soldiers and others. I know that the Government do want to give more, do want to replace all the cuts. But all of us who are in business know the condition of the world to-day, know the condition of trade and commerce in this country, and know how hard the Government must find it to make both ends meet. That fact is patent to us all. But I ask the Government to consider this question of disability pensions. All men who were knocked about in any way during the War realise as they get older how the disability from which they suffer taxes their strength more. I beg the Government to bear this fart in mind, and when things can be helped a little bit to remember these people. I know the Government will do so because their heart is in the right place.

Mr. COCKS

The hon. and gallant Member for Montrose (Lieut.-Colonel Kerr) is, I think, a very simple soul. He still believes in the currency crisis of last year, still thinks the country was nearly on the rocks, and that the crisis was not manipulated. As far as it existed the crisis ceased when the country went off the Gold Standard. Therefore the hon. and gallant Member's argument, based on the assumption that the country was En a critical position then and would soon be in a critical postion again if we abolished the means test, falls to the ground. I am rather sorry that there is no one present representing the Ministry of Labour, because I want to say something about the speeches of the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary. In reading through the speech of the Minister of Labour I feel that he does not yet appreciate the exact reason why we oppose the means test. I will put it in a few words as simply as I can. The position we take up is this: We believe that the three-million-odd unemployed are not unemployed through their own fault. They are not paupers; they are not people who have reached the poverty and unemployable stage through weakness of character or some fault of their own. We say that they are unemployed purely as a result of the failure of the economic system to provide them with work. That being the case, the fault lies in society, and we say that these men and women have the right to demand from society everything that is required to keep them in health and strength and to preserve their self-respect. That is our position.

We object very strongly to the term that is used both by the Parliamentary Secretary and the Minister of Labour when they refer to these payments as State relief. We do not look upon the payments as State relief. We regard them as compensation paid by society to these workers because society has failed to provide them with the employment which they would much rather have. It is very inadequate compensation, but still it is in the nature of compensation which they have a right to demand. When I am told by the Minister of Labour that I am acting against the interests of the agricultural labourer or the black-coated clerk, my answer is, "Bring them into the scheme also. Bring everyone into the scheme who has an income of £500 and under. Bring them all in and treat them in exactly the same way."

My second point is this: Just as from the point of view of the unemployed I look upon these payments as compensation so from the point of view of the State I look upon the payments as a preservation of capital. I believe that the real capital of the country is not the useless gold in the vaults of the Bank of England, useless metal which might be thrown into the sea without any damage to the country—I hope it will be one one of these days, so that we shall never get back to the Gold Standard—but is in the flesh and blood of our people. What I suggest is that by imposing a means test the Government are wasting that wealth, diminishing it. It is a recognised fact that as a result of the means test, which gives very inadequate payment, men and women who are undergoing that test, at least one million of them, are being under-nourished, are losing their strength and their capacity for work, are losing their health, and in many cases are actually dying as a result of the starvation methods that are employed. That can be proved from a report of the Archdeacon of Northumberland who, with a number of clergy, investigated this particular matter. What he said ought to be put on record: Our attention was first arrested by the almost unanimous request on the part of unemployed men that what was really most needed was food. In visiting we have observed that the mothers are suffering from under-nourishment, particularly in families where there are several children. The Committee also state: It (the working of the means test) has clearly led to a great decrease in helping each other out by neighbours and relations. It has thereby considerably increased the number of families who have nothing but the hare benefit to live on.…It is our considered opinion that even as a bare maintenance level, standard benefit in this area"— that is around Newcastle— is failing to maintain families adequately. This is specially obvious in cases where the wage earner has been out of work for a long period. The fact is standard benefit has never been adequate, but it has been eked out by one family helping another. Now that the means test has taken pensions, etc., into account this has become impossible. I quote one further paragraph: The growing opposition to the means test is partly due to this fact. Everyone has been brought down to a level too low for bare maintenance. Debt, and fear of increasing debt, inability to replace clothing, boots and cooking utensils are adding to the danger of under-nourishment by creating an irritable mentality. 5.0 p.m.

It seems to me that that proves conclusively that by imposing the means test you are destroying the chief wealth of the country. You are ruining the nation by starving and degrading the people. After all, what is a country without its people? The workers of this country represent the nation far more than do the alien fiananciers in Lombard Street. My suggestion is that in a case of this sort we should put everything into the pool in order to save the health of the people. Next week a new Session of Parliament will be opened with great pomp and pageantry. There will be much glitter, and as always a great display of diamonds, but while a new Session is being opened people are dying through your legislation. It seems to me that the hunger marchers made a great mistake. They ought to have waited until next week.

There are one or two points to which I desire to reply before I come to the central point which I would urge upon the House. First, there is the question of savings. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry, when he spoke last week, and the hon. and learned Member for Central Nottingham (Mr. O'Connor), who spoke yesterday, were, I think, rather cynical on that subject. They first said that the money which these poor people possessed was not necessarily all savings; that they might have inherited it, and so forth. I am afraid that not many of the working people of this country are so fortunate as some hon. Members of this House who make remarks of that kind. They also said that the workers who saved did so to provide for a rainy day and, they added, "Here is the rainy day and it is for them to open the umbrella." As a matter of fact, when working people save it is not specially for what is called a rainy day, or for a spell of unemployment, although that consideration is ever present to their minds. Their real reason is in order to protect themselves against poverty in old age, when they are past work altogether. If you are going to take for 10 years the savings of a man of 40 or 45, whether they amount to £300 or not, then by the time that man is 50 or 55 he will have nothing left. Such a man will have to spend his later years in poverty and pauperism. I consider that a very mean saving on the part of the Government and a very sad reward for thrift.

The second question is that of anomalies. We have had trotted out in this Debate the usual figures about people owning thousands of pounds and drawing benefit. From the personal point of view no one is going to defend that. At the same time we know that this Bill was not brought in to deal with those anomalies but to save money all round by cutting everybody down and imposing the burden of maintaining the unemployed upon the families of the unemployed. The Government have imposed what amounts in many cases to an income tax of 10s. in the £ on the mem- bers of the families of the unemployed. Even in these anomaly cases one does not always know the exact circumstances. It may be that a man who has saved £1,000 is entitled to benefit. Such a man may say: "I am not going to draw the benefit for myself but many of my neighbours are suffering cuts under the harsh administration of local authorities and I will draw the money to which I am entitled and hand it over to my neighbours in order to help them to eke out their scanty resources." That is a position which I would not condemn and which I might take myself if I were faced with such circumstances. But in any case, in order to catch a few people like that, you are imposing undeserved humiliation upon 1,000,000 people. The hon. and learned Member for Central Nottingham rather cynically asked what was the humiliation in the means test and what was the difference between it and an Income Tax demand. What a "grotesque and ridiculous" comparison to use the famous words of Lord Snowden. What happens when a wealthy man receives his Income Tax demand?

Mr. J. JONES

He dodges it.

Mr. COCKS

Not himself. He does it by deputy. He hands it over to a firm of chartered accountants with instructions that they are to get as many deductions as possible, and that is all the investigation that happens. But in the case of the means test for the unemployed, what happens? How would the hon. and learned Member for Central Nottingham like to have an investigator coming to the place where his house is situated and inquiring from all his neighbours as to whether they think his income is more than he has stated it to be? But that is what is clone among the poor. How would he like an investigator coming to his house and asking if he is really married to his wife and whether his children are legitimate or not? [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] Yes that is done now and the hon. and learned Member for South Nottingham (Mr. Holford Knight) who is sitting opposite is only exposing his ignorance of what is going on in this matter if he denies that that is so.

Mr. HOLFORD KNIGHT

Will the hon. Member say where these things are occurring?

Mr. J. JONES

You ought to know. In the place of which you used to be Recorder.

Mr. COCKS

If I may be allowed to proceed, I would say that if such questions as are being asked of poor people were asked of Members of this House, the investigator would be thrown downstairs, and rightly so.

Mr. J. JONES

Some of them have been.

Mr. COCKS

But it is only the poor in this country who are subjected to these humiliations. I should not be surprised if some of these investigators got broken heads or perhaps broken necks before this matter is finished with. The right hon. Gentleman for Tamworth (Sir A. Steel-Maitland) said that one of the difficulties at the present time was to draw a line which would allow the unemployed man sufficient to keep himself but not too much, and yet avoid penalising him for thrift. But that is not the line which has been drawn by the public assistance committees and the Government in- the administration of the means test. The line is drawn to-day between semi-starvation and absolute starvation. In many cases that line has been crossed and people are dying, no doubt, as a result of the administration of the means test. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."]

Mr. BUCHANAN

Yes, undoubtedly so.

Mr. LUKE THOMPSON

Is it not true that 50 per cent. of these people have no means test whatever and that 70 per cent. of the total people concerned get full benefit?

Mr. COCKS

I am only dealing with the people who are suffering under the means test.

Mr. THOMPSON

That is just my point.

Mr. COCKS

There are 3,000,000 people drawing unemployment benefit. About 1,000,000 of them are on transitional payment and it is with those I am dealing. The others do not come under the Bill at all. I come now to the central objection which we urge to the means test. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour some time ago supported this principle of reckoning the family income wholesale—not by individuals but by the whole family—and he expressed the belief that a huge majority of people supported that idea. We deny that that is the case and' we oppose that principle which we do not consider to be just. In fact I think it is disgusting, revolting and obscene and that is why I am opposed to -it. It is creating tragedies in countless homes all over the country. [Interruption.] Yes I used the word "obscene" and I hope that hon. Members opposite will remember it.

I give one example and the case which I am about to mention is not an extreme one at all. There are many worse cases but this one came under my own notice and opened my eyes to a great deal of what was going on. I went into a room in a house at Arnold near Nottingham. There was an old man of 62 who was out of work pacing to and fro from the living room to the scullery like a beast in a cage. He had no boots fit to go out in and no tobacco for his pipe. His wife was suffering from glaucoma. She had lost a son in the War and as a result was getting a pension of 5s. a week. She had another son a man of 35 who was unemployed. Because she had a pension of 5s. a week, in respect of the son who had been killed, this other young man had been cut down from 15s. 3d. to 12s. The Minister of Labour surprised me the other day when he said that many of the charges made against the public assistance committees were so much cant. I consider that action of the sort which leads to what I have just described is not merely callous but is the action of a cad. That is the only phrase which expresses it properly.

In this case the mother told me in the presence of the son that in order to fit out this young man and make him respectable, because he was the only member of the family who could go out to look for a job, she and her husband had to spend their own money to buy him boots, clothes, collar, and so forth. When she told me that I could see in her eyes the resentment which she felt at the fact that in order to fit out this son, her "old man" had to be deprived of his tobacco and could not go out of the house because he had no boots to wear. On the other hand I felt how humiliating that position must be to the son himself. He knew what was being sacrificed for him and perhaps he felt that it would have been better for him if he had been left lying by the side of his brother on the fields of France. That sort of thing can be multiplied by the thousand—fathers being kept by children, of whom perhaps the fathers rather disapprove, grown-up men being kept by their fathers, brothers being kept by their sisters. Can the House not imagine what is happening, the jealousies, the hatreds, the humiliation intensely felt in thousands of ways? All that is the result of the operation of this family test, and that is why we are opposed to it. I wonder there are not more suicides in this country, now that gas is so cheap and convenient.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Mr. D. Grenfell) was much criticised and attacked yesterday for what was called the violence of his language, but no language can be too violent to condemn such a situation, and I should find it difficult not to excuse action, however violent it might be. I am personally a, constitutionalist—at present I am, anyhow. I believe in constitutional action, but if ever there was a situation in this country which justified armed revolt, the system brought about by the means test is such a situation, and the Government may thank themselves that the people of this country are not to-day an armed proletariat as they were in the Middle Ages. If everyone had a rifle in his home, there would be no means test, and perhaps there would be no National Government, especially when we know by whom this test is imposed.

I did not quite agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Gower when he described the kind of people who are behind this means test as being people sitting in clubs and drinking sparkling wines. My experience is that some of the greatest enemies of the working classes of this country are the thin-lipped financiers who drink nothing stronger than water, and if you want an example of that—though it is someone who knows very little about finance—take Lord Snowden, who drinks water and spits poison. It is these financiers to whom the Government surrendered last year and to whom they have been slaves ever since.

When I speak, as I did earlier to-day, of English manhood as being wasted by the operation of the means test, I often get a good deal of sympathetic support from English people, but I do not expect to get any support at all from the dark-complexioned financiers who rule the country to-day, who have dictated this means test and these economies, who do not care about the future of the Anglo-Saxon race at all, but who care for their money power and for their dividends, and who, in order to save those, are quite prepared to doom a whole race to ruin. We see on the Government Bench Members of the Cabinet, men with charming manners and pleasant voices and all the atributes of English country gentlemen, but they too are in the grip of this alien and abhorrent power, this power of international finance which has the whole country in its tentacles; and those tentacles will have to be cut, if necessary by the sword, before England can regain her freedom.

Mr. PIKE

I do not intend to follow up the remarks of the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Cocks), who has just resumed his seat, for fear that I may imagine I am back again in the days of the past. I can assure him that he has not in any way given expression to the thoughts of the people of this country in so far as their attitude even towards the bad side of the administration of the means test is concerned. Had he been expressing it, it is quite possible that we should have met, some time ago, many of the terrible conditions at which he has hinted. I think, nevertheless, that no opportunity should be lost of throwing cold water—nothing is better than cold water to cool down a heated temper—upon what I consider to be the hon. Member's very indirect incitement to civil war and public disturbance. He said that it was lucky indeed for the people of this country that the opening of Parliament, about to take place next week, was not held during the period of the hunger marchers' stay in London. Why did he suggest that? It does not need anything beyond a child's mind to analyse the undoubted incitement at the back of the suggestion, and coming from those benches—we do not expect very much better from them, I will admit—it only adds another warning to the already great overflow of warnings that Members on those benches, individually and collectively, have uttered from time to time.

I want to ask the Minister to regard what I consider to be one of the causes of bad administration in a different light from that in which it has been presented to him by many of the speeches upon this Bill. I have listened to every one of them since yesterday afternoon, and I have not yet heard it suggested to the Minister that one of the troubles under the means test is not the test itself, nor the administration of the test, but the failure of those who administer it to understand thoroughly the mentality of the people to whom they administer it. I do not suggest that those who have to apply the means test are any less intelligent than I am, but it will be recognised in all parts of the House that there is a time in the lives of humble men and women when they may be overcome by the importance of the moment, and I have discovered cases in my own division of people who have gone before public assistance committees, been overcome by the importance or the moment, and been unable to express themselves thoroughly and to make their cases properly understood by the committee. In consequence, the benefit that they should have received has only been given in proportion to the facts that they in their dilemma have placed before the committee.

I will ask the Minister to consider the desirability of issuing some very simple pamphlet containing questions to claimants by the public assistance committees, to be placed in the claimants' hands some days before, in order to give them an opportunity thoroughly to understand the questions and to be prepared to answer them in a manner fitted to the conditions that they desire to place before the committees. During the last seven months I have dealt with over 163 eases of men and women who have been before the public assistance committee, and who have not received what they have considered to be their just measure of benefit. They have come to me and have explained the position thoroughly, and I have asked the committee to reconsider their cases. Because I have had the person quietly in my office, and he or she has spoken to me like an ordinary man or woman in the street and explained the position thoroughly; and I have been able ultimately to put before the committee facts that they in their excitement did not reveal when they themselves were before the committee. The result has been that in 116 out of 134 cases so presented, increased allowances have been granted and definite statements have been made to me that the facts as I had revealed them later were not revealed by the claimants in the first instance. I ask the Minister to consider that point.

Another point that I would like to make, very emphatically, is with regard to the number of cases which we, as Members of this House, receive from our constituents and from outside, containing a whole pack of lies and misrepresentations. People come to you and tell you what their income is, how much this son or that daughter earns, and how much is not going into the house, and when you have the case ultimately put before the authorities, you find that those so-called facts are not true. I would ask the House, individually and collectively, to help the Ministry, the public assistance committees, and the administrators of what one might call a very unpopular piece of legislation, to administer it properly, by bringing to their notice on every possible occasion those people who bother us with misrepresentations and lies. After all, that is a public duty that falls upon our shoulders, and it is one that we should try our utmost to carry out.

Yesterday the senior Member for Dundee (Mr. Dingle Foot), quoted from page 289 of the report of the Royal Commission, as follows: 'One of the normal inducements to earn is the power to spend some part at least of wages in satisfaction of personal inclination.'"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th November, 1932; col. 803, Vol. 270.] 5.30 p.m.

Much more has been said in this House upon that point since yesterday afternoon, but I want to point out an important factor, which a good many Members are either afraid or reluctant to admit. Take a case of a woman and her husband and two sons, who are both working, and the sons are earning, say, 25s. a week. There is a natural desire on the part of those sons to have some pocket money, and no one will induce me to believe that in every instance throughout this country the father or the mother knows what their sons actually earn. There is a certain dishonesty in relating to their parents the facts as to their earnings, because they know, especially in the hard-hit districts, that the more they declare their earnings to be, the greater will be the amount taken from those earnings and so from their weekly personal maintenance. There is a greater tendency perhaps to-day to declare a false figure than to declare the true figure. I am in whole-hearted agreement with some hon. Members of the Opposition when they say that there should be a definite percentage of earnings fixed as required for the "satisfaction of personal inclination." If you fixed a figure of that description, I say that you would have the truth revealed as to the earnings of the sons or daughters in households, when applications for benefit are made to public assistance committees and other bodies. Under the present system we must have what is called the inquisition. If a committee discover that men have told lies about the income going into their houses, where can the truth be discovered except from the information in the hands of employers? It is an inquisition which we as Englishmen probably do not like, but unfortunately, when we are operating public money for the purpose of maintenance, we must have an inquisition of that description so long as there is a temptation to tell lies as to earnings and incomes. I ask the Minister to come at the earliest possible moment to some arrangement as to a percentage of earnings which should be taken first for the satisfaction of the earner's personal requirements and inclinations. We have to remember that no matter what the justification for the provision in regard to savings, there is a tendency on the part of the man who is unemployed to meet his full requirements from savings. If an unemployed man has £300 in the bank, he is not likely, as the report says, to leave his £300 untouched in the bank simply because he is receiving benefit. He will dig into a portion of his savings, and if the figure is to be fixed at £300, some recognition must be made of the possibility of a diminishing return. In one week that £300 may fall to £295, and at the end of the month to £285. If the man is unemployed for six or 12 months, his £300 may very quickly fall, especially if he has children to keep, to £200. It is only fair that that man should have an opportunity of declaring from time to time his actual capital holding.

There is another point which unfortunately this Bill does not meet. A man may have £300 invested as, unfortunately, I have at the moment, in shares which nobody wants, and which are worth on the market no more than 3s. 7½d. each. If a man owns £300 in such shares, is his capital to be regarded as £300, or 300 times 3s. 7½d.? He has £300 on paper, but in actual realisable value he has nothing like that sum. This is a question which is asked throughout the constituencies, and it concerns people with a small amount of savings. Allegations have been made from the other side of the House as to the feelings of ex-service men towards the concession granted in the Bill. As the president of a branch of the British Legion, I say emphatically that ex-service men are thankful beyond expression for the concession addressed a mass meeting of them on Saturday night and placed before them the nature of this Bill. I did not hesitate to say that there must be some pensioners who would not receive benefit through it, but I pointed out, what was true, that it would mean that 85 per cent. of disability pensioners would in future be able to satisfy themselves on the point that none of their pensions would be taken into consideration when their incomes were being assessed under the means test. There are 600,000 disability pensioners in the country. Over 200,000 are on the 8s. level, and 75,000 on the 12s. level. These men are to be put in the position that their pensions will come into consideration for the purposes of assessment.

Mr. BUCHANAN

I am anxious to know how the hon. Gentleman reaches that conclusion. He says that a pensioner with 8s. per week will have none of the pension taken into consideration.

Mr. PIKE

It will, in fact, amount to nothing.

Mr. BUCHANAN

This Bill says that 50 per cent. is to be ignored.

Mr. PIKE

What I mean is that when the 50 per cent. of the total pension received is taken into consideration, it will enable the committees to administer to the limit to these people, whereas if they were in receipt of full pension, and their full pension was taken into consideration, certain deductions from the limit would have to be made. This Bill is therefore a concession to the ex-service men— [Laughter]. Hon. Members can laugh, but it is at least a concession which they never gave, and never even thought of giving, when they spoke so loudly in praise of ex-service men. I have yet to know upon whose authority in any circumstances Members on the other side of the House can claim to speak on behalf of ex-service men. I know of no ex-service men who have given them that authority.

The question of the family income has been forced home from the other side of the House, and it is undoubtedly a problem. I am not so much concerned about the effects of the Measure in splitting up families, as about the fact that the Measure affords a temptation to certain members of the family to leave home in order to get money from the public purse to which they are not entitled. The temptation is the thing that matters. In my district there are young men who have left home, because, while remaining at home, the income of the household was sufficient in the eyes of the public assistance committtee to disentitle the men from benefit. A man, for instance, will leave home and take lodgings with Mrs. Jones or Mrs. Brown at 3s. per week. He has the remainder of his allow0ance left and takes it back to his home. He gives his parents so much of what is left for maintenance, and at the end of the week has pocket money which he would not have had he not left home. There is a temptation to young men and women to leave home as the only means whereby they can take money from the public purse to which they are not legitimately and genuinely entitled. I ask the Minister to look at that point seriously.

The hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. A. Bevan) spoke yesterday of the humbug and cant of Members on this side of the House, and the hon. Member for Dumbarton Burghs (Mr. Kirkwood) said today that all that this party appeared to do was to allow itself to be pulled hither and thither by the party machine. Fancy he of all Members condemning any Members of the House for allowing themselves to be pulled about by the party machine. If Members of the Opposition really believe that there is such a thing as hypocrisy, cant and humbug on this matter, I ask them to remember the position of their own party less than 12 months ago in respect of the means test. The Leader of the party made the definite statement in January, 1930, that it rested with the guardians to decide on the appropriate form of relief, but that in coming to that decision they should be guided by the need of the individual household and not automatically by rule. When the party runs away from principle underlying that policy in a short 11 months for no given reason whatever, it hardly becomes them to accuse anybody of humbug or hypocrisy. A statement by the Leader of the Opposition in November last year has often been repeated, but it is such good capital that it is worth quoting again. Why should the Opposition be allowed to get away from all their responsibility in this matter? During the last two days they have never mentioned their responsibilities. One cannot help at times accusing them of attempting to make political capital at the expense of the poverty-stricken conditions of the people of the country. The Leader of the Opposition stated in the House on the 13th November last year: As to the means test … I am not prepared to give people money year after year without knowing what is their own personal position; that is to say that if a person has gone out of ordinary benefit and has means of his own to maintain himself, I am not prepared to pay, him State money. When that statement has been quoted before, I have heard the right hon. Gentleman ask for his further remarks to be quoted. I will take advantage of his invitation, and I will continue to quote from his statement: If it is said that a person who may have a business or who may have invested money and has an income, is to be maintained for ever after he has run out of benefit for which he has paid, then I do not stand for it and never have stood for it."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th November, 1921; column 446, Vol. 259.]

Lieut.-Colonel WATTS-MORGAN

There is nothing wrong about that.

Mr. PIKE

No, but the right hon. Gentleman is standing for it now, and he is building a wall round the Opposition over which he is making it impossible for any of his followers in the near future to jump if they believe that it is their duty in the interests of the nation to do so. For 71 years the right hon. Gentleman says that he has stood for this principle. He has stood like a rock for it for 71 years, but he has collapsed against a wave of municipal necessity. It was never until the means test was likely to become a factor in the municipal elections which have been just fought that hon. Members on the other side declared their intention to have nothing to do with it. In Sheffield, 10 days before the municipal elections, I challenged the leader of the Socialist party to declare that if he were again returned with his party to the council chamber he would refuse to operate the means test and refuse to elect members of his council to the district committees for the purposes of operating it. I challenged him to reply before polling day, but I got no reply. Why did I make the challenge? For six years the Socialist party has been in power in Sheffield and have operated the Poor Law during that time. For one year they operated the means test. They picked the districts which they as councillors actually represented, and they told the Progressive members that if they wanted to go on the public assistance district committees they would have to go to districts which they did not represent as councillors. When we turned them out this month and reverted to sane government, the Progressive party said to the Socialist councillors who had been administering the means test in their own constituencies, "Now you are going to get a taste of your own medicine. You have got to go on to committees outside the constituency you happen to represent." Perhaps it will interest the House if I quote the exact instruction to them. The leader of the Progressive party said: We feel that it is in the public interest for temptation to be removed from every member of the public assistance committee, any suspicion that might be cast upon them that they were somehow attempting to curry favour by increasing the amount of the relief of certain people in their own wards. We propose that the policy which has been pursued since the Socialists were in power of dispensing relief to their own constituents should definitely stop. What our members have had to do during the time the Socialists have been in power shall be done by all the members of the public assistance committee. What has happened? The Socialists on the committee, so democratic, so faithful to the leadership given to them in this House of Commons have, like a lot of screaming school children, struck en bloc and refused to act as members of the district committees. Running away seems to be a habit! It is not only a national practice, it is developing in the districts. If anything proves the dishonesty of pur- pose of the party opposite it is this action. After all, the cases of these people must be dealt with. The right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down said they were dying of starvation in some cases, starving for the want of nourishment. Will those people who refused to administer that nourishment come along at the next election and claim that they acted in the interests of starving humanity, or for political purposes directed from Eccleston Square or the Front Bench opposite? If they do not, I consider it will be the duty of Members of this House to do it for them.

I suggest in conclusion that hon. Gentlemen opposite are not honest when they say they are not in favour of a means test. I say that they are wilfully misleading the public in this country into the belief that they will not administer a means test. Is there any one of them who is in favour of £11 or £12 a week, or Le, or £5, or £4, or £3 going into some house and nothing going into some other house? Will they say they are in favour of the house into which £10 a week is going not having its position considered, when next door there is a house with nothing, and when both of them are craving to be maintained from the public purse? They know perfectly well that they will administer a means test, and they know—they dare not admit it—that their application of the means test would be so cruel in its effectiveness against those who are worst off in the community as to make it utterly impossible for them in the future ever to have a chance of getting back to administer that test.

I submit very humbly to hon. Members that if they want to do anything by which this Bill can be made of the greatest possible value in eliminating some of the anomalies of the moment in administration, if they want to encourage the Ministry to go forward at the earliest possible moment with a measure that will still further diminish existing anomalies, they should do their utmost in their constituencies to follow Sheffield's example by refusing to be browbeaten by Socialists who go on strike rather than administer poor relief, and who refuse even to consider their objections and administer it in face of those objections. The motto in this matter should be "Follow Sheffield." Then the Minister's Bill will be of great value not only to those immediately affected by it but ultimately for dealing with the great problem with which we are confronted.

Mr. BUCHANAN

I cannot be expected to follow the hon. Member for the Attercliffe Division (Mr. Pike), and nobody in this House would expect from me a defence of the official Opposition; nor, indeed, would anyone expect me to defend the discipline of the Labour party, seeing that I have been, possibly, one of the worst sufferers under it. I would like, however, to say one or two words about two statements which the hon. Member for Attercliffe made. He was the only Member of the House, save one, who urged the Government to be even more reactionary than they are. When he insisted that men should not be allowed to leave their own home, and urged that the liberty of the individual to stay where he liked ought to be curtailed, I felt that he must claim the distinction of wanting to have not only a means test for the family but wanting to curtail the liberty of movement of a man because there were unemployed relatives living in the same house.

Mr. PIKE

I am sure the hon. Member does not want to misrepresent what I said. I admitted that the operation of the Bill did tend to break up the family, as has been alleged, but what interested me was the fact that as the law existed it created a temptation rather than a compulsion.

Mr. BUCHANAN

But the hon. Member said more. He said that a man left home and got public money because he left, and another man did not leave home and therefore did not get public money, and then he said, "Take action." Therefore, it meant obviously that the man who left home was to have his rights and his liberty curtailed.

Mr. PIKE

I meant that the Minister should take action to remove the anomalies of the position. If we are going to punish a man for stopping at home, then the Minister should do something by way of making the position of the two men at least equal.

Mr. BUCHANAN

Let me go over again what the hon. Member said. Suppose there are two sons living at home and one leaves home and gets benefit and one stays at home and does not. He says that some action must be taken to see that the two are treated alike, and I say to him, "Therefore you propose to stop the man who wants to from leaving home." He says: "No, I do not want to do that." What does he intend to do? What he intends is that if a man is unemployed and lives in a home with an unemployed family he is not to be allowed to go out of the home. [Interruption.] Yes, that is what he meant. He said things about the Labour party, but let us go over what he said and what he wants. [Interruption.] Do not try to slip away from what you mean, like the Labour party. What did he say? We all heard it. He said a man got the benefit if he left the home and did not get it if he remained in the home, and. that some action should be taken to stop that man from getting public money. What other means can you take? [Interruption.] I have already given way for one or two questions, and I will give way again, but I want Mr. Speaker to take notice of this. The hon. Member said some action should be taken. What action does he intend should be taken? There are only two kinds of action that you can take. One is to stop the man from leaving, and the other is to give him nothing because he left. [Interruption.] Well, if there is a third, let us have it.

Mr. PIKE

The other is to give equal benefits for stopping or going.

Mr. BUCHANAN

Equal benefits. That means that if he were getting nothing at home he will get nothing if he leaves home. Therefore it means, if you give him nothing, that his right to leave the home and to go to search for work elsewhere would be at once curtailed. After all this twisting and wriggling we have got to this position—that you must curtail the liberty of the man. The hon. Member would not pass a law to prevent the man leaving home, but he would say, "If you leave home you get nothing." That is harsher law than sentencing him to 60 days imprisonment, because you are saying to him, "You will have to starve."

The other point made by the hon. Member which thoroughly amazed me was his constant reference to the people tell- ing lies. I think I can claim justly, and no Conservative on the Treasury Bench will deny it, that I work in my division. I do not say it egotistically, but I claim that I do more work in my division than does any other Member in this House, and not only I, but my wife. It is one of the poorest divisions in Scotland and, indeed, in the whole country. I have never been absent more than 10 days from my division in the 10 years that I have been in Parliament. I go down there night after night. What amazes me is the few lies I am told. I may have been told a lie, but all this talk about the people telling lies is grossly exaggerated. There was another statement made by the hon. Member which I could not understand. He talked about a mother with two sons, each of whom was earning 25s., but who did not tell the mother what they earned. If they are applying for transitional benefit—the mother or any one of them—they have got to tell the mother, and I could not see the point of the hon. Member's remarks. If they do not tell what they earn it will be found out in 10 minutes. The transitional benefit people will find it out from any firm in the country.

6.0 p.m.

Having dealt with those points I come now to the Bill itself. Yesterday there was a great conflict between the hon. Member for the Gower Division (Mr. D. Grenfell) and the Minister of Health. I cannot understand why the Government should have been so indignant at the criticism by the hon. Member for the Gower Division. What does the Bill do? It says in effect that 50 per cent. of an ex-service man's disability pension or of an award made to a workman under the Workmen's Compensation Acts shall be ignored when considering his means. The local authority must not ignore less than 50 per cent., but, equally, they must not ignore more than 50 per cent., taking those people as a class. They must not say that all the people in Glasgow, for example, who have disability pensions and are applying for transitional benefit are to have more than 50 per cent. of their pension ignored. What they can do is to ignore more than 50 per cent. in the case of individual applicants where there are special circumstances arising from illness or any other good reason. They may go beyond the 50 per cent. in the case of individuals, but cannot do it in the case of a whole class of people. I think that is clear. What was the point made by the hon. Member for the Gower Division which caused annoyance? The hon. Member for Gower said, quite rightly, that there are public assistance committees who are granting more than 50 per cent. to applicants as a class, and that for those, who do that, this Bill would therefore make the position infinitely worse. We get to the point where he says—

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