CLASS V. (Hansard, 10 July 1933)

Captain CROOKSHANK
There are a few observations I should like to make. I purposely did not attempt to make them on the Committee stage of the Resolution because the Debate dealt entirely with the substance of the Estimate. To-night I really feel that once again a protest must be entered against the methods of the Government in introducing Estimates of this kind. The main Estimate for the year of the Ministry of Health has not yet been passed, and now we are asked to find this vast Supplementary Estimate which, on the paper on which it is printed, definitely says that it is an extra statutory grant. There have been protests made year after year in this House against the growing practice of extra statutory grants. The House of Commons is very careful of its financial procedure arid properly asks that when Bills are introduced which involve cost there shall be Money Resolutions and Bills founded upon them. In this case there will be no statutory authority except the Appropriation Act of the year, which is sufficient for the time being. The difficulty and objection there is in regard to this Vote of 2500,000 for these two Services combined is that there are no conditions under the con- 895 trol of this House as to how the money is to be spent. All that the White Paper tells us is that the grant is to be distributed: subject to such conditions as the Minister of Health, with the approval of the Treasury, may determine. It is a very large order for any Government to ask this House to place £500,000 at the disposal of the Minister of Health, with Treasury sanction, for this purpose, particularly, if I may say so with all respect in this case, because less than six months ago the Minister intended to spend less money on this Service, and to raise it in a different manner. We have since heard from him, in the speech he made the other night, that it is to be a question of distribution to areas whose poor rate is over 2s., and that there is to be some question of proportion as between different areas; but there is no Act of Parliament dealing with it, and nothing except his remarks in Committee on the subject. The House ought to be more careful than it appears to be on this occasion—the Opposition have not mentioned it, although it is supposed to be their business to guard the public purse in matters of this kind—before these very large powers are given to a Department.
The Minister tells us that the first distribution is to take place some time in September, but he may between now and September entirely dhange his mind as to the areas to receive the grants or as to the way in which they are to be distributed, and by getting some sort of agreement with the local authorities, with Treasury concurrence, he may distribute the £500,000 without this; House having a single say in the matter. That is wrong. I do not say that of my own authority but on the authority of those whose business it is to watch these matters and who have said it for years. We have many examples to-day of grants of this kind. We find the Minister of Labour paying out, without statutory authority, money for the re-settlement of the unemployed and the training of the unemployed. We find grants being paid without statutory authority to keep the police of the country going. For three years they have been getting grants from a central fund without statutory authority. Every time that an occasion of this sort comes along if no one else makes a protest I intend to 896 do so, because I am satisfied that it is a wrong method of proceeding and quite contrary to the rules of the House as laid down in the past.

§ Mr. HERBERT WILLIAMS
I rise to support my hon. and gallant Friend in what he has said. When the Minister of Health made an announcement of what he intended to do, I think I was the first speaker but one after him, and as one of those representing what I described as a paying area, I criticised the proposal. I think it is very dangerous that we should be making these grants. Many of the local authorities who are in need of the grants have been incurably extravagant. On that occasion I gave a number of examples in adjoining areas in proof of my statement. The point we are discussing to-night is whether we shall add to the grants we are making to local authorities without having submitted to Parliament the precise details of the scheme in a Bill which we should have a chance of discussing and, if necessary, amending. It is not desirable that public money should be spent in this way. One of the reasons which this country has suffered from excessive unemployment is the careless expenditure of public money and the House is under a debt of gratitude to the hon. and gallant Member for having once more objected on constitutional grounds against this form of public expenditure.

§ Mr. ALBERY
I only rise because I am surprised that the Minister of Health has not got up to reply.

HON. MEMBERS
He did.

§ The MINISTER of HEALTH (Sir Hilton Young)
I rose to reply but gave way as the hon. Member was on his feet. If he does not desire to continue, let me say that I welcome an opportunity of dealing with a criticism which I entirely appreciate. The hon. and gallant Member for Gainsborough (Captain Crook-shank), and the hon. Member for South Croydon (Mr. H. Williams) first of all, objected to this proposal on its merits; that this expenditure was not necessary. That point was dealt with fully in a previous Debate and therefore, the House will not expect me to repeat my general arguments on the merits. It was fully established that an additional contribu 897 tion of some sort was necessary in the case of certain particularly distressed areas in order to see them through the difficulties of the present year, owing to the large increase of the outlay on Poor Law relief.
Let me turn to a, question upon which I welcome an opportunity of giving an explanation, and that is the question of the regularity of these proceedings. On. this I am confident that I shall be able completely to satisfy the House. The principle of this matter has been extremely well put, if I may say so without assumption, in the last report of the Select Committee on Public Accounts, published in June of this year. I will read the relevant passage, because I feel that it will put hon. Members in possession of the principle which ought to govern matters of this sort. The words are these: The committee of 1932 also expressed the opinion, as a matter of general principle, that, where it is desired that continuing functions should be exercised by a Government Department, particularly where such functions may involve financial liabilities extending beyond a given financial year, it is proper, subject to certain recognised exceptions, that the powers and duties to be exercised should be defined by specific statute. Your Committee are assured by the Treasury that they agree that practice should normally accord with this view, and will continue to aim at the observance of this principle. The House will observe that we are dealing with a case which does not fall within that principle. We are dealing here with expenditure which is not concerned with "continuing functions," and which will not last beyond the present financial year. We are dealing here with a special emergency expenditure applied to this year only. In these conditions, I say as a student of these questions and of the financial procedure of the House in past years, and as, I hope, a faithful guardian of them, that there is nothing which is not in accordance with the strictest precedent in the procedure followed on this occasion. The only case in which it would be improper to proceed by Estimate, and in which a Bill would be the proper procedure, is where there was anything in the proposal made which was contrary, directly or by implication, to the provisions of any other Statute. If you are doing anything which is contrary to the provisions of any other Statute, then undoubtedly 898 it might be wrong merely to proceed by Estimate, even though the Estimate may be subsequently approved by the Appropriation Act, because, although it may be absolutely necessary to override one Statute by another, yet it is contrary to the right procedure of this House to do so by Estimate. But this case does not fall within that rule either. Here we are doing nothing which overrides or is in any way contrary to any other Statute. In these circumstances I can assure the House that we are following strict practice and also acting in accordance with the sound principle of financial control by this House when we proceed by the method of Estimate confirmed by the Appropriation Act. The very purpose of the Estimate is to secure an opportunity to the House of asking the Minister, myself in this case, what the proposals for the expenditure of the money are to be and to extract from him a. statement of what the procedure will be for the expenditure of the money. That has been taken full advantage of in the present case.
There is nothing at all illegal in the cases to which the hon. and gallant Member for Gainsborough (Captain Crook-shank) referred in the action of the Minister of Labour or any other Minister. If we were to argue those cases—I cannot do so now—we should find that they were in accord with the principles which I have extracted from the proceedings of the Public Accounts Committee. In those circumstances I believe the House will be satisfied that this procedure is entirely regular, and I hope we may now have the Vote.

§ Mr. HARCOURT JOHNSTONE
I make no apology for intervening, not on the point of legality or order but in the form of an interrogatory to the Minister on the point of how this money is to be expended. I appeal to him to expend it on a slightly different basis from that which I understand is the plan and policy. Unless I am misinformed, this money is to be expended in assisting distressed areas, which are to be defined by the Ministry as areas where the expenditure on the out-relief of the able-bodied poor exceeds an annual rate of 2s. in the £. I am speaking on behalf of one of the most distressed boroughs in the kingdom. South Shields has a population of ap- 899 proximately 113,000, and 14,000 unemployed, equivalent to 50 per cent. of its employable population. Owing to various causes that figure is immensely high, and is likely to remain high, but, in spite of that, the actual amount expended on out-relief only comes to exactly 2s. in the £ as a rate. It does in fact comes to 2s. but I am informed that unless it is 2s. ld. it does not count as being in excess of 2s.
The fact that the rate is not greater is due to this: The corporation, very rightly and wisely, has determined upon an increasing allocation of money from the rates towards finding, not relief but employment for the unemployed. It has a programme amounting in this year to an expenditure of £14,000 upon public works of the sort which we know the Ministry encourage local authorities to undertake. The amount included in that £14,000 for wages is approximately £10,000, and it may be said without exaggeration that at least that. amount would have had to be expended upon out-relief had it not been devoted to this excellent programme of public works. That would have amounted to a rate of not less than 5id. in the £, bringing the rate charged in the borough for out-relief up to 2s. 6d. in the £. That would have qualified the borough for the receipt of some of this money.
I ask the Minister to reconsider his policy in this respect. It must be to his advantage, and to the advantage of the country, to encourage local authorities to spend this money as far as possible upon employment, and not upon unemployment.
900 The more he can induce local authorities to do so, the better for him and for the country. It would be ridiculous if a local authority, which took no trouble to prepare or carry out such schemes, were able to draw this money from the Exchequer, while a local authority which exercised better administration in regard to unemployment and made better use of the money drawn from the rates, were disabled by that very fact, from drawing their share of the money allocated by Parliament for the relief of distressed areas. I hope the Minister or the Parliamentary Secretary, either now or at some future stage, will be able to give an assurance that this matter will be taken into account by the Ministry in considering milat constitutes a distressed area.