HC Deb 22 February 1935 vol 298 cc738-50

Order for Second Reading read.

1.36 p.m.

The SOLICITOR - GENERAL (Sir Donald Somervell)

I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

I wish to explain that this is a consolidation Bill and a consolidation Bill only. All that it does is to put into one Bill what at present is scattered among a very large number of Acts. That is a procedure which facilitates the task of everyone who has to administer the Act; of those affected by it, and of hon. and right hon. Members of this House who may wish to criticise the existing law. As the House knows, there is a Joint Committee of the two Houses set up which examines these Bills to see that they are consolidation and consolidation only, and that Committee presented its report in respect of this Bill on, I think, the 12th February.

1.37 p.m.

Mr. LANSBURY

We put down a Motion for the rejection of this Bill for two reasons. One was in connection with a legal point which was raised by some of our friends and which we considered of some importance. That point has been discussed with the authorities of the House who deal with these matters, and we have come to the conclusion that there is no reason why I should raise it here this afternoon. But I want to raise another and rather more important point. We are not against the consolidation of the Unemployment Insurance Acts, though we would have preferred that they should have been consolidated in simpler language, if that had been possible, and along the lines suggested by the writer in the "Times" this morning. The legal jargon that is put into Acts of Parliament very often requires legal minds to interpret it, and these Acts dealing with unemployment insurance and the treatment of unemployment generally are even now, in this consolidation Bill, not exactly simple for ordinary people to understand.

I am perfectly aware that it is too much to hope that the legal profession should give up the right to deal with these matters in, shall I say, the un-understandable manner that they do. I remember well that on the first Health Insurance Act, or else it was the first Unemployment Insurance Act, the first thing that the Solicitor-General of that day did was to take a case to the courts to ask what the Act which he had helped to pass really meant. I have great respect for the legal profession, because one of my best friends on this bench is a leading member of the Bar. All the same, I wish it had been possible to simplify the Acts and boil them down still more than they have been, so that ordinary people could have understood them more clearly. I intended to say this and I am fortified in saying it by the letter which, as I say, appears in the "Times" of this morning.

But it is a much more serious matter that we want to raise. There have been two speeches, anyhow one rather notable speech, in this House by an hon. Member who is not here, and therefore I will not mention who it was, in which it was stated categorically that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood) was responsible for the poor law means test because he had introduced it into this House. I asked that hon. Member privately, as I did not want to interrupt him when the speech was being made, what authority there was for that statement, and the authority adduced was the Act which consolidated the poor law. I should not have troubled very much about it, because there are many things connected with the legal procedure of this House of which most of us are quite [ignorant, but the hon. Member who made that speech called in aid another hon. Member, one of the most prominent King's Counsel in this House, who sits on the Government benches. That hon. and learned Gentleman repeated to me the statement and maintained it in face of the fact that I tried to explain what a consolidation Bill of this kind really was. He still maintained that we could, if we had liked, in a consolidating Bill have repealed certain portions of the Acts which were being consolidated. I always understood—and I want the learned Solicitor-General to deal with the point—that when you consolidated Acts of Parliament you were not allowed to repeal portions and you were not allowed to alter them in any way, and I want that to be categorically stated to-day.

I am not going to drag in the King Charles' head of what I may or may not have said on the means test, but there is a matter of honour, if the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Labour will allow me to use that word again, that ought to exist among politicians, especially on a matter of fact and not a matter of opinion. We may, and we do, disagree thoroughly on matters of opinion, but it does seem to me rather dishonourable, to use a very mild expression, that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen should attribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield, when they are speaking in the country, the authorship of the poor law means test. And it was done in this House. I do not think the Minister of Labour was here when I started this speech, but an hon. Member made that statement—

The MINISTER of LABOUR (Mr. Oliver Stanley)

I was not denying it.

Mr. LANSBURY

I feel that that is so politically dishonest a statement that it ought to be cleared up in regard to this Bill, because if that is going to be maintained, then we shall have to fight the Third Reading of this Bill as hard as ever we can, though we know very well that if we rejected this Bill altogether, the Acts would remain just as they are. You would not get rid of them. Until this is passed, the original Acts remain, and it is a fact—at least, we thought it was, and I am asking the learned Solicitor-General to say what is the fact—that the Committee stage of this Bill is a purely formal stage, exactly like that of the Appropriation Bill. We are not in a position to move out clauses or to deal with the various Acts by repealing them, nor can we add to them. I feel very strongly about this matter because of the use that is being made of a perfectly simple constitutional piece of procedure on the part of my right hon. Friend in the Labour Government. I am not sure that we even prepared all that consolidation measure ourselves; I rather fancy it was started when we came into office. However, it was a good thing that the poor law was consolidated. It is now more understandable than it was before, and the present Bill will be of considerable help, even though it is not exactly as one would like to have it, but, so far as these Acts can be consolidated, it is a good Bill under present conditions. If the hon. and learned Gentleman will clear up the point once and for all that he himself in bringing in this Bill is not adding to or taking away, and cannot add to or take away, from the existing law, I shall be obliged. If his answer is as I hope it will be, the Bill can get its Second Reading and the other stages without further opposition.

1.47 p.m.

Mr. TINKER

I have gone through this consolidation measure very carefully because, when I got hold of it during the week, I wondered what was happening. I had not heard of it before, and anything that comes from the House of Lords at once moves me to antagonism. However, on examination I find it puts together the provisions of unemployment legislation and repeals eleven Acts. It also repeals Part I of the Act of 1934. It is a comprehensive measure and will be very helpful to Members. When we are questioned about any particular provision, we shall now find it more easily and shall not have to go through a whole series of Acts in order to find it.

There are things in this Bill, however, which we in this party have fought against all along. Take for example; Clause 22, which lays down the statutory conditions under which a man shall claim his right to benefit. It is the 30-stamps qualification. Everyone knows that we on these benches object to that. In accepting this Measure as a comprehensive measure which, for the moment, cannot be altered, one does not want it to go forward that we are agreeing in principle to any provisions like that. It is easy to urge against us afterwards, when we are declaiming against the Government and urging that people should be entitled to out of work pay without any conditions at all, that on Friday afternoon, the 22nd February, Members of our party agreed to a measure that embraced this particular provision. We find that some hon. Members opposite make use of that kind of argument, and it puts us in a very ill light when we have to explain how it happened and how Parliamentary procedure is run. I feel that I ought not to vote against this Measure in view of the fact that it puts all unemployment legislation in a convenient form, but I want, with my right hon. Friend, to put on record that, in accepting this Bill, we are not agreeing to many of the provisions contained in it.

1.50 p.m.

Mr. MAXTON

I associate myself with the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. Member for Leigh (Mr. Tinker), but I find myself in somewhat stronger opposition to this Bill. Failing some satisfaction from the Government on the difficulties that I feel, I shall be compelled to record a vote against it. Like other parties in the House to-day, my party is just a little short of its ordinary numerical strength, and if the matter went to a Division I do not think I should be in a position to supply the necessary number of Tellers, unless I could count on the kindness of Members of other parties. But that would not preclude me in the absence of some satisfaction from the Government, of recording my opposition to the Measure. My objection is on the ground that has been stated by the right hon. Gentleman, that we have had experience of people being made responsible for the substance of a consolidation Bill. We have been accused of approving all the matters contained in it because, as it was a consolidation Bill, we did not actively dissent from it. The person who introduces that type of argument into parliamentary discussion does a very grave disservice to the House. We cannot allow ourselves to be placed in a position of that sort again. I do not approve of the existing unemployment insurance legislation. I think in practically every particular it is bad, and I certainly cannot allow myself to be put in the position of seeming to approve of it, even in a tentative fashion, to-day.

My bigger objection is this. I cannot imagine a more unsuitable time for bringing forward a Bill to consolidate unemployment insurance legislation. The assumption always underlies a consolidation Bill that you have reached something like stability; that you have got to a stage when the body of law on a particular subject is of such a standard and such general acceptation, that it is now suitable to place it in a more permanent form and to collect all the various instalments and put them into one Act of Parliament, and say, "Here we have a standard work which defines unemployment insurance legislation for at least some considerable time in the future." Does anyone in the House, does the Minister of Labour or the Solicitor-General suggest, after the experience of the last three or four weeks, that unemployment insurance is now on what can be regarded as a permanent level? It was never in a state of greater flux than just now. It is true that the controversies of the last few weeks related more to the operations of the Unemployment Assistance Board than to unemployment insurance, but under the Act which set up that Board we also set up the Statutory Insurance Committee, which in a short time will come forward with proposals for including agricultural workers and others in unemployment insurance, and if those proposals are accepted by the House they will become definitely part of the whole body of unemployment insurance legislation.

Am I to pass a consolidating Measure to-day which will be out of date in a month or so? It is preposterous. Does the Minister think that even the question of the 30 contributions raised by the hon. Member for Leigh (Mr. Tinker) is settled for all time? Does anyone believe that the division of the unemployed into two categories, those who are insured and those who come under public assistance, is accepted by any large section of the community as a permanent arrangement? My hon. Friend the Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan) has already protested against the establishment of a class of "untouchables" to be permanently in a lower caste than the average members of the working class, and that view is very widely held. Does anyone think the mass of the people regard it as a permanent state of affairs that one lot of people should be in unemployment insurance and others out- side? In any case it is singularly inappropriate for this Government in its dying days, to bring forward a consolidating Bill. It is obvious to anyone who is watching public affairs that, whatever leading spokesmen of the Government may say at meetings about going on and on and on, and for a long, long time, it is on its last legs, and that the new Government will take its place. I hope I am not wrong in assuming that whatever Government succeeds it there will be drastic changes in the whole position of unemployment insurance such as will make this consolidating Bill of February, 1935, a back number and of no use for the purpose.

With the hon. Member for Leigh, I like to get my Parliamentary information in the easiest possible form. Perhaps that desire is stronger with me than with the majority of Members. I do not like to have to go messing through ten different volumes to get one piece of information. I wish one could get a little handbook containing the whole law, a Parliamentary encyclopaedia of 100 pages or so. That would suit me, absolutely; but I should want to know when consulting such a volume that I was getting real up-to-date information; and I am sure that this consolidating Bill will not serve the purpose of the hon. Member for Leigh for more than a relatively short time. At one time in my career I endeavoured to study law, and I know how law students always like to get little compendiums like "All about the Criminal Law for 6d." Parliamentarians have a similar desire; but anyone who is preparing to face the House of Commons or a board of examiners wants to be reasonably assured that the little compendium does contain it all. This compendium of unemployment insurance will not contain it all for more than a few months. I have talked about the next Government making sweeping changes, but the present Government, if it continues for a few months more, will be making additions or subtractions from the existing unemployment insurance legislation. For these reasons I propose to enter my opposition to this Second Reading. I have been studying Erskine May about procedure on consolidation Bills, and I agree that the right hon. Gentleman seems to be right in saying that the power of amendment and opposition are very limited. During the week-end, however, I shall engage in a little further study of the question, and reserve the rights of myself and my colleagues to further opposition at other stages; but in the meantime, unless I receive satisfaction from the Solicitor-General, or whoever is to speak for the Government, I enter my opposition at this stage.

2.1 p.m.

Mr. ANNESLEY SOMERVILLE

Hon. and right hon. Members opposite are very much afraid that in consenting to the Second Reading of this Measure they are consenting to the retention of the means test.

Mr. LANSBURY

And many other things.

Mr. SOMERVILLE

And other points. The general opinion is that the party opposite are at any rate equally responsible with the party on this side for the means test.

Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER (Captain Bourne)

On a consolidation Bill we cannot go into the merits or demerits of the Statutes which are already on the Statute Book. I allowed the leader of the Opposition to go on because he raised a perfectly legitimate point, namely, whether by agreeing to a consolidation Bill hon. Members are responsible for its contents; but a consolidation Bill can do nothing except to state the existing law. Whether this Bill were passed or not would not in any way alter the law as regards unemployment insurance, nor alter the existence of the means test or anything else to which hon. Members could object.

Mr. SOMERVILLE

I bow to your ruling, but surely the right hon. Gentleman went a little further than that. However, I leave that point. I would only ask whether the Anomalies Act is not in-chided in this Bill, and for that Act the party opposite is responsible.

2.3 p.m.

Dr. O'DONOVAN

One little touch of human nature makes the whole House kin. That the Eon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton) has suffered under political misrepresentation through supporting consolidation Bills in the past makes us all feel great sympathy towards him, hut there is no Member who has not been subjected to what he regards as political misrepresentation by those who, at political meetings, consider themselves his legitimate critics.

Mr. MAXTON

I make no complaint; I like it.

Dr. O'DONOVAN

It is strange that the hon. Member likes it, but has used up our time on a quiet Friday afternoon on a Consolidation Bill to show us his bleeding heart, and to say that he really cannot have anything to do with a Bill which is subjecting him and his tenderest feelings to the risk of misrepresentation at public meetings. Those of us who have given support to consolidating Bills and other Bills must take the rough with the smooth. If political fortunes can be advanced by misrepresentation, unquestionably political adventurers will take advantage of the opportunity, and it cannot be helped; but I can assure the hon. Member for Bridgeton that he will have the sympathy for which he has appealed in full measure, pressed down and running over. He has referred in his speech to leading politicians and their ways. Unquestionably leading politicians do go on and on when they are referring to consolidating Bills, or any other sort of Bill, at meetings outside this House as well as in here. In certain newspapers with a fair circulation I have seen the hon. Member referred to as a leading politician, and I am certain' that he is a leading case of going on and on and up and up almost without limit. Even in this House we have heard him, with pleasure, go on and on, and we have listened on and on, wondering where he was coming to—

Mr. MAXTON

But I have never gone up and up.

Dr. O'DONOVAN

I accept his interruption. He has gone on and on towards that happy land far far away while we have remained here, on this terrestrial domain. He has said that the world is divided into touchables and untouchables, but there is a certain amount of indecision in his mind as to who should be the untouchables. I understand that under this consolidation Bill you can be untouchable either because you are an insured person out of benefit or because you are suffering from a certain political depravity. I understand that Members who support the Government are, in the minds of many other people, quite untouchable; some of them because of an oppressive Tory type of mind—

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER

I do not think the hon. Member's line of argument has anything to do with the Bill.

Dr. O'DONOVAN

I accept your correction in a filial spirit, Sir, but I have said all that need be said upon that point. In regard to this consolidation measure, I wonder whether the hon. Member for Bridgeton was thoroughly sincere in one reason he gave for opposing the Bill. He said that it represented a state of things that would not last. On the other hand, if he wished to dispose of many Bills to which he has a sincere objection, and if this opportunity were taken to have the whole of those Bills put together into one measure, when that time came, either for advance or retrogression—I do not pre-judge that issue—he would only have to deal with one consolidated Bill, instead of wasting five or six years of his time in government departments making his own consolidated Bill after which he would endeavour to enter upon a new world. One of the beauties of the English people is that they effect improvements without making any show of well doing—

Mr. MAXTON

I am Scottish.

Dr. O'DONOVAN

I am sorry, but I lost that important observation; but it will be recorded in the OFFICIAL REPORT for my instruction to-morrow. I was saying that the English people are a modest folk who do not advertise their well doing. Were we French we would be lost in admiration of, and we would make many references to, the Code Napoleon. We would say "How simple is French law." Every Frenchman who is in trouble turns to the Code Napoleon in order to give instructions to his solicitor, but English law is mostly case law, and we have nothing like the Code Napoleon. Since I have been in this House I have watched English lawyers build up consolidation Bill after consolidation Bill so that uninstructed Members of Parliament could find out where they are, not with the help of sixpenny compendiums, but with the help of consolidation Bills which they can obtain free of charge from the Vote Office. This consolidation Bill on unemployment insurance tells us where we are, and from it we can proceed to better times or we can smash up what exists. Whether hon. Member's approve of unemployment insurance or not, the Bill deserves the support of everybody in the House.

2.9 p.m.

The SOLICTOR-GENERAL

Speaking on behalf of the Government, I am grateful to the leader of the Opposition and other hon. Members who have spoken for the points that have been raised. As I understand your ruling, Sir, there are only two issues which are relevant; one, whether this is an appropriate time for consolidation and the other, raised by the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton), what is involved in moving or accepting a Consolidation Bill. I will take the first point first. I have on previous occasions unsuccessfully tried to put arguments to the hon. Member for Bridgeton, but I am going to try again, and I do not despair. I think that he is wrong in suggesting that consolidation is a process which it is right to go through only when you think the law has reached a position of stability. When you are deciding whether it is right to consolidate you do not look ahead, but backwards. If you find that any branch of the law is in such a tangle of statutes and is spread over a period of years in such a way that unless you are highly skilled in that law it is almost impossible to find out what the law is, you consolidate. It may be a branch of the law which everybody contemplates will be altered and amended year by year, but you consolidate whatever may be the outlook and the expectation as to the future.

The hon. Member entered upon the realm of political prophecy. Let me make a prophecy which is as likely as his to come true, let me assume that next year he finds himself Minister of Labour in a Liberal Government—

Mr. MAXTON

Repeat that outside.

The SOLICITOR-GENERAL

And that he desired to make the sort of changes which he undoubtedly would make in our unemployment law. I am certain that he would find this measure the greatest possible convenience and boon to him. One can imagine a state of affairs, which is not at all unusual, of the Government desiring to change a law which they knew they must consolidate in order get the whole of it into one Act, before being able to go ahead and make their changes.

Mr. MAXTON

If I were introducing legislation and approaching the subject from an entirely new point of view, would it not be sufficient to put a schedule to the Bill saying that all previous legislation was repealed?

The SOLICITOR-GENERAL

My hon. Friend will, I am sure, follow my argument. All I said was that it is not an argument against consolidation that you may later want to amend the law, and that on the other hand the amendment and alteration which you may want to make may well be such that it is inevitable that you should consolidate before you go ahead. I want to make my hon. Friend feel that for once he is on a really bad point. There is no implication, when this or any branch of our law is consolidated, that you have reached stability and any Government would be failing in their obligations if in any branch of our law, they left the law scattered among 10, 12 or perhaps 20 statutes, many of which were amended in part or repealed in part, and which made a jigsaw puzzle which had to be gone through before anybody could arrive at a conclusion as to what the law was. I hope the hon. Member will consider that argument, and will withdraw his opposition on that ground.

So far as the other point is concerned, you, Sir, in your ruling, really stated the position, and I have very little to add to it. I would associate myself with what has been said in different quarters of the House, that it is important that it should be stated in the clearest possible terms that when a consolidation Bill comes before the House the only issue is; Shall the law be consolidated, and that the issue is quite definitely not, Do we all approve of the terms of the laws which are consolidated? It would be most unfortunate if in this very necessary process of consolidation, that were not made as clear as words can make it. What applies to the Bill applies equally to another consolidation which has been referred to as a great piece of work, the consolidation of the public health law which was introduced during the time of the late Government. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood) brought that Bill before the House and said that he was not asking the approval of the House or of his party to the various measures which it contained, but he was only asking the House: Do you agree that this branch of our law should be consolidated? I hope I have made that clear enough, and covered the points he raised, and I trust that my right hon. Friend will now allow the Bill to be read a Second time.

2.15 p.m.

Mr. MACQUISTEN

May I submit that the consolidation of a number of Statutes which are spread over a series of years is very much like making an index of the law?

2.16 p.m.

Mr. THORP

May I ask one question about this Bill? It is primarily a consolidation Bill. As I understand it, it is to repeal certain Acts and re-enact them so that they can all be found in one Act; but in the Schedules one can see that it does not accomplish this very laudable object. It only repeals parts of Acts here and there, and I do think it would be of great assistance to everyone concerned if all the Acts of Parliament, instead of being consolidated in part, could be consolidated in whole.

Question, "That the Bill be read a Second time," put, and agreed to.

Bill committed to a Committee of the Whole House for Monday next.—[Sir G. Penny.]

The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

Whereupon Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question, put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 2.

Adjourned at Eighteen Minutes after Two o'Clock until Monday next, 25th February.