§ 8.39 p.m.
§ Mr. E. BROWNI beg to move, in page 11, line 19, at the end, to insert:
'Private gardener' means a person employed in horticulture otherwise than in any trade or business carried on for the purposes of gain, not being a person so employed by a public or local authority, or a society, institution, association, club, or company (whether incorporated or not).I move this Amendment in conjunction with an Amendment in the First Schedule, on page 12, line 11, to leave out from "gardener" to the end of the paragraph. Both go together, and they are drafting Amendments. The House 974 will remember that in Committee we inserted a Clause to deal with private gardeners and made it mandatory upon the Minister to put the questions at issue before the Statutory Committee, giving him power, if they recommended that gardeners should be brought within the scheme, to do it by Order. It is necessary from the passing of that Clause to make these Amendments.
§ Sir F. ACLANDThe right hon. Gentleman entirely failed to answer a question that I put to him a few minutes ago about 26 and 21, but this is an easier one. Is it simply the substitution of 975 defining a gardener for defining gardening, the occupation? Is there no other modification than that of defining the man instead of the occupation?
§ 8.41 p.m.
§ Mr. TURTONI have an Amendment down to the Schedule dealing with this question which raises the question of the words "or company." As the Minister is aware, many private owners have turned their estates into companies, and this Amendment will mean that where a private estate is a company and employs a gardener, he will pay contributions, and the gardener when out of employment from that estate will get benefit. Yet where an owner has not turned his estate into a company, he will not be able to get his gardener into the unemployment insurance scheme. I believe that the unemployment insurance for a gardener is a benefit both to the gardener and to the employer, and it seems very hard that by the terms of this definition we shall be helping the man who has turned his estate into a company and hindering the man who has not done so.
I never like a definition that tells you, not what a thing is, but what it is not. Here you have a form of words which says that a private gardener is not a great many things. It would be far better if you could draft a form of words stating what a private gardener is. Apart from the question of the estate company, it is unfortunate that the people who will be brought under the Bill now are the very people who, earlier in the Debate, speakers from all sides of the House said should not be brought into this scheme, namely, the public park employés. This is not the type of man that one wants in an agricultural unemployment insurance scheme. If it was in order or possible, he ought to be dealt with by another insurance scheme, but that is beside the point. What we ought to say is that he is not more deserving of being brought into this special agricultural scheme than the man who is employed in private service as a gardener, and I would ask the Minister to think again about this definition. I am very glad that he has taken the proper course, as I thought it, of having a definition of a private gardener in Clause 15, instead of merely stating in Clause 13 that he was doing certain things for the 976 private gardener, without defining it, but this definition is not satisfactory, and I hope that the Minister will, before the Bill leaves this House, give us an assurance that this question will be duly considered in another place and that, if necessary, the definition will be altered.
§ 8.44 p.m.
§ Mr. E. BROWNIn reply to the right hon. Member for North Cornwall (Sir F. Acland), the definition in the Schedule was to apply to gardeners, not to gardening, and it will remain a definition of a private gardener. I would only add that it is as it was in the First Schedule, with the one exception that we have taken the opportunity, in transferring the definition, to make it clear that the word "institution" includes clubs and associations. That is the only alteration in transferring it from the Schedule to the Clause. With regard to the point put by the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton), it is a difficult point, and I cannot say any more now than that I will look carefully into it before the Bill reaches another place.
Amendment agreed to.