UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFIT. (Hansard, 29 June 1937)

§ Mr. Tinker
I want to take this opportunity of drawing attention to a case which I have mentioned to the Minister of Labour of a man who was unemployed. He had a number of stamps on his card for the previous two years and he was 1927 sent by the Employment Exchange to another class of work. This was sewerage work. There is a sewage scheme under construction where labour was required, and this man was sent. He was told that if he accepted this employment, it would be generally the kind he was used to, it was on the labouring side. He went, and it was drainage work. I am told by the man that the drainage was anywhere from four feet to seven feet in depth on the sewage farm. He was on that job for about 16 weeks, and when he finished he went to claim benefit on the aggregate amount of his stamps, the 28 weeks he had had before and the 16 weeks' work—two years. He was told that the work on which he was employed was a so-called agricultural scheme, and therefore that he could not claim standard benefit because he had not fulfilled the condition as to 30 stamps in the previous two years.
It seems to me to be a very hard case for two reasons. The first is in regard to his being told that he would come under his own class of work, namely, drainage work. He is a labourer, and in that case it might at least be expected that he would come under the general scheme. In the second place, I think that, where a man has a number of stamps for the previous two years, and is sent to another grade of work. some arrangement ought to be made by which the two sets of stamps could be put under one scheme. It seems most unfortunate that a man should be sent to another class of work, and then told that he falls between the two and that neither can count unless he gets 30 stamps in each separately.
I went to the Employment Exchange and interviewed the manager with the man. The manager agreed that there was something in my contention, and said that it would be submitted to the authorities. They declared that the man came under the agricultural scheme. I got in touch with the Minister of Labour, and asked him to examine the case. He confirmed the decision already given, and said that, owing to the Act and to the fact that the work was called agricultural work, the two schemes must be kept separate, and the man could not bring the two sets of stamps together. He also told me, apparently trying to mitigate the position, that the man was now in receipt of public assistance, and was getting 28s. a week, so that that prac- 1928 tically met the position. I have made inquiries of the man, and he tells me that it is not 28s., but 18s. a week that he is getting, whereas under the general scheme he would have got 32s.
It is very hard for a man so situated to be told by the exchange to go to a particular grade of work, and then to find, when he gets there, that he can get no benefit in respect of his stamp qualification unless he is able to continue in that employment until he has got 30 stamps. I thought that this matter ought to be brought to the attention of the House, so that something might be done to meet the grave injustice which it involves. I have brought it forward because I think that, where a man has followed one grade of work and has more than 15 stamps for that grade, and is able to get the balance from the other grade, the two sets of stamps ought to be added together and ought to go to the first grade of work; or, if the first set of stamps is the lesser, to the second grade of work when the balance has been obtained. I want the Minister to give a reply to the House as to whether he can meet the situation, or, if he cannot, as to whether he will take this case back and examine it in the light of the fact that this grade of work comes very near to what I would call the general labourer's class of work. It is drainage work such as the man was doing, and is comparable to the ordinary work under the general scheme.

§ The Minister of Labour (Mr. Ernest Brown)
The hon. Member is most assiduous in taking up difficult cases which come to his notice, and he always puts his case in a very fair way. We have had some correspondence about the matter, as he has told us, and I pointed out in a long letter to him that this is one of the difficulties arising out of the decision made when the scheme for insuring agricultural workers was passed last year. It was not overlooked that one of the hardest of all cases would be the case of where a man worked sometimes in industrial and sometimes in agricultural work, and was not able to qualify under either scheme for benefit. It was realised before the Bill was printed. I would call his attention to the report of the Statutory Committee, Command Paper No. 4786, paragraph 121. There is a very full explanation there of 1929 an attempt to solve the very problem which the hon. Gentleman has raised. In the drafting of the original Bill, there was no more knotty problem than this—how could we get a scheme to insure agricultural workers, while at the same time doing our best to safeguard the case of the man who was sometimes in one employment and sometimes in another? In the paragraph I have mentioned, there is a suggested scheme, put up by the Ministry of Labour. When we went into details we found, as previous Governments had found, that it was impossible to get a scheme to insure agricultural workers on precisely the same basis as industrial workers. We found that it was necessary to have a completely separate scheme for agriculture, and it is because the agricultural scheme is completely separate and the industrial scheme is on a different basis with different rules, that we are unable to do what the hon. Member asks and make the contributions cumulative, one with the other.
First of all, in the industrial scheme there is no ratio rule for the first six months of benefit. The employed person pays his contribution and draws his benefit. Of course, there are hard cases there. There are men who nearly qualify but not quite, and then are out of work and do not draw benefit because they have not qualified. When we came to deal with the agricultural scheme, we found it was impossible to draw up a scheme which would be fair to the agricultural worker. We had to be very careful that the benefits went to genuine agricultural workers. The last thing that the House would want to do, and, I am sure, the last thing that the hon. Member for Leigh (Mr. Tinker) would want to do, would be to have a scheme which would mean a number of people who were not in the normal sense agricultural workers being brought within the ambit of the scheme, with the danger of making it difficult for the agricultural worker to get his full benefit for his contribution. We devised the ratio rule, and that is the fundamental distinction between the industrial scheme and the agricultural scheme. The House also knows that more contributions are paid by the industrial workers than by the agricultural workers, and naturally the benefit is higher, but the structure is quite different. The benefit is drawn strictly according to a ratio of days of unemployment to days of 1930 benefit. When we went into this, it was fully discussed in Standing Committee A and hon. Members who are further interested in this matter owing to the fact that the hon. Member for Leigh has taken the trouble to bring it before the House tonight, will find that the late Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour made a most careful and exhaustive examination of the very kind of difficulty which has actually arisen. My surprise has been, and the surpise of all those connected with the Ministry, is not that this case has arisen, but that we have had so few difficulties after nearly a year's working of the scheme. I can assure the Member that we went into this case most closely and found that the work which the man was then doing was work which could only be classified as agricultural.

§ Mr. Kelly
I understood that it was sewage work—a corporation sewage scheme. That is not agricultural work.

§ Mr. Brown
I understand after my inquiry that the work is agricultural work as classified under the agricultural scheme.

§ Mr. Ellis Smith
It was on a sewage farm.

§ Mr. Brown
That does riot invalidate what I said, that the work is agricultural work; and he was therefore asked to pay a sum under the agricultural scheme. It was unfortunate for him—we are always very sorry when there are these hard cases—that when he fell out of work, he had not in his general account for industrial work enough stamps to qualify for benefit and not enough stamps under the agricultural scheme.

§ Mr. Lawson
Who decides a question like that?

§ Mr. Brown
It is always the responsibility of the Minister of Labour, as the hon. Member well knows from his experience of the Ministry. It is always the duty of the Minister of Labour to decide as to scope, and after careful inquiry, I decided the matter.

§ Mr. Kelly
It is most unjust.

§ Mr. Brown
The hon. Member talks about injustice. It is easy to use a general term of that kind, but he knows that we have tried to frame a great social Measure like this and to give the maximum of benefit to the maximum 1931 number of people. We have solved a problem which was not solved before, with the result that over 600,000 agricultural workers are now insured who were not insured before. These hard cases we regret, but the structure of the Act is such that I cannot give the hon. Member for Leigh the assurance he has asked for.

§ Mr. E. Smith
We cannot discuss the matter further now, but it is a very serious question. Will the right hon. Gentleman be prepared to receive a deputation in order to go into the question?

§ Mr. Brown
I shall be very happy to see any hon. Members about this point or any other cases they may have. We have been very surprised at the Ministry that we have not had more cases. If hon. Members will look at the paragraph they will find that it is foreseen by the Ministry.

§ Mr. Kelly
Not this work.