HC Deb 18 July 1938 vol 338 cc1943-56

11.9 p.m.

Mr. E. Brown

I beg to move: That the draft Unemployment Assistance (Winter Adjustments) Regulations, 1938, dated the second day of June, 1938, made by the Minister of Labour under the Unemployment Assistance Act, 1934, a copy of which was presented to this House on the third day of June, be approved.

I think I shall conform with the wishes of the House if I say only a few words on the proposed new Regulations, to the objects of which I am sure hon. Members in all parts of the House will be sympathetic. Hop. Members will remember that the Board's present Regulations give the Board no specific power to adjust their allowances by reference to winter conditions as such. Last winter, the Board were advised that the concurrence of winter with the rise in the cost of certain commodities enabled the Board to make additions in appropriate cases under their general discretionary powers. The purpose of the new draft Regulations is to enable the Board in future to grant additions to allowances, in appropriate cases, on account of winter conditions as such. The House is entitled to know from me whether I have any idea as to the use which the Board intend to make of this Regulation if the House adopts it. I have been in consultation with the Board on that question. The Regulation it will be seen is expressly framed so as to permit special needs arising out of winter conditions to be dealt with in the light of the circumstances of each individual case. Treatment On an individual basis is necessary because the incidence of winter expenditure differs necessarily for different types of applicants, e.g., on householders and on single persons living as members of households. The Board exercised their general discretionary power last winter in dealing with the facts of each individual case, giving special attention to those applicants upon whom the burden of providing fuel and light fell and in particular to those households which were mainly dependent upon the Board's allowance for support. The Board inform me that, assuming conditions next winter to be similar to those of last winter, it is their intention that the administration of the new Regulation should proceed on the same general lines as were followed last winter. Last winter the weekly cost of the special allowances was £26,000 and, assuming that the general position in future winters remains the same, the cost of the winter additions authorised by the Draft Regulations will probably be between £20,000 and £30,000 per week.

11.13 p.m.

Mr. Lawson

We do not intend to oppose this Regulation, but having heard what the Minister said I am still as puzzled as ever to know why the Board require it for the purpose of granting winter relief. The Board last winter used their discretionary power and from the relevant Sections, of which I have made a careful study, as far as a layman can, it seems to me that the discretion of the Board is over-riding. Those who know anything about the Regulations will know that although they gave certain guidance as to methods of fixing amounts, it was carefully laid down that the discretionary power of the Board was supreme. Those of us who took part in the various stages of the passage of the Measure and who understand something of the spirit in which that legislation was framed, know that emphasis was laid on the discretionary power of the Board, and in the light of that fact and of the law itself I do not understand why the Regulation is necessary. But in case it should be legally necessary, we do not oppose it. There is only one point about it. I do not attempt to put my view against the views of lawyers, but since the Board granted winter allowances for last winter and there was an outcry about taking them off I wonder whether, instead of giving something in this Regulation, it is not rather a limitation of relief, so that the amount granted might come off definitely when the winter is over. I do not know, but I should not like to risk opposing the Motion.

This Regulation is itself a very curious comment upon the whole of this system. I do not understand some of the wise people to whom the right hon. Gentleman referred, even the Archbishop or the newspapers, in their comments upon this system. The more I see of it—and this Regulation is the best illustration of it—the more I am sure that we are getting into a very miasma of pauperism that is not doing our people any good and that ultimately will be seen to be doing no good to the mass of the people. Think of what we are doing. The fixing of the amount that people are to get and the estimating of their needs is almost a Chinese puzzle. There are people in this House who have excelled at it, and if people could become King's Counsellors for knowing something about these Regulations, they would certainly have become King's Counsellors in this matter of relief. Having fixed the amount, there has been a wage stop in the case of men getting too much. Having exercised a wage stop now, for winter purposes, the Board give us this Regulation, which is for the purpose of undoing the evils of the wage stop during winter. It is a system which is equal to the old-time Poor Law before it was somewhat modified by the Labour Administration.

I think this system will not do any good to the country and certainly will not enable us to face the unemployment problem effectively. I think it was 54 per cent. of the people who received certain amounts last winter, and I think the average was about 3s. a week, and 3s. a week in winter will not make a great deal of difference. There were many complaints from Members about people whom they thought were entitled to winter relief but who did not receive it, and I hope that, while this Regulation is in operation during this winter, the Board will at least exercise all the generosity it can in applying it. I must repeat that the more I see of this system, the more certain I am that a mistake was made by this kind of legislation, and this is perhaps the best illustration of it.

11.19 p.m.

Mr. Harold Macmillan

I do not wish to detain the House at this late hour, except to point out that this Regulation which the Minister has moved is rather a sad end to what has been to-day's general Debate on the whole problem of unemployment and unemployment assistance. At the end of this Debate, when the general question of employment on the one hand and the special question of the relief of unemployment on the other hand have been raised, the Government have been pressed by almost every speaker, of every party in the House, to take some specific and immediate action to deal with the grave situation revealed by the report of the Board, we are presented with a Regulation which my right hon. Friend has not explained in any detail, and which appears to me to be self-contradictory and almost meaningless. What is the function and the duty of the Board? It is to relieve the people who are in need. This very regulation says: Without prejudice to the generality of any power of adjustment conferred by the principal Regulations, and so on. As the Board says in its report: We cannot disregard the primary duty of meeting need. That is, need whether in the winter, the summer, the spring or the autumn. There is no legal purpose of this Regulation because every power exists under the present Statute which we passed two years ago—at least it was what we thought we passed. It is the duty of the Board to relate assistance to the need of every household and to see that the standards of nutrition and health are properly met. This duty is as great in any period of the year. At the end of two days' Debate in which the Government were pressed by hon. Gentlemen representing the most loyal elements of the Conservative party and the biggest majority in the party, no reply of any sort was given by the right hon. Gentleman except by way of vague generalities which we hear day after day. Sooner or later, if this House does not rebel, the country will rebel against the treatment it receives from the present Administration. We have empty benches when the condition of the people is being discussed, but full benches when we are discussing rearmament and the pouring out of public money without regard to dividends, profits or price. When a paltry few millions are asked for to relieve and to bring up to a decent standard the conditions of the poor, not one Minister is present except the Minister of Labour himself, and the Junior Lords of the Treasury, who occasionally give us the favour of their appearance, and also the Prime Minister for a short time.

If this Regulation has any legal meaning, which I very much doubt, let the House pass it, but it is the duty of the Board, whether the Regulation is passed or not, to meet the needs for assistance of the applicants who come before it. With all credit the Board says in its report that it is unable to meet these two conflicting duties—to pay a sum of money in assistance which it knows is necessary from the point of view of the health and proper treatment of the people; and not to infringe in any way upon the wage system. The Board has made a magnificent effort—and we have every sympathy with it—in the difficult and self-contradictory task which has been imposed upon it by Parliament to do its best in these circumstances. Parliament, session after session, refuses to face this issue.

I cannot blame the Minister, because these questions raise wider issues than he can deal with administratively. With all respect, he is a junior member of the Cabinet. These are great Government questions and he cannot deal with them; he has not got the support of his colleagues even to the extent of attending any of these Debates. Day after day we have these discussions, and not a thing is done, not a step is taken. Sooner or later something will have to be done. The united opinion of all impartial experts has condemned the standards laid down by the Board. All who have studied nutrition and health know that these scales are insufficient to maintain decent life, the Board themselves say so, yet we are asked to make as our single contribution to this problem, after four years, the passing of a Regulation. As a pious hope we welcome it, but I think that it gives no additional benefits beyond those which it is the duty of the Board to give. It makes a farce of Debate if this is the only expression of public and Government policy that we are to be allowed after all these months and years of public discussion.

11.27 p.m.

Mr. Dingle Foot

I certainly agree with the general sentiments of the hon. Member for Stockton-on-Tees (Mr. Harold Macmillan), but I differ from him on his interpretation of the Board's powers. It seems to me that there can be no doubt that this Regulation is necessary if the Board is to grant this additional relief, and I found it difficult to understand why we did not have such a Regulation last autumn when the Board's circular was issued. It was the view of a number of hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan), that the action of the Board in sending out the circular about additional relief last autumn was action of very doubtful legality. The hon. Member spoke as if the Board had general discretion to relieve distress according to its own ideas. Anyone who studies the Regulations closely must see that they have no such discretion. In the Regulations a definite scale of relief is laid down. It may be varied between one district and another, according to differences of rent, and so forth, but, allowing for these regional variations, there is a definite scale of payments.

Over and above that the officers of the Board are given a discretion to make additions or reductions in special cases, but I think that no one who reads the Regulations can doubt that "special cases" mean special to the individual household. What the Board did last autumn was to send out a circular advising—in fact instructing—their officers to give additional assistance on the ground of the coming of winter and the increased cost of living. An hon. Member reminds me that they defined the special cases. They said that in cases where the income from the Board, that is, the unemployment allowance, comprised 50 per cent. of the total household income the additional 2s. or 3s. a week should be given. That, it appeared to me, was stretching their powers rather further than they were ever intended to go, because the coming of winter and the increased cost of living could not be special circumstances in the sense of being special to the individual household, seeing that it would apply to every household in the same way. They were doing something which did not affect a few households but many thousands of households. Therefore, it would have been very much better if an additional Regulation had been introduced last autumn, instead of the Board stretching its discretionary power as it did.

I do not think that either of the hon. Gentlemen has referred to the actual wording of the Regulation, which is much too general in its terms. We do not know what is going to be done for the people who will be affected by the onset of winter. What increase are they to have? Last year the Board sent out a circular visualising an increase of from 2S. to 3s. per week, in the category of cases to which I have referred. Is that sort of increase visualised for next winter? That is a matter on which we ought to have some kind of direction. Is it intended that the Board shall send out a further circular next autumn giving a similar instruction, again specifying particular types of case which are to get this additional relief and other types which are not to get it, and expanding this Regulation which will have been passed by this House? Is it intended that the Board shall again use its powers in this way? It would have been very much better to have had a more detailed and specific Regulation brought before the House so that we might have some idea, that we cannot gather from this Regulation, as to the exact effect which it will have upon households which come under the Board.

A further point to which I should be grateful if the right hon. Gentleman would give me answer is that when the Board sent out a circular last autumn it advised its officers to give additional relief in certain cases on two grounds, first of which was the onset of winter and the second, increase in the cost of living. In this Regulation, we have the winter referred to, but there is nothing about the cost of living. It may be that when we come to the winter months we shall again have the two circumstances coming together. Suppose we again find that there has been a sharp increase in the prices of commodities, and that that increase in the cost of living is bringing hardship, as it did last winter, to the households that come under the Board, and yet this Regulation has been passed instructing the Board to give their relief only on this one ground. Does the Minister take the view that it will be within the province of the Board also to take into account the increase in the cost of living as another ground? It may very well be argued that by passing this Regulation referring simply to the oncoming of winter we are excluding other possible grounds for relief on a large scale to a large number of households, but we may find that as a result of passing this Regulation we are not extending but are fettering the discretion which the Board has exercised in the past. We ought to have a word from the Minister on this point.

11.34 p.m.

Mr. Stephen

I agree with the hon. Member that we ought to have a definite statement from the Minister. The Regulation may have a limiting effect. I notice that it, states in the beginning of paragraph 2: Without prejudice to the generality of any power of adjustment conferred by the principal Regulations. I interpret that to mean that there has not to be read into the second part of the Regulation any limitation such as suggested by the hon. Gentleman who preceded me. The hon. Member also made the point that the Minister did not give us any information with regard to the operation of this new Regulation. I think the right hon. Gentleman felt that the hon. Member was being scarcely fair to him on that point, because I take it that his statement that the Board are going to proceed on precisely the same lines this year as they did last year covers the point. If that be so, the statement that we have simply amounts to this, that evidently in the mind of the Board last year there was a certain amount of doubt as to the legality of the action they took on the previous Regulation, and they are now putting beyond doubt their power to do what they did last year, in case, for example, it might be challenged by the Treasury. It was not challenged, but it might have been, and they are putting it beyond peradventure that they have the power to do this.

If that be so, I suggest to the Minister that something much more is necessary. Surely the Board should be in a position this year to improve on what they did last year. Are they so absolutely satisfied with what they did last year that they cannot do more than repeat exactly what they did then? I take it from the Minister's statement that they cannot vary in any degree, because he says they are going to do precisely the same as they did last year.

Mr. E. Brown

Broadly.

Mr. Stephen

I will say nothing about that word "broadly," because I hope that the Minister will be able to indicate to us to-night a definite date when the winter relief is to come into operation. I hope that it will come into operation earlier than it did last year, and that there will not be so much doubt and hesitation about it, but that the Board will lay their plans now, so that they may be in a position to give this special allowance at the beginning of the winter, and so that the unemployed may know exactly where they stand.

I am very disappointed that the Board have not come to the conclusion that the regulations should have been wider, and have not sought power to give more substantial relief than the 2s. or 3s. which they gave last year—no more than one bag of coal for a family, in spite of the rigour of winter time. I hope the Minister will indicate that the Board will be asked to take into consideration this year the inadequacy of the amount that was given last year, and the fact that there were many cases where no winter relief was given at all. It should be made plain, that every one of these people drawing an allowance should, when the winter comes, be given an additional allowance. The regulation says: Where special need due to winter conditions exists. The hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Foot) sought to draw an analogy with regard to the meaning of these words and whether the Board really acted within their powers last year. He said they were bound by the previous regulations, and could only deal with particular cases on their merits with regard to winter relief. But, as I understand, that is exactly What they did last winter. There were many thousands of people refused winter relief. Winter relief should be general; there should not be special cases. I am very disappointed that the Minister, in consultation with the Board, did not go into this subject much more widely. This House passed legislation with regard to physical fitness, and a great deal is being spent on people lecturing all over the country, telling the poor people how to keep fit. I wish the Minister had not only thought of winter relief, but of holidays as well. There is all this talk of holidays with pay at present, and there are all these people on unemployment assistance who are unable to get a change of air because of the miserable income going into their homes. The Minister should draw the Board's attention to the special need of those under the administration of the Board with regard to holiday allowances, as well as winter allowances. This Regulation makes it all the more plain that the whole administration by this Board is wrong. It would be far better if the thing were being done by the Ministry of Labour itself. There would be a great saving on administration, and this could go to the unemployed. The Minister should make it plain in his reply to-night that people on standard benefit will be entitled to winter allowances, as a supplement, and that the Regulation will not apply only to those ordinarily in receipt of unemployment assistance; and also that it will be on a much more generous scale than a miserable 2s. or 3s. a week.

11.43 p.m.

Mr. J. Griffiths

I think it necessary to commend to the Government's attention the speech of the hon. Member for Stockton-on-Tees (Mr. Harold Macmillan). All hon. Members who have had experience of what the people are thinking know that the sentiments he has expressed as to the complacency of the Government about this growing problem are shared by the people of this country. This may be the last opportunity we shall have before the Board receives its authority and begins to operate, to ask one or two questions. Can the Minister tell us what is the precise meaning to be attached to the words "winter conditions"? The words are used in such a way that it is not the onset of winter that is the deciding factor, but the onset of winter conditions. Who is to define winter conditions? Is it the Board or some other authority? Does this term apply to a period? Does it begin in September, October or November? Does it end in March, April, or when?

Mr. Buchanan

In Scotland it never ends.

Mr. Griffiths

I will say, in reply to the hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan), that for the unemployed it is always winter, in Scotland and in South Wales. We are giving the Board this power, and we have the right to ask for something much more specific than the Minister has given us already. When will the Board begin paying these winter allowances? Is it to be determined by the actual meteorological conditions or is it to be a definite period? We are entitled to ask that question, and I hope that we shall get a reply. What is meant by winter conditions? Will the officers of the Board be authorised to make extra allowances to every applicant, including single men? Will they exercise an authority, which, we understand, they had no legal right to exercise last winter? As far as I know—and the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—no extra allowance was given on account of the increased cost of living, or of the onset of winter conditions, or a combination of both conditions, to unmarried applicants. Why not? Although the test is said to be one of need, have the Board already absolutely made up their minds that the onset of winter conditions creates no greater need among applicants who are single? What about lodgers who get 15s. a week? Will they be entitled to make an application because on the onset of winter they need more and thicker clothes, better boots and the warmth of a fire, all of which require the expenditure of more money? Will every applicant, whether single or married, whether a householder or living as a member of a household, be enabled to make an application, and will it be considered.

We are entitled to press for answers to these questions at this stage. If a man makes an application for this allowance, will the board allow the area officers discretion without a maximum sum being fixed by the board? Will the applicant who is refused the allowance have the right to appeal to a tribunal? I hope that the Minister will reply to these questions, as they are sure to arise during the administration of these allowances in the coming winter?

11.49 p.m.

Mr. E. Brown

In answer to the questions that have been raised, I would say, first of all, that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Dundee (Mr. Foot) has put the position in a sentence. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Stockton-on-Tees (Mr. Harold Macmillan) said that there was necessity for this because, as the hon. Member for Dundee said, there was a doubt. We are advised that it was not legally sure that the board were entitled to make a special grant. Last winter the board were advised there were what have been described to-night as special circumstances. With regard to the procedure, it will be as last year. The hon. Member for Dundee asked whether a circular would be issued; a circular will be issued giving directions to area officers. In answer to the hon. Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths), the limitation in practice was, I believe, 4s. od. The actual instruction that the board have in mind will depend upon the conditions that prevail when the operation of the Regulation is envisaged.

Mr. Foot

Last year in the autumn a definite demarcation was drawn dividing one class of applicant from another. The direction that was given in the Circular was that in cases where 50 per cent. or more of the total household income was represented by allowances from the board, additional relief should be given, and that in the other cases it should not. Is it the intention of the board to draw that line of demarcation again?

Mr. Brown

That is so. I thought I had made that point quite clear in my original statement. Broadly, the same procedure will be adopted, but if I had brought down to-night what has been asked for to-night hon. Gentlemen would have asked for more. My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton-on-Tees may speak of my "miserable millions," but I am responsible in this House for the administration of relief to the unemployed, and in my three years I have spent annually about £70,000,000 or £80,000,000. I know that when he speaks in that way it is rhetorically, but I would remind him that we do more for the unemployed than any country in the world. This relief last year began at the beginning of November and ended in April; I should say that that would be the procedure for next year. May I point out something that is new in the history of able-bodied relief in this country? Certain authorities have given winter relief. Nineteen of the larger authorities gave it as well as a number of smaller ones. Last winter the Board decided that in the exercise of its duty it was desirable to give the winter allowances that were discussed in the House. There was a doubt. What we ask the House to do now, for the first time, is to agree that there shall be winter allowances in special circumstances.

Mr. J. Griffiths

Is any applicant, single or married, to be entitled?

Mr. Brown

If the hon. Member will look at the report, page 23, he will see that point made clear.

Mr. Lawson

I take it that the right hon. Gentleman means that the additions set forth in page 23 are simply to be repeated?

Mr. Brown

Broadly, yes. I tried to make that clear.

Resolved, That the draft Unemployment Assistance (Winter Adjustments) Regulations, 1938, dated the second day of June, 1938, made by the Minister of Labour under the Unemployment Assistance Act, 1934, a copy of which was presented to this House on the third day of June, be approved.

The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

It being after Half-past Eleven of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at Three Minutes before Twelve o'Clock.