UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE (EMERGENCY POWERS) BILL. (Hansard, 5 September 1939)

§ Mr. Ellis Smith
My right hon. and hon. Friends did not oppose the Second Reading of this Bill, but it is necessary, in view of our experiences in the past, that we should get some assurance upon what is contained in Clause 1. The Clause gives very wide powers to the Minister. I will mention two points in order that the concrete cases which I propose to give and my anxiety about them will be understood. The Clause states that the Minister of Labour is to have power to make regulations adapting the statutory system of unemployment to war-time conditions. It may be said that, with the Minister who is in office at the present time, it could be safely left to him, but some of us have heard that statement made at various conferences held throughout the country, and although many people had confidence in the 467 Minister at that time my confidence was not as great. I indicated it at those conferences and events later proved that my suspicions were right. The same thing may happen again and I will give two or three concrete illustrations to explain why we feel anxiety and want assurances upon various points before we part with this Clause.
Hon. Members on this side will remember that between 1912 and 1921 the number of contributors to National Unemployment Insurance was very restricted. Men in the trade with which I am particularly familiar paid in regularly from 1912 to 1920 without losing a week's work and having to ask for benefits. After the last war millions of additional people were brought into the insurance system, and that restricted number of contributors had to bear the financial obligations which followed, whereas it is our contention that those obligations ought to have been spread over the whole of the State. What I am going to ask is that when the war terminates the National Insurance Fund shall not, as on the last occasion, have to accept the obligations which arose when the men came home after being demobilised. They were given a month's payment and in many cases it was a charge upon the Insurance Fund. The result was—and this is the seriousness of the matter—that, as I am convinced, the benefits of the restricted number of insured contributors who had been paying in from 1912 to 1920 were affected. They had to shoulder the burden of the serious state of affairs which existed after the last War, whereas it should have been a charge upon the whole of the State. My first point is that the Minister ought to give us an undertaking that if we are again faced with a similar set of circumstances the Fund shall not have to bear the cost, but that it shall become a responsibility of the Exchequer—that the maximum amount of benefit shall be paid and that it shall be a State charge, irrespective of the Fund.
The next point upon which I want an assurance concerns elderly men. Some of my hon. Friends and I are associated with a number of elderly men who have been skilled in their particular trades but, owing to becoming affected physically— through worsening eyesight, for example 468 have not been able to hold their own under modern conditions, with its piecework systems and the like. Those men have had their confidence undermined and have not been able to hold their own in industry. At the same time we find that trainees are being brought into industry from Government factories. I am the first to admit that under the conditions we are now living in we want the maximum effort from everybody, but we also want to give encouragement to these elderly men. They ought not to have to go to Employment Exchanges or to sit at home week after week while these young men are going into their industry from the training schools. I ask an assurance from the Minister that men who have been skilled in a particular trade shall be given a chance. I have in mind a driller. His employers admit that before his eyesight started to decline he was a tip-top workman. He ought to be found some less skilled work in his industry, or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dumbarton (Mr. Kirkwood) suggests, be employed upon some less accurate work. These elderly men ought now to have an opportunity of serving in any capacity in which they can be of use.
There is another point which I consider very important. In war time the tendency will be to say of workpeople," Oh, they ought to be working; they ought to get a job." It is all right for those who have never been in the position in which some workpeople find themselves to talk like that. Already the pottery industry, parts of the cotton industry and one or two other sections of industry are seriously affected by wartime conditions. The people in those industries are as patriotic as any other section of the community, and when they find themselves unemployed owing to war conditions they ought not to be taunted by people who do not know their circumstances if they do not get another job. I can see danger in this Bill unless we have safeguards for their benefits and conditions, because of the atmosphere that can be created, as we saw in the case of the Anomalies Act. Therefore I want an assurance that if workpeople find themselves unemployed through circumstances over which they have no control, that their conditions and benefits—I realise that benefits are not dealt with 469 under the Bill but their conditions—will not be adversely affected by the Bill.

§ The Chairman
I must call the hon. Member's attention to something which he himself said just now. Some part of the subject with which he has been dealing does not come under this Bill at all.

§ Mr. Smith
I would like to explain that Clause I deals with a variety of questions, and I have had to be very careful to keep within the bounds of order, but it is provided that the Minister may issue regulations, and what I ask is that before he does so he should bear in mind what I have said.

§ The Chairman
I am not complaining of the hon. Member, but I was bound to take notice of his remarks, because I may have to stop later speakers.

§ The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour (Mr. Lennox-Boyd)
I think I can set at rest very speedily the fears of the hon. Member with regard to any possible change of Minister in the future. As he knows, the rates of benefit and certain other provisions of the principal Act cannot be adjusted without recourse to Parliament. In regard to the period of benefit the intention would be to make only those adjustments and no more which were rendered necessary. As regards the experience of the last War, he will remember that there were then some 2,000,000 insured workers in the country. To-day there are some 15,000,000. In so far as insured men will come back again at the end of the war they will be returning to insured occupations and will not for the first time follow such occupations. In so far as they are still interested in insurance, their contributions as insured workers will meanwhile be kept up to date. As to the third point about elderly men, we shall not lose sight of the matter. It may be that one of the happier features of these grievous times will be the reabsorption of these people into insurable employment.

§ Mr. Foot
Yesterday on the Second Reading I ventured to ask the Minister of Labour for an assurance on some of the points in which I am interested, and in particular on the question of the duration of benefit and that there should be 470 no cutting down of the duration of the time during which a man was entitled to benefit. The right hon. Gentleman gave an assurance and said there was no question of cutting down the 26 weeks—if I understood him correctly. He said that there might be some difficulty in a case in which a man had an exceptionally good employment record, and therefore was entitled to a rather longer period of benefit than 26 weeks. I was a little disturbed by that. There must be many cases of this kind. Obviously men with an exceptionally good record are likely to be in insurance certainly for the next few months, and I hope that in such cases the Minister will preserve the right of those people.

§ Mr. Lennox-Boyd
I can certainly give the hon. Gentleman an assurance of this kind. It is our intention that the minimum period under both the general and the agricultural scheme should be extended. This will cover all cases likely to arise.