HC Deb 23 September 1943 vol 392 cc542-50

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Sir J. Edmondson.]

Sir H. Morris-Jones

I was about to say that the question is not whether women of 45 to 50 could be called up. We know that women of 60 to 70 could be called up in this country if necessary, and that they would be forthcoming if it was proved a necessity to win the war. The question is whether younger women should not first be called up from every conceivable source, and made use of. The Government have not made a case on those lines. I am sorry that the Minister is not in the House now. I am sorry that he was not here when my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mr. W. Brown) just now made one of the most devastating speeches ever made in this House on one single issue. I challenge the Government to consider the facts given by my hon. Friend. After all, he is not one to decry the Civil Service. His reputation has been made with it. He is not one to say that there is gross waste of personnel in the Civil Service without overwhelming evidence. I think he has proved that there is gross waste of personnel.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury, with his usual charm, spoke, naturally, for the Civil Service. In this House we all admire the Civil Service. It is not part of our case to say that there are not men in the Civil Service who are not gravely overworked. There are many such. The point is that the organisation of the Civil Service is such that there are gross over- lapping and waste. There happens to be a town in my constituency where 5,000 civil servants are employed—the town of Colwyn Bay. A very happy relationship has been brought about between the people of that borough and the civil servants, and very lasting affections have been made, on both sides. But I never go down to that borough—and I am sure there is no definite animus—without people of responsibility, whose judgment I respect and who have experience in public life, constantly repeating to me that nothing disturbs the inhabitants so much as to see such a large number of junior men and women in these offices to-day under the age of 31, to the extent of something like 1,500, while their mothers and grandfathers are being called-up under the proposals of the Government. I make no reflection on them, but it is the duty of the Government to exhaust every source before calling upon their mothers for the sacrifices involved. I have no doubt in my mind, although the Minister of Labour at the beginning of his speech adopted a rather narrow point on the medical aspect of the case. In these age categories of women disturbances do occur which are inevitable owing to their age. There is a physiological factor involved which was in existence a million years before any Minister of Labour was known, and it is no good this or any other Government adding anything to their difficulties which cannot be proved to be necessary.

Sir Herbert Williams (Croydon, South)

It was unfortunate that the Financial Secretary, for whom I have both affection and respect, should have come here with a prepared brief which had not the faintest relation to, and was not a reply to the important speech made by the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. W. Brown). It is really no good saying that there were 300,000 then and 750,000 now and that therefore everything is all right because there is so much more work to do. It is not the Civil Service we are blaming; it is the system. If I write to the Minister of Labour, for example, about a man who lives in Croydon, how long will it take before he answers? Three weeks or thereabouts. What happens? I write to him, and his private secretary sends a courteous acknowledgement. They put the case into the departmental machine. They start a file. There is a long sheet to which everybody can contribute their views. It goes to two or three Departments, and then to the regional office. It has an urgent label attached to it, because it is from a Member of Parliament. The regional officer will get it through to the manager of the employment exchange. It will then come back. The thing is too foolish for words. It is playing like kids, and nothing more. They could run every Department in London with one half of the staff if they took their courage into their hands and took a chance. I would much rather make a mistake quickly than take three weeks to make it. I have been on both sides of this job. I was an unpaid civil servant for about two years in the last war. I was at the Ministry Of Munitions and had a very good training, and years later I was a junior Minister for a short time. I have seen too much of it. What disturbs me is that, whenever I know the facts of a case which is argued, the Minister's answer is hardly ever quite correct. That is a very serious thing. Ministers are always explaining the case away. They will not admit that they have made a mistake. This sort of thing does not impress you.

We have had an important speech from the hon. Member for Spennymoor (Mr. Murray), who said there was serious unemployment in his constituency. It is not only in his constituency where there is unemployment; there is unemployment in a large number of factories in this country. People are sitting down with nothing to do. This is due partly to the change-over of production. I will give a specific example to illustrate the point. I went to a factory in Croydon the other day to see the managing director, and as I walked in he said, "I am delighted to see you, as I want your help. I am writing letters to 38 of my workpeople." I saw the letters, which ran: I much regret that owing to a switch over of production two processes have been eliminated and 38 people are redundant. I have applied to the employment exchange for your release so that you can work somewhere else in the war effort but up to now I have not got it. As your presence in the factory with nothing to do is having a bad effect on other workpeople will you please take a holiday? Your money will be paid as usual on Friday and until further notice. I rang up the employment exchange and communicated either with the Minister or the Parliamentary Secretary. The manpower board got busy; indeed, they got so busy that it took another three weeks before they sanctioned the release of 29 of these 38 workers. Of the remainder they said that a few were likely to be called up at an early date for military service, so that it was reasonable for the firm to carry them for the time being, while the others were rather elderly, but they would try to fix them in somewhere. So for six weeks 29 people did not do a stroke of work, and the sole responsibility was on the Ministry of Labour. That sort of thing is not unique. It is unfortunate that in this Debate some Members have seemed to' think that there was some kind of caste business in this, that the objections were made on behalf of wealthy idle women. There is not the faintest semblance of truth in that. I have more letters on this subject than on any other definite subject since the war started. Serving men are perturbed at the prospect of their homes being broken up. No assurances you give in advance as to how kindly you are going to carry out this business will reassure the people who will he affected. Remember, their friends have been interviewed at the Employment Exchanges; they have been treated with the greatest discourtesy in some cases. I have not been present, although no doubt if a Member of Parliament was present things would be nicely conducted. People have been insulted by hardship committees and man-power boards. I mentioned this to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, and he asked me to go round and have a look at things for myself. What is the use?

Mr. Magnay (Gateshead)

The hon. Member could go as a friend.

Sir H. Williams

I could not go in Croydon, because I would probably be identified. After all, I have had some connection with the place for some years. I do not believe all the stories of the supposed discourtesy which have been put to me, because sometimes people are disgruntled at not having their own way, but I would ask my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to look into this matter. Some of these women of about 50 are the heads of households in the effective working sense, whether they are middle class or working class. After all, mother is the "boss." The prospect of being sent for by an Employment Exchange, of being interrogated by somebody whom they regard as their inferior, by somebody who has lower status, is not very pleasant to them. They do not like it. Do not run away with the idea that because the Minister has not had many letters this is not provoking the most intense indignation. People do not like to say it in case they will be accused of not helping the war effort. The amazing thing is how few people have complained in this war. In the last war several by-elections were fought in which people stood as candidates on call-up issues. I am certain that, if anyone at a by-election makes this the sole issue, he will beat the Government hands down anywhere. I could win a by-election if the Government sent the whole Cabinet against me. [An HON. MEMBER: "That would help you."] Of course it would. I have been told that the fundamental reason for clothes rationing is that all the wool has got into the minds of the Government, but I do not know whether that is true or not.

My approach to this problem is a little different from that of most other Members, because, when the Bill was passed under which this power of direction became operative, if remember aright, the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton) and his colleagues opposed it, and there was a Division. I do not agree with the hon. Member in his attitude to the war, and I could not go into the Lobby with him, so I deliberately abstained, but I am permanently opposed to the industrial conscription of women. I personally go further. I think the industrial conscription of men is a mistake. There is a great deal of absenteeism due to the resentment of people being sent where they do not want to go. I do not think you are getting the results you would get by recruiting labour voluntarily. I dissent very much from direction. I do not believe it produces efficiency. That is the great issue. You have resentful labour. The real trouble started when the then First Lord of the Admiralty in March, 1940, said we wanted a million women in industry. In the next few days hundreds of thousands of women registered. The exchanges were amazed. They said they did not know what it was all about. That was No. I mistake. Anyone can make that kind of mistake once, but the example of the then First Lord was followed on three separate occasions by the Minister of Labour. He made a vague general appeal and each time got a response, but a smaller response. You cannot ask for women and offer them nothing when they turn up. The trouble is the failure to have any understanding of industrial psychology. I do not believe there is a member of the Government who has ever had any responsibility for factory management or engineering. No one in the Government has ever tried to manage a factory, yet they come along and tell other people how to manage theirs. It is a very strange situation.

I want the employment exchange system to work as well as it can after the war. I do not want it to be a monopoly, which is the desire of some people. For some purposes employment agencies are much more efficient than employment exchanges, but employment exchanges, owing to the long period of unemployment between the two wars, were not regarded as places where you would get jobs but as places where you would get benefit. Nevertheless, I want employment exchanges to be popular places. They are not very popular to-day, which is unfortunate, and I think the Minister must do more to make them popular. What is the problem that we are faced with? We have not had a census since 1931, and. I was only able to look up the summary, and it did not deal precisely with the age groups that we are concerned with, but I found that in 1931 gainfully occupied women aged 45 to 54—I do not mean that they were in a job on the day of the census, but they were either in a job or seeking a job—numbered about 22 per cent. So that normally in this class rather more than a fifth work for their living in one way or another in normal times. I have not raised the question that this is a difficult time of life for women. I base my case on the destruction of home life. That is what I am concerned with. A good many of these women are very efficient. A large number of them work regularly. The bulk of women, certainly 90 per cent., when they leave school get jobs. By 30 the bulk have vanished from the industrial field. There were still at those ages, that is 45 to 54, about 22 per cent.

I do not know, and the Minister does not know really, what sort of a dividend he will get out of this. I do not believe he has the faintest idea how many in effect he will get. We are concerned with how many extra he will get by compulsion over the number he would get by appeal. I believe he would get as many by appeal and they would be far more efficient than those he gets by compulsion. The arguments for industrial conscription are entirely different from those for military conscription. In the case of the soldier the profit motive does not arise. He argues a great deal about his rate of pay and allowances, but it does not arise in his case. Once you get in industry the profit motive is in everybody's mind, from the office boy to the managing director. In spite of what Archbishops say, it is there and will continue to be there. One lot of people are out on strike on the Clyde because they want to work piece-work and the employers will not let them, and another lot in Manchester are on strike because the employers want them to work piecework. We all have different views in economic things and like to be awkward. But when a man is earning £6 a week and my right hon. Friend directs him to earn £4 a week, he is very angry, and I would be too. If you say to a fellow who is temperamentally nervous about a particular occupation that he has to go down a coal mine, he is frightened. If I was directed to climb a ladder 100, feet I could not do it because I have that particular kind of fear and hate heights. If I were directed to work as a steeple-jack I would be in jail because I should refuse to do it.

What is this idea that you can achieve results by sending people to jail? There are too many Ministers in the Government who think that the only way to get results is to send people to jail. Over 100,000 tons of coal were lost recently because a man was sent to jail. There is far too much of it. The hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan) in a powerful speech said there were many Ministers who wanted compulsion for compulsion's sake. What we want are industrial results in the factories and I think that if we will bully people less, be more considerate and be less Fascist or Communist, whatever it is we are trying to be at the moment, it will be very much better. I beg and beseech the Minister of Labour to go slow over this. I have not received many letters on this subject because we do not tell the world when Parliament is sitting, but in the last day or so I could have deluged the Government with correspondence if I liked merely by a little incitement. I appeal to my right hon. Friend to go slow. The whole popularity of his Ministry is at stake. More resent- ment has been caused by this proposal than by any other act of coercion that has been suggested during the war.

Mr. Higgs (Birmingham, West)

The Minister has been criticised, and he will be criticised. My opinion is that he is as efficient as any other Minister on the Front Bench. How do we compare efficiency? It is no good saying that his method of procedure would not be satisfactory to business men. We have to compare the result of this, nation with those of other nations. I consider that the problem of the United States is due to the fact that they have not a Minister of Labour of the calibre of ours. He has done a fine job of work. But having said that, I am going to criticise him with regard to the position of firms registered under the Essential Work Order. Men leave for one reason or another, and so do women. They may leave for the reason that they have permission from the man-power board because the transfer has been asked for by the employer or by the employee; but why does not the Minister give more consideration to the replacing of these people when their discharge has been granted? If the work of the firm is essential it is equally essential to maintain the man-power of the firm.

The hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Orr-Ewing) and others have referred to idle time in factories. It is a very serious matter. It exists in all factories to a greater or less extent. The problem was overcome before the war by discharging workers and taking them on. That privilege no longer exists. Various hon. Members have referred to the attitude of the man-power board. When they are approached with regard to the movement of labour they come down and inspect the labour, but unfortunately they are often frightened of the problems which confront them. They will not grant releases, and the firm has to retain this labour and pay it, and pay it, obviously, out of excess profits. If the Minister would give instructions to the man-power board that the transfer of labour was to be made more free I think it would solve the problem to a great extent. Take the case of a firm who before the war were employing 10,000 men. It was no uncommon occurrence during changeover periods for such a firm to reduce its employees to the order of 2,000 or 3,000, and then build them up again. We get to-day changeovers of the same magnitude, and yet no facilities are granted to simplify the movements of labour. The man-power board will not face the problem, and I think the Minister should pay more attention to this very important point of idle time in factories. It is only he who can assist to solve the problem.

We have heard much about women between 45 and 50 being called up. There are other sources of labour. I have referred before to the potential productive capacity of boys attending public schools. I took the trouble to look through Whitaker, and I found that there are about 71,000 boys at public schools, and probably the same number of girls, between the ages of 13 and 18. That would give us something in the order of 30,000 youths a year. Would it be detrimental to their future if they were released for industry for one year out of the five when they attend public schools? It would be for their benefit. No matter what calling they are to pursue in the future, a year in a factory would be beneficial to them.

It being the hour appointed for the Adjournment of the House, Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.