HC Deb 21 June 1944 vol 401 cc312-20

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—(Captain McEwen.)

Mr. Edgar Granville (Eye)

I desire to raise the problem of the supply of domestic servants at the present time. I do not apologise for raising again the question which was raised by the hon. Member for Denbigh (Sir H. Morris-Jones), myself and others. The case that we made out on the previous occasion was that it was wrong for one private household to have four, five or six domestic servants while others, whose need was the same, were unable to get any at all, and we referred particularly to the case of old people bed-ridden and infirm, and particularly maternity cases, as well as the shortage in the supply of servants for hospitals and institutions. Since we raised this question we have received hundreds of letters. Fortunately or unfortunately, on the occasion I refer to I mentioned one Member of Parliament, who was looked upon as a future Prime Minister, who had to get up and do his own chores and get his own meals. That has added, I am afraid, considerably to our correspondence, and there were an alarming number of volunteers who were ready to come forward and assist one who they thought was a future Prime Minister. Some of them thought I referred to the hon. Member for Seaham (Mr. Shinwell), others took him to be the Foreign Secretary, and others thought the reference was to other equally good looking aspirants in the House of Commons. I have no intention of reading quotations from this mass of correspondence. These letters do show a very strong feeling in the country about serious difficulties owing to the shortage of domestic help.

I will give at random three cases. One is the case of an old infirm couple unable to cook their own meals, to look after their small house, to make their bed and to get any domestic help through the agency of the Ministry of Labour. They must depend upon visits by relatives. The second case is that of the wife of a gallant man in the Royal Navy who has been turned out of her lodgings because she was about to have a baby and was able to secure alternative accommodation of a sort, but who is completely unable in these circumstances to get any help while he is at sea. Another case is that of a large family in a village; all the members of it are engaged on war work, but they are unable to obtain any assistance, though in a house of considerable size near by, with two in the family, they are able to maintain four domestic servants. I must repeat the question I have asked before—Where is the equality or fair play if we allow conditions of this kind to exist? One reads in the newspapers as recently as yesterday that it is possible for an attendant at a night club in London to make as much as£18 a night in tips.

There was some suggestion on a previous occasion that the newspapers' advertisements were not authentic, but I have one in my hand which gives the name and address of the advertiser. It says: Experienced house or house-parlour maid for small convenient house, two in family, three maids kept, good wages and fare. Then follow the name and address.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour (Mr. McCorquodale)

Has the hon. Gentleman checked that?

Mr. Granville

No, I have not checked it. It is hardly my responsibility. Everybody hoped that in 1940 the Government, having taken tremendous emergency and temporary powers, would conscript everybody, private individuals, property and all the rest of it. That was not done. Even at this stage I am pleading that the vast administrative experience and influence of the Minister of Labour should be used as effectively as possible to endeavour to iron out the serious social inequalities in these various cases of which I have given examples.

I asked the right hon. Gentleman a question, and I make the suggestion again now. In necessitous areas where there is some supply available, it should be possible to arrange for a pool of domestic servants. I understand that Finchley Social Service Club runs a pool of this kind very successfully, and that the local authority have been asked to provide funds to help those who cannot possibly afford to pay the wages of domestic servants.

If that can be done—and T believe it is done largely through that really magnificent organisation the W.V.S. and with the help of the Red Cross Committee—surely the right hon. Gentleman's Department could initiate some kind of pool on a national basis, particularly where there is a supply of domestic servants available, both alien and others. Secondly, it should be possible, again in areas where there are a considerable number of domestic servants, to take a census of these domestic workers. I do not want to place any more work upon the Ministry of Labour, such as form-filling and so on, because I know that they have heavy responsibility, but I think this suggestion could be carried out without much trouble. I should like my hon. Friend to give us some sort of hope that it may be possible in those districts to have a census and then to make some arrangement for a pool to be available, particularly for the very bad cases, such as those of old or infirm people who are literally unable to get any help at all.

I have read the Green Paper which the Minister of Labour has issued. It is a good Paper but it says: All domestic work to which women are now sent by employment exchanges is priority work of a high order. It is essential for it to be performed if the sick and wounded are to recover, if the rising generation is to have the good start we want them to have, if mothers in childbirth are to regain strength, if war-workers are to be well fed and cared for, and if the old and invalid are to be properly looked after. This leaflet is well written, but the question still remains: How do you get a domestic servant? The Minister has stated his case and then made an appeal. He has asked for volunteers but as far as I can see there is no really effective administrative machinery behind that appeal to enable anyone who wishes to get a home help or domestic servant.

There is one more side to this matter. Now is the time, and it is not too soon to begin, to consider the whole question of raising the status of the domestic worker. It involves questions of raising wages, reducing hours and improving conditions. The State, the employers and the employees must agree upon a scheme to raise the standard of the important workers in this country by improving the conditions of their profession after the war. If that is to be done, it should be begun now. We ought to try to get a domestic workers' charter now. I noticed that at their annual meeting charwomen do not like being called by that name; their organisation said so. They think their status is that of office cleaner or domestic cleaner. The hon. Gentleman is in effect the Parliamentary representative of Mrs. Mopp. I want my hon. Friend, who has shown such good sense and helpfulness in all these matters, to recognise the importance of this problem and to give us some hope that he realises the unfairness as well as the social suffering which is being caused in the cases to which I have referred. I understand that the Government have been putting their thinking cap on and that the matter has been considered; is it too soon to hope that the right hon. Gentleman can make some sort of statement on the Government attitude on this question to-day?

Mr. Evelyn Walkden (Doncaster)

I will not detain the House for more than two or three minutes but I want to underline or emphasise one aspect of the case that has been made out by my hon. Friend the Member for Eye (Mr. Granville), who has just presented the argument so ably to the House. I do not agree with all he says, but I do feel, on the question of a local census in certain areas, that much good could come, and great advantage could be derived in regard to the needs of those particular areas. I would not burden the Ministry officials, for example, with a census throughout the whole of my division of Doncaster, or say Hemsworth, because we would not find many domestic servants in areas like that. There are some parts of most towns where big houses are situated, and I want the Minister clearly to understand that owing to the experience of some of us—this is not all newspaper prattle nor are they ill-founded suggestions—it is well known that the Ministry is not getting a record of all the servants who operate in many of those big houses.

One may be able to find here and there a case where a servant has been sent to people who need a servant or where a servant has been left in the home because the people needed one, but in the town in Surrey where I reside I know of two or three good sized houses where there are two, three and in some cases more, servants. The master of the home, or the man in the homestead, or the husband, or whatever designation he may have, has his car waiting for him in the morning with a chauffeur. He has, indeed, all the help one can possibly expect or need in a home. The Minister dissents from that——

Mr. McCorquodale

Does my hon. Friend know a single case where, in a house like that, any one of these domestic servants is within registerable age?

Mr. Walkden

The registerable age is the trick they all know, and of which they take advantage. They are very artful in making use of, shall I say, the means of evasion which are often provided by the Ministry. I admit that if you were to question them about their ages some would say that they are 63. I am not so sure of that; I would doubt it in some cases I know. What I want to put to the Minister is that if he would send out only two clerks in almost any town of reasonable size for a couple of days during the next two or three weeks, he would be able to discover the kind of evidence the hon. Member has just referred to as having been extracted from the correspondence. I believe it is wrong that the Ministry should sit back and content itself with issuing a document, content itself with setting up a committee. After all it is a waste of time for the ladies who sit on the committee to allocate servants to those who need them. I do not exactly support the hon. Member in regard to the voluntary organisation of a pool of servants. I think it is the local authorities' responsibility to provide household helps. Surrey attempted it before the war. The scheme was going well, but, unfortunately, through shortage of personnel or shortage of servants, they had to drop it. I appeal to the Minister to co-operate with the local authorities, and to place the responsibility on them for household help. Let us make a fresh start to solve the problem which has been so ably stated by the hon. Member.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour (Mr. McCorquodale)

I am afraid that I have very little to add to the rather full statement that I made very recently to the House on an Adjournment Motion, raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Denbigh (Sir H. Morris-Jones). If the hon. Member for Doncaster (Mr. E. Walkden) had been here, and had listened to my remarks on that occasion, he would have found that a number of his queries had been answered.

Mr. E. Walkden

I was here.

Mr. MeCorquodale

Then I hope the hon. Member will look it up, because I do not want to repeat it all again, in the few minutes that are available to me. I have no complaint about this matter being raised by the hon. Member for Eye (Mr. Granville), especially on such a very appropriate occasion as to-day, when we have been discussing post-war employment. The whole matter is one of very great importance in regard to employment, especially to the female section of the population. As has been already stated in this House, we have set up at the Ministry of Labour a special inquiry, under the direction and guidance of Miss Violet Markham, into the question of employment in domestic work in the post-war years. I should estimate that it is quite possible to find employment after the war —because this industry has been combed to the uttermost during the war, and cut down to very small proportions—for up to i,000,000 extra persons in the whole range of domestic work, both public and private, if the conditions are favourable. Therefore, I agree most wholeheartedly with what the hon. Member said about raising the status of the domestic worker, as a valuable and respected member of society. Anything that hon. Members can do to that end will be welcomed by the Ministry of Labour.

I would like to take the opportunity of putting before the House the present position with regard to the placing of domestic workers in priority services, domestic workers in hospitals—to which the Ministry and indeed the whole House attach importance—and where we can and where conditions are suitable, in priority households. We cannot direct them there, because it would not be proper, in our opinion, and I think the House will agree, to force, with penal sanction, any girl to go into private domestic work where we cannot guarantee the conditions. We have found that there has been a net increase in the hospital sphere, during the first 15 weeks of this year, of 3,200 nurses and midwives, and 2,200 domestic workers. This is not bad, at this time of the war, and that process is continuing. We have also placed in the last four months, as home helps and in priority private households, where there is no direction, as I said, over 6,000 women. That, I think, shows that the Department attach importance to trying to meet the demands of priority households.

The hon. Member talked about setting up a pool in places where there is a surplus of domestic workers. Incidentally, we do not know anywhere where there is a surplus of domestic workers, of an age at which the Ministry of Labour can direct, or require to go anywhere. We have been in consultation with my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health, who has been most co-operative in this matter, and, with him, we have been opening discussions with the Standing Joint Committee of the Metropolitan Boroughs and with other local authorities, because I quite agree with the hon. Member for Doncaster that if we are going to run any form of home help services, for special cases of illness and the like, the local authorities should, if possible, be the people to run them. I do not claim that we have any cut-and-dried scheme. We have had preliminary discussions, though not to the point of committing local authorities, but I think we are justified in saying that we hope that those authorities whose representatives we have approached may be able to undertake this work if we can provide the necessary facilities, and, most important of all, the borne helps themselves.

With regard to the other matter which the hon. Gentleman raised, that of taking as ay from present households domestic servants of over registration age, where they are outside normal direction and control of the Ministry of Labour in any other walk of life, I think various considerations arise. We have reviewed households with domestic servants in the registerable ages, from 18 to 51, and, where there are domestic servants over that age in these households we would normally withdraw the younger ones. I asked, the last time we had a Debate on this subject, for cases to be sent to me. I have had remarkably few, and when the hon. Member for Denbigh raised one case with my Minister, my right hon. Friend in answering him is pointing out that the conditions were very far different from what he had been given to understand.

If we did what the hon. Members want, we would have to say to domestic workers "You are in a special category. While the State does not call up, register and direct other classes of the community in these age groups, you are going to be called up, registered and directed up to the age of 65." I do not believe the House would tolerate that. Up to the age of 51, domestic workers, with all other workers in this country, have had their position reviewed. I do not believe the House, which only gave us permission to go up from 45 to 51 with a good deal of criticism, especially from the hon. Member for Denbigh, would be prepared to give us further powers to register, control and direct these ladies up to 6o or 65. I am afraid I cannot put before the House any justification for such a step. According to my information, from the manpower point of view, the numbers of domestic servants above the registerable age in households is negligible, and our experts throughout the country, who have been consulted, have advised us that the number of people who would be regarded as a placing proposition and who could be obtained by any step like that proposed would not justify the labour and expense and the time that would be taken by the Ministry in registering them and calling them up for interview and the rest.

I therefore say that I could not possibly justify on national grounds our coming to the House to ask for a special census or order for these people above military age to be registered and then directed. If we did not direct them, but only registered them, as the hon. Member suggested, what would happen? We may be able to say "You do not stay at house X," but we would not be able to say, "You go to house Y" or "You go to a hospital." We could merely say "You shall not work there, but we cannot compel you or require you to work elsewhere." Some of these elderly and middle-aged ladies would be lost to employment altogether. Therefore, I cannot come here and justify any steps which would mean that we were treating domestic workers as a special class by registering them up to 65.

I have endeavoured to show that while we are giving attention to the post-war position and to the hon. Member's suggestion with regard to home helps, what he calls pools—I do not like the term "pools," because there is no pool of reserve labour about and we shall have to draw it from other occupations—we cannot meet him on the suggestion of carrying out a census.

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.