DOMESTIC WORKERS

HC Deb 04 May 1944 vol 399 cc1545-76

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Beechman.]

Sir Henry Morris-Jones (Denbigh)

I do not make any apology for raising a matter which I think is of some importance, arising out of a Question which I put to the Minister of Labour a fortnight ago, concerning the present serious shorttage of domestic assistance in the households, institutions and hospitals—especially the hospitals—of this country. Nor do I apologise for raising the matter at a time when we are on the eve of great events in another connection, because its importance has been accentuated and aggravated in recent months. I have called the attention of the Minister of Labour to it on more than one occasion in the last two or three years, but the position probably is more serious than it has ever been before. Many of our people are carrying great burdens, and have been doing so into what is now the fifth year of the war. They have done so without complaining, but I believe there is to some extent a tendency to take, advantage of that fact, and to take some of the burdens as a matter of course. I am sure that our people are prepared to bear any burdens which are absolutely necessary for the prosecution of the war right to the very end, but I certainly do not think they are willing, nor should it be necessary to ask them, to bear burdens which can be avoided.

The first point is that there is a great shortage of domestic help and that it is causing serious damage to the health of men and women in this country—certainly to the health of women. It affects all classes of the community, whether working or professional, in varying degrees. It affects women who are working on the war front in factories, in canteens, on Red Cross work and, especially, a large number of old and infirm people. It affects expectant mothers and mothers during and after their confinement, especially those who have other children. There is also a very great disparity, an almost flagrant discrimination between the way civilian life has been pruned down to the bone for the benefit of the Services, while we are engaged in total war, and there is an absence of equality as regards domestic help between household and household.

No standard is laid down by the Ministry of Labour for domestic assistance of such a character, and I think the country has remarked upon it. My attention has been called to it as between street and street, household and household. On the one hand there is gross over-personnel and over-service and in other households no service whatever. I appreciate that in a great war there must be sacrifice, but there should be equality of sacrifice. In this regard, however, there is great inequality of sacrifice calling out loud. The nation is becoming conscious of it, and I hope therefore that the House will endorse what I say and that the Minister of Labour will appreciate the position, as I think he must.

It is also a fact that there is a very great scarcity of domestic help in institutions and hospitals, and there is a good deal of distinction as between institution and institution and hospital and hospital. I think the Ministry have given quite a considerable amount of help to some institutions and hospitals but have not been able to help others. They have tried to lay down some standard in regard to institutions such as they have not laid down in regard to private households. A letter appeared in "The Times" a short time ago, among a lot of letters on this subject. Some of them were written by quite eminent people. I would like to draw the attention of the House to a letter which was written by a very well-known man, Sir Leonard Hill, who is a great scientist and who is general superintendent of the St. John Clinic and Institute of Physical Medicine. He said that his own clinic and institute: giving many thousands of treatments a year, has been left with one able-bodied porter, one old man and an old charwoman to do all the cleaning and other work. At Government offices nearby, half a dozen young men, acting as porters, may be seen any day hanging round the entrance, while eight at a time are seen fetching coal in a hand truck, to be used to warm the tenants of the flats and the members of the staffs in the offices. I myself, 77 years of age, and my wife 75, not very strong, have to do everything in our own house and garden. Of this I am not complaining but I suggest there should only be requisitioning of labour at the expense of civilians that is really necessary or justifiable. We can all endorse the remarks of Sir Leonard Hill. Over and over again in our own experience we find instances. I was talking to a solicitor the other day; this is only one case. He had lost two sons in the war. In his own office he had lost two partners who had gone out to serve in the war. He had in his office two typists and a clerk instead of a staff of 13. He is a man of over 50, although he looked considerably older. His wife is very ill as a result of domestic anxiety and losses of the war. He has no domestic assistance of any kind in his household, so that, in addition to coping with a very busy professional life, and its harassing and increasing difficulties day by day, he has to make his own fires and cook his own food. He is completely unable to get any domestic assistance of any kind. I know the wives of two doctors who have broken down completely as a result of a similar position. The Ministry of Labour have tried to render assistance in the case of doctors' households, but in many directions they have failed to do it.

In the case of elderly people there are, in this country, most pathetic cases. I know of two people in the same house who are bedridden, and they cannot get assistance of any kind. Local institutions are full and cannot take them in. They have to get out of a sick bed in order to attend to the necessities of life. This problem extends to Members of this House. An hon. Member who is 70 years of age, who has a wife aged 68, and is a man with an immense correspondence, has 50 or 60 letters a day, and has no secretary. He gets up every morning to light the fire in his house because he has no domestic assistance. As against that there is unquestionably a gross waste of personnel in the Services at the present time. One does not want to do anything at the moment to try and cut down the Services of this country, but I do not think it would detract from the efficiency of the Services to take from them personnel where there is clear evidence that that personnel is wasted. Many of them are unfit for military service, and they would be very much better in civilian life and would pull their weight better. That is so in the women's Services as well. There are hundreds of women in the Services to-day who are quite prepared to come out and give domestic assistance, and who feel that they would be making a greater contribution to the national effort at this juncture by doing so than they are making in the Services where they are now employed.

Although I know that inquiries have been made with regard to personnel in the Civil Service there is clearly evidence that, on both the men's and women's side, there is still a waste of personnel. Not long ago in my constituency a Civil Service organisation secretary stated that there was an immense waste of personnel in the Service. We know how in all these Services the thing grows like a snowball, and there does not appear to be any check. One complaint I have against the Minister of Labour, to whom I have paid tribute in this House on more than one occasion for the fine work he has done in regard to national service, is that he appointed a committee to go into the question of the use of personnel in the Services, but he has never brought evidence before this House to show that he has combed the Services, nor has he satisfied the House that there is not waste going on at the expense of civilians.

The other aspect to which I wish to call the attention of the House is the inequality as between household and household in this matter. One has only to read the daily Press. I have two or three advertisements before me taken from very reputable papers, so reputable that I am rather surprised that some of them publish these advertisements, papers like "The Times," for instance. Here is an advertisement of a week or two ago: Parlourmaid wanted in flat, West Watford. Good wages, four in staff, comfortable post. I think it ought to be. Here is an advertisement from a Northern paper. These people actually have the temerity to put in their own names. In this particular instance I have satisfied myself from inquiry that the case is almost worse than it appears from reading it. A young housemaid required, 14 to 16, Three maids kept. Three in family. That is to say, they want an extra housemaid in this family with three maids already kept at the present time. Here is an advertisement from "The Times" of Tuesday: Single-handed cook required for Cobham, Surrey. Two adults in family. Three staff, with daily help for rough. Here is a case of three on the staff, with a daily help, and the people concerned are advertising for extra assistance in that household at the present time. They would not be advertising for assistance of that character unless they had some hope of getting it. Yet there are men and women working hard day by day, some of them for years, who have no domestic assistance of any kind in their houses.

I say that advertisements of this character are a challenge to the Minister of Labour and an affront to the nation at a time like this. It is an affront to the nation at a time of scarcity of labour and personnel. There is an individual in this country who holds no official position who has eight indoor servants. How does the Minister of Labour justify it? I cannot give their ages but I believe that some of them are of military age. This individual is competing for domestic service at enhanced prices. There is a ramp going on in certain categories of domestic servants, by which people can get domestic assistance in their household at prohibitive prices, making it quite impossible for a large number of deserving people to get help. This is especially so in the case of alien labour, refugees, some of whom do nor come under any category of national service registration. I want to direct the attention of my hon. Friend to it. Any individual in this country, whether he be a millionaire or anybody else, who has eight indoor servants is showing a callous disregard for the national situation which ought to be exposed. I do not think it should be allowed to go on.

My right hon. Friend has tried to meet this, I know, in more than one direction. In an answer which he gave recently in the House he said that in response to applications by deserving households some vacancies had been filled up, and that in the cases in which they had had applications there were 6,563 vacancies unfilled after application at the time he answered the Question. I think that should be multiplied by ten in respect of people who do not apply, which means that there are 60,000 at least. What should my right hon. Friend do in circumstances of this kind? He ought to inquire again into the personnel of the Services and the Civil Service. He will find there ample room for action. There are a large number of men in many corps in the Army, men getting on in years, who are in the R.A.M.C., who are ready, and should be ready, to retire from the Army, and who could render great assistance in this field. If the right hon. Gentleman leaves it to the Services themselves there is no hope of any reduction or any redress. After all, he is responsible for personnel and labour in this country, and for the organisation of man-power. It is the duty of the Ministry of Labour to satisfy themselves that they have combed out the Services, including the Civil Service, so long as it does not affect the efficiency of those Services. The Minister ought to see that no household in this country has more than two servants. I do not care what household it is. I do not think any household has a right to have more than two servants at a time when there are thousands without any.

Wing-Commander Grant-Ferris (St. Pancras, North)

Private households?

Sir H. Morris-Jones

Yes, I am speaking about private households. The House will understand that I do not wish to extend my argument to boarding houses or hotels, or even houses of official people. I know there are other hon. Members who feel as strongly as I do on this question. But I do want my right hon. Friend on behalf of the Ministry of Labour to give us some assurance this time which will carry us a little further than we have been carried in the past. We are engaged in a total war. The civilians of this country run great risks; many of them have made great sacrifices. But there are junior officers in the Army today who have batmen to look after them.

Mr. Bartle Bull (Enfield)

This talk about batmen is so much nonsense. The only officers who have batmen are those who go into battle; and then the batman acts as the officer's runner, and does everything for him.

Sir H. Morris-Jones

I am quite well acquainted with the situation in the Army; I have been in the Army myself. I say that a junior officer with the rank of captain is entitled to a batman.

Mr. Bull

No junior officer has a batman unless he goes into battle, and then the batman is his runner.

Sir H. Morris-Jones

I was talking today to an officer who is a captain, and he has a batman. I do not think that any junior officer should have one man looking after him.

Mr. Bull

They do not. If the officer is a fighting soldier he has a batman, who acts as his runner, at the man's own wish. If the man does not wish to be a batman he does not have to be one.

Sir H. Morris-Jones

My hon Friend is talking of men in the fighting line. These officers to whom I am referring are in this country, and have been here since the beginning of this war. They run no greater war risks and make no greater sacrifices than anybody else.

Mr. Edgar Granville (Eye)

Some of them are in this House.

Sir H. Morris-Jones

Yes. I think that there should be further inquiry into this matter. The situation in civilian life is very serious. Our people are getting tired, and this war may last a long time; it may last another year—I do not know. I think the Minister of Labour should go into this question thoroughly, to satisfy our people that every endeavour is made to see that civilian life is eased somewhat, if it can be.

Wing-Commander Grant-Ferris (St. Pancras, North)

I rise to say how grateful I am to the bon. Member for raising this most important subject. I would like to say a word about one particular class of person who, I think, is served very badly indeed. That is the young wife with a young family. I have personal experience of this, not because I am concerned myself—my own family, I am glad to say, are old enough to be away at school—but many of my wife's contemporaries have young families. In one case there are three children below the age of four. This young wife finds it quite impossible to get any domestic help. She comes of a good family: she has been used to having things reasonably comfortable. She has to clean her house.

Mr. Gallacher (Fife, West)

We all come from bad families.

Wing-Commander Grant-Ferris

The hon. Gentleman might allow me to make my point, and then he will have the opportunity to get up. When I say a good family, I do not mean what he suggests; I mean a well-brought-up family, such as he comes from himself, I am sure. This young lady has had a nervous break- down. She has had to go away, and the children have had to be farmed out with anybody who is good enough to take them. This sort of thing should not be tolerated, and I hope that something will be done by the Minister to help these very hard and deserving cases. It is scandalous that private houses should have a number of servants to-day, when people such as those I have referred to cannot get any help at all.

Mr. Edgar Granville (Eye)

I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Denbigh (Sir H. Morris-Jones), who, with his record in the last war, should know all about batmen, was not taken up the garden path by the hon. Member for Enfield (Mr. Bull) on the question of batmen. Mine saved my life in the last war—

Mr. Bull

I brought the hon. Member down the garden path. I did not take him up.

Mr. Granville

Well, whether the hon. Member took him up, or brought him down, the garden path, or whatever he was doing, the question of batmen was not the main argument of my hon. Friend. My recollection is that in the early part of this war, whether an officer was on the active list or not, he got a batman if he was a senior officer, and he got part of a batman if he was a junior officer. I should have thought it a very strong thing to say that there is no senior officer anywhere in this country not on active service who did not get a batman.

Mr. Bull

My hon. Friend spoke of officers up to the rank of captain. I do not think that a senior officer was mentioned.

Mr. Granville

Then let us deal only with junior officers up to the rank of captain. I think it would be a very strong thing for the hon. Gentleman to say that nowhere in the British Isles was there an officer—

Mr. Bull

I did not say it.

Mr. Granville

I am supporting the argument of my hon. Friend the Member for Denbigh, and I say that it would be a very strong thing to say that nowhere in this country was there an officer below the rank of captain who had not a batman to himself. The House is indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Denbigh for introducing this subject. He raised it a long time ago, and he has been a most persistent questioner of the Minister. I hope that we are going to have a considered reply to-day from the Parliamentary Secretary. He is a mountain of Parliamentary efficiency and charm and courtesy, and I am certain that he is aware of the seriousness of this problem. I hope that he is going to give it sympathetic consideration. As my hon. Friend said, we all have evidence of the unfair working of this domestic problem. I am very sorry that the Minister of Labour did not, quite early in this war, tackle the question of avocational allocation, in its technical sense, in this manpower problem. There were bound to be these problems accumulating in a long war. As my hon. Friend suggested, the solution is some kind of voluntary or organised pooling of domestic servants. We have all had evidence from our own constituencies. We have had letters sent to us over and over again about old and infirm people, cripples and invalids, who have suffered considerably because they are unable to get any domestic help for their very simple needs.

One hon. Member in a Debate a few days ago, the hon. Member for Southampton (Dr. Thomas), referred to the case of the grand-daughter of an ex-Prime Minister who was having to do her own chores because of poverty, and of course there are a large number of old people to-day who have to do their own housework simply because they cannot get domestic help of any kind although they could afford to pay for it. I know one hon. Member who sits above the Gangway, who is looked on by some people as a future Prime Minister, who makes great attacks on the Government and then has to go home and cook his own supper, and make his own bed, simply because in the district where he lives it is impossible to get domestic help.

Mr. Muff (Kingston-upon-Hull, East)

I should like to ask the hon. Gentleman the future Prime Minister is married.

Mr. Granville

He is married, but his wife lives in another part of the country in his northern constituency. Another Member of the House is looked after by a single alien servant as housekeeper. There is a millionaire with eight servants in the country and a peeress who has a large establishment with a large number of servants, constantly making bids of higher wages to get that housekeeper away from the hon. Member. There is a considerable wage racket going on among many of these alien servants. I have heard of another case of a house in the country where a veritable band of Hungarians wait at table, and look after the domestic requirements of that particular house. Of course, there is a law of supply and demand operating here, and well-to-do people can outbid the ordinary person when trying to obtain alien servants who are not subject to the National Service Acts. I do not think we can altogether blame the aliens, who very often are good cooks and good domestic servants, for going to the wealthy people, but I think we ought to have regard to the case referred to by my hon. and gallant Friend of the young wife with family responsibilities who has not the slightest chance of getting hold of any of these people to help her. Surely, those in the position of that young wife are the people who should be able to get help.

I know a street only a few hundred yards from the House of Commons in which live an old couple, both completely infirm, almost unable to move. If it were not for the fact that their relatives make journeys to London to help them, I do not know what they would do. Yet that same street is absolutely chockablock with scores of girls in the A.T.S. in houses taken over by the War Department, who are bored and idle. It seems to me that something ought to be done by the Government in this matter, even at this stage of the war. I am afraid the Minister of Labour was inclined to take the view that he had solved most of the problems when he put everybody into uniform. In the total war we have to wage now, we must organise man-power. I believe that, in the last war, the Americans tackled the question of getting the right men into the right jobs scientifically. The Germans, the best copyists in the world, have tried to do it in this war. Our Government are content to get everybody conscripted into uniform. Consequently, there is a wastage of man-power all over the country and I believe that even now with great events pending the Government should make some attempt to organise man-power on the home front.

This so-called racket in the matter of domestic service is typical of some of the injustices that are being allowed up and down the country to-day. It is time that someone uttered a warning to the Government. Nobody from the Government tackles the home front or attempts to give inspiration to the people of the country. Somebody has said that as well as a second military front we must have a second moral front, but the Government have never done anything to give an inspired lead on vital issues. There is unenlightened self-interest amongst certain sections in the towns and cities; the Government know it and do nothing about it. They do not try to give a moral lead. Instead, they leave it to the B.B.C. with its programmes of talk and uplift. It is not good enough. I wish we had the Minister of Labour here to-day. The Minister can go to Bristol and in an amazing speech use a steamhammer to crack a peanut, and in doing so he upsets industrial morale instead of harmonising the various interests. This matter ought to be tackled and I hope that the hon. Member the Parliamentary Secretary will give an encouraging reply that he is alive to all this.

Sir R. W. Smith (Aberdeen and Kincardine, Central)

I think the House is indebted to the hon. Member for raising this matter, which is of considerable interest to the country, but I do not think he should deal with it entirely on a numerical basis. There are many cases in which one domestic help is worth two or three in other cases. You might get young people going into a house with no experience. They cannot possibly be as useful as, say, a woman of 40 or 50, who has had experience in running a house and has knowledge of cooking. I would like to say that in dealing with institutions, and especially hospitals, the Government have been very remiss. This trouble about domestic help in such institutions as emergency hospitals ought never to have arisen. The Government decided that they wanted so many beds in these emergency hospitals and they must have known perfectly well that that meant that so many nurses would be required. If they knew the number of nurses that would be required to look after the patients, they ought also to have known how much domestic help would be necessary. Instead of that women were directed into work away from their homes, when they might have remained and have done domestic work in the neighbourhood. There are many cases of old and infirm people who were looked after by a daughter who kept house. That woman has been directed into labour somewhere else. I have myself made appeals to have women in such a position brought home, but the reply has been that nothing can be done. If these women had been allowed to go to work in institutions in the neighbourhood they could have looked after the homes of their parents after finishing their work in the institution. Surely, something might be done to make use of the material we have in this country?

Reference has been made to young wives, and I would like to press that point, because I know many cases of young women with children—in one case, twins, and in another case four children—who cannot get any help at all. We talk about the health of the nation, but, if you are to have these young wives working overtime and pulling down their strength, you are not going to be able to have an A.1 nation. You are doing your very best to produce a C.3 nation. Cannot we have some of our women brought back to us from other parts of the country and set to work to help their own people at home? I believe the Minister has some sympathy, but this is a problem which should have been tackled long ago. It should be possible to do something for these young wives. It is very hard on a person who is hard-pressed when she sees members of the A.T.S. and other young women, wandering about the streets and doing, so far as she can see, absolutely nothing, and with a certain amount of time off. Could not the Minister make it possible for the daughters of old people to be able to do their work, when called up, as near their homes as possible?

Mr. Muff (Kingston-upon-Hull East)

I am glad the hon. Member raised this question and also that he paid his tribute to the efforts of the Ministry of Labour to endeavour to direct people to work in hospitals. To quote the hon. Member's own language, "the Ministry of Labour has not been altogether unsuccessful" in getting women to help in the highly necessary task of serving the hospitals. There are still deficiencies, but it is no good ex- aggerating and talking about rackets as if we have not done anything in this House to encourage the Ministry of Labour. The hon. Member who raised the matter said that much has been done and that it is not altogether unsatisfactory. Then he goes off at a tangent, and pleads for the Ministry of Labour to have another comb-out in the Army, and gives us a dissertation on the iniquitous system of batmen. I thought we were talking about skirts, not trousers. [An HON. MEMBER: "Including bat-women."] I refuse, Sir, to be led up the garden, and I will keep to females and the lack of female labour, because I understand that this Debate originally had nothing at all to do with batmen and their duties. This shortage of labour is a serious thing, but the hon. Gentleman who raised it turned totalitarian in dealing with advertisements for girls of 14 to 16, and in making an appeal, which will appear in HANSARD to-morrow, to the Minister of Labour to abolish the powers of such people to put in such advertisements.

Sir H. Morris-Jones

I think that, when my hon. Friend is quoting me, he might do me the justice of quoting me correctly. There are men as well as women in domestic service, but, on the other point of domestic service, the suggestion I made was that the Minister should prohibit any advertisements for homes where there were three or four in the house already.

Mr. Muff

I agree, but the point is that even the Minister does not want to take such totalitarian powers as that. The only thing we can do, and here I agree with my hon. Friend, is to suggest that such foolish advertisements, if read by many people, would certainly have a bad effect on the morale of the nation.

Mr. Granville

Does the hon. Member not know that the Ministry have already taken powers to conscript the man-power of the country?

Mr. Muff

I submit that we are not going to give powers to the Ministry of Labour, or to any other Ministry to prohibit advertisements which are within the law. That is the policy of the hon. Member for Eye (Mr. Granville), whose attacks we bear with philosophic equanimity. I am concerned with those who are aged and who lack domestic help in their own households. I do not want to boast, but I have to make dozens of calls every week in households, where the husband is away in the Fighting Services. That is one of my jobs, and I find that the position is getting more and more serious in those households. I do not want to indulge in any class distinctions, but there are tens of thousands of housewives in this country with two, three, or four small children, who are at their wits' end in trying to conduct their households in a decent way.

I suggest that this House has encouraged the Minister to do something, and, if the Minister of Health were here, he would be able to tell what has been done in the North of England. I know very little about Wales, but I do know something about the North of England, where we are progressive and have an enlightened civic pride. If my hon. Friend the Member for Denbigh (Sir H. Morris-Jones), for whom I have such a great personal esteem, could visit the area North of the Trent, he would find civic authorities which had, with the accord of the Minister of Labour and through the foresight of the Ministry of Health, provided day nurseries and crôches and other forms of help to these housewives. I would prefer, however, that we should be able to give communal help by daily helpers, not only to those with money in their pockets but also to those with modest means.

To-day, we are in a total war. I agree that neither the Minister of Labour nor his Parliamentary Secretary is in need of defence from me. The Parliamentary Secretary is big enough and strong enough to stand his own corner. Neither Minister has a lean and hungry look about him. But let us be factual and realistic. We have put many women in the Services. There is a wastage, I agree; there is always wastage, where there is war. But to ask, at this juncture, for miracles to be done, like producing rabbits out of a hat, is not much good. What we can do, is to make the best use of the services we have got.

Mr. Granville

I am not attacking the Labour Party.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Mr. Charles Williams)

The hon. Member may ask questions. He has already made one speech and he must not endeavour to make another speech, or to answer attacks made upon him now.

Mr. Granville

I bow to your Ruling, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, and will content myself by asking whether the hon. Member thinks it proper and fair that one household should have four or five servants, when another, with equal means, is unable to get a servant at all. As a good Socialist does the hon. Member think that that is right?

Mr. Muff

I do not like to make comparisons and I agree with the hon. Member on the principle that I would apply to universities. I do not want universities abolished just because I cannot send my children there. These matters want ventilating. It is an abuse of the power of money to be able to attract domestic servants to staff your household by paying too high wages. I am ready to go with the hon. Member to the street I mentioned at the back of Westminster immediately the House has adjourned. I will take a soap box with me, and will hold an open-air meeting with him, and try to awaken a decent sense of propriety and balance during the war. In the meantime, let us get back to life. The hon. Member for Eye exaggerated his case and he does not make it any better by talking about rackets and racketeers. This means, Can we get more mothers' helps, more creches and more day nurseries? That is the question which the Parliamentary Secretary has to answer and I hope that he will be able to give a good answer.

Mr. Glenvil Hall (Colne Valley)

I do not want to detain the House for longer than is necessary because most of the arguments have been put several times. The House is well aware of the difficulties of this question. The hon. Member for Denbigh (Sir H. Morris-Jones), who introduced it, rather spoilt his case by dealing with certain aspects of it, which, though interesting, are irrelevant. Occasionally one sees in various newspapers advertisements of the kind to which he referred, but I am inclined to think that they are very few and far between. Households with four, five or six servants are not as numerous as he would lead us to believe. The problem goes much deeper than that. It is a serious and permanent problem. We had the problem before the war. The war has made it worse and it is likely, when the war is over, that it will not appreciably improve. The plain fact is that domestic service is not popular and that girls today prefer regular hours, like their evenings off and to know where they are from day to day. If a girl happens to be the only maid in the house, she is frequently unable to know just where she is and to make arrangements as one can when one's hours are definitely laid down.

Although that problem has to be faced—and it would be a good thing if the Ministry of Labour faced it soon—if we are to encourage people to have larger families, some provision will have to be made nationally for seeing that the woman in the home, whatever her financial situation, gets domestic help, or help with her children if she herself looks after her own house. But even during the war the Ministry of Labour could do something. It could instruct its local hardship committees to be a little more lenient when a girl comes before them and can show definitely that she lives with aged parents, or is helping a sister or her mother with younger children in the home. I have had a number of these instances from my own division and time and time again, in my view, an excellent case has been put up, but the local hardship committee have directed the girl to go into other employment. It is clear to me—and I should like to feel that it is clear to the Ministry—that, if a girl is helping in the home, or helping aged parents, she is doing work of national service, and is just as much use to the community at this particular juncture in its history as she would be if sent into the Services or even to work elsewhere.

Another direction in which the Ministry could help would be to help raise the status of those who go out to give help to others. Here, again, I have had instances in my Division where the Ministry has shown itself somewhat short-sighted. Women have been willing to assist in other households, but having a certain sense of dignity and pride, they have wanted to go well dressed. In her own home, a woman can do the housework in her old clothes, but if she is going out to help someone else, she likes to dress a little better than if she were staying in her own house. She also likes to have an overall for the work she is going to do. It would help considerably if the Ministry of Labour would help women in that position, either to get their overalls free, or to be able to get them with a reduced number of coupons. I put the idea to the President of the Board of Trade some time ago and he could not see his way to acquiesce in the suggestion. I suggest to the hon. Gentleman who is to reply to the Debate that his Ministry should ask the President of the Board of Trade to see that, either overalls are provided free for those who go out to give domestic help, or for a limited number of coupons. I do not know what else at the present time the Ministry can do. I realise the difficulty of directing women into work of this kind but much could be done to bring hardship committees to a different frame of mind, so that when a good case is made out, a woman shall not be directed away from domestic work.

Mr. Bartle Bull (Enfield)

I intervene only for a moment or two and I will endeavour not to be provocative. I want to say a word or two in view of the fact that I asked a question of the hon. Member for Denbigh (Sir H. Morris-Jones). Obviously there is no compulsion. As every hon. Member knows, nobody need be a batman to any officer, and a batman very often has to perform his ordinary duties as well. Very often now in the case of service battalions you will find one batman helping two, three or four officers, second lieutenants, first lieutenants or captains, according to the number of people available to do that particular job. You will of ten find that the batman is much older than the other soldiers, and is very often also a category man. What is an officer's duty? Is it to look after his men and to think a little—if he is capable of doing so; if not the batman should be the officer and the officer should be reduced to batman—or to shine his boots and polish his buttons? That is the question we must consider. There is, as everyone knows, very little, if any, polishing of buttons or belts or shoes in the field, but in an active service battalion I am quite satisfied that it is extremely important for an officer of any rank to have a batman because, as my hon. Friend knows very well, the batman is then in the position of runner to the junior officer. It is the usual custom for the officer in the British Army to go first, and his batman, as runner, comes immediately after. It is a most unenviable job to be a runner in the field. That is all I have to say, and I hope I have not been provocative in the remarks which I have only made because of what was said by the hon. Member.

Miss Ward (Wallsend)

I think the provision of domestic service is one of the most difficult problems which the Ministry of Labour has to face. I would like to emphasise two aspects of it. First, I do not think anyone would feel it would have been right for the Minister to direct girls into private domestic service. I think that would have raised a quite impossible situation in the country. Ever since the inception of the Minister of Labour's consultative committee, I have had the privilege of sitting on it, and I very much welcomed the opportunity of being associated with my right hon. Friend. I am quite certain, however, that I should not have felt able to accept the point of view that one should direct girls into private homes in a domestic capacity. At the same time, I would like to pay a tribute to the housewives and the mothers of the country for the way they have carried on, sometimes doing very much harder jobs, involving very much longer hours, than women who have been called up to serve in other forms of national life.

I must apologise for not having been here when my hon. Friend raised the question. I understand that the discussion has roamed over houses where there is more than one domestic servant, and that those have been compared with the houses of people who have been unable to obtain any domestic help of any kind. If one looked into the position of the fortunate people who still retain a domestic staff, I think you would find, for the most part, that those domestic servants are of an age unaffected by the Ministry of Labour call-up. Therefore, if you tried to level up the position by withdrawing the women from those houses, you would in fact be seeking to direct women who are over calling-up age, or under calling-up age, and it would raise a quite impossible position to try to enforce direction on people who fall without the age categories subject to direction by the Minister. I think, also, that it would be very difficult even to try to direct women over the age of 50, who have been associated with perhaps one family ever since they were 18, 19 or 20 years of age, and suggest that they should work in some other household. As I am sure my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary would agree, women can be extremely obstinate when they want to be, and I do not think I would like to undertake the responsibility of trying to direct women over the age of 50 from one kind of domestic post into another.

I would just say, because I know that it has given great cause for anxiety to my hon. Friend, and, indeed, to many of us who have had associations and contacts with families all over the country, that women who have very young children, or women who are going to have children, are placed in an impossible position when they cannot obtain domestic help for a period of a few months. I do not think there is an answer, but what has caused criticism is that there has been a variation in the approach of the local hardship committees when domestic servants have come up before them, either on their own account or with the co-operation of their employers, and deferment has been asked for on the ground that the mistress of the house is going to have a child in the near future. Now some local hardship committees have been extremely wise, helpful and knowledgeable, but some have, in my opinion, taken an entirely wrong line. If any criticism can be levelled at the Ministry of Labour, I think it is that, somehow or other—I am associating myself with what has been done—we have found it impossible to get sufficient uniformity of decision from the local hardship committees to give the feeling that justice is spread equally right over the country.

I do not know whether my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary could look into that particular aspect. As we all know, we are on the eve of very grave events, and I feel extremely sorry for officers and other ranks who have to go abroad, leaving their wives struggling and not knowing what is going to happen to them. As I say, I think the problem is almost insoluble but perhaps we could see that there is greater uniformity of decision by local hardship committees, and in areas where, in the technical sense, there is not so much war work for women—and one cannot direct the wives of serving men away from their homes—I thing local committees could be more on coming in organising their household labour. I do not know whether we have been active enough in stimulating the local authorities to local schemes, but I do think that in areas where there is not much women's war work—take my own North East coast compared with Birmingham and Coventry—there is perhaps a surplus of women. If they had really had the case put to them, I believe they might have gone in and helped women in very difficult domestic circumstances over their major period of difficulty.

However, on the general issue of directing women into domestic service, I cannot think of anything more unpopular that the House of Commons could do than press the Minister on that line. Let us face the fact that domestic service is not popular. Frankly, I would myself do any one of the jobs open to women to-day, much more readily and with greater alacrity, than I would undertake a domestic service job. It is one of the phases of life, and there are so many phases to be dealt with that the Minister will have a difficult job to popularise domestic service. But we can all give our minds to this problem, and I hope that in future we may be able to increase the status of domestic service so that people will want to go into it and realise that by doing so they are making a contribution to the national effort.

Mr. Martin (Southwark, Central)

I would like to deal with a point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Glenvil Hall) with regard to appeals of daughters at home who have sick or aged parents and who are directed into work by the local National Service Officer or the local committee. I have always understood that the Minister would give consideration to such young women and that, except in cases where it was quite clear there was no justification for the request, they should get exemption when sick parents depended upon them. Now I find, in case after case, that the daughters of old and sick people are frequently directed into work away from their neighbourhood, although they have asked if they could do work near home so they could help with house- work at night and look after their parents. These appeals have been completely ignored. To-day, I sent to the Department a case of an old man suffering from a heart complaint and chronic bronchitis, whose only daughter has been sent from London to Birmingham, leaving him entirely dependent upon neighbours. This man was so ill when I saw him that he could not answer the door, yet the local officer said that there was no need for his daughter to live at home or to stay in London. [An HON. MEMBER: "Shame."] That sort of case frequently happens, and I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to pay attention to this matter and see that his local officers and committees adopt a uniform method of dealing with these cases, because there is great disparity in various parts of the country.

Mr. R. Morgan (Stourbridge)

I want to make a friendly intervention in the Debate. There is a special difficulty with regard to the paucity of domestic servants. In my own county there have been domestic servants who have been happy in their work, and who have been directed by the Department to factories, where there was no need for them—at least, that is what I have been told. I cannot say how true it is, but I can say that the head man of a factory near my division said to me the other day, "I could do with 500 fewer young women to-morrow." Whether that is so I do not know, but if it was so the Ministry could alleviate the burden of finding domestic help. I do not believe that all young people want to leave their jobs in domestic service; many are well remunerated and are happy. I wonder whether the Parliamentary Secretary could disillusion the people who talk like that by telling them that we have not reached the peak in industry yet, or the point at which we can release large numbers of young people? If so, it would give great satisfaction, because if it was thought that hundreds of people were wasting their time in our factories it would be a serious matter. I do not believe it is true, but it is being repeatedly said. I have had letters from people who have said that factory workers are wasting their time. I would like the Parliamentary Secretary to give an assurance that all this young labour, especially women labour, in our factories is being satisfactorily used.

Mr. Murray (Spennymoor)

I want to deal with a matter concerning my own Division, namely, that of miners who have no wives and who have had their daughters taken away from them and sent to other work. This is a good deal worse than anything which has been mentioned to-day. It is wrong that men should have to come from the mines and cook their own food because their daughters have been directed to other work. I know that the Ministry have tried to put these women as near home as possible, but if I had to choose between a woman staying at home to look after her father coming from the mine and going away to look after two or three children I would choose, every time, that the woman should stay at home. Some of us have been brought up in homes where there have been more than two or three children and where it was the usual practice for someone to help in the home for a fortnight after our mother's confinement, after which we were left to our own devices. I would remind hon. Members who have spoken that there is a war on and that I am talking about difficulties which existed in our homes before the war started, when there was an economic war. I have not been able to understand why there are so many girls in the Services. I have wondered whether there were permanent jobs for them to do. I felt that many of them could be doing more useful work, and that they were perhaps only where they were because others held good jobs as their supervisors. That is my individual opinion about the Services. I have felt that many of the girls there could be doing more useful work than they have been called to.

I wish the Parliamentary Secretary would look at the question of calling young women from the homes of miners and sending them to work for long hours in the factories. If a girl is sent to a factory in my Division it means that she is away from the home for 12 or 13 hours. I ask the House to realise the difficulties of a man working seven or eight hours in the pit and then corning home to a girl who has been working for 12 or 13 hours. What chance has she to do domestic work and to give food to a man who has been working hard, and in some of the mines in Durham, working wet? There is no place he can go to to dry his clothes Some of the collieries are small; their life may not be long and it does not pay to instal baths. In the old-fashioned miner's house there is no bathroom and he has to bath in the kitchen. If the girl is taken away where there is no mother in the home, you create 100 per cent. worse hardship than in the cases that have been mentioned. I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will help us in this direction.

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

I make no complaint whatever about the raising of this subject, which affects every one of us, on a day on which we can have a certain amount of time to discuss it fully. I think we may be well content both with the attendance and with the number and quality of the speeches that have been made. The underlying condition in all these problems which affect the Ministry of Labour, and affects us all, is that there is no chance at the moment of easing up in our labour position. The demands on our people at the moment are as heavy, or heavier than they have ever been, and there is no chance, therefore, of the rigour of our call-up or of our demands on the population being lessened at this moment. The House will not wish me to labour the point. They all know the reason. That is why I was rather sorry to hear the attack made upon the Forces by the hon. Member for Denbigh (Sir H. Morris-Jones), which was taken up by some other speakers. He talked of gross waste of personnel in the Services and asked if this call-up was necessary, and if some of the R.A.M.C. could be weeded out.

Sir H. Morris-Jones

I said that there were elderly men in the R.A.M.C. on the point of demobilisation, many of whom could be released.

Mr. McCorquodale

That is what I said; the hon. Member said that some of the R.A.M.C. could be weeded out. I ask the House to consider whether, on the eve of the operations of which we all know, it is practical to ask the Services, especially the medical services, which are going to attend to casualties, to curtail their numbers. If all, the women's Services are not fully employed to-day—and those best able to judge tell me that by and large they are very fully employed—they will all very soon be fully employed and over-employed and I cannot recommend to the House that we should at this time turn, for an easement of our domestic difficulties, to a comb-out of the Services. The question has been raised of women being withdrawn from their homes, causing hardship to their parents. Our present procedure is that cases of women being withdrawn, daughters or domestics, are now dealt with by women's panels in the first instance if there is any doubt or difficulty or if the women wish that to be clone. It is only where there is an appeal against direction that the local appeal board comes in, and these girls do not go to the statutory hardship committees. The women's panels are specially instructed to pay due regard to the conditions in the households from which it is proposed to withdraw the women. If, therefore, there are cases where hon. Members think that at the moment hardship is being caused unnecessarily, I wish they would write to me and I will look into them.

Major Lloyd (Renfrew, Eastern)

Are there these women's panels in every part of the country?

Mr. McCorquodale

Very much so, and they are doing very good work. I am glad to pay tribute to these panels. It is unpleasant and difficult work and by and large they have done awfully well and we have very few complaints.

One of the interesting things about the Debate is that it is on a subject which our wives probably know much more about than we do, yet with the single exception of the hon. Member for Walls-end (Miss Ward) all the lady Members have chosen to absent themselves. I thought we should get a broadside from all of them. Instead we had a speech from a lady Member who pointed out certain difficulties in the proposals that the hon. Member for Denbigh made. I would ask him, before he suggests that we at the Ministry should begin directing and calling up and changing the position of women over 50 and under 18, to recall the Debate we had some little time ago when we asked permission of the House to call up women of 45 to 50 and were subjected to a storm of criticism, in which I believe he himself indulged, saying that this was iniquitous. If that is the case, it would not be a practicable step for us to consider rationing domestic help where it concerns women over the age of the call-up. I am glad the hon. Lady raised that point and put it so clearly, because it is fundamental in all suggestions about rationing the supply of domestic servants. All we can do is to take the women in the call-up ages of 18 to 50 and see that they at least are properly employed. The hon. Member said he did not feel that the Ministry of Labour quite appreciated the position. On the contrary, we cannot help appreciating the position, in view of our postbags and representations made by Members and by our own officials all over the country. It has given my right hon. Friend and myself a very great deal of concern. We know that there are hard cases and difficulties.

May I run over what we are doing at the moment to supply domestic workers to hospitals and other institutions of that type, and also what we are doing about private homes? With regard to hospitals and similar establishments, we do not withdraw any labour. Nevertheless, because labour drifted away and there was wastage, the supply position became acute and the hospitals were not able to keep on recruiting sufficiently to make up this wastage. The Ministry of Labour a year and a half ago was entrusted with the recruitment and distribution of nurses and midwives and we set up an Advisory Council, over which I presided. It was no use recruiting a great number more nurses if we did not have a complementary number of domestic workers in the hospital to make the thing balance.

Therefore, we considered the domestic problem, as it concerned hospitals. The first thing we did was to ask a committee, presided over by Sir Hector Hetherington, to make recommendations as to minimum rates of wages and conditions in hospitals and institutions, so that, if necessary, we could direct women to those hospitals, knowing that they would get the proper rates of wages and conditions. He reported in November, 1943. My Minister immediately set up a committee on institutional *domestic employment over which I also preside. The Committee made certain suggestions towards the end of the year, and asked that the highest priority should be given to this domestic work. We agreed to do so.

Now, the priority of domestic employment in hospitals and similar institutions is placed on the highest level and it is regarded by the Ministry of Labour as equal in importance to aircraft work. The Committee asked that directions should be issued, if necessary, where the Hetherington scales were in operation, and we are doing that. They also suggested that we should go in for a publicity campaign to try to improve the status of domestic work in the eyes of the general public and to make it easier to ask girls to go in for it. This we are doing now. The Treasury were good enough to let us have a considerable amount of money for this publicity campaign which has been in full swing for some time and which, I am glad to say, is having an effect. Finally, the Committee made certain valuable recommendations as to the training of domestic workers which we are following up.

All those steps have been taken. As a result, I am glad to be able to tell the House that, in February, we placed no less than 4,000 domestic workers in hospitals and in institutions, another 500 in children's homes and the like, and another 460 in the school meals service. In March, it is interesting to note, we placed very nearly another 4,000 in hospitals. In the first two months of this campaign its results were felt, and I am glad to say that the position is easier in those hospitals and institutions, and that shortly it will be much easier. I am afraid I have not got the April figures yet.

Last night I was tackled about the call-up of the 1923 age group to be sent into a vital industry, and about the Cabinet decision that only very exceptional sections of the community should be exempted from this arbitrary call-up. I am glad to be able to say that this field of domestic service is one of those to which the 1923 age group call-up does not apply. It is rather early yet to judge the results of the publicity campaign but we have run it on the same lines as the one in which we appealed last summer for nurses. That campaign was most successful. If the House would be interested for a moment I would like to tell hon. Members—because these are fairly new figures—that in the field of nursing, following the campaign for more nurses to come forward, the Ministry of Health figures for hospitals and institutions—not including mental nursing, district nursing, midwives and the like—show that there was a net increase of 4,000 nurses, after wastage, in the country, between May last year and February of this year. Of those 4,000, no fewer than 2,500 are increased numbers of student nurses who will be of permanent addition to the profession. If that was so following our publicity campaign for nurses, and if we can get anything like the same success regarding domestic workers, I think our problems will be much relieved.

Now I come for a moment or two to the problem of domestic staffs in private houses. This, as the hon. Lady the Member for Wallsend (Miss Ward) says, is even more difficult because we cannot really issue directions, backed by prosecution and possible imprisonment for disobedience, for girls to go into private houses for domestic work. We do not make withdrawals, even in the age groups where the call-up operates, from houses where there is only one domestic and where there is exceptional hardship. We have recently taken steps to supply help in all possible cases where these household hardships occur. We have especially turned our attention to houses in which there are expectant mothers with children, several young children, or households with a number of war workers in them or lodgers doing war work, doctors' households, farmers' households and widowers' households—and that meets the case of the hon. Member who spoke from a Durham constituency—and where there are aged people. In these cases we will do our best to supply help. We give these jobs high priority, and if necessary, if there are no immobile older people available, we will allow young mobile people of ages at which they would normally be sent to the factories, to go to those houses; and, in cases where there is doubt whether hardship exists and whether a young person who would otherwise be employed in the highest military production should be allowed to go to the household, we ask our women's panels to advise us.

This step we have again only recently started, as a result of the advice of our committee, and I am glad to be able to tell the House that, both in February and in March, between 1,400 and 1,500 were placed during the month in these difficult households. I know that has not com- pleted the number of hardship households in the country but it is a start—nearly 3,000 domestic workers, one for each of these households. Where they have been submitted I know they have been very readily accepted. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for North St. Pancras (Wing-Commander Grant-Ferris) raised the question of a household which he knew about which exactly fitted this description of undue hardship, if what I heard is correct. I wonder whether the lady in question had applied to the Minister of Labour for help. If not, I hope she will do so, and we will do our very best to help her without limit, except that we cannot issue a direction.

The point has been raised, and I am glad of it, about those most unfortunate advertisements—and I quite agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Denbigh—that one sometimes reads in the paper, such as "two in family, four maids kept." It is an affront to the nation when such words are read. From such inquiries as I have been able to make, it appears that a great number of these advertisements are not correct. At least, one into which I inquired myself brought the reply, when application was made: "Oh, yes, four maids kept? Of course we have not got four maids now. That was before the war." It is a lure to try to get hold of someone. Sometimes they are advertisements thrown out in the hope of catching a fish. I suggest to people who are inclined to put such advertisements into the paper that they are not patriotic because they cause a great deal of mental distress. The war effort would be helped if they refrained from putting in advertisements of that kind. We cannot stop them. They are not illegal, but they are most unfortunate, and I hope that the comments made about them in all parts of the House will be borne in mind.

Sir R. W. Smith

Are not these advertisements very often put in by registries, and not by individuals?

Mr. McCorquodale

I believe that is the case in a great number of cases, especially where there is a box number. I would like to look into the case of the household mentioned by the hon. Member for Denbigh in which there were eight domestic servants, and see whether any of them come within our scope, so that we could withdraw them. I would also like to look into the case in which there was a "swarm of Hungarians" mentioned by the hon. Member for Eye (Mr. Granville). I would like to thank him for the very kind remarks he made about myself. These Hungarians should, of course, come under our rules if they are of the proper age, and we would direct them to more important war work. If he will give me the particulars I shall be happy to look into the case.

Home helps have been mentioned. They are very important. It is very necessary in cases of illness, childbirth and short periods of emergency of that sort, that some special steps should be taken. We are in active discussion with the Ministry of Health and local authorities to see if we cannot get on with some good scheme before next winter comes round.

Mr. Glenvil Hall

Could anything be done to provide overalls for these home helps? I have had several cases of this kind. They like to feel that they are respectably dressed.

Mr. McCorquodale

As my hon. Friend knows, that is primarily a matter for the Board of Trade, but I will certainly look into it and see if something can be done.

I would just like to make one remark about a matter that is concerning us at the Ministry of Labour very much, that is, the future of domestic work of all kinds in this country after the war. It is certain that we shall look to this field for the employment of very large numbers of women. I am sure that the lessons of this war have led all of us to the conclusion that the easing of the household duties on the harrassed housewife by means of domestic help should not be the sole prerogative of the rich, but if possible should be spread over all sections of the community. Also I am sure that if we are to attract girls to this valuable and necessary profession after the war, there should be some more definite standards laid down as to the rates of wages, conditions of employment, and the like At the Ministry of Labour we have set up a special Department recently to consider this problem as a whole. This Department has got outside help of the highest qualifications, and at this moment is collecting and sifting all the suggestions which have been sent to us from all quarters. I hope something will come out of the inquiry. It is too early yet to say. I am merely making these remarks because my right hon. Friend and myself are most keen that the end of the war should not find us without some future plans for domestic work in this country, and domestic work which will help as many families as can possibly be assisted.

Mr. Muff

Would the hon. Gentleman consider having training schools for mistresses so that they shall know how to treat their servants?

Mr. McCorquodale

I only want in my last words to echo what the hon. Member for Wallsend said. There is no doubt whatever that the domestic work that has been done in this country, both in hospitals and institutions and in private households, has been beyond praise, and the work which housewives have done and the way they have carried on in the difficult situation of the war has rendered service to this country in the hour of her direst need no whit less valuable than that of any other section of the community.

Question, "That this House do now adjourn," put, and agreed to.