Commons Sitting of 13 December 1954

Preamble
The House met at Half past Two o'Clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  HOSPITALS

    Orthodontic Treatment (Children)
    Mr. Maudeasked the Minister of Health how many children in England and Wales were, at the latest date for which statistics are available. awaiting specialist orthodontic treatment under the National Health Service; what is the approximate proportion of these needing treatment for functional defects; and to what extent the waiting lists have increased in recent years.
    The Minister of Health (Mr. Iain Macleod): I reget that this information is not available.
    Mr. Maudeasked the Minister of Health how many orthodontic specialists are available, full or part-time, for the treatment of children in England and Wales under the National Health Service; and to what extent the number has declined in recent years.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: The number of consultants and senior hospital dental officers employed exclusively as orthodontists is 37, compared with 39 on 31st December, 1953; but an appreciable amount of specialist orthodontic work in hospitals is done by other dental consultants and senior hospital dental officers.
    Mr. Maude: In view of the fact that the impression seems to be current that the waiting lists are quite considerable and are increasing, can my right hon. Friend say whether the shortage of orthodontic specialists is due to absolute shortage or to low rates of remuneration, and, if the latter, does he not think that a small amount of money invested in this
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    service now might save a great deal of expenditure on the general dental service later?
    Mr. Macleod: Some of these points will probably be covered by the Committee whose appointment I recently announced. There is a good deal of orthodontic work done under the general dental service, and I think that, apart from these figures, one-third of all dental practitioners do at least some work in the orthodontic field.

    New Towns
    Mr. K. Robinsonasked the Minister of Health what special capital provision he expects to make during the coming year for hospital construction in the new towns.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: I hope that it will be possible to make a start during the year on the preliminary stages of a new hospital for Welwyn and Hatfield which is to be financed from funds reserved centrally for major projects.
    Mr. Robinson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this is really merely scratching the surface of the problem and that the new towns are now providing houses, shops, factories, schools and even cinemas, and that the one thing which is not being provided is a hospital service? Would not a special allocation be appropriate for the new towns and these other new communities which have to have new hospital provision?
    Mr. Macleod: In general, I am against special allocations and I have made an exception only in the mental field. I take into consideration the particular needs of the regional board in which the hon. Member is concerned in making my allocations, but new hospitals represent such a vast project that they must clearly be financed centrally. Therefore, a special allocation is not appropriate.
    Mr. Blenkinsop: Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that there are two new towns in the North-East which need attention?
    Mr. Macleod: So I am told.
    Mr. K. Robinsonasked the Minister of Health if he will consult the Minister of Housing and Local Government with a view to arranging that

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    capital for new hospital construction in the new towns shall be provided by the development corporations.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: Neither my right hon. Friend nor I consider it appropriate that development corporations should provide capital for this purpose any more than for other services which are the responsibility of other statutory authorities.
    Mr. Robinson: But is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this House is in process of voting £100 million for the new towns, which is roughly 10 times the amount he has available for the whole capital development of the hospital services for the next 12 months? In those circumstances, does not the Minister think that this matter is at any rate worth looking at again?
    Mr. Macleod: That is quite right, but the money, if voted, is not intended for that particular purpose. I think that the solution would be for me to allocate, through the regional boards, what I consider a fair proportion of the amount of money which I can obtain from my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
    Mr. Blenkinsop: Is it certain that that grant of aid to the new towns necessarily excludes any health development at all? Surely that is not so?
    Mr. Macleod: I should have thought that it excluded hospital development, which clearly is an Exchequer matter, but, if the hon. Member wishes, I will look at the matter again.
    Mr. Collins: Is the Minister confident that in that way he will be able to provide for the hospital needs of the new towns without detriment to capital improvements in other regions?
    Mr. Macleod: The new towns are a special problem within the much wider problem, and I must give special attention to them.

    Tone Vale Hospital, Norton Fitzwarren
    Mr. Collinsasked the Minister of Health why he refused to accept a proposal for building a 44-bed unit at Tone
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    Vale Hospital, Norton Fitzwarren, although, compared with its statutory accommodation, the hospital is overcrowded to the extent of 40·1 per cent. in the male, and 57·3 per cent. in the female, wards.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: This scheme has not yet proceeded because it was not included in the regional hospital board's list of first priority schemes to be met out of the "mental million." I should add that the hon. Member's figures of overcrowding are inaccurate.
    Mr. Collins: Is the Minister aware that the figures for overcrowding which I quoted were supplied by the hospital and, in any case, in many of the wards it is difficult to walk between the beds? Although it is only 50 years old and comparatively modern, there is a feeling of considerable frustration that the hospital cannot really be carried on properly. Will the right hon. Gentleman bear this in mind?
    Mr. Macleod: As the hon. Member knows, this was not one of the four major plans that the board put forward to me and which has been accepted for provision out of the "mental million." I understand that it comes high in the thoughts of the board in what we might call the second division, but the board must decide what comes in front of it.

    Thoracic Surgery, North-West Region (Beds)
    Mr. Boardmanasked the Minister of Health how many beds for non-tuberculous thoracic surgery, male and female, pro rata of population, are available in the North-West Region compared with neighbouring regions and the Southern Regions; and how many persons are awaiting major surgical treatment.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: As the answer consists of a table of statistics, I will, with permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL
    REPORT.
    Mr. Boardman: Can the Minister say how the waiting times compare and what has been done to reduce them in the North-West Region?
    Mr. Macleod: So far as the Manchester region is concerned, in which no doubt

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    the hon. Member is particularly interested, the percentage of beds is the lowest on the population basis of any of those quoted. On the other hand, its waiting list is surprisingly good in comparison with the other regions with which comparison is drawn.

    NON-TUBERCULOUS THORACIC SURGERY

    Region

    Estimated Population (mid-1953)

    Number of Beds

    Total

    Per 100,000

    Waiting Lists

    Male

    Female

    R.H.B.

    4,372,800

    30

    20

    64

    1·46

    217

    266

    Manchester

    (and 14 children)

    B.G.

    None allocated

    49

    R.H.B.

    2,102,600

    59

    26

    88

    4·2

    124

    Liverpool

    (and 3 not classified)

    B.G.

    None allocated

    R.H.B.

    2,911,200

    79

    50

    129

    4·45

    633

    Newcastle

    B.G.

    Nil

    R.H.B.

    3,044,900

    28

    24

    85

    2·79

    54

    217

    Leeds

    (and 5 not classified)

    B.G.

    8

    15

    163

    (and 5 children)

    R H.B.

    4,470,000

    33

    32

    97

    2·17

    312

    457

    Birmingham

    (and 16 not classified)

    *B.G.

    16 not classified

    145

    R.H.B.

    4,172,700

    58

    52

    142

    3·4

    107

    309

    Sheffield

    B.G.

    21

    11

    202

    R.H.B.

    2,678,200

    51

    29

    107

    3·99

    399

    Bristol

    (and 27 children)

    B.G.

    Nil

    S.E. Met. †(R.H.B. only)

    3,197,400

    30

    20

    50

    —

    36

    S.W. Met. †(R.H.B. only)

    4,620,900

    78

    47

    141

    —

    84

    (and 16 children)

    * B.G. figures are not specifically non-T.B.

    † NOTE: The London teaching hospitals are omitted as they took special regional affiliation.

    Western Counties (Capital Allocation)
    Mr. Collinsasked the Minister of Health if he is aware that the Royal Western Counties Hospital Group, with more than 1,800 patients, has spent only £8,000 on new capital works since 1948; and if, in the next financial year, he will reverse his recent decision and provide £50,000 from the special allocation for a 54-bed unit, at the Langdon extension.
    Mr. Boardman: Can the Minister say whether the difficulty in the Manchester region is due to buildings or staff?
    Mr. Macleod: To a certain extent, it is due to both. In the Manchester region, it is mainly buildings.
    Following is the table
    Mr. Iain Macleod: My information is that, since 1948, £14,246 has been spent on capital works at this hospital. In addition, a scheme for the reorganisation of the engineering services at Langdon extension will involve expenditure of about £14,000 this year and £30,500 next year. The scheme for a ward unit has been postponed because other schemes regarded by the regional board as more urgent have taken up the capital available for the purpose.
    Mr. Collins: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this Hospital Group with 1,800 patients is spread over some 18 buildings, many of them very old; that it is doing wonderful work but is gravely handicapped through shortage of capital, and that in one case people are housed in a decrepit building part of which is used as a mortuary? Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that this matter needs further consideration?
    Mr. Macleod: I do not dissent from what has been said, and I will bear it in mind.
    Mr. Nabarro: Can my hon. Friend say whether it is a proposal of the Boundary Commission to name a constituency "Taunton with Shoreditch and Finsbury?"
    Mr. Collins: Will the Minister bear in mind that I, in common with all other hon. Members of this House, have an interest in people who need others to speak up for them?
    Mr. Macleod: I should be very glad to consider these problems of the West Country in conjunction with the Members of Parliament concerned.
    Mr. Nabarro: Hear, hear. Rub it in.

    Bridgwater, Minehead and Budleigh
    Mr. Collinsasked the Minister of Health if he is aware that expenses of the Bridgwater, Minehead and Budleigh Hospital Group have, owing to increased costs, only been held within the the estimate by the restriction of expenditure on maintenance of buildings; and if, in the interests of economy, he will provide funds for essential work.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: I am aware that, in order to help keep expenditure within its approved estimates, this group is spending less this year on maintenance of buildings than in previous years, but I have no evidence that essential works are not being carried out.
    Mr. Collins: Will the Minister say whether he would regard normal maintenance as essential work, and is he aware that this is only one of scores of examples of having to defer important work through lack of funds? In making up his Estimates for next year. will the
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    Minister bear this in mind so that sufficient can be provided for a full service?
    Mr. Macleod: This is one of the main matters now under discussion between myself and the Chancellor. I am very conscious of this.
    Mr. Silverman: Arising out of a previous answer on the same subject, may I ask whether, when the Minister said that he would be pleased to discuss these matters with the hon. Members concerned, he was intending to suggest that there were any hon. Members who were not concerned?
    Mr. Macleod: I meant what I said.

    Dietary Expenditure
    Mr. Wilkinsasked the Minister of Health whether he is aware that in mental hospitals the daily diet allowance per patient is 2s. 5d., and in general hospitals 3s. 5d.; that, owing to increased costs, it is impossible to provide an adequate balanced diet within this limit; and if he will frame his Estimates for next year on a basis more in keeping with the current cost of food.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: I will certainly take into account the effect of food prices in considering the estimates for the hospital service for next year, but no daily diet allowance per patient is fixed centrally, although in some instances a daily rate has been indicated by the regional board to help to secure that expenditure as a whole does not exceed their allocation.
    Mr. Wilkins: Can the Minister say whether the regional boards have, or have not, to seek his approval for the cost of diet per patient? Are the boards free agents in the matter of the amount of money spent on the diet of the patients?
    Mr. Macleod: Yes, they are. I am aware of the letter from the South-West Regional Board, which I think the hon. Member has in mind, but I indicated neither approval nor disapproval.

    Langstone Sanatorium, Portsmouth
    Brigadier Clarkeasked the Minister of Health (1) for what purpose the Langstone Sanatorium, Portsmouth, was used between 1st January, 1953, and November, 1953;

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    (2) why the Langstone Sanatorium, Portsmouth, was not offered to Portsmouth Corporation until May, 1954, when it became officially surplus in November, 1953; and
    (3) when the Langstone Sanatorium, Portsmouth, was last used as a sanatorium; and for what purposes it was subsequently used.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: The last use as a sanatorium was in June, 1950, and it was subsequently used for storage until August, 1953. Although the hospital management committee reported the property as surplus to their requirements at the end of 1953, it was not possible to offer it to Portsmouth Corporation until possible alternative uses for hospital purposes had been considered by the regional hospital board.
    Brigadier Clarke: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Ministry of Health did not use this hospital for any useful purpose after 1950, that it might well have been handed back to Portsmouth and that it would have saved Portsmouth a lot of money in that case?
    Mr. Macleod: I am afraid that I cannot quite agree with my hon. and gallant Friend. It may have taken a considerable time to dispose of this, but the final decision was well outside the time of the special concession that had been agreed to run for five years from 1948. In the circumstances, I regret that I cannot change my mind.
    Brigadier Clarke: In view of what seems to have been a rather unnecessary delay, will my right hon. Friend now offer the hospital to Portsmouth at the same price at which it could have been offered if there had not been a delay?
    Mr. Macleod: No, Sir.
    Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: When the Minister says that he cannot quite agree with his hon. and gallant Friend, does he mean that he thoroughly disagrees with him? Would not it be better to say that?

    Newcastle
    Mr. Owenasked the Minister of Health whether he will increase the capital allocation for the Newcastle Regional Hospital Board in the next financial year.
    Mr. Willeyasked the Minister of Health if he will now increase the amount allocated to the Newcastle Regional Hospital Board for hospital capital projects.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: As I informed the hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, East (Mr. Blenkinsop) on 6th December, I am not in a position to do this for 1955–56.
    Mr. Owen: Is the Minister aware that this is a matter which really does require some special consideration, and is he prepared to review the matter?
    Mr. Macleod: I am reviewing it tomorrow morning, when I meet a deputation from the Newcastle Regional Hospital Board.
    Mr. Chetwynd: Can the right hon. Gentleman say how much the actual allocation falls short of the estimate?
    Mr. Macleod: No, not without notice.
    Mr. Blenkinsop: Is the Minister also considering any representations made from the Newcastle teaching hospitals as well as from the Board?
    Mr. Macleod: Yes, at the same time.
    Mr. Owenasked the Minister of Health what the degree of overcrowding is in the mental and mental-deficiency hospital in the Newcastle Regional Hospital Board's area; and how this compares with the average throughout the country.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: 35·3 per cent. in the mental hospitals and 28·9 per cent. in the mental-deficiency hospitals of the region at the end of 1953. The comparable national averages were 15·7 per cent. and 12·4 per cent.
    Mr. Owen: Will the Minister recognise, on the basis of the figures that he has now submitted, that there is an urgent need for capital grant to enable this needful social service to be provided for the people concerned?
    Mr. Macleod: Yes, I agree at once. Indeed, it is just because of that that the Newcastle Region has been given rather more than twice the allocation out of the "mental million" compared with what it would have received on an ordinary basis of population proportion. I am most conscious of the need in the Newcastle area.
    Mr. Marquand: Can the right hon. Gentleman hazard any estimate of what improvement in this percentage might be effected by the new building which is authorised?
    Mr. Macleod: There is a great deal of building, especially for mental deficiency work, in what we can call the "pipeline" at the moment, but I do not think that one could make an estimate of the effect that would have on percentage overcrowding, because it depends, for one thing, on the rate at which patients are cured.
    Mr. Blenkinsopasked the Minister of Health the number and total value of hospital capital projects costing over £100,000 started in the years 1953–54 and 1954–55, and proposed to be started in 1955–56; and which of these projects are located in the Newcastle Regional Board area.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: In 1953–54 four such projects were started, with an estimated total value of £1½ million. In the current year 13 have been started so far, with an estimated total value of £2·8 million. I so far know of 12 further projects, estimated to cost £2·2 million, which are likely to start between now and the end of 1955–56, but programmes for 1955–56 are not yet available and these may include other projects of this order to be started in that year. Two of the 29 projects mentioned, estimated to cost a little over £540,000, are in the Newcastle region.
    Mr. Blenkinsop: Is the Minister aware that there is a very strong feeling in the North-East Region, especially on Tyneside, that that area has been considerably neglected in the past? While I know some of the difficulties involved, may I ask if the right hon. Gentleman will do his best to ensure not only that urgently needed capital projects are proceeded with, but that there is sufficient revenue expenditure to see that they get going?
    Mr. Macleod: So far as Newcastle is concerned, I think that what matters is not the share in any particular sector, but the total share of the capital allocation. As I have said before in this House, Newcastle's share, while it may be inadequate for the need, is, in proportion, quite high when compared with other regions in the country.
    Dr. King: Will the Minister give special consideration to proposals for the improvement of heating in hospitals, because in the long run that will be an economy?
    Mr. Macleod: Yes, I am aware of that. We have a number of schemes in connection with the amalgamation of boilers, which we are trying to get on with as soon as we can.

    Nurses (Recruitment)
    Mr. Wilkinsasked the Minister of Health whether the instruction issued by the regional hospital boards to hospital management committees, that the recruitment of nursing staff up to approved establishment can be made only on the condition that the salaries of any additional staff can be met out of the approved estimates was made with his approval.
    Mr. Blenkinsopasked the Minister of Health if he is aware that many hospitals are not able to recruit nursing staff that are needed to bring numbers up to approved establishment because of lack of finance; and what action he proposes to take to remedy this.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: While the allocations made to hospital boards, within the sums voted by Parliament have generally been sufficient not only for the maintenance of existing services and staffing standards but also for some improvements and developments—which include increases in staff—I have, from the outset made it clear that the cost of these must be met within the allocations made. I am constantly encouraging hospital authorities to achieve the maximum economy in running their services in order to release further resources for improvements and developments.
    Mr. Wilkins: What earthly use is it to hold recruiting campaigns in the various regions—which I understand arc reasonably successful—if hospital management committees find it impossible to meet the cost of additional staff? They are already hard pressed to keep their expenditure within the estimates, and does not this mean that there will be no recruitment of staff?
    Mr. Macleod: No, it does not. As a matter of fact, some of the recruitment drives have, perhaps, not been quite as

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    successful as the supplementary question may have indicated, though both I and my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of Labour are always looking for such recruits. But it is a general principle, and always has been in the budgeting of all Departments, that every one must try to keep within their allocation and use it for the improvements which they can obtain.
    Mr. Blenkinsop: Does that reply mean that the Minister is prepared to look again at individual cases where special development has been long planned—and indeed where capital expenditure may have been incurred—but which cannot be put into full operation because nurses, although available, cannot be paid?
    Mr. Macleod: I have consistently told regional boards, who equally consistently have told hospital management committees, that they must stay within their allocations. But I am always prepared to consider any special case if an hon. Member wishes to put one forward.
    Mr. Wilkins: Does that mean that when a regional hospital board sends in its budget, it is expected to take account of the maximum number of staff it may be permitted to have?
    Mr. Macleod: No, Sir, not necessarily. A board submits its demands to me on the basis of the numbers it thinks it can reasonably expect to recruit within the coming year.
    Mr. Marquand: Whatever may be happening elsewhere, can the Minister assure us that, so far as mental health is concerned, the number of nurses will not have to be limited by the amount of finance available?
    Mr. Macleod: That goes too wide. It is right to say that the recruitment of mental health staff is a special problem.

    Facilities, Goole
    Mr. G. Jegerasked the Minister of Health whether he is aware of the inadequate hospital facilities in Goole; and what proposals he has to improve them.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: I understand that the regional hospital board has recently reviewed the hospital services in this and other areas. It has concluded that, with
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    the completion of capital works at West-field Hospital early next year and projects which it hopes to include in its capital programme in the next two years at Longwood, Bartholomew and St. John's Hospitals, the main deficiencies, as compared with other areas, will have been made good.
    Mr. Jeger: Does the Minister appreciate that many would-be patients in Goole have at present to travel to Leeds, which is a journey of two hours by bus, and that there are many complaints also about the long waiting list at Goole?
    Mr. Macleod: I will examine that, but the answer I have just given, which is based on information from my regional board, would seem to indicate that Goole is doing reasonably well in comparison with most areas covered by that regional board.

    Out-patients Departments (Waiting Lists)
    Mr. G. Jegerasked the Minister of Health what results he has obtained from his circular to hospital authorities on the subject of reducing waiting-time in outpatients departments; and whether he will make a statement.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: I am asking for a progress report and hope to be able to make some assessment of results early in the New Year.
    Mr. Jeger: Will the Minister publish that progress report when he receives it?
    Mr. Macleod: I will certainly consider how best I can convey the information to the House. I know that many hon. Members are particularly interested in this matter.

    Repairs and Maintenance
    Mr. Blenkinsopasked the Minister of Health to what extent he is satisfied that hospitals have been able to carry out essential repair and maintenance works on their buildings during the current year; and what further provision he hopes to make.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: I am anxious that hospital buildings should be properly maintained, but I am not in a position to make a comprehensive statement about the current maintenance standard. It is not the practice to make special allocations for this purpose.
    Mr. Blenkinsop: Is the Minister aware that for some years now hospitals have been repeatedly cutting down on this vital work, and that while it may be possible to do that as an emergency measure for one or two years, if it is continued it piles up much larger bills for the future? Will he give some instruction or advice to hospital boards, together with some extra cash?
    Mr. Macleod: I am not sure that the position is quite so bad as that. This year, on the recently revised estimates, we are spending about £9 million, which is less than the year before but substantially higher than the average for the previous years. I do not think the money is enough, but I think that we tend to exaggerate the amount of the reduction which there has been.
    Mr. Blenkinsop: Is the Minister aware that one receives continuous complaints from hospitals all over the country on this issue? It is becoming a very pressing matter, which I do not think that one can exaggerate.
    Mr. Macleod: I am aware of that but, as I said in answer to an earlier Question, it is one of the particular matters which I am discussing with the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

    Capital Expenditure
    Mr. Marquandasked the Minister of Health what proportion of the total capital expenditure by hospital authorities in the current financial year he estimates will be met from non-Exchequer funds.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: About 7 per cent.
    Mr. Marquand: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether that percentage has tended to rise in recent years?
    Mr. Macleod: It is too early to say yet, because it has hardly been running for a full year. I should think that it will tend to rise, because some of the big schemes involved clearly take some time to prepare.
    Mr. Marquandasked the Minister of Health what proportion of the total capital expenditure by hospital authorities in the current, and the coming, financial year, respectively, he expects to be devoted to projects directly concerned with mental health and mental deficiency.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: I expect that the figure for the current financial year will be about 28 per cent. I have not yet received hospital board programmes for next year, but at least 20 per cent, of the total sum expected to be available is likely to be spent on centrally financed works at mental and mental deficiency hospitals, and the overall percentage therefore is likely to be higher than this year.
    Mr. K. Robinson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this proportion is still inadequate, in view of the fact that over 40 per cent. of the total number of hospital beds are devoted to mental and mentally deficient patients? Will he continue to use his best endeavours to step up this percentage?
    Mr. Macleod: Yes, but if the hon. Member will study my answer he will find that the percentage expected next year is about 36 per cent., and if one takes into account the fact that many special departments are not required in mental hospitals it would appear that this bears a very good relationship to the provision of beds under the Service.
    Mr. Blenkinsop: Would not the Minister agree that it is perhaps unwise to concentrate entirely upon a percentage, because quite a large percentage of a small sum is still a small sum?
    Mr. Marquandasked the Minister of Health how the capital allocation to hospital authorities in the current financial year compares, allowing for changes in costs in the meantime, with the expenditure on hospital building in the year 1938 or any other convenient year before the last war.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: I estimate that the average capital expenditure on hospitals in England and Wales in the three financial years immediately before the last war was about three times the allocation for the current year.
    Mr. Marquand: In view of the considerable increase in population since then, together with the heavy war damage and the creation of new towns which at present have no hospital facilities, would not the right hon. Gentleman agree that the nation really cannot be satisfied with the present position?
    Mr. Macleod: I have made great use of these figures over a long period. What they show—and it is no credit to any of us—is that in the 1930s we were doing three times as much hospital building as either Government has been able to achieve since the National Health Service came into operation.
    Mr. Wilkins: Will the right hon. Gentleman undertake to consult the Minister of Education to see if he can ascertain the methods adopted by that Minister in order to get a reversal of the Government's policy on that subject?
    Mr. Mellish: Is the Minister aware that this is a very serious problem, because we are merely holding on to what we have, rather than making any progress, as a result of not being given the money for capital expenditure? Will the Minister take up this very serious matter with his right hon. Friend?
    Mr. Masonasked the Minister of Health what action is being taken by his Department to cut down the time lag now existing between schemes of capital expenditure on new hospitals being approved and the actual starting of these new projects.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: I am not sure what the hon. Member has in mind. I know of no undue delays between authorisation and starting of hospital capital projects.
    Mr. Mason: Is not the Minister aware that, during the period 1948–53, the Sheffield Regional Hospital Board underspent its allocation by over £700,000—
    Mr. Mellish: It ought to be shot.
    Mr. Mason: —and that one of the main reasons is that it has been waiting for the signal from the Minister to start hospital projects which have been approved for many years and is now waiting for an extra financial allocation in order to be able to start them?
    Mr. Macleod: That is a rather different point. That arose before authorisation. Now that there is no starting date control, there is nothing at all to stop a scheme going ahead once it has been authorised.
    Mr. Marquand: After a scheme has been worked out by the management committee, approved by the regional
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    board and vetted by the officials of the Ministry of Health, has it then to be vetted once more by Treasury officials?
    Mr. Macleod: It depends on the size of the scheme.
    Dr. Strossasked the Minister of Health whether he is aware that many hospitals have been compelled to allocate funds for capital expenditure on plant and buildings, other than those received from the Exchequer; and what steps he proposes to take to relieve hospitals of this burden.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: I do not regard the amount of capital expenditure from hospital non-Exchequer funds as disproportionate to the capital expenditure from the Exchequer.
    Dr. Stross: Does not the Minister agree that this bears very grievously on those hospitals which particularly wish to make progress and which happen to be fortunate enough to have some funds? The type of fund they are now receiving, which ought to come from the Exchequer, is not, of course, recoverable, and cannot be used over and over again.
    Mr. Macleod: The fact that all hospitals have not got substantial non-Exchequer funds is surely no reason for stopping those which have from using them for the benefit of their patients.
    Mr. Blenkinsop—
    Sir T. Moore: On a point of order. While admitting that the hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, East (Mr. Blenkinsop) may have special claims on health Questions, will you recall, Mr. Speaker, that he already has had 11 questions which represent one-quarter of the normal amount allowed to this House at Question time?
    Mr. Speaker: I thought that the hon. Gentleman was going to ask a supplementary question.

    North-West Metropolitan Board
    Mr. Fenner Brockwayasked the Minister of Health if he will increase the amount allocated to the North-West Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board for hospital building, in view of the need to meet the demands of increasing populations at Slough and elsewhere.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: I am aware of the problems facing this Board and bear them in mind when fixing the region's share of the capital programme.
    Mr. Brockway: I do not ask for a disproportionate amount for this Board, or for Slough, but will the Minister bear in mind that 17,000 people are coming to Slough from the London area, and that the hospitals there are just about fully used up—89 per cent. of the beds are permanently employed. Will he therefore give special consideration to the problem, with a view to providing for this largely incoming population?
    Mr. Macleod: I appreciate the needs of Slough, and so do the Board. It put Slough third on its list, so the hon. Member will get place money, and as the first name on this Regional Hospital Board's list is the Welwyn-Hatfield Hospital—which we hope to see started next year—the hon. Member is coming fairly near the top.
    Mr. Remnant: Will my right hon. Friend take into account the requirement of Bracknell when he is considering the needs of Slough?
    Mr Macleod: Yes, Sir. know the needs of Bracknell.
    Mr. Ede: How many runners are there in this race?
    Mr. Macleod: Far too many.

    Barnsley
    Mr. Masonasked the Minister of Health if he will increase the amount allocated to the Sheffield Regional Hospital Board in view of the need for meeting the demands of the Barnsley Hospital Management Committee who desire to effect immediate improvements.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: No, Sir. I am aware of the need here and so, I am sure, is the Board.
    Mr. Mason: Is the Minister aware of the difficult conditions confronting the Barnsley Hospital Management Committee? I have already sent him details of these conditions, and I have had consultations with his Parliamentary Secretary, who agrees with my statement that they are below standard. The Sheffield Regional Hospital Board has already contacted the Finance Committee of the
    1374
    Barnsley Hospital Management Committee about the percentage, which is a hopeful sign. The Barnsley Hospital Management Committee is dependent upon an extra allocation from the Minister as well as an extra allocation from the Sheffield Regional Hospital Board.
    Mr. Macleod: If I may coin a phrase—questions of priority are for the regional hospital boards.

    West Hill Hospital, Dartford (Out-Patients Department)
    Mr. Doddsasked the Minister of Health if he is aware of the need at the West Hill Hospital, Dartford, for the provision of a new out-patients department at the earliest possible moment what consideration has been given to the matter and if he will make sufficient funds available to enable work to commence at an early date.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: The regional hospital board has not, so far, been able to include it within its current programme, and I am not in a position to increase the capital allocation to enable it to do so.
    Mr. Dodds: Does not the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that he is the nigger in the woodpile here, because last year there were 18,000 more attendances at the outpatients department than there were in 1951, and that the present premises are totally inadequate for that number? Does he realise that, with a little more provision, people would be able to get proper treatment and stay in their own homes, instead of queueing up for hospital beds, which are more costly?
    Mr. Macleod: The hon. Gentleman will know that the priority at the West Hill Hospital is not for the out-patients department but for the operating theatre. I understand that that particular scheme is moving towards completion.

    Corbett Hospital, Stourbridge
    Mr. Wiggasked the Minister of Health if he is aware of the need for a new out-patients department at the Corbett Hospital, Stourbridge; and whether he will make a sufficient capital allocation to the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board to enable work to be started on this scheme early in 1955–56.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: The answer to the first part of the Question is, "Yes." As regards the second part, I leave the choice of schemes within their allocation to the board.
    Mr. Wigg: Would the right hon. Gentleman be good enough to make an exception in this case? Is he aware that this is a very pressing need indeed, which does not concern only Stourbridge but the whole of that part of the West Midlands, and that it is really an outrage that it should be left so long?
    Mr. Macleod: I am sorry to seem so obstinate, but I do not make this choice. I do know the need of the hospital, and I should like to see some agreed scheme, though I do not myself know the size, started soon.

    New Hospitals
    Mr. Slaterasked the Minister of Health the number of hospitals to be built in 1955; and what areas are designated for new hospitals in the next three years.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: I hope it will be possible to make a start before the end of the next financial year on a new hospital for Welwyn and Hatfield; and work on the new mental deficiency hospital near Southport is continuing. I cannot say what new hospitals will be started in the three years after 1955 until I know what sums will be available for hospital capital development generally in that period.
    Mr. Slater: Is not the Minister aware that, even though he does not know what he will be able to do in the next three years, if he does not improve on the reply he has just given, this country will be left for a very long time with hospitals which will be falling into decay and which ought to be pulled down?
    Mr. Macleod: No one in this House is more anxious to see new hospitals built than I am.

    Durham
    Mr. Slaterasked the Minister of Health to what extent the intake of mental-illness patients in the Durham county area has gone up within the last two years; and how such figures compare with the rest of the country for the same period.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: Admissions to Cherry Knowle and Winterton hospitals in 1953 exceeded those in 1951 by about 15 per cent. and 42 per cent., respectively. The comparable figures for all mental hospitals was 14 per cent.
    Mr. Slater: Is the Minister satisfied that we in Durham are well accommodated for receiving mental patients, particularly when, as the Minister is aware, the mental hospitals at Cherry Knowle and Winterton are seriously overcrowded? Is he satisfied with what is being given to us in order to increase the accommodation, which we desire to do?
    Mr. Macleod: I am not satisfied, and I have given details of what is being done in Durham in this House and to the hon. Member on a number of occasions.
    Mr. Slaterasked the Minister of Health what extensions to existing hospitals have been agreed upon in Durham county for the year 1955; if his Department will proceed with the building of a new county hospital in Durham; and when such a scheme will be commenced.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: I have not yet received the regional hospital board's programme of new capital works for 1955–56, but I can say that nine schemes of improvement or extension already in progress will be continued next year. With regard to the second and third parts of the Question, I will bear these claims in mind, but I have no statement to make.
    Mr. Slater: Is the Minister aware that this project for a new county hospital in Durham has been earmarked for a long time; yet we still seem to be right back where we were and no one seems to take the least notice of the demand in the county for the provision of a new county hospital? Will he do what he can to further this scheme?
    Mr. Macleod: In principle, it has been agreed to provide new hospitals at Peterlee and Newton Aycliffe, but there are many other places in that regional board area, particularly West Cumberland, which also have very high claims indeed.
    Mr. T. Reid: Is the Minister aware of the fact that a new hospital for Swindon has been agreed in principle and that all the preliminaries have been prepared

    1377
    for years? Is the Minister forcing on the Government the need to have a proper system of priorities in the allocations for new hospitals?
    Mr. Macleod: In Swindon, there is a very considerable need, but it is not in Durham.

    Leeds
    Miss Baconasked the Minister of Health the capital allocation for Leeds region in the coming financial year; and how this compares with the current year.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: The basic allocation in each year is £413,000. In addition, the board have had a supplementary allocation this year of £40,000 for works to save running costs; and some £97,000 is likely to be spent this year, and £90,000 next year, on schemes financed from central funds.
    Miss Bacon: Is the Minister aware that this amount is totally inadequate for the needs of the area, particularly in regard to mental hospitals? Can he give us some indication of the Government's intentions in this respect? Is he aware that recently the Leeds City Council had a cut in their housing programme from 3,000 to roughly 2,000, and that one reason given was that more was to be spent on schools and hospitals? Do I understand that now we are to get neither houses nor hospitals?
    Mr. Macleod: The housing programme is not a matter for me. Perhaps the hon. Lady would like to draw my attention to the statement to which she has referred, as I have never heard of it.

    Pontefract and Castleford
    Mr. Sylvesterasked the Minister of Health whether he will increase the allocation to the Leeds Regional Hospital Board so as to enable the hospital facilities under the Pontefract and Castleford Management Committee, especially in Castleford, to be extended, as requested by the hon. Member for Pontefract and the Castleford Urban District Council.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: No, sir, regional board's ordinary projects are not nominated by me.
    Mr. Sylvester: Is the Minister aware that, in the area covered by this Management Commitee, there is already
    1378
    a shortage of over 200 beds, and that unless the regional hospital board receive an increased allocation, it looks to me as if in a number of areas there will be no further development of hospitals?
    Mr. Macleod: As the hon. Gentleman knows, Pontefract is in a deficient area, but if I make an extra allocation to the board, it does not follow that the board will give it to Pontefract.

    Liverpool
    Mrs. Braddockasked the Minister of Health the total sum asked for in the 1955–56 Estimates by the Liverpool Regional Hospital Board and the Liverpool United Hospitals, respectively, for capital expenditure schemes; and the amount to be allowed in each case by his Department.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: Capital programmes for 1955–56 have not yet been received from either Board, but the amounts allocated for that year are: United Hospitals, £68,000; Regional Hospital Board £283,000. Additional sums will be made available as required to enable work to be continued on three schemes now in progress which are being financed centrally.
    Mrs. Braddock: Is the Minister telling us that there have been no consultations between the Regional Hospital Board and the board of governors with reference to capital expenditure? Is it not a fact that the Board has been told how much it is to be allowed to spend, and that, therefore, it is not a question of what estimates should be submitted of work requiring to be done?
    Mr. Macleod: For some time now, it has been the custom in the summer of each year to notify regional boards, subject to the approval of Parliament, which, of course, has not by then been given, the amounts which it is intended should be spent in the next financial year, and it is for them to say how the priorities shall be allocated within that amount.
    Mrs. Braddock: Is it not a fact that the position now is that boards are not asked to submit estimates but are told what they are going to get, and that they then have to decide what they are to do with the money? Is not this a very silly way of dealing with the problem? Would it not be wiser for a statement to

    1379
    be made about an alteration in policy before Questions of this sort have to be asked?
    Mr. Macleod: I have just explained that there has been no alteration in policy at all.
    Mrs. Braddockasked the Minister of Health if he is aware of the distress being caused to parents who are compelled, in the Liverpool area, to retain at home mentally-defective children who need hospital care; and what action is being taken to provide the accommodation necessary, as a matter of urgency.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: I am well aware of this problem, which causes me grave concern. The building of a new mental deficiency hospital at Greaves Hall, Southport, is being financed from central funds and will provide 1,000 beds, including 300 for children of which 100 are expected to be ready by December, 1956. Schemes in the Manchester region financed from the "mental million," which will to some extent help this area, are expected to produce accommodation for 40 mentally deficient adolescent boys by next April and for 40 mentally deficient children in 1956.
    Mrs. Braddock: Does not the Minister realise that he is talking about the Manchester Regional Hospital Board and about the immediate vacancies in April, whereas this problem is in Liverpool, and is a very serious one indeed. While realising that a scheme is going to be started, does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is now that something needs to be done in order to relieve these parents of the very difficult problem which they have to face? Will the Minister please say whether it is possible to alter the arrangements whereby a child can be sent to a short-stay home for up to eight weeks, but under which, if it is over eight weeks, the regional hospital board then refuses to take any further financial responsibility and places that cost upon the local authority?
    Mr. Macleod: It is precisely because I know of the special need concerning mental cases in the Liverpool area that the first hospital being built in this country since before the war is for mental patients in that region. What happens in the Manchester region is very relevant indeed, because for mental and
    1380
    mental deficiency problems the Liverpool and Manchester authorities pool their resources.
    Mrs. Braddock: They do not get the vacancies.

    Warley, Halifax
    Mr. D. Brookasked the Minister of Health whether he will make provision in his 1955–56 building programme for the new hospital unit at Warley, Halifax, about which the hon. Member for Halifax has had correspondence with him.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: This would probably not be a centrally financed scheme and it depends therefore on selection by the board.
    Mr. Brook: Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that the man who left this estate to the Halifax Infirmary also left £50,000 for hospital purposes? Could not the Minister consider the release of that sum, to which the people of Halifax think that they have a moral if not a legal right? Does the right hon. Gentleman think it equitable that towns which before the passing of the National Health Act made more adequate provision out of their own resources for hospital purposes should now be penalised in favour of those which were more parsimonious in their expenditure?
    Mr. Macleod: On the first part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary, which deals with a question which arises all over the country, it would clearly be impossible to do what he suggests, because these sums are vested free of trust in the Minister and are used for general hospital purposes. With regard to the second part of his supplementary, in deciding the amount of building that one is going to do, one clearly has to take particularly into account the needs of those towns and cities which were neglected before the war.

    Colonial and Foreign Nurses
    Mr. Sorensenasked the Minister of Health approximately how many nurses and student nurses in hospitals, respectively, have come from British Colonies, from India, Pakistan and Ceylon, from foreign countries and from Eire.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: I regret that separate information on this is not available.
    Mr. Sorensen: Is the Minister aware that from time to time figures have been produced in this House concerning the number of girls from the Colonies? In these circumstances, if such figures are obtainable, would it not be possible to obtain figures for this category of girls?
    Mr. Macleod: I will make more inquiries, but I am told that returns from hospitals do not distinguish An this way. Therefore, the only help I can give is with regard to girls from foreign countries—and not from the Commonwealth—who need a Ministry of Labour permit. I am told that 1,000 such permits were issued in the first six months of this year.
    Mr. Sorensen: Can the right hon. Gentleman give the total number of girls of all kinds from overseas who are serving the hospitals very well indeed at the present time?
    Mr. Macleod: I do not think that I could do that without a special return being made, and I do not think that would be justified.

    Physiotherapy Departments (Male Orderlies)
    Mr. Sorensenasked the Minister of Health what steps have been taken to secure more male orderlies for service in physiotherapy departments of hospitals in order that they can assist the patients to have appropriate exercises without which the patients are involved in longer treatment than is necessary and thus delay others from having treatment.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: It is for hospital boards or committees to decide whether to employ orderlies in their physical medicine or geriatric departments.
    Mr. Sorensen: Has the Minister taken any steps to encourage the boards to find these orderlies who, if found, could certainly relieve a good deal of the pressure upon the more specialised treatments which patients are receiving and thus enable patients to go out much earlier?
    Mr. Macleod: I am aware of the position at Leytonstone, to which, think, the hon. Gentleman is referring, but it is essentially a matter for the management committees to decide whether they are prepared to take such action.

    Birmingham
    Dr. Strossasked the Minister of Health whether he is aware that a more generous allocation of capital expenditure to the West Midlands Hospital Regional Board would ensure considerable saving in the running costs of many of the hospitals in the region; and whether he will make a statement as to his intentions for the coming financial year.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: I am aware that capital expenditure can often save running costs and have advised all boards to bear this in mind in determining priorities. A supplementary allocation of £60,000 was made to the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board this year for such schemes, but I do not anticipate that it will be possible to make a similar additional allocation in the coming year.

    North Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent (Nurses)
    Dr. Strossasked the Minister of Health to what extent the North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary and the City General Hospital in Stoke-on-Trent are short of nursing staff.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: I shall have to make inquiries and will send the information to the hon. Member.
    Dr. Stross: While the right hon. Gentleman is making the inquiries, will he take particular steps to see that one of these hospitals, the City General Hospital in Stoke-on-Trent, where split shifts are being worked, gets a more adequate number of nurses, because the position is becoming aggravated by this very matter?
    Mr. Macleod: I should not like to comment further until I know the figures. In any case, I understand that the nursing establishment for these hospitals has not yet been finally fixed.

    Manchester
    Mr. W. Griffithsasked the Minisster of Health the number of capital projects in south Manchester hospitals which have been approved by the regional hospital board but which are not in operation because of shortage of money for maintenance and staff.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: I am making inquiries and will write to the hon. Member.
    Mr. W. Griffithsasked the Minister of Health whether he is aware that 25 additional beds provided at Wythenshawe Hospital, Manchester, and 10 additional beds provided at Baguley Hospital, Manchester, cannot be used because the hospital management committees have insufficient money to staff and maintain them; and whether he will take action to see that this accommodation is put into use.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: I understand that, for the reason given, the hospital management committee is experiencing difficulty in bringing these additional beds into use, but that the regional board has urged on it the desirability of finding the money by savings in the cost of running existing services.
    Mr. Griffiths: Is the Minister aware that it would be quite impossible -for the hospital management committee to find from current maintenance expenditure the money with which to staff and maintain this new project because the hospital management committee is already being compelled to discharge maintenance workers and to cut down expenditure on meals for patients and staff because of its inability to keep within the current maintenance expenditure figure?
    Mr. Macleod: The regional hospital board tell me that it will take this matter into account in making its allocation to the hospital management committee next year.
    Mrs. Hill: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the hospital management committee has met the regional hospital board on these items and that in our budget for this year no money was allowed for our maintenance schemes? We have thousands of pounds worth of maintenance, improvement and capital schemes which we cannot put into operation at all. It is a waste of money.
    Mr. Macleod: In view of what my hon. Friend says, I should like to look into the case which she mentions.
    Mr. I. O. Thomas: Will the Minister please indicate how the regional hospital board can take into account and
    1384
    allow for the developments mentioned in the Question if, according to his earlier answer, we have already decided upon the amount of allocations under which no proposals other than those within that expenditure limit can be entered into by the regional hospital board?
    Mr. Macleod: I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is confusing capital expenditure, which was the subject of an earlier Question, with maintenance expenditure.
    Mr. W. Griffithsasked the Minister of Health what action he proposes to take to reduce the waiting period of 16 months being experienced by children awaiting tonsil and adenoid operations at the Manchester Ear Hospital and whether he is aware of the concern in Manchester at the lengthening of the waiting period at this hospital during the last six months.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: I am in communication with the regional hospital board and will write to the hon. Member.
    Mr. Griffiths: Does the Minister recall that when I asked him about this hospital in July, the waiting period was then 15 months, and that he promised that he would look into the position with the regional hospital board with a view to effecting some transfers? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that though there has been a small transfer to one hospital, the average number of operations performed on children in all hospitals in Manchester has been much smaller in the past five months than before I asked the Question? This has been a worsening of the position and not an improvement. Will the right hon. Gentleman treat the matter as one of the greatest urgency?
    Mr. Macleod: Although the time on the waiting lists has gone up by one month, I understand that the numbers on the lists have dropped by 9 or 10 per cent.
    Mr. Marquand: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in all these Questions which have been asked this afternoon about capital allocations there has not been a single unreasonable Question nor a bad-tempered supplementary? Is he further aware that the whole House will be glad that he has announced his intention of seeing his right hon. Friend the Chancellor about this matter, and will he

    1385
    draw to the attention of his right hon. Friend all that has been said this afternoon?
    Mr. Macleod: I remember saying last week that no one knows better than my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer the needs in this matter.

  NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE

    Sanitary Inspectors (Recruitment)
    Mr. Doddsasked the Minister of Health what progress has been made up to the latest convenient date in the recruitment of sanitary inspectors since 1st May, 1954.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: I am informed that 84 students qualified as sanitary inspectors during 1954, as against 52 in 1953.
    Mr. Dodds: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the concern expressed in some quarters about the lack of sanitary inspectors, and is he satisfied that the figures he has quoted will really meet the need, and, if not, are any further steps to be taken?
    Mr. Macleod: They will not meet the need, but the trend is most encouraging—half as many again as the year before. I am very well aware of the need, which has been brought to my attention by the recent working party report.

    Emetics
    Mr. H. A. Priceasked the Minister of Health whether in view of recently expressed medical opinion details of which have been sent to him, he will reconsider his Department's rejection of the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Lewisham, West, in August this year, that small quantities of suitable emetics might usefully be incorporated in dangerous drugs to prevent fatalities from over dosage.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: I think this is more appropriately a matter for the medical profession than for me, and in any case I have no authority to give effect to the hon. Member's suggestion.
    Mr. Price: Does my right hon. Friend realise that during the last five years there have been over 3,000 deaths from this cause, including nearly 100 children
    1386
    —one-third accidental and two-thirds suicidal? Does he not think that he might take an interest in the implementation of so simple a remedy when there have been so many tragedies?
    Mr. Macleod: I think that the hon. Member greatly over-simplifies the problem. So far as legislation with regard to dangerous drugs is concerned, that is a matter for the Home Secretary. All I did in correspondence with my hon. Friend was to point out the view of the professions concerned towards the proposal, which is that there is nothing new in it, and there are, in fact, very grave dangers indeed.

    National Health Service Cost (Committee)
    Mr. K. Robinsonasked the Minister of Health whether the Guillebaud Committee has finished taking evidence; and when he expects to receive its report.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: I understand that the Committee have recently completed the hearing of evidence; but that it is still too early to give a precise forecast of the date when they may be ready to report.
    Mr. Robinson: Since possible changes in the structure and financing of the Health Service seem to be awaiting the report of this Committee, and since such changes are obviously desirable, would the right hon. Gentleman do his best to expedite the report?
    Mr. Macleod: I know that we shall get the report as soon as possible. It is such an important report at this stage of the Health Service that, honestly, I would rather have a completely thorough job of work than hurry the Committee in order to get it a month or so earlier.

    Cerebral Palsy
    Mr. E. Johnsonasked the Minister of Health if he will issue regulations to make cerebral palsy a notifiable disease.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: No, Sir. I have no power to do so, but in any case I am not satisfied that notification would achieve any useful result.
    Mr. Johnson: Does not my right hon. Friend agree that such notification would enable a much more accurate estimate to be prepared of the number of spastics and

    1387
    would also increase the probability of children receiving that very early treatment which is of such supreme importance?
    Mr. Macleod: I do not think that I have any power in this matter. The reason I cannot make this a notifiable disease is that it is not an infectious disease and, therefore, does not come within the scope of the regulations under the Public Health Act, 1936.
    Mr. Hastings: I quite agree that the Minister has no powers to deal with the matter in that way, but will he not use all his influence with the medical profession to try to get these cases notified to medical officers of health as soon as possible, realising the great importance of early treatment in the vast number of cases, and also the fact that, as he well knows, in many cases the disease can be recognised in children before they are six months old?
    Mr. Macleod: I think it would be helpful if we had as early notification as possible, although there are often considerable difficulties about diagnosis of this disease, which I think would complicate the matter.
    Mr. Hannan: Will the right hon. Gentleman consult his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland in this matter? Many parents have a very exaggerated idea of the need for protecting their children and keep them in a secluded fashion at home where the local people are quite helpless to advise persons how best to help these children.
    Mr. Macleod: If there is anything that we can learn from the methods employed in Scotland, I shall be very happy to consult my right hon. Friend.

    Spastic Children (Physiotherapy and Speech Therapy)
    Mr. E. Johnsonasked the Minister of Health what action he is taking to provide spastic children with increased facilities for physiotherapy and speech therapy.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: The physiotherapy and speech therapy services provided under the National Health Service are available to spastic children as to others. Local education authorities also provide these services in special schools and as part of the school health services, for
    1388
    which my right hon. Friend the Minister of Education is responsible.
    Mr. Johnson: Would my right hon Friend agree that these facilities are available in an altogether inadequate quantity? Very few of these people can obtain the necessary treatment. Would not he further agree that if they can receive treatment between the ages of three and five, spastic children may be able to lead perfectly normal lives later on, and that in any case such treatment would greatly improve the possibility of later treatment being beneficial? Will he bear in mind that a stitch in time will save nine?
    Mr. Macleod: I have studied the speech made by my hon. Friend in the debate on the Address, and I should like to consider that question. I think we have to make a start in the great cities. in view of the small numbers of spastic children involved and the difficulty of bringing them together in groups. A start is, in fact, being made in London.
    Mr. Emrys Hughes: Will the Minister consider giving the Secretary of State for Scotland the benefit of the speech therapy service?
    Mr. J. R. H. Hutchison: Can my right hon. Friend say exactly what he has in mind in the direction of giving some aid? At the present time the heat and burden of the day is being carried, quite inadequately, by voluntary services, and many thousands of children and adults are not getting the treatment they are entitled to receive.
    Mr. Macleod: I should think that a great deal of the burden is being borne by the National Health Service, whose facilities to people injured or disabled are available here, as in any other field.
    At the end of the questions—

  FOREIGN SERVICE EXPENDITURE (SELECT COMMITTEE'S REPORT)
  The following Question stood upon the Order Paper:
  Mr. FELL: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether his attention has been called to the 7th Report from the Select Committee on Estimates; and what action he proposes to take.
  The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Sir Anthony Eden): With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I should like to answer Question No. 108.
  I have read this Report, to which I will in due course be issuing a Departmental reply. I wish, however, to take this opportunity to correct certain misleading impressions to which the publication of this Report has given rise.
  The total expenditure on the Foreign Service at home and abroad, including expenditure incurred on behalf of the Foreign Office by the Ministry of Works and other Departments, is not £200 million but just under £20 million.
  It is inaccurate to suggest that the number of Foreign Office officials serving abroad in a representative capacity—to which this Report draws special attention—has increased by almost 7 per cent. in the last year. The number has, in fact, decreased by nearly 7 per cent. The figure of 311 given for the estimated United Kingdom-based staff at Bonn at the time of ratification is not comparable with the figures for staff at other embassies, since it includes many officers concerned with the residual functions of the Occupation. The Foreign Office United Kingdom-based staff in Germany is now about 1/15th of what it was five years ago and is decreasing month by month.
  In consultation with my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and my hon. Friend the Minister of Works, I am having an immediate examination made of the practicability of the recommendations made by the Select Committee, and I will inform the House of the results as soon as possible.
  Mr. Fell: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the House will be grateful to him for coming so quickly and giving us his assurances? In view of the fact that Recommendation No. 4 under "Summary of Recommendations" is made by the Committee, would my right hon. Friend consider consulting the Leader of the House on the possibility of an early debate on this subject?
  Sir A. Eden: That is another question, which is not, and is not thought to be, for the Foreign Office. I do not think that it would be right for me to go into matters concerning these committees who travel abroad, because that is a consti-
  1390
  tutional question. The broad fact remains that, over the last two years, the Estimates of the Foreign Office have been down by £80,000, despite the sum of over £300,000 for new services, all of which I think the House would endorse, such as the opening of our Embassy in Teheran—which is surely welcome to everyone the increase of our staff at Pekin—which I am sure is also welcome—and, finally, the increased services which are needed in the Persian Gulf.
  Mr. Yates: While appreciating that the Minister will submit a statement to the House in regard to the £200 million, I suggest that it is not misleading, so far as the Report is concerned, because it is tied up with the importance of this House exercising an effective check over Government expenditure overseas. In view of the fact that the Chairman of the Committee, together with myself, submitted to the Leader of the House that the figure was clearly mounting beyond £200 million as a reason for an examination abroad, if we have been considering only £8 million of expenditure and can put forward these criticisms, what could we not do on £200 million? Will not the Government agree to a debate on the matter in this House?
  Sir A. Eden: I only wish to point out to the House that in this Report, which deals with Foreign Services costs, it was perhaps not very happy to refer to a total of £200 million, which is not the cost of the foreign services at all but the cost of the Army, Colonial, Air Force and other services overseas.
  Mr. Snow: With regard to the presumed accurate level of expenditure in our foreign services, is it not a fact that hon. Members who travel abroad, irrespective of party, are somewhat concerned at the high level of entertainment at our embassies? Is it not a fact that the all-too-frequent cocktail parties are just one long round of meeting the same people?
  Sir A. Eden: If the hon. Gentleman dislikes attending international cocktail parties, he cannot hate it more than I do, I assure him. I suspect that in the experience of almost every one of Her Majesty's Ambassadors overseas nobody would do such a thing for pleasure. May I remind the hon. Gentleman that although the scale of entertainment is no

  1391
  doubt something which ought to be watched and carefully considered and examined, this Report did say that it was not in a position to determine whether the amount was either inadequate or extravagant? In view of that fact, I think it is rather a pity that the Chairman should have referred to the entertainment as "simply fantastic." If the writer of the Report could not tell what it was, I do not see how he could have applied the epithet that it was fantastic.
  Mr. Gaitskell: While appreciating the statement made by the right hon. Gentleman, which corrects certain misleading impressions given by certain newspapers, may I ask if he does not agree that, in the light of this Report, it is highly desirable that we should debate the subject at the earliest possible moment, in order that the various points made in the Select Committee's Report can be discussed and answered, if there is an answer?
  Sir A. Eden: I am sure that the House would, in justice, wish to have the Departmental reply. I have told the House that as soon as we can get it—land it will be prepared as rapidly as we can do it in conjunction with other Departments concerned—then, if the House desires so to do, the matter can be raised through the usual channels.
  Captain Waterhouse: In order to avoid further confusion in this already too confused matter, may I ask my right hon. Friend whether he did not say that the Chairman—and I happen to be the Chairman—of this Committee used this word "fantastic"? Is my right hon. Friend aware that it was not used by me at all?
  Sir A. Eden: I beg pardon of my right hon. and gallant Friend. I should have said "Chairman of the sub-committee."
  Mr. Speaker: This matter can be properly debated on Supply quite easily. The Report of the Select Committee will then be before the Committee. We cannot carry on a debate now.
  Mr. Yates: On a point of order. After all, the Foreign Secretary has referred to a statement which I made. Am I not to be allowed to inform the Foreign Secretary that all I said was to repeat the words of the chief Treasury witness, which the right hon. Gentleman will find in Question 2,150. that the number of
  1392
  guests that they do entertain, on the present method of doing things abroad, is quite fantastic?
  Sir A. Eden: It is perfectly possible to have opinions on the scale of the entertainment.
  Several Hon. Members: Withdraw.
  Sir A. Eden: I have nothing to with draw, nothing whatever. I quoted accurately what the Chairman said. If he now says, "I was quoting from the evidence," the responsibility is still his.
  Mr. Hoy: On a point of order. The Public Accounts Committee were informed in regard to this Report, and it might be advisable for the right hon. Gentleman to reply to the criticism contained in the Report of the Public Accounts Committee with regard to the cost of building foreign embassies abroad, to which we took exception.
  Mr. Speaker: That is not a point of order. This matter is relevant to a debate in Committee of Supply.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That the Proceedings on Government Business be exempted, at this day's Sitting, from the provisions of Standing Order No. 1 (Sittings of the Mouse).—[Mr. Crookshank.]
Mr. S. Silverman: On a point of order. Before the House decides whether to accept the Motion standing in the name of the Prime Minister, Mr. Speaker, may I ask what is the effect of the term "Government Business"? In particular, may I ask whether it covers, or is intended to cover, the Motions for the appointment of certain Select Committees and a Joint Committee tonight?
Mr. Speaker: I have no idea at all what the Motion is intended to cover, but if the hon. Member asks what is the effect of the rules of order, the answer is that if the Motion is accepted it does include the Motions for the appointment of these Select Committees.
The Lord Privy Seal (Mr. Harry Crook-shank): For the information of the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman), may I say that it is not the intention of the Government to take these Motions tonight.
Question put and agreed to.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

  NATIONAL INSURANCE [MONEY]
  Resolution reported,
  That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to increase contributions and benefit under the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Acts, 1946 to 1953, and the National Insurance Acts, 1946 to 1953, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament—

  (a) of any increase in the sums payable out of moneys so provided under—

  (i) paragraph (b) of section two or subsection (1) of section sixty of the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act, 1946; or

  (ii) subsection (3) of section two of the National Insurance Act, 1946 (as amended by section one of the National Insurance Act, 1951), or subsection (1) of section thirty-eight of the National Insurance Act, 1946,

  which is attributable to any provision made by the said Act of the present Session for increasing any rates or amounts of contributions or benefits under the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act, 1946, or the National Insurance Act, 1946;

  (b) of contributions to the National Insurance Fund (additional to the Exchequer supplements) in respect of the period of five years beginning with the first day of April, nineteen hundred and fifty-five, not exceeding in all three hundred and twenty-five million pounds.

  Resolution agreed to.

NATIONAL INSURANCE BILL
Considered in Committee.
[Sir CHARLES MACANDREW in the Chair]

Clause 1.—(HIGHER RATES, ETC., OF CON TRIBUTIONS AND BENEFIT UNDER INDUSTRIAL INJURIES ACT.)
3.43 p.m.
Mr. George Brown: I beg to move, in page 1, line 5, to leave out sub section (1).
The subsection which we are inviting the Committee to delete from the Bill is one which has given rise to considerable comment and criticism outside the House, and particularly among the workers, with whom some of us are in especially close contact. It contains the one provision in the Bill which the Minister, on Second Reading, seemed least willing to explain or defend. It provides that the contributions called for
1394
from insured workers and their employers in regard to the industrial injuries provisions of the scheme shall be raised by 1d.
I say at once that to me it seems quite extraordinary that, in a Bill which proposes, in any case, to make quite considerable increases in the contributions that have to come from insured workers, among whom there is a good deal of feeling—about which arguments will emerge during the debate today and tomorrow—any particular increase should be put on unless there is a really good reason to be adduced before doing so. I was very interested to see the way in which Ministers dealt with this in their various speeches last week.
The Minister of Pensions and National Insurance, as I think he will admit, did not deny himself time—and, of course, quite rightly—in introducing this important Measure. When he had been speaking for 65 minutes, or a little more, without having mentioned this point at all, my right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths) asked:
"Will the right hon. Gentleman explain the industrial injuries part of the Bill?"
To that question the Minister gave this extraordinarily clear and detailed reply:
"I have already spoken about the benefits, and everybody knows that the extra contribution is Id. The House probably thinks that it has listened to me long enough."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th December, 1954; Vol. 535. c. 981.]
Among millions of workers there is already a good deal of feeling about the operation of the Industrial Injuries Act. In that Act there are a large number of anomalies and problems, about which those of us who sit for constituencies which include the heavier industries have to talk almost every week. To tell those people, "You know that the extra cost will be 1d. you have already heard enough from me, and that is that," is treating all concerned with a good deal less than the frankness to which they are entitled.
The unwillingness of the Minister to explain the extra ld. was, in fact, repeated by his hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary either at the end of that day or at the beginning of the following day. He did not touch upon the extra cost at all. He spoke at length about the extra cost in general, and told us that he had discussed it from the point

1395
of view of the man in the street, and several other points of view, but at no stage did he deal with the extra cost under the Industrial Injuries Act. Indeed, to hear anything at all, we had to wait for the Minister of Health—who is usually to be found facing up to the balls which his colleagues try to avoid seeing at all.
The Minister of Health referred to "most important points" in the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Mr. R. Williams), and paid tribute to his knowledge. All Ministers and all Governments pay great tribute to the knowledge of an hon. Member when they do not wish to meet the points put by him. In reply to my hon. Friend, the Minister said:
"All I need do at the moment is to refer the hon. Member to paragraph 6 of the Government Actuary's Report, which makes it clear that the problem will later form part of another review, as the House will expect, and the Bill deals only with the problem of rates and benefits under the 1946 Act."—(OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th December, 1954; Vol. 535, c. 1238.]
Up to that point four Ministers, I think, had spoken, but, apart from the statement of the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance that we had already heard enough and that he did not propose to tell us more, that was the only reference to this increase. Even then, the Minister of Health did not tell the House why there had to be the increase, but only said that the matter would have to be dealt with when the Actuary's Report was produced.
Our complaint, therefore, is that we are being asked to lay on millions of insured workers an additional imposition for which no one has yet produced a single argument. We have not been told that the National Insurance Fund needs it; we have not been told that it matches the increased costs of benefits; nor have we been told what will happen to it. The Minister says, almost sotto voce, that it is in the Government Actuary's Report; but it was not the Government Actuary who presented the Bill. The Government presented the Bill, and we are entitled to know what they feel about it. I will deal with the Government Actuary's Report in due course.
The Ministers responsible have not yet advanced a single argument to justify the increased contribution. We, on this side, are not at all sure that any of the general increases have yet had a really solid case
1396
made out for them, but, whatever emerges about that, I think that the Committee will agree that, industrially, it is a very bad thing to unload on to either industry or the workers in it charges which are not, in fact, required. My contention is that this charge is not required; that, whatever the reason for levying it, it has nothing to do with the actual need at this moment.
As I say, the Minister mentioned that the Government Actuary's Report contains all that we need to know about this—but does it? I quote paragraph 3 of Cmd. 9332, the Report by the Government Actuary:
"The new rates of contribution"—
which are what we are inviting the Committee not to impose—
"will increase the income of the Industrial Injuries Fund by about £5,400,000 in 1955–56 and £6,500,000 in the first full year, 1956–57."
That is the extent of the additional charge which the Government are seeking to impose upon industry, employers and employed persons.
The paragraph continues:
"To these sums must be added the Exchequer supplement of one-fifth under Section 2 (b) of the Industrial Injuries Act, 1946.… The additional Exchequer charge will thus be about £1,100,000 in 1955–56 and £1,300,000 in 1956–57, so that"—
and this is the important point—
"the total extra receipts in those years will be about £6,500,000 and £7,800,000 respectively."
Paragraph 5 deals with the cost of the additional benefit and says:
"It is estimated that the proposed increase in benefits will entail additional expenditure from the Industrial Injuries Fund of about £5,500,000 in 1955–56 and £7,000,000 in 1956–57. The additional expenditure will, however, increase steadily from year to year with the growth in the numbers of disablement and widow pensioners, and will ultimately be considerably greater than the estimated additional receipts."
In the years 1955 to 1956 and in the subsequent years, until an unstated time in the future, the actual charge we are being asked to impose will bring in over £1 million more than is required in the years 1955 to 1956 and very nearly £1 million more than will be required in each of the subsequent years.
I find it extremely difficult, therefore, to accept the Minister's comment that all that we need to know about this is in the Actuary's Report, and it is difficult to avoid the feeling that the reason all

1397
the Ministers who have spoken on the subject so far were so coy about it, varying in conduct from complete silence to the merest tentative genuflection in the direction of the point and immediate withdrawal, was that there was not, in the Actuary's Report, enough evidence to support the charge proposed.
I ask the Minister to tell us why the Government feel it proper to charge industrial workers, on top of the extra charge they are laying on them by other provisions of the Bill, this extra 1d. in respect of industrial injuries, particularly having regard to the feeling that already exists on this subject. What is the reason? Why do we raise £1 million more than we need to raise, even on the actuarial basis?
Secondly, I invite the Minister to tell us why nothing was said about this by the Government in the Second Reading debate, despite the frequency with which the question was raised. Thirdly, I ask, am I right in believing—I have not had the time to check this myself, but I am advised that it is so—that in March, 1953, the Industrial Injuries Fund alone had balances standing at £93,712,000? If there is very nearly £94 million already in the Fund, whatever may or may not be the argument for increasing the contribution enough actuarially to cover the cost, what is the point of proposing to build the Fund up at a rate in excess of £1 million a year now and hereafter?
We were all agreed, in 1951, that there was no point in going on building up balances in the Fund that could be used elsewhere, that were not particularly required in the Fund, yet here we are with nearly £94 million—quite £94 million by now, I suppose—in the Fund, and proposing to build it up at a rate of £1 million a year until an unstated time in the future, and, in order to do so, proposing to charge industrial workers and their employers an extra contribution which otherwise would not be required.
I can see no argument for it at all, no argument in equity. I had to discuss this subject in my constituency at the weekend. Indeed, I had to discuss the whole Bill in my constituency. There were differing views about it, of course, and one had to meet fundamentally different approaches to the whole question.
Most of the difficulties and contentions one could meet, but I could not meet
1398
this one. There is no argument in equity or on any other basis that can be used in defence of this charge.
The only argument the Minister can advance is that at some time in the future the snowballing effect will catch up and that the Fund from that time will begin to run down, but we are told by the Actuary in paragraph 6 of his Report, to which the Minister of Health referred in his winding-up speech on Thursday, when replying to my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan:
"In my report (Cmd. 8518) on the financial provisions of the 1952 Bill I pointed out that its effects would require further examination in the first quinquennial review under Section 59 (1, a) of the Act of 1946. This review, my report on which will shortly be laid before Palriament, is concerned only with the period up to 31st March, 1954, and the effect of the prsent proposals is therefore beyond its scope."
The paragraph then indicates what the results of the review are.
The whole point of that is that there will have to be further action. This is an interim arrangement. There will have to be a further attempt to deal with this problem, to deal with all the problems, too, I imagine, the benefit problems as well as the contribution problems. Why, if we are to have a further major attempt to clear the matter up, must we make an interim arrangement that simply has the effect of building up balances in the Fund? Why must we, as an interim arrangement, charge the workers more, when we are to have a more permanent arrangement later?
This proposal seems to me to be a major mistake of the Government. It complicates the problem outside; it complicates the approach to it. It has no justification in itself; there is on actuarial basis for it. Why is it made to deal with difficulties that may arise in the future when the Government themselves say they propose to deal with them on a proper basis later? In the circumstances. this charge is an absurd, illogical, irrelevant and improper charge to lay upon the workers.
I hope that whoever replies to the debate for the Government this time will be a little more willing to face up to the arguments, and that when he speaks we shall be able to learn—for the first time—what it is the Government have in mind.
Mr. Ronald Williams: I do not think that in the whole sphere of industrial injuries or National Insurance there can be any proposition more spiteful and more unnecessary than the one which the Minister is now proposing. I would ask him particularly to remember that when he was endeavouring to substantiate the arguments, as he called them, in support of a general increase of contribution to the National Insurance Fund itself—and, of course, with that general increase he included this 1d.—he drew attention to the age and sanctity of the contributory principle. The right hon. Gentleman spent a lot of time the other day in attempting to convince the House that this principle was one which had gone through the years and which had been applied to previous insurance schemes, and that it was something which had the blessing of Lord Beveridge in his Report.
4.0 p.m.
I ask the Minister to pay particular attention to the fact that there is a great distinction between the lineage of the contributory principle in relation to industrial injuries and that in relation to national insurance generally. Although the most terrible things have been said, justifiably, to the discredit of the old workmen's compensation system, at least it was a non-contributory system, and it was a non-contributory system under which the beneficiary, however limited his benefits, had these benefits as of right.
Consequently, any arguments which might have influenced the right hon. Gentleman in relation to the general principle of payments of contributions cannot have had any relevance at all in respect of industrial injuries, except at one point only, and that is in relation to the 1946 Act.
The Minister will note that when bringing the contributory principle into effect there were very strong arguments which were then put, but I ask him to bear in mind that they were of such a nature that any advance in relation to the contribution of the worker should be taken with very great care, particularly in present circumstances when the representatives of Her Majesty's Government seem to be falling over themselves in trying to persuade themselves how prosperous they are, and how fortunate we
1400
are to be living under this Government, with so many resources available. If there are so many resources available, why impose this little poll tax on the people who are making the increase in productivity possible?
What the Minister is arguing is that injured people shall not only bear the consequences of their own injuries, and not only have that anxious necessity, but, in addition, shall pay for the benefits they will receive, and pay at this level when the Minister has ample funds to account for every contingency that he or the Government Actuary, in their wildest imaginings, can devise. In these circumstances, I say that this is a shocking thing to do; that it has no justification at all, and that if it had any justification it should have rested on an argument so powerful that it would have commanded the assent of the whole House.
Another point in the argument put forward by the Government Actuary refers, almost in passing, to the industrial injuries cost. How can the Minister and his advisers have the effrontery to impose extra burdens on the workers before bringing forward the quinquennial review in relation to industrial injuries? They have done it without the facts having been examined. There, again, I hope that I have shown that in relation to the general case for a general increase of the contributions under the National Insurance provisions, he has no argument in relation to industrial injuries. What argument has he in relation to the quinquennial review?
Another argument he put forward was that he could not do anything, much as he wanted to, to help in relation to National Insurance until he had the quinquennial review. He has not got the quinquennial review on industrial injuries. When is it coming along? I am very grateful to the Minister of Health for the extremely flattering references which he made to me personally, but I wish that those flattering references had been accompanied by an even more flattering concession to the arguments that I put. If I have any experience in these matters, that must mean nothing if it does not mean that my submissions might perhaps be treated with respect; but to treat my experience with respect, and my arguments with no respect at all, is something which does not impress me.

1401
On this particular point the answer of the right hon. Gentleman was rather peculiar. He said that there was to be a review. If there is to be a review, it is self-evident, and has been evident for a long time, that it is necessary to make substantial increases in benefits to those suffering from industrial injuries, but it is highly-conjectural whether it is necessary for any increase to be made in respect of contributions, so why the indecent haste, and the assumption that, despite any lack of evidence, further contributions have to be levied upon the worker?
I know that many of my colleagues would like to speak upon this subject, so let me tell the Minister this. When there are so many of us who want to speak, it is very important for him to have some idea of the intense indignation and contempt that has been aroused throughout industry, and particularly the mining industry, where I have had the opportunity of consultations with those concerned, since the right hon. Gentleman's proposal was made known.
Those in industry have never had any inducement to pay part of the amount they are to receive, and, as for paying this, they have nothing but contempt for those who have proposed it. I beg the Minister to take the strength of this feeling into account, because he is under no necessity whatsoever to impose extra contributions upon the workers, so far as the benefits are concerned.
I ask the Minister to pay particular attention to the guarded way in which the Actuary expresses himself when he comes to deal with this question of contributions. First he refers to the fact that he is preparing a review, and he calls it a quinquennial review, but he says that it is concerned—and mark these words—only with a period up to 31st March, 1954, and the effect of the present proposals is, therefore, beyond its scope.
If the effect of the present proposals—and here the Actuary is talking about the contributions—is beyond his scope, the Minister has not the alibi of being able to say that the Government Actuary has forced him into this. If he refers to earlier parts of the Actuary's Report, to which my right hon. Friend referred, he will find not actuarial calculations but mathematical calculations. Nobody can
1402
say, when we have a certain scale of benefits, what we shall need in respect of contributions, with no other factors entering into consideration at all. But that is not the job which faces the Actuary in relation to this problem.
The Actuary himself says that these proposals are beyond his scope. If they are beyond his scope, that must mean that the Minister and his advisers, regardless of actuarial advice, knowing that the only matter that the Actuary is attending to is something that will be beyond the scope of these proposals, nevertheless makes these proposals and forces his unjustifiable, excessive increase down the throats of the workers, especially the injured workers.
What does the Government Actuary, looking at a Fund which has over £90 million in credit, say in relation to the emerging cost? The Government have no argument to put forward which applies to industrial injuries. Have they any argument to put in relation to the emerging cost as the Fund proceeds? They would have to say that the Government Actuary said that they must be careful because, although there is a big surplus in the Fund now, when the costs come on later as the years go by this surplus will be practically wiped out. But the Government Actuary does not speak in these terms. I ask the Minister to remember that when actuaries speak about the fund they are more likely to give weight to their arguments for the preservation of the Fund than for the annihilation of the Fund.
Bearing that in mind, the Government Actuary, using all the arguments he can in favour of the preservation of the Fund, says:
"The results of the review indicate that although—on the basis of existing rates of benefits and contribution—the Fund would continue to increase for a number of years to come, contributions may"—
I stress that word—
"sooner or later have to be slightly increased if it is ultimately to reach the stable condition necessary for continued solvency."
How many years has he looked forward to? What dates had he in mind?
On a basis of "may sooner or later" the Government rest their case. It is not a case at all. The proposition which is being put, that the worker who is already substantially over-paying for the benefits received in respect of industrial injuries

1403
should now make further contributions, shows that the Minister has no idea of the feelings of workers in industry.
I would sound this note of caution. There are many well-meaning people who engage in the subject of industrial injuries, thinking that it is a relatively simple one which they can pick up from books and accounts and can put forward in a debating spirit. There is nothing wrong with their hearts, as some of them, notably Lord Beveridge himself, want to do good. But it is known in the mining industry that but for the representations which were made, and, at last, almost successfully made, on the miners' behalf, Lord Beveridge's reputation would have been ruined by one of the greatest industrial crises which would have occurred in industry had his uncriticised proposals in relation to industrial injuries been put into effect.
We saved his reputation by the proposals which we made. It may well be that, although it is a result upon which we on this side of the Committee might have differing opinions, we would save the reputation of the present Minister if he had the gumption and the common sense to listen to our proposals and to say that, on reflection, he has enough in the "kitty" to provide extra benefits without providing for any increased contributions. I hope that he will accept our Amendment.
The Minister of Pensions and National Insurance (Mr. Osbert Peake): I thought it would be a good thing if I intervened at this moment not with a view to closing the discussion but in an attempt to explain to the right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown), and hon. Members who perhaps have forgotten, what is the basis of the financing of the Industrial Injuries Insurance Fund. I had a great deal to do with the building up of this Scheme, and so did the right hon. Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths). I built perhaps the main outline of the structure and he added the finer points of the decoration at a later stage when he came into office in 1945.
It is important to understand that the financial basis of the Industrial Injuries Insurance Scheme is wholly different from that of the National Insurance Scheme. The right hon. Member for Llanelly
1404
adopted, in the case of industrial injuries, what I thought was a very provident and wise scheme in the matter of finance. We all knew that as the Fund was not going to take over old cases of industrial injury it was faced with the position that the burden which it would have to bear by way of outgo for benefits and pensions would grow steadily year by year, perhaps for 30 years or more, until the full weight of existing cases fell upon the Fund.
4.15 p.m.
There were two possibilities confronting the right hon. Gentleman. One was to fix the contribution to provide exactly enough money to meet the outgoing at the outset and then to go on increasing contributions, perhaps for three, four, or five years, without any increase in benefit, to meet the increasing outgoing from the Fund. The other way, and the one which the right hon. Gentleman I think wisely adopted, was to set the contributions at the outset much higher than was required to pay the annual outgoing at the outset, so as to build up a reserve fund, the idea being that ultimately the interest on that fund, combined with current contributions, would suffice to meet the whole burden upon the Fund. By this method the right hon. Gentleman provided that at the outset the contribution would be too high but that we should get the benefit later on when, by virtue of the interest coming into the Fund, the contributions would not have to be fixed at such a height that they would have to meet annual outgoings in a number of years' time.
Mr. James Griffiths: The right hon. Gentleman is perfectly right. That is the method which I adopted, with the proviso in Section 59 (1) that having had the Scheme in operation for five years we should have a quinquennial review of the whole of this operation, which would enable us to have before us the working of the Scheme not for a year but for five years, so that we could find out how the financial structure was working out. There is no pretence about it. We were waiting for the quinquennial review. Since the date of a report on this Scheme is exactly the same as the date of the Report on the National Insurance Scheme, why have we not had a report? Until we have had the report, why not leave the Scheme as it is?
Mr. Peake: I am much obliged to the right hon. Gentleman. He is quite right in confirming what I said about the methods of financing the Scheme, which was to build up a reserve in the way which I have described.
The right hon. Gentleman is also right in saying that Section 59 of the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act, 1946, provided for a quinquennial review by the Government Actuary, but here there is a distinction to be drawn between the two Schemes. The National Insurance Scheme provided that there should be a review by the Government Actuary, and Section 40 of the National Insurance Act, 1946, provided that the Minister should himself then proceed to review the rates of benefit and contribution. No Section corresponding to that Section providing for a Ministerial review at the end of five years was included in the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act. There was a provision for review by the Government Actuary of the effects and the results after five years' working of the Scheme.
Mr. Griffiths: And a report to Parliament.
Mr. Peake: Yes, it was to be laid before Parliament in the normal way, exactly like the Government Actuary's Report under the National Insurance Scheme.
I should like the Committee to note what has happened and to have it on the record. In the part year 1948–49, with the contributions which were fixed under the original Act, the income of the Fund was £24½million, expenditure only £8 million and a sum of £16 million was put to reserve. In the second year, 1949–50, the income was £37 million, the expenditure was £14 million and £23 million were passed into reserve. In 1950–51, the income was just under £37 million, the outgoings were £17 million and £20 million passed into the reserve fund. That course of events has persisted, but with the increased charge on the Fund from the increased number of cases the amounts put to reserve are steadily coming down.
In the latest year, 1953–54, the income of the Fund is £44 million, the expenditure £29 million, and the transfer to reserve for investment £15 million. That is the way in which this Fund is progressing. There is now in the reserve
1406
fund £109 million, earning interest which will help us as the years go on towards the payment of the benefit. The actuarial view is that so that income and outgoings of the Fund may eventually balance, it is desirable for the reserve fund to be built up a great deal further, to a figure in excess of about £300 million.
This was not the Scheme which I devised. It was introduced and passed through the House at the instance of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Llanelly. I myself think that that is a wise way to do it. It is very difficult to explain an increase in the contribution rate if it is not accompanied by any increase in the benefit rate at the same time.
Mr. Sydney Silverman: Could the right hon. Gentleman tell us whether the Actuary has submitted any figures to show what would he the effect on the actual transfer to the reserve fund of increasing the contributions and also increasing the benefits, as this Bill proposes?
Mr. Peake: Yes. The facts are set out reasonably clearly in the Report of the Government Actuary upon the Bill. If hon. Members will look, first, at paragraphs 2 and 3 they will see, in paragraph 3, that the income of the Fund will be increased altogether by £7·8 million, £6½ million coming in a full year from the employers and employees, and the Exchequer paying in its supplement of £1,300,000. That gives an additional income, under the Bill, of £7·8 million.
The increased benefits are set out in paragraphs 4 and 5. There the Government Actuary estimates that the additional outgoings of the Fund in a full year compared with £7·8 million will be £7 million in the year 1956–57; that is to say, there will be a margin of £800,000 which will be the extra money to be added to the reserve fund as a result of the operation of this Bill.
I do not think there is anything unreasonable in our following what has been the accepted process of the finances of the Fund. After all, what is happening is this. The main benefit rate—I will not deal with all the subsidiary ones—is going up from 55s. a week to 67s. 6d. I make that to be an increase of 23 per cent. The contribution is going up from 4d. to 5d., which is 25 per cent. One is going up 23 per cent. and the other is

1407
going up 25 per cent. Everyone who is acquainted with this Scheme knows that we cannot deal with halfpennies and farthings. It leads to most appalling complications in stamps and it adds greatly to the labours of accountants and of all sorts of people who have to deal with these things when they are making up wage sheets and wage packets.
I therefore say that this is a fair and just increase in contributions. It is almost balanced by the increase in the benefits to be paid, and I think the hon. Member for Wigan (Mr. R. Williams) was going a little far when he spoke of it as being spiteful. I cannot accept that, and I do not think it will be so accepted by the people who pay the extra 1d. contribution. We are following on what has been done before, and I think that is reasonable and sensible. It will be clearly understood by those who have to pay the extra 1d., and I conclude by saying that I cannot accept the Amendment.
Mr. S. Silverman: I should like to begin by expressing my gratitude to the Minister for two things. One is the clear explanation of the financial effects of the reserve fund and the balance between the extra money to be collected and the extra money to be paid out. I had not appreciated what the figures actually were. Perhaps I ought to have done, and if I do now it is because of the right hon. Gentleman's explanation.
Secondly, the right hon. Gentleman has prevented me from doing a considerable injustice to my right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths). All these years I have gone on thinking that my right hon. Friend was really the villain of the piece in regard to the Industrial Injuries Act. I am grateful to know now that he is not the prime offender, but that the right hon. Gentleman is and that my right hon. Friend was only an accessory after the fact. I am sorry that he should have even the share of guilt, but I am sure he will recognise that it is a lower degree than that of the right hon. Gentleman in this matter.
The right hon. Gentleman said that my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Mr. R. Williams) used some harsh terms. He certainly did. They come with even more striking force from him because he is not in the habit of using stronger terms than
1408
are necessary, and if I have any criticism of his language it is that it was not strong enough.
The right hon. Gentleman has made absolutely no case for his proposal and even after his attention has been directed to the actuarial and financial criticisms of it, he really pays a very poor compliment to the intelligence of the working classes if he thinks they will either ignore or not resent the calculation which he has made for them this afternoon, which makes it clear beyond any further argument that the Government propose to take more money from the worker in extra contributions than they intend to give back in extra benefits.
That is clearly established, and the right hon. Gentleman can go to the industrial workers and defend it if he can, but I would suggest that if he wants to do that he would be very well advised to defend himself here first. That he has lamentably failed to do. Why is it so wrong a thing to do? Alone of all the citizens of our country who are subjected to the changes and chances of misfortune in their everyday lives, the injured workman and his dependants are the only ones who are worse off under post-war legislation than they were under pre-war legislation.
4.30 p.m.
A great many hard things have been said of the old Workmen's Compensation Acts and some of them deservedly. They were badly constructed, they were the subject of complicated and often not very sincere litigation from their earliest years, so that it was only over many years, and by the expenditure of large sums of money, that it became known what was an accident or how it arose, whether in the course of employment or outside, or what a factory was, or what a workshop was. All these matters were litigated with much ferocity for many years.
There was the absurd limitation on the benefit in the early Act—half the wages, with a maximum of 30s. People are too often inclined to compare the benefits under the Industrial Injuries Act with those of the early Workmen's Compensation Acts. That is quite wrong, however, because almost all those difficult questions, many of which ought never to have arisen, and which only arose because of the fact that insurance companies were

1409
able to spend large sums of money in cutting down their legitimate obligations, had been settled by 1946. There was a body of case law, however stupid and however ridiculously arrived at, which had become a codified system of workmen's compensation law, and there was no more difficulty.
When we come to the benefits, the old 30s. limit has long since passed. There were war-time increases, there were children's allowances and, by the end of the war, a married man with a family, who was injured at work, was able to draw, while unable to work because of the results of those injuries, as much as seven-eighths of his wages. There was no nonsense about a flat rate benefit. And what a silly thing a flat rate benefit is when applied to an injured workman. When a man is injured at work, his expenses are not reduced, his landlord wants just as much, and his children want as much to eat. All his obligations to his family remain exactly as they were before. A man cannot readjust all his family responsibilities to the changed circumstances resulting from an accident over which neither he nor anybody else had any control, or for which they were in any way to blame.
What the 1946 Act did was to impose a flat rate that was certainly a better flat rate than the original 30s. in the Workmen's Compensation Acts. It was not very much better but perhaps, having regard to the changes in the index, it was a little better than the original maximum under the original Workmen's Compensation Acts. However, it was a low flat rate, which made it impossible for an injured workman who was earning comparatively good wages to insure himself against all the consequences to his domestic budget of an accident.
Not merely that; for these vastly reduced benefits he was for the first time called upon to pay himself or at least to pay in part himself. Certainly, the old system had been grumbled about by employers for many years, but they had got used to it. What the law implied was a duty of the employer to insure his workmen against the ordinary and natural risks of his employment, and to regard that as just as much a proper charge to be borne by the owner of an industrial plant as accidents to his machine would be. To expect the workman to pay a contribution to that out of his wages is
1410
as absurd as to expect the machine to pay a contribution to its own want of repair.
So what happened in the Industrial Injuries Act—for which I am much relieved to know the right hon. Gentleman accepts the chief responsibility—was to reduce the benefits to a flat rate which, in the majority of cases of married men with children, meant a substantial reduction in the actual benefit to be received, and to introduce for the first time, while reducing the benefit, the principle of a contribution from the workman out of his wages.
Now what do the Government propose to do? They say, "We are not making enough profit out of this Fund. In the latest year for which we have had figures, we collected £15 million more than we paid out, and that was the lowest we have ever collected. In other years it was £20 million or £30 million.
Mr. Raymond Gower: What the hon. Gentleman is really saying is that his own Government were even more wicked because they collected £27 million more than they needed to pay accrued benefits.
Mr. Silverman: If the hon. Gentleman listens carefully, he will know exactly what I am saying. There is no need to interrupt me to tell me what I am saying. I know what I am saying. I am saying that this Fund has been collecting a profit out of these contributions ever since 1946.
Sir William Darling: The hon. Gentleman's own party.
Mr. Silverman: The hon. Member will know which Governments were in power in which years. That has nothing to do with the arithmetic. The arithmetic is what I said, that all these years the Fund has been making a large profit.
It is true that in later years the profits were reduced a little, but they had not gone below a profit of £15 million. In those circumstances, the right hon. Gentleman comes along now and says, "We want another £800,000 a year out of you. We will give you a little more money. We will take some more money from you. On balance, we will win to the extent of another £800,000."
What justification does he offer? The justification he offers is that, if things go

1411
on as they are, there may come a time when perhaps the expenditure and the income will balance and perhaps there will come a later time still when there will be a deficit. But he can give us no idea when that is likely to happen. The Report of his Actuary does not help him on the point. It is a problematical, speculative future event, and for that he is to take an extra £800,000 this year.
Will it help him? Will his Fund look very much healthier when he gets this £800,000? Perhaps next year it might be £1 million. He has £109 million in his Fund now. At this rate it will take 100 years to double it. What is the necessity, then, for going to the workmen now and saying, "Give us this extra 1d."?
My hon. Friend used the word "spiteful." If the right hon. Gentleman or his colleagues know a more appropriate word, perhaps they will tell us what it is during the course of the debate. There is no justification for this proposal at all. It represents the determination of the Government, having been compelled by the pressure of public opinion slowly and reluctantly to give some measure of relief—small enough, heaven knows—to people who can no longer bear the inflictions which the Government have put upon them since 1951, to pick the pennies out of the pockets of the insured workman to make a contribution.
The right hon. Gentleman ought to be ashamed; at least, he ought to be ashamed if shame in these matters were possible to the Members of his party. Hon. Members opposite have resisted bitterly at every step every advance in social services in this country for half a century, and the proposal which they are making with regard to the Industrial Injuries Scheme is the clearest possible symptom that their minds have not changed and that they are incapable of change in this matter.
Mr. Gower: This is a most unfortunate form of debate. If hon. Gentlemen opposite bring in a social reform, then they say that it is because they desire it and because they are nobly minded. If my hon. Friends do it. then they are said to do it reluctantly—
Mr. Silverman: If the hon. Gentleman has any respect whatever for the English language, he must not describe as "a
1412
social reform" to take more money from people than one gives back.
Mr. Gower: I was coming to that point.
If hon. Members opposite bring in a form of legislation which takes more away from the beneficiary to provide for the future than the benefits which they paid for in 1946, then it is foresight; but if we apply the Act according to the advice of the Government Actuary in 1954, then it is "mean" and "spiteful." That is the implication of what has been said by hon. Members opposite. It is a form of propaganda which the Labour Party has waged for a long time, but it is a form of propaganda which the people of this country are accepting no longer.
Many of us on this side of the Committee concede that there may be a strong case for a further actuarial review in the future, but what hon. Gentlemen opposite want us to do now is to say, "Pay out the benefits and take no account of the cost." The right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) said, in effect, that if we put up the cost by Id. for each side of industry, we should acquire a sum £1 million in excess of what we really need.
On that assumption, if we do not collect the money we shall be about £6 million short of what we really need in order to apply the principles laid down by the right hon. Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths), who, supported by hon. Members opposite presumably, when they supported the Bill, in his wisdom thought it right to provide for the day in the future when the requirements to pay the injured workmen would exceed the amount of money which might normally be expected to be received. That was "wisdom and foresight" in those days. Surely it is equally wise today to maintain the principles which were then laid down.
Mr. G. Brown: I am sure the hon. Member does not wish to misrepresent me. What I said was that it would be reasonable in view of what is now in the "kitty" to pay the benefits out until the review has to be made, when the whole matter can be dealt with.
4.45 p.m.
Mr. Gower: I wanted particularly to say that the statements by the hon. Member for Wigan (Mr. R. Williams), for whom

1413
many of us have the highest respect, were most unfortunate and quite out of keeping with the kind of legislation which this is, because this Bill is really meant to bring benefits to those who are injured in excess of the benefits which they have hitherto been receiving and is also designed to have some regard to the financial obligations of the country as a whole.
Many thinking people have one very big doubt about the party opposite, and that is about the soundness of their financial judgment and their provisions to meet obligations in the future. That is why the Labour Party were defeated in 1951, and that is why I believe the country will reject the Labour Party again.
Mr. R. Williams: The hon. Gentleman has done me the honour of referring to me and has taken objection to what he said were statements which I had made. If he was merely expressing himself in the form of abuse, however vigorous, I have no objection to it, because that is all part of the cut and thrust of debate, but if he had any particular statements in mind, is it not rather unfortunate that he did not even refer to them?
Mr. Gower: I was referring to the description of the Minister's action in applying the recommendations of the Government Actuary as "spiteful" and "mean." I thought that an excessive and unfair description of what has happened.
Mr. G. R. Mitchison: Will the hon. Gentleman say to what recommendations he was referring?
Mr. Geoffrey Bing: The whole Committee is indebted to the hon. Member for Barry (Mr. Gower) for his speech. It shows how the Conservative Party secure their votes at a General Election. Here is a perfectly honest hon. Member who comes forward and says something which is quite untrue without having the least idea that he is talking nonsense. He has told the Committee—with complete sincerity, I am sure—that the figures are based on the Report of the Government Actuary. The Minister knows otherwise; he knows perfectly well that he did not use the powers which the Act gives him to have a Report by the Government Actuary before him.
The Minister put forward a very specious argument which avoided any
1414
mention of Section 59 of the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act, 1946, which says:
"Provided that the Treasury may at any time direct that the period to be covered by any review and report under paragraph (a) …"
that is, the quinquennial report.
"… of this subsection shall be reduced and that the making of that and subsequent reviews and reports under that paragraph shall be accelerated accordingly …"
The Minister was very careful to decelerate the Report. He told us that he could not do justice to the old-age pensioners because he had to wait for the quinquennial review. Does he not remember what he said in his Second Reading speech? He said:
… when … I … became Minister in 1951, … it took the Government Actuary between 11 and 14 or 15 months after the close of the financial year to prepare his interim report. All I did in this matter was to ask the Government Actuary to give top priority to his work on the quinquennial review so that his Report could be available much sooner after the close of the financial year ending March, 1954, than would otherwise have been the case."
He added:
"Of course, I had to wait for the Report of the Government Actuary."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th December, 1954; Vol. 535, c. 961–2.]
Hon. Members who have studied Reports from the Government Actuary on the Industrial Injuries Scheme will know that he is generally able to produce a Report for a year ending in March by the following November. If the right hon. Gentleman looks at the Second Interim Report he will see that it goes to March, 1952, and that it was produced in the November. Why did not the right hon. Gentleman ask for acceleration of the Report?
Mr. Geoffrey Wilson: I am trying to follow the hon. and learned Gentleman's argument. Is he suggesting that top priority should be given to two Reports at the same time? If not, what is he suggesting?
Mr. Bing: I am suggesting not only that top priority should be given to two Reports at the same time, but that justice should be done to the poorest sections of the community and that for that purpose the Government Actuary and his staff might be asked to work a little harder than they have done. If the hon. Gentleman has any quarrel with that, perhaps he will make it in his own speech.

1415
My hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Mr. R. Williams) described Clause 1 of the Bill as spiteful. I should like to endorse that and add that it is not only spiteful, but is exactly typical of the approach which hon. Gentlemen opposite make to all these problems.
What is the problem of industrial injuries? There are all sorts of people—and the mining community is typical—who make great sacrifices of life and limb in the service of the country. So, of course, do people who fought in the war. But we do not say, when war pensions are to be raised, that everybody will pay for a war pensions stamp to be put on his card. Why make a difference with a miner who suffered an industrial disease, because, owing to the war, there was not in the pit that type of machinery that might have saved him?
Why say that because a miner who worked overtime in difficult circumstances, when nerves were strained and judgment false, had an accident, he must be paid for by ordinary people buying stamps, but that men who got lumbago, because the camp at Catterick was damp, should have a pension paid out of taxation? It is ridiculous and illogical.
The Minister is trying to have it both ways, saying that we must pay for this extra charge and that he is not in a position to show the accounts. He does not dare to produce the Government Actuary's report. From the terms of the Government Actuary's own report on the Bill, I suggest that the document is now in the Minister's hands. Let him come to the Box and say that the Treasury has not got the Government Actuary's report. Is he prepared to do that, or to say why it has not been published?
Mr. Peake: I have not got the Government Actuary's report.
Mr. Bing: Is it not odd that the Government Actuary should have said a week ago that it was almost ready? When will it be published?
Mr. S. Silverman: My hon. and learned Friend will agree that, if the Minister has not got it, but is to get it shortly, he might have postponed this proposal until he had it.
Mr. Bing: Exactly. I was about to make exactly the same suggestion. But
1416
first I want to deal with the right hon. Gentleman's extraordinary admission that he does not know when he will get it.
We are dealing with only ld., but it is the principle that matters. The Minister is so keen about the principle with old-age pensioners that they have to wait a year for their pensions so that he can have the quinquennial review. But with regard to people suffering from industrial injuries he is so unconcerned when he has got the ld. that he does not bother to ask the Government Actuary when he will get the report. It may be next year, or in two years' time.
He has not seen fit to ask when the report will be ready. What a disgusting state of affairs. It is fantastic that this Committee should be invited to debate a matter about which, for all the Minister knows, a report might be ready tomorrow. How does he know that the report will not be ready tomorrow? He has not asked the Government Actuary when it will be ready.
This is a serious matter. It may be only ld. a week, but we are taking a sum of money from the poorest section of the community in a purely irresponsible way and, on the face of it, the Minister has not even bothered to ask for a report which the Act provides he could require at any time, if he had seen fit to ask for it. He has not even bothered to decide on what date that report should be obtained.
There is every reason why the Committee should reject this Clause, if for no other, as a Motion of censure on the Minister who is not even bothered to ask when the report on which this Measure is based will be ready.
Mr. Peter Roberts: I want briefly to say why I agree with the Minister and disagree with the speeches from the other side. I remember the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) putting forward the principles which he has this afternoon when he sat on this side of the Committee. I cannot remember whether the hon. and learned Member for Horn-church (Mr. Bing) did the same. I do not think he did.
But did the right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) support his right hon. Friend in those days, or not? My recollection is that he supported the idea

1417
of a contributory scheme. How could he make the speech which he made this afternoon, attacking my right hon. Friend on the very principle which he himself supported at that time?
The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne is quite consistent. I understand his argument, but I do not agree. I believe he is wrong, because he is not looking into the future. If one accepts the principle of a contributory amount, then the Fund must be sound and, as was said earlier, we must look to the future for people who, unfortunately, may be injured in 10 or 15 years' time.
Mr. Mitchison: Would the hon. Member answer a question which is troubling me? It is about the contributory principle. Does he say that I should be made to pay an extra ld. for the benefit of the hon. Member's grandchildren because we happen to be in the same trade?
Mr. Roberts: It is rather difficult to follow that argument. The problem which we are now discussing is that people may be injured in the future and money must be found to pay them while they are injured.
We know that a fund was set up under the auspices of the right hen. Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths) and the principle has been agreed. It has been consistently opposed by some hon. Members, but accepted by the vast majority of hon. Members on that side of the Committee.
I rise only to say that I do not think that the right hon. Member for Belper was doing himself justice in his attack. I hope that we shall hear from him, or, possibly, the right hon. Member for Llanelly, whether the Labour Party believes in the principle of the contributory pension brought in by their Government.
Mr. G. Brown: I hope that my hon. Friends will forgive me for rising now, but there are other vitally important parts of the Bill to be discussed. We did not want some other matters to be pushed back and taken late at night, when there will be no opportunity for the public to know what we are discussing. We are, therefore, in a sense submitting ourselves to almost a voluntary limitation of our rights of debate. That does not mean that we regard this Amendment as any less important.
1418
The hon. Member for Heeley (Mr. P. Roberts) said that I did not do myself justice. That is all right by me. The more often hon. Gentlemen opposite say that about me, the more comfortable I am in other respects. Whether or not he felt that I was not doing myself justice, I must say that I thought that the Minister fell incredibly short of doing himself any kind of justice at all. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Oh, yes. If an hon. Member has the right to say that I did not do myself justice, I have an equal right to say that about the Minister.
The Minister spent all his time reminding us of what he was good enough to say that we had perhaps forgotten, and giving us details of how the Scheme began, and its financing. With great respect, some of us remember all that. But he did not at all justify the imposition of this charge.
If the hon. Member for Heeley had really listened, he could not have failed to have realised that what I was talking about was not the contributory basis of the Scheme. On that I disagreed with my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) in 1946, and still disagree with him. That is not to say which of us is right. But I did not attack the contributory basis. What I attacked was simply the putting up of contributions when there has been amassed a very considerable kitty, a very sizeable balance indeed, and the putting up of contributions by more than is required to cover the benefits.
5.0 p.m.
That was what I attacked, and, with respect, I think that one can take that line without attacking the contributory basis of the Scheme. The extraordinary thing is that there have been three speeches from hon. Members opposite, and not one of the speakers has defended the principle of taking more in contributions than is required to meet the cost of the benefit—of taking so much more that we go on building up a balance which already exceeds £100 million. The hon. Member for Heeley did not do so, and neither did the hon. Member for Barry (Mr. Gower). Goodness alone knows—
Mr. P. Roberts: I did indeed. The Fund has been increasing year by year, and the principle which the right hon. Gentleman defended earlier was that

1419
it should go on. He cannot have it both ways.
Mr. G. Brown: Hon. Gentlemen are talking little bits of the original Scheme which happen to suit their arguments.
The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne may have disagreed with it, but he will remember that we all accepted the principle in the beginning; subject to a proviso that after five years there would be a review. We are now saying, why exaggerate the effect of what we undertook, when we are at the point where a quinquennial review is almost due?
I repeat my question to the Minister, when are we to have the quinquennial review? He has dodged that matter. He has got it, or he has nearly got it, or he knows what is to be in it, but in any case the right hon. Gentleman is up against the fact that now is almost the time when it should be available. When are we to have the review, and why cannot we hold up this miserable business unitl we know where we are?
I understood the Minister to say that it is the view of the Government Actuary that the balance in this Fund should reach £300 million. I should have thought that to be one of the matters which we need to review—
Mr. S. Silverman: When did he say that?
Mr. G. Brown: I am about to deal with that. The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne made an excellent speech without any help from me. I hope that he will return the compliment, and I will do the best I can.
I understood the Minister to say that, in the view of the Government Actuary, the balance in the Fund should be £300 million. Where was that said? That is one of the important issues which should be sorted out in the quinquennial review. I am not prepared to vote that the industrial workers, either in my constituency or in my trade union, shall pay an extra ld. a week which is not justified on the facts before us, simply because the Minister says that he 'happens to believe that the Government Actuary thinks that the balance should be £300 million.
I do not think that hon. Gentlemen opposite can charge me with not standing up for something, just because it is
1420
unpopular, if I am convinced that it is right. Were I convinced on the evidence about the need for this payment, I should be prepared to vote for it. But I am not convinced, and the Minister has not devoted any argument to convincing me.
I repeat that here we have a large sum in the kitty. It is increasing, if anything, at a rate of from £15 million to £27 million a year. The Minister gave us the progression from £15 million to £27 million a year—
Mr. Peake: It is progressing down, not up.
Mr. G. Brown: If the Minister will listen—
Miss Irene Ward: Get it right.
Mr. G. Brown: If the Minister will listen, he will help me to get it right—he interrupted too quickly.
I said that the Minister gave us figures which went up from £15 million to £27 million. Then he stopped. He did not give us the progression figures after that. He said that in the last year the figure was £15 million. The Minister did not say that it is a steady progression down. He convinced me that it was varying from £15 million to £27 million, and back to £15 million again. It may well move up and down like that. These things do not necessarily move in arcs in that way, but evidence that that is so in this case has not been produced. That is the sort of thing which the quinquennial review would reveal to us.
We come back every time to the fact that the Minister is dealing with the contribution side on the assumption that, in order to build up a bigger and bigger balance, he needs more money in the Fund than will be paid out in increased benefits. But he gives us no evidence at all. Were I once more a trade union official, I should have great difficulty in defending this attitude, and in answering arguments deduced from it by trade unions members.
After all, the benefits are going up by 23 per cent. The contributions are going up by 25 per cent. The argument of the Minister is that the contributions are going up by 23 per cent., but we cannot have odd halfpennies, so that we have to increase the contributions by 25 per cent.: if the benefits are to go up by

1421
23 per cent., we must pay a contribution to the nearest penny.
Again we come to the question, is it necessary? We have had no evidence that it is. Simply because the benefits are increasing the Government have assumed that the contributor ought to bear an increase in his contribution. They have got it to the nearest round figure in order, as was said by the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne, to make a profit out of it.
Some things were said by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Horn-church (Mr. Bing) with which I disagree. I am not a lawyer. I am a trade unionist and a trade union official. My experience of the old Workmen's Compensation Acts, both before and during the war, was as a trade union official, and I prefer the present Scheme.
I am bound to tell the hon. Member for Nelson and Come and the hon. and learned Member for Hornchurch that I could not recognise the old workmen's compensation scheme from their descriptions of its working. I spent a great deal of my time trying to make it work, trying
to extract bits out of it here and there for the benefit of workers after all sorts of people had tried to prove that they were not entitled to anything, and I prefer the present Scheme.
Having said that, I am all the more angry when the Minister helps to bring the scheme into disrepute, and helps to unload on to our members a charge, when there is not a tittle of evidence of a need for it. It is a charge that will merely build up the balance in the Fund and remove from the pockets of the trade unionists money which need not be taken.
Because the Minister has failed to answer us on that point and has failed to produce any justification for this charge; because, quite obviously, he is doing something which could have been left to be considered in the quinquennial review—for all those reasons, I shall advise my right hon. and hon. Friends to divide on this matter.
Question put, That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause.
The Committee divided: Ayes 272; Noes 236.

Division No. 4.]

AYES

[5.8 p.m.

Aitken, W. T.

Churchill, Rt. Hon. Sir Winston

Galbraith, Rt. Hon. T. D. (Pollok)

Allan, R. A. (Paddington, S.)

Clarke, Col. Ralph (East Grinstead)

Galbraith, T. G. D. (Hillhead)

Alport, C. J. M.

Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmouth, W.)

Gammans, L. D.

Amery, Julian (Preston, N.)

Cole, Norman

Garner-Evans, E. H.

Amory, Rt. Hon. Heathcoat (Tiverton)

Colegate, W. A.

Glover, D.

Arbuthnot, John

Conant, Maj. Sir Roger

Godber, J. B.

Armstrong, C. W.

Cooper, Son. Ldr. Albert

Gomme-Duncan, Col. A.

Assheton, Rt. Hon. R. (Blackburn, W)

Cooper-Key, E. M.

Gough, C. F. H.

Astor, Hon. J. J.

Craddock, Beresford (Spelthorne)

Gower, H. R.

Baldock, Lt.-Cmdr. J. M.

Crookshank, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. F. C.

Graham, Sir Fergus

Banks, Cel. C.

Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.

Gridley, Sir Arnold

Barber, Anthony

Crouch, R. F.

Grimond, J.

Barlow, Sir John

Crowder, Sir John (Finchley)

Grimston, Hon. John (St. Albans)

Baxter, Sir Beverley

Crowder, Petre (Ruislip—Northwood)

Grimston, Sir Robert (Westbury)

Beach, Maj, Hicks

Darling, Sir William (Edinburgh, S.)

Hall, John (Wycombe)

Bell, Ronald (Bucks, S.)

Davidson, Viscountess

Harris, Reader (Heston)

Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)

Davies, Rt. Hn. Clement (Montgomery)

Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)

Bennett, William (Woodside)

Deedes, W. F.

Harvey, Air Cdre. A. V. (Macclesfield)

Bevins, J. R. (Toxteth)

Digby, S. Wingfield

Harvey, Ian (Harrow, E)

Birch, Nigel

Donaldson, Comdr. C. E. McA.

Harvie-Watt, Sir George

Bishop, F. P.

Donner, Sir P. W.

Hay, John

Black, C. W.

Doughty, C. J. A.

Head, Rt. Hon. A. H.

Bossom, Sir A. C.

Drayson, G. B.

Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hon. J. A.

Dugdale, Rt. Hon. Sir T. (Richmond)

Heald, Rt. Hon. Sir Lionel

Boyle, Sir Edward

Duncan, Capt. J. A. L.

Heath, Edward

Braine, B. R.

Dulhie, W. S.

Henderson, John (Cathcart)

Braithwaite, Sir Albert (Harrow, W)

Eccles, Rt. Hon. Sir D. M.

Higgs, J. M. C.

Braithwaite, Sir Gurney

Eden, Rt. Hn. Sir A. (Wrwk. & Lmgtn.)

Hill, Dr Charles (Luton)

Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. W. H.

Eden, J. B. (Bournemouth, West)

Hill, Mrs. E. (Wythenshawe)

Brooke, Henry (Hampstead)

Elliot, Rt. Hon. W. E.

Hinchingbrooke, Viscount

Brooman-White, R. C.

Errington, Sir Eric

Hirst, Geoffrey

Browne, Jack (Govan)

Erroll, F. J.

Holland-Martin, C. J.

Buchan-Hepburn, Rt. Hon. P. G. T.

Fell, A.

Hollis, M. C.

Bullard, D. G.

Finlay, Graeme

Holt, A. F.

Bullus, Wing Commander E. E.

Fisher, Nigel

Hope, Lord John

Burden, F. F. A.

Fletcher-Cooke, C.

Hopkinson, Rt. Hon. Henry

Butcher, Sir Herbert

Ford, Mrs. Patricia

Howard, Gerald (Cambridgeshire)

Campbell, Sir David

Fort, R.

Howard, Hon. Greville (St. Ives)

Carr, Robert

Foster, John

Hudson, Sir Austin (Lewisham, N.)

Cary, Sir Robert

Fraser, Hon. Hugh (Stone)

Hudson, W. R. A. (Hull, N.)

Hughes Hallett, Vice-Admiral J.

Maudling, R.

Smithers, Peter (Winchester)

Hulbert, Wing Cmdr. N. J.

Maydon, Lt.-Comdr S. L. C.

Smyth, Brig, J. G. (Norwood)

Hurd, A. R.

Medlicott, Brig. F.

Snadden, W. McN.

Hutchison, Sir Ian Clark (E'b'rgh, W.)

Mellor, Sir John

Soames, Capt. C.

Hutchison, James (Scotstoun)

Molson, A. H. E.

Spearman, A. C. M.

Hyde, Lt.-Col. H. M.

Monckton, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter

Spens, Rt. Hon. Sir P. (Kensington, S.)

Hylton-Foster, Sir H. B. H.

Moore, Sir Thomas

Stanley, Capt Hon. Richard

Iremonger, T. L.

Morrison, John (Salisbury)

Stevens, Geoffrey

Jennings, Sir Roland

Nabarro, G. D. N.

Steward, W. A. (Woolwich, W.)

Johnson, Erio (Blackley)

Neave, Airey

Stewart, Henderson (Fife, E.)

Johnson, Howard (Kemptown)

Nicholls, Harmar

Stoddard-Scott, Col. M.

Jones, A. (Hall Green)

Nicolson, Nigel (Bournemouth, E)

Storey, S.

Joynson-Hicks, Hon. L. W.

Nield, Basil (Chester)

Strauss, Henry (Norwich, S)

Kaberry, D.

Noble, Comdr. A. H. P.

Summers, G. S.

Kerby, Capt. H. B.

Oakshott, H. D.

Sutcliffe, Sir Harold

Kerr, H. W.

Odey, G. W.

Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)

Lambert, Hon. G.

O'Neill, Hon. Phelim (Co. Antrim, N)

Taylor, William (Bradford, N.)

Lambton, Viscount

Orr, Capt. L. P. S.

Teeling, W.

Lancaster, Col. C. G.

Orr-Ewing, Charles Ian (Hendon, N.)

Thomas, Rt. Hon. J. P. L. (Hereford)

Langford-Holt, J. A.

Osborne, C.

Thomas, Leslie (Canterbury)

Leather, E. H. C.

Page, R. G.

Thomas, P. J. M. (Conway)

Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H.

Partridge, E.

Thompson, Kenneth (Walton)

Legh, Hon. Peter (Petersfield)

Peake, Rt. Hon. O.

Thompson, Lt.-Cdr. R (Croydon, W.)

Lennox-Boyd, Rt. Hon. A. T.

Perkins, Sir Robert

Thorneycroft, Rt. Hn. Peter (Monmouth)

Lindsay, Martin

Peto, Brig C. H. M.

Thornton-Kemsley, Col. C. N.

Llewellyn, D. T.

Peyton, J. W. W.

Tilney, John

Lloyd, Rt. Hon. Selwyn (Wirral)

Pitt, Miss E. M.

Touche, Sir Gordon

Lloyd-George, Maj Rt. Hon. G.

Powell, J. Enoch

Turner, H. F. L.

Lockwood, Lt.-Col-J. C.

Price, Henry (Lewisham, W.)

Turton, R. H.

Longden, Gilbert

Prior-Palmer, Brig. O. L.

Tweedsmuir, Lady

Low, Rt. Hon. A. R. W.

Profumo, J. D.

Vane, W M. F.

Lucas, Sir Jocelyn (Portsmouth, S)

Raikes, Sir Victor

Vaughan-Morgan, J. K.

Lucas, P. B. (Brentford)

Ramsden, J. E.

Vosper, D. F.

Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh

Redmayne, M.

Wade, D. W.

McAdden, S. J.

Remnant, Hon. P.

Wakefield, Edward (Derbyshire, W)

McCorquodale, Rt. Hon. M. S.

Renton, D. L. M.

Wakefield, Sir Wavell (St. Marylebone)

Mackeson, Brig. Sir Harry

Ridsdale, J. E.

Walker-Smith, D. C.

McKibbin, A. J.

Roberts, Peter (Heeley)

Wall, Major Patrick

Mackie, J. H. (Galloway)

Robertson, Sir David

Ward, Miss I. (Tynemouth)

Robson-Brown, W.

Waterhouse, Capt Rt. Hon. C.

Maclay, Rt. Hon. John

Rodgers, John (Sevenoaks)

Watkinson, H. A.

Macleod, Rt. Iain (Enfield, W.)

Roper, Sir Harold

Webbe, Sir H.(London & Westminster)

MacLeod, John (Ross and Cromarty)

Ropner, Col. Sir Leonard

Wellwood, W.

Macmillan, Rt. Hon. Harold (Bromley)

Russell, R. S.

Williams, Rt. Hon. Charles (Torquay)

Maitland, Cmdr. J. F. W (Horncastle)

Ryder, Capt. R. E. D.

Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)

Maitland, Patrick (Lanark)

Savory, Prof. Sir Douglas

Williams, R. Dudley (Exeter)

Manningham-Buller, Rt. Hn. Sir Reginald

Schofield, Lt.-Col. W.

Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)

Markham, Major Sir Frank

Scott, R. Donald

Wood, Hon R.

Marlowe, A. A. H.

Scott-Miller, Cmdr. R.

Woollam, John Victor

Marples, A. E.

Sharples, Maj. R. C.

Marshall, Douglas (Bodmin)

Shepherd, William

TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

Maude, Angus

Simon, J. E. S. (Middlesbrough, W)

Sir Cedric Drewe and Mr. Wills.

NOES

Acland, Sir Richard

Callaghan, L. J.

Evans, Stanley (Wednesbury)

Albu, A. H.

Carmichael, J.

Fernyhough, E.

Allen, Arthur (Bosworth)

Castle, Mrs. B. A.

Finch, H. J.

Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)

Champion, A. J.

Fletcher, Eric (Islington, E.)

Anderson, Frank (Whitehaven)

Chetwynd, G. R.

Follick, M.

Attlee, Rt. Hon. C. R.

Clunie, J.

Foot, M. M.

Bacon, Miss Alice

Collick, P. H.

Forman, J. C.

Bartley, P.

Collins, V. J.

Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)

Bellenger, Rt. Hon. F. J.

Corbet, Mrs. Freda

Freeman, John (Watford)

Bence, C. R.

Cove, W. G.

Gaitskell, Rt. Hon. H. T. N.

Benn, Hon. Wedgwood

Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)

Gibson, C. W.

Benson, G.

Crossman, R. H. S.

Gooch,E. G.

Beswick, F.

Cullen, Mrs. A.

Gordon Walker, Rt. Hon. P. C.

Bevan, Rt. Hon. A. (Ebbw Vale)

Daines, P.

Bing, G. H. C.

Darling, George (Hillsborough)

Greenwood, Anthony

Blenkinsop, A.

Davies, Harold (Leek)

Grenfell, Rt. Hon. D. R.

Blyton, W. R.

de Freitas, Geoffrey

Grey, C. F.

Boardman, H.

Deer, G.

Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)

Bottomley, Rt. Hon. A. G.

Delargy, H. J.

Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llainelly)

Bowden, H. W.

Dodds, N. N.

Griffiths, William (Exchange)

Braddock, Mrs. Elizabeth

Donnelly, D. L.

Hall, Rt. Hon. Glenvil (Coins Valley)

Brockway, A. F.

Driberg, T. E. N.

Hall, John T. (Gateshead, W.)

Brook, Dryden (Halifax)

Dugdale, Rt. Hon. John (W. Bromwich)

Hamilton, W. W.

Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.

Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C.

Hannan, W.

Brown, Rt. Hon. George (Belper)

Edelman, M.

Hardy, E. A.

Brown, Thomas (Ince)

Edwards, Rt. Hon. Ness (Caerphilly)

Hargreaves, A.

Burke, W. A.

Edwards, W. J. (Stepney)

Harrison, J. (Nottingham, E.)

Burton, Miss F. E.

Evans, Albert (Islington, S. W.)

Hastings, S.

Butler, Herbert (Hackney, S.)

Evans, Edward (Lowestoft)

Hayman, F. H.

1424

1425

Healey, Denis (Leeds, S.E.)

Mikardo, Ian

Silverman, Julius (Erdington)

Henderson, Rt. Hon. A. (Rowley Regis)

Mitchison, G. R.

Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)

Herbison, Miss M.

Monslow, W.

Simmons, C. J. (Brierley Hill)

Hewitson, Capt. M.

Moody, A. S.

Slater, Mrs. H. (Stoke-on-Trent)

Hobson, C. R.

Morgan, Dr. H. B. W.

Slater, J. (Durham, Sodgefield)

Holman, P.

Morley, R.

Smith, Ellis, (Stoke, S.)

Holmes, Horace

Morris, Percy (Swansea, W.)

Smith Norman (Nottingham, S.)

Houghton, Douglas

Mart, D. L.

Snow, J. W.

Hoy, J. H.

Moyle, A.

Sorensen, R. W.

Hubbard, T. F.

Mulley, F. W.

Sparks, J. A.

Hudson, James (Ealing, N.)

Murray, J. D.

Steele, T.

Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)

Nally, W.

Stewart, Michael (Fulham, E.)

Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)

Neal, Harold (Bolsover)

Strachey, Rt. Hon. J.

Hynd, H. (Accrington)

Noel-Baker, Rt. Hon. P. J.

Stross, Dr. Barnett

Hynd, J. B. (Attercliffe)

Oldfield, W. H.

Summerskill, Rt. Hon. E.

Irving, W. J. (Wood Green)

Oliver, G. H.

Swingler, S. T.

Isaacs, Rt. Hon. G. A.

Oswald, T.

Sylvester, G. O.

Jay, Rt. Hon. D, P. T.

Owen, W. J.

Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)

Jeger, George (Goole)

Padley, W. E.

Thomas, Iorwerth (Rhondda, W.)

Jeger, Mrs. Lena

Paget, R. T.

Thomas Ivor Owen (Wrekin)

Jenkins, R. H. (Stechford)

Paling, Rt. Hon. W. (Dearne Valley)

Thomson, George (Dundee, E.)

Johnson, James (Rugby)

Palmer, A. M. F.

Thornton, E.

Jones, Rt. Hon. A. Creech

Pannell, Charles

Timmons, J.

Jones, David (Hartlepool)

Pargiter, G. A.

Turner-Samuels, M.

Jones, Frederick Elwyn (West Ham, S.)

Parker, J.

Ungoed-Thomas, Sir Lynn

Jones, Jack (Rotherham)

Parkin, B. T.

Wallace, H. W.

Keenan, W.

Paton, J.

Warbey, W. N.

Kenyon, C.

Pearson, A.

Webb, Rt. Hon. M. (Bradford, C.)

Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.

Peart, T. F.

Weitzman, D.

King, Dr. H. M.

Plummer, Sir Leslie

Wells, Percy (Faversham)

Kinley, J.

Popplewell, E.

Wells, William (Walsall)

Lawson, G. M.

Price J. T. (Westhoughton)

West, D. G.

Lee, Frederick (Newton)

Probert, A. R.

Wheeldon, W. E.

Lewis, Arthur

Proctor, W. T.

White, Mrs. Eirene (E. Flint)

Lindgren G. S.

Pryde, D. J.

White, Henry (Derbyshire, N.E.)

Lipton, Lt.-Col. M.

Rankin, John

Whiteley, Rt. Hon. W.

Logan, D. G.

Reeves, J.

Wigg, George

MacColl, J. E.

Reid, William (Camlachie)

Williams, David (Neath)

Mclnnes, J.

Rhodes, H.

Williams, Rev. Llywelyn (Abertillery)

McKay, Jonn (Wallsend)

Robens, Rt. Hon. A.

Williams, Ronald (Wigan)

McLeavy, F.

Roberts, Albert (Normanton)

Williams, Rt. Hon. Thomas (Don V'H'Y)

MacMillan, M. K. (Western Isles)

Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)

Williams, W. R. (Droylsden)

McNeil, Rt. Hon. H.

Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)

Wilson, Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)

MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)

Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)

Winterbottom, Ian (Nottingham, C.)

Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)

Ross, William

Winterbottom, Richard (Brightside)

Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.)

Royle, C.

Wyatt, W. L.

Marquand, Rt. Hon. H. A.

Shackleton, E. A. A.

Yates, V. F.

Mason, Roy

Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E.

Younger, Rt. Hon. K.

Mayhew, C. P.

Short, E. W.

Mellish, R. J.

Shurmer, P. L. E.

TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

Mr. Wilkins and Mr. John Taylor.

Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2.—(HIGHER RATES, ETC., OF CON TRIBUTIONS AND BENEFIT UNDER NATIONAL INSURANCE ACT, 1946, AND ADDITIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS FROM EXCHEQUER.)
Mr. Douglas Jay: I beg to move, in page 2, line 3, to leave out from "to" to the first the "in" line 4.
The Deputy-Chairman (Sir Rhys Hopkin Morris): I think it would be convenient if, together with this Amendment, we considered the Amendment in page 2, line 6, after "in" insert "Part V of".
Mr. J. Griffiths: I agree.
Mr. Jay: In considering the previous Amendment we discussed a rise of 1d. in
1426
the contribution. In these Amendments we are proposing to delete the whole of the remaining increase in the contribution. We are discussing the sum of 11d. for employee contributors and the corresponding contribution from the employers. We are not proposing that these contributions should be wiped out, and the resulting deficit left to fall upon the Fund. Our intention is that the money lost from employees and employers should be made up by the Exchequer.
It is worth remarking that the Amendment, which is the main one affecting contributions, deals with an amount of about £80 million or £90 million a year. That is comparable to a major increase in taxation. Our proposals for compensating the Fund for the loss of this contribution are, as we explained on Second Reading, twofold. The first is that the Exchequer proportion of one-fifth should be restored,

1427
and, as we have another Amendment on that subject later on, I shall not say anything further about it now.
The second is that we propose that the Minister should abandon the suggestion of putting an extra 6d. on the employees' contribution over and above the actuarial figure. Taking these two changes together, the loss of 6d.—and there is no dispute about the figure—and the alteration of the proportion, they just about wipe out the 11d. which is the issue of these Amendments.
There are two points at which we have to look. First, the ability of the ordinary employee to pay this extra 11d., and, second, the justification for the action of the Minister in going beyond the figure which is actuarially necessary. It seems to us that 6s. 9d. is really an excessive figure for a wage earner to pay every week in relation to present level of wages.
It may be that as applied to average earnings, it is not so oppressive, but, as the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr. Vaughan-Morgan) quite rightly said on Second Reading, we are bound to look at the cases in which the level of wages is much lower than the average. I have in my constituency a number of railwaymen, some of whom are earning not more than £6 9s. a week. I think that if any of us in this House were asked to pay a contribution which bore the same proportion to our income as this 6s. 9d. does to £6 9s. a week, we should resent it as unquestionably excessive.
It is also said that the proportion which the contribution bears to average earnings is no higher than it was in 1946, but, of course, taxation has been reduced since 1946. The higher incomes are paying a lower proportion of the total amount of tax than they did at that time, and I do not accept the doctrine that these contributions should necessarily bear the same relation to earnings as they did eight years ago. I should be prepared to face some increase in contributions at this time if it were actuarily justified and really necessary to provide the benefits, but, on analysis, it is perfectly clear that that is not so.
The Minister of Health, during the Second Reading debate last week, produced yet another and wholly new explanation why the Government waited nine months before introducing these in-
1428
creases. He said they were not waiting for the Phillips Report, as we had previously been told, but for the Report of the Actuary. But when his right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence went to the West Derby by-election in November, he said that the country would be satisfied with the proposals when they got them.
He was referring to benefits which he knew already, and not to contributions, for which he had to wait for the Actuary's Report. This interesting disclosure of the Minister of Defence meant that he thought that the people would be satisfied with the benefits, but he did not know whether they would be satisfied with the contributions. I do not think that any of the electors of West Derby—
Mr. J. Griffiths: Will my right hon. Friend allow me? On 11th November, the Minister of Defence knew what the benefits would be. but did not know what the contributions would be. The benefits were fixed before the Actuary's Report was received.
Mr. Jay: That is perfectly clear. The benefits had been settled without relation to the contributions or to the quinquennial review. We are also expected to believe that, though the Minister had no knowledge what the contribution was going to be on 11th November, nevertheless, between the arrival of the Actuary's Report on 15th November, and 1st December, the whole of this complicated scheme was worked out. And now we have this final version of the story.
I should like to ask the Minister of Health, if that is the whole explanation of this course of events, why has he not based the contribution on the Actuary's Report at all, because, in point of fact, the contribution is far from being based on the principles of the Actuary's Report? It is not based on that at all—it has nothing whatever to do with it. What does the Report show?
It shows that, owing to a more favourable experience than the Actuary had expected, the contribution was already too high. So far from it being too low on actuarial principles, it was already too high, as the Minister of Health may see if he looks at Table 7 or paragraph 52 of the Report, which show that the employers' and employees' contributions together stood at 10·8d. above the actu-

1429
arial figure. That was before the benefits were increased. Is it not perfectly clear that there was nothing in the Actuary's Report of 15th November to justify any increase in contribution or to justify this ls. at all? If there is, perhaps the Minister of Health will tell us what it is.
Even after the calculation of the new increased benefits, the contribution is raised to a long way above the actuarial figure that would justify it. If hon. Members will look at page 5 of the Actuary's Report on the financial provisions of the Bill, they will see that the excess of 10·8d. in the total contributions over the actuarial figure has gone up to 17·8d., and that, of course, includes the 6d. which we are now discussing.
We now come to the conclusion of the story. Having waited all these months, as we were told, for the Report of the Government Actuary in order to decide the contributions, the Government finally ignored the Report altogether and decided the contributions on some totally different principles, of which we have not yet been informed. Therefore, I should like to ask the Minister of Health, when he replies, either to repudiate the story he told us last week about the importance of the Actuary's Report in relation to the contributions, or else, as we would much prefer, to accept his own logic and agree to this Amendment today.
The fact is that this extra 6d. which is loaded on to the employees' contribution over and above the actuarial figure, and over and above the 2d. in 1946, is really not insurance at all, but an additional tax. We can argue about the insurance principle, and varying views about it have been expressed, but if we are to stick to the insurance principle, we ought to stick to the actuarial figures which the Government Actuary put forward. If we go beyond that, we are really doing nothing else but imposing a tax on the contributors in order to pay, not for their own benefits, but for those of other people at a later date.
Mr. J. N. Browne: I am trying to follow the right hon. Gentleman's argument, but I should like to ask him if it has not always been so, ever since the scheme started?
Mr. Jay: Only to the extent of the 2d. which came into force in 1951, and, of
1430
course, to add further to that is to introduce a wholly new principle of taxation into the scheme. In our view, it is not justified. If we are going to finance these benefits, not by insurance, but by taxation, then it seems perfectly clear that that taxation ought to be progressive, and not at a flat rate. Whatever we may think about the rest of the calculation, this 6d. is really in the nature of a poll tax.
5.30 p.m.
According to his Second Reading speech, the Minister of Health believes in the contributory principle. He said that people liked to feel that they had earned their benefit and that they took a pride in paying their contributions, and so forth. Does not the right hon. Gentleman think that it was perhaps a little unwise of him to introduce his rather curious argument about the age of 23, because it seemed to me to cast ridicule on the insurance element of the scheme or, at any rate, to undermine to some extent the confidence which people might have in it?
If we depart to this extent from the actuarial calculation in deciding the contribution which an employee has to pay, are we not bringing the insurance principle into disrepute? The employee is now to he asked to pay 8d. out of the 6s. 9d. over and above the figure which scientific calculations justify. Therefore, no good arguments can be put up for the increase.
I think that the Government have treated us in a most extraordinary way by basing the whole reason for their delay on the fact that they were waiting for this Report, and by then, in effect, treating the Report with very little respect, and, in fact, departing from it. I do not think it justifiable to finance the improved benefits by what amounts to a poll tax which departs both from the insurance principle, on the one hand, and from progressive taxation on the other. I hope, therefore, that the Committee will accept the Amendment.
Mr. Ralph Morley: I hope that the Minister will accept this Amendment, because, by so doing, he will not only please a large number of people, but will also give some electoral advantage to the party which he represents. The proposed contributions represent a very heavy burden on people who only receive a low income.

1431
Many millions of people in the country are only in receipt of £5 or £6 a week. A considerable proportion of them are single women, not all of whom are living at home and are paying to their parents less for board and lodgings than they would have to pay if they lived away from home, thereby getting their parents to subsidise the low wages paid by their employers. Many single women live in lodgings, for which they have to pay the current rate.
A single woman earning £5 a week not only has to pay a weekly contribution towards National Insurance, but is also assessable for Income Tax. Taking the 5s. 6d. a week contribution towards National Insurance, together with about £10 a year which a single woman has to pay in Income Tax, it means that her wage of £5 a week is reduced by at least 10s., leaving her with £4 10s. After paying for her board and lodgings and for her cosmetics and toilet necessities, she will probably be left with £1 10s. for such items as bus fares, amusement, cigarettes, and other amenities of life.
A contribution of 5s. 6d. a week is a very heavy burden to impose on a single woman who is only earning £5 a week. But perhaps the proposed contribution will weigh even more heavily on a married man, earning £6 a week, who has a wife and a child to keep, and who, because he has only one child, does not draw any family allowance. Out of his £6 a week, he will have to pay 6s. 9d. in contributions, leaving him with £5 13s.3d. on which to keep himself, a wife and a child, with the further prospect that in the coming months he may have to pay 4s., 5s. or even 6s. a week more for the rent of the house in which he lives.
The present rate of contributions is a serious burden on people in the lower income ranges. Is this to continue in the future? Are the contributions to be progressively increased as pensions are increased, because it may well be that the cost of living will go on rising? In fact, it is almost certain that if in the future we continue to have a Government like the present Government, who do not believe in price control, orderly marketing, or in all the other devices by which prices can be kept at a reasonable level, the cost of living will continue to rise.
1432
That means that, in two or three years' time, we shall have another demand from the old-age pensioners for a further increase in their pensions in order to meet the increased cost of living. Are those increased pensions to be met by still further contributions, thus placing a still heavier burden upon the lowest-paid people?
It is pretty obvious that we cannot meet the cost of old-age pensions solely on the insurance principle, solely by contributions. The man who entered the pensions scheme when it first became contributory in 1925, and who is now drawing his pension, has not since 1925 paid by way of contributions a tithe of the cost of that pension. The same applies to his employer's contribution.
It seems to me that we cannot possibly finance these pensions unless a very substantial sum is added to the contributions by the Treasury from taxation. I do not wish to indulge in a lot of statistics, because we had a spate of them during the Second Reading of the Bill. I remember the old saying that there are three kinds of liars—liars, damned liars, and statisticians.
It was proved in the Second Reading debate that 90 per cent, of the cost of the increased benefits will come out of the contributions. There is a weekly journal which, I know, inspires and instructs hon. Members on the Government side of the Committee. I sometimes hear them quoting a week afterwards what has been said in that journal on the Friday before. The journal to which I refer is the "Economist." The "Economist" said, in its last issue, that if the Exchequer contribution had been increased from one-seventh to one-fifth it would only have been necessary to increase the contribution of employee and employer by 4d. per week each, in order to make the scheme actuarially sound. My chief point is that the cost of the increase in the pension has been thrown upon the unfortunate contributors.
It may be argued that if we increase the Exchequer contribution, and continue to increase it as it becomes necessary in future years to raise the pensions on account of the continually increasing cost of living, we shall throw a heavy burden upon the Exchequer, and will give rise to a level of taxation so high that it will be a crushing burden upon industry in

1433
general. We are told that, on the most conservative estimate, our rate of production will increase by 1½ per cent. per year. This year it has been increased by more than 1½ per cent. I believe that some hon. Gentlemen on the Government side claim that it has increased by 6 per cent.
The contributors, who are chiefly the working people to whom this increased production is due, are entitled to some part of the benefit of their efforts, and they might be allowed to get it by our not increasing the contributions in the pensions scheme. It is generally estimated that there will be an increase of production of 1½ per cent. year by year. That is the very lowest estimated figure, and means that in 25 years' time, by 1979, when, I understand, the cost of pensions will reach its peak, the national income will be £6,000 million a year more than it is today. Instead of having a national income of £14,000 million, we shall then have an income of £20,000 million a year. Surely that income will be able to bear some additional contribution from the Treasury without increasing the level of taxation. A much higher production will give a greater yield of taxation, and will enable a much greater contribution to be paid from the Treasury.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) made a speech during the Second Reading debate marked by his usual consummate mastery of the English language. It is rather humiliating to think that the greatest master of spoken English today is a Welshman. We can take some consolation from the fact that my right hon. Friend does not speak Welsh, and that English is his mother tongue. My right hon. Friend, in his eloquent and cogent speech, seemed to be advocating that the whole cost of old-age pensions should be thrown upon taxation and that there should be a special social security tax, graded to produce different yields according to the size of the income which was being taxed.
I know that the Socialist solution of this difficulty would be a tax of about 2½ per cent. upon all incomes, but it would raise very serious practical difficulties if we attempted to put it into operation. If we had a 2½ per cent. social security tax on a man with £6 a week and on a worker with £15 a week, the
1434
latter would say, "I want a higher pension because my 2½ per cent. is a good deal more than that of the man with £6 a week." We have to bear in mind also, that a large number of people are contributing to occupational pensions. If there were a social security tax on top of that, those people would demand two pensions. not only their occupational pension but the State pension in addition.
Mr. S. Silverman: Do they not get it now?
5.45 p.m.
Mr. Morley: New entrants will not be able to draw two pensions. [An HON. MEMBER: "Yes."] Oh, no. For example, in the teaching profession a new entrant will not be allowed to draw his occupational pension and the State pension. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"] Because that is the arrangement made with my right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelly (Mr. G. Griffiths), when he was Minister of National Insurance. The arrangement was that new entrants would pay a little less. This point may be irrelevant to my argument, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) interrupted me I am trying to enlighten him.
The Deputy-Chairman (Sir Rhys Hopkin Morris): The hon. Gentleman himself said that the point was irrelevant to his argument; it is also irrelevant to the Amendment.
Mr. Morley: Quite right.
Mr. S. Silverman: On a point of order. Is this matter really out of order? My hon. Friend was arguing that if we had a non-contributory scheme—and part of the argument against this extra contribution is against contributions at all—it would result in unequal pensions instead of in a flat rate of pension. My right hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) argued much the same thing, and it has been argued repeatedly throughout. It should be very difficult at this stage to say that the argument is not relevant.
The Deputy-Chairman: I did not say that that argument was not relevant. I referred to the argument about teachers' pensions.
Mr. Morley: You are absolutely correct, Sir Rhys. I only wanted to point out to my hon. Friend that a number of

1435
people will not be able in future to draw double pensions.
Mr. J. Griffiths: My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, lichen (Mr. Morley) referred to some negotiations and discussions. You have ruled the point out of order, Sir Rhys, and I do not wish to pursue it, except to say that teachers have the same conditions as everybody else. I hardly recall any discussions with teachers or with anybody. If they had discussions it was not with me but with somebody else, who was responsible for the other pension.
Mr. Morley: The discussions did take place. I took part in them. Before the discussions I remember interviewing my right hon. Friend to ascertain his point of view.
I do not want to labour the point. A number of people will not be allowed to draw two pensions. If there were a social security tax, they would argue that they should have both. I did not say that my right hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale said that people who paid a social security tax on a large income would have the right to a larger pension, but that they would claim and agitate for it.
I draw this somewhat disconnected discourse to a conclusion. Surely the best way of financing old-age pensions is to have a moderate contribution from the employee, and for the rest of the money necessary to finance the pensions to be met by a more generous contribution from the Exchequer. In this Bill the contribution from the Exchequer is by no means generous enough. Contributions from the employees are unreasonably large, and larger than they need be to make the scheme actuarially sound. For that reason, I hope that the Minister will consider this Amendment favourably.
Miss Ward: For a considerable time have taken a very great interest in the lower income groups. I was, therefore, very grateful to my right hon. Friend when, in his Second Reading speech last Wednesday, he said that the National Insurance Advisory Committee was reviewing the contribution liability of the smaller income groups. When he replies to the case for this Amendment, I hope that he will give us a great deal more
1436
information on the kind of proposals now under examination.
What I particularly want to know is whether the fact that the increased contributions are not to come into operation until next June is because, if the Advisory Committee makes certain recommendations, the Minister is then to review the liability of those income groups to pay the additional contributions at present standing in the Bill. Although my right hon. Friend dismissed this whole matter in a single sentence, I believe it to be one of the most important aspects of contribution liability. I am, therefore, anxiously seeking for a very great deal more information.
It would not be in order for me to go into the whole argument whether this should be a contributory pensions scheme or merely a State scheme. I myself am in favour of a contributory scheme, and I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for protecting the pension rights of those who will be due for their pensions in the years to come. We should fall far short of our duty if we did not think of the pensioners of the future.
I wish to make this point about the lower income groups and their liability. I noticed that several hon. Gentlemen opposite—I think it was mentioned from the Opposition Front Bench—started to raise the question of Income Tax reliefs for insurance contributions. They did not, of course, pursue that very far. They were the people who made those arrangements. There were one or two of them, however, who jumped up to say that it was just like the Conservative Party. I repeat, it was the Opposition which gave Income Tax reliefs in respect of Insurance contributions.
Mr. William Keenan: What is wrong with it?
Miss Ward: The effect is that those liable to Income Tax relief in respect of contributions are getting their social insurance benefits at less cost than those who are not liable to tax. That concerns me very greatly indeed.
I know that the general argument is that when benefits are subsequently drawn they are then taxable, and that what one loses on the swings one gains on the roundabouts. In fact, that is not true. Particularly in relation to old-age

1437
pensions, no one can say whether it is those who have had that Inland Revenue relief who will be taxable when they retire at 60 or 65 years of age. In my view, people who pay Income Tax are getting their insurance benefits more cheaply than are the lower income groups who do not pay Income Tax. Is my right hon. Friend intending to seek the advice of the Advisory Committee so that this matter can be readjusted?
Following the hon. Gentleman the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Morley), with whose views I was in some agreement, I shall instance a specific case. In my constituency there is a woman who is now, I think, 51 years of age. She had a very good and responsible job as manageress of a shop. When her mother, unfortunately, had a severe mental breakdown, this woman considered it her duty to give up her job and look after her mother, rather than have her sent to a mental institution. As she had had a good job and had a great sense of responsibility, she had saved, in the course of her employment, about £1,000. As a result of that, when she went home she could not draw National Assistance benefit but had to live on her savings.
6.0 p.m.
She had, of course, in the ordinary insurance process, been an insured person for a considerable number of years. As she wishes to maintain her position in insurance so that she can be eligible for pension on reaching the age of 60, she continues to pay her stamp liability out of her savings. Of course. she is not in a position to pay Income Tax. Far from it. So, in due time, when that very responsible woman, with a great sense of family responsibility, draws her National Insurance old-age pension at the age of 60 she will have paid more for it and out of her savings than other people will have paid who are paying Income Tax and get Inland Revenue relief year by year in respect of contributions.
Mr. Spencer Summers: Has my hon. Friend taken into account that the pension which this woman will get when she is 60 will be about seven times the pension which her contributions would justify?
Miss Ward: Before one can come to a decision on a question like that one
1438
must work out the full liability, the full payments and the final results.
I realise that we cannot differentiate between incomes over a wide field, but in the different insurance groups we have to take into account the time at which the contributions started, the amounts of Inland Revenue allowances received, and the final pensions payable, and what I am saying is that it would be much fairer to have a flat rate contribution with no reliefs. I understand that that is impracticable, to vary contributions by incomes, a very difficult thing to do, outside the three-group framework already in existence. I think it is most unfair that people should have Income Tax relief and get their National Insurance benefits—I repeat—at an annual cost to the Treasury of £34 million, which is a considerable sum, while people in the lower income groups who do not pay Income Tax have to pay the full contributions for the benefits which they receive.
Mr. Jay: If the hon. Lady would withdraw tax relief for National Insurance contributions, would she withdraw it for life insurance premiums, also?
Miss Ward: I am delighted that the right hon. Gentleman has put that question to me, for several times I have asked in the House for the setting up of a committee to examine the whole of this problem of providing for old age—
The Deputy-Chairman: I have listened to the hon. Lady with considerable interest, but she seems now to have raised a matter totally different from that in the Amendment.
Miss Ward: The hon. Gentleman opposite was talking about lower income groups, and he was allowed to go a very long way, if I may say so with great respect, Sir Rhys, and when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay) puts that question to me, although I do not want to develop the answer at length, because I realise that that would be out of order, I think I am entitled to give him an answer; otherwise, he will say that I funked it. [HON. MEMBERS: "Not the hon. Lady."] Hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite, and, indeed, my own party, may not always agree with me, but I am always ready to stand up to any knocking about I may have to put up with.
The Deputy-Chairman: I am quite sure of that, but I am not concerned with that, but only that the hon. Lady's argument should be in order.
Miss Ward: My main point is whether there should be a variation in the rate of contributions for the lower income groups. I had a Question down to my right hon. Friend today for Written Answer, and I want to tell the Committee the answer I have had, because it is germane to this argument. The Question I asked was:
"To what extent the proposed increased contributions from employees, self-employed, and non-employed could be reduced if £34 million being tax relief in respect of contributions was transferred from the Treasury to the National Insurance Fund and applied in reduction of contributions equally over all groups."
That would give help to each group. The answer of my right hon. Friend was:
"If an extra £34 million a year were made available by the Exchequer for the Fund it would be possible to reduce the total contribution payable for each class of insured person by about 8d."
I am suggesting that if the arrangements made by right hon. Gentlemen opposite when they introduced the National Insurance Act, which gave a great advantage to the higher income groups were to be readjusted on the advice of the Advisory Committee, and we got back to some equitable contributions in respect of the three income groups, we could then have a reduction in the increased contribution liability at any rate for the self-employed and the non-employed. Indeed, I think it would be only fair to include the other group as well, because there are many low-wage earners in the other group. they could have their increased contribution liability reduced by 8d. and we should then each be paying 4d.
I take it very badly indeed that there is this differentiation and I hope that when my right hon. Friend replies to the debate he will bear in mind that tremendous efforts are made by very many people to try to keep themselves within the scope of the National Insurance Fund and that many of them are paying stamp contributions when they would be able to claim exemption on the ground of low income. I think it is tremendously important. I regret that we have not examined this matter properly before. We
1440
ought to know exactly where we stand so that we may not overstrain the people in the lower income groups while taking for ourselves in the highest income groups a favourable position.
I was very glad that my right hon. Friend, on Second Reading, mentioned that he was to have advice from the Advisory Committee. I look forward with considerable interest to knowing what proposals are in his mind, and when he will take action when he receives advice from that very interesting Committee. I should also like him to say when he expects that it will report.
Dr. Horace King: I am in agreement with much of what the hon. Lady the Member for Tyne-mouth (Miss Ward) has said—indeed, with most of what she said that was in order. I am only sorry that she should have marred her speech by a party thrust when she charged the Opposition with having been responsible for one of the blemishes in National Insurance as it now is—the fact that the rich man gets tax exemption on his National Insurance contributions.
Miss Ward: Not necessarily rich, but in the higher income groups.
Dr. King: If the Opposition are responsible for blemishes in the 1946 Act they are also responsible for the 1946 Act itself which, with all its magnificence, has become part of the pattern of the British way of life.
Both sides of the Committee want the Bill, and both sides want it quickly, but our speed must not allow the Government to imagine that they can get the Bill exactly as it stands in every detail. They really ought not to resist every Amendment. I plead with the Government earnestly to consider this Amendment, which contains one of the central arguments in the opposition to the Measure. I ask them, also, to consider certain other Amendments which we shall move, and to concede something to the Opposition, who are endeavouring to play an honourable part by needs of the pensioners on the one hand and by the Government's desire for speedy passing of the Bill on the other.
I want to deal briefly with one simple point—the fact that the heavy charges which are being imposed by the Bill on

1441
the contributors is being justified by saying that we must maintain the insurance principle. That principle, roughly, means that workers should be able to identify payments which they make with the benefits which they receive and that if we do that they will have the advantage of regarding their benefits as something given as of right. But, with all respect to Lord Beveridge, the insurance principle has long been whittled away. Before this new Bill was introduced, workers' contributions by no means paid directly for the benefits which they received. They were subvented by employers' and State contributions.
Therefore, the battle at the moment is joined not because the Government's proposition is standing firm by the principle of insurance and the Opposition's Amendment is destroying that principle. All that we have to decide, both in the Amendment and the Government's proposal, is what balance we shall strike between the insurance principle on the one hand and the State subventions on the other.
I believe that as years go on people are becoming more and more anxious about the case against direct contributions, against what has been called a poll tax. To say that "a bob a nob" is rough justice is not true. It has been said already in the debate that it is not even a "bob a nob," that the better off one is the less one is likely to pay, because of the tax relief that one receives. I have the worst case in mind—the simple fact that two kinds of people will pay the same amount in theory. The widow on the 10s. pension will have her contribution increased by the amount stated in the Bill and the millionaire will have his contributions increased by the same amount, and the only one for whom the Government will temper the new burden is the millionaire, because he receives tax relief on his increased contribution.
I regard this proposal, therefore, as a charge on the poorest people and as a heavy burden upon those whom we should have most in mind. The only difference between the part of the increased pension which has to be found by the worker's contribution and the part that has to be found by the British people generally is that the State part is graduated according to income. The Amendment does not abandon the insurance principle, but
1442
demands that the new charge carry a lower burden in direct contribution by the worker and a greater burden by the Welfare State.
This is not a question of charity. We do not regard the Welfare State contribution, National Assistance, or subvention by the State as an act of charity. We believe that we as a community should contribute each according to his ability to pay and that that should be distributed to each according to his need. We believe that the Amendment is much nearer that principle than the Government's proposal. Therefore, I urge the Government to accept the Amendment.
6.15 p.m.
Mr. Gower: I respectfully submit that, as it stands, the Amendment could not well be accepted by the Minister and by the Government. At present, the Exchequer is already accepting liability for the next five years well in excess of £300 million. Acceptance of the Amendment would throw another £77 million immediately on the Exchequer in the first year.
The hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Morley), with some of whose remarks many of us on this side of the Committee would agree, said that productivity would increase year by year and that that would enable us to take this Scheme in our stride. Many of us are hopeful and agree with him in his optimistic forecast of increased productivity, but our hopes of that increased productivity will bear some relation to the taxation burden which we assume. It is all very well to say, "Throw £77 million on the Exchequer in addition to £300 million and productivity will still go up by X per cent. per annum. We shall take it in our stride." That is the economics of folly which no responsible Minister could lightly undertake.
While we on this side of the Committee have great sympathy with what was said by the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen and by my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Miss Ward) about the lower-income groups, the fact remains that that problem is now being investigated by a committee. I do not think that in a haphazard way we can lightly throw this additional burden on the Exchequer I would ask my right hon. Friend, however, to indicate more

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clearly the terms of reference of that committee. I wholly disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth in her remarks about private pension schemes. I should have thought that, as a Conservative, she would have wanted to support measures of private thrift.
Miss Ward: I did not say that I did not. Of course I support thrift. I said, in reply to a challenge from the benches opposite, that I was quite willing to have a committee examine the whole of the arrangements made with regard to thrift.
The Temporary Chairman (Mr. George Thomas): Having allowed the hon. Lady to reply, I hope that the hon. Member for Barry (Mr. Gower) will now leave that subject.
Mr. Gower: Yes, Mr. Thomas. But when my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth was speaking, the right hon. Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay) made an interjection, with which I entirely agree, that any alteration of the basis of contribution to National Insurance—which is directly revelant to the argument about small-income earners—would also have to be applied to private pension schemes. I am in favour of all measures of private thrift but I also feel that if persons receive tax allowances on private schemes of that kind it is only right that people who contribute to State insurance should have similar benefits.
In their own interest, the Opposition should reconsider their attitude to the Amendment. There may be a very strong case for close study of the financial implications of repeated increases in contributions, but it would be most irresponsible to say tonight that we should throw this burden as it is on the Exchequer without further study.
Mr. Emrys Hughes: The hon. Member for Barry (Mr. Gower) has argued that it is impossible for the Exchequer to find another £77 million in order that so much of the burden of this Scheme shall not fall upon the contributor. What is £77 million compared with the £1,500 million which is spent every year on armaments. on so-called defence and on obsolete weapons?
I have never heard the hon. Member for Barry say during debates on the Services Estimates that it is simply impossible for the Chancellor of the Exchequer
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to find another £77 million, but when we want £77 million for the purpose of improving the social standards of old-age pensioners and those on the lower incomes, along comes the hon. Member who is in favour of spending £1,500 million—
Mr. Gower: I did not say anything of the kind. The hon. Member is assuming that the two subjects are compatible. He is also assuming that the £77 million is the only expenditure on this social provision.
Mr. Hughes: I am saying that the Chancellor's problem will be the same. If the hon. Member finds no difficulty about the Chancellor finding £1,500 million for one thing, I fail to see how he can raise it as an insuperable problem for the Chancellor to find this money by direct contribution from the Exchequer.
The argument on the principle of contributory or non-contributory pensions has been going on since the first insurance Bill was introduced in 1910. I recall that at that time a small minority of Labour Members led by the then Mr. Philip Snowden, who had not become Chancellor of the Exchequer, argued very powerfully in favour of a non-contributory scheme. Mr. Snowden's argument was that social welfare benefits should come out of taxation, and I cannot see why that principle cannot be applied today.
Why was the Exchequer contribution reduced from one-fifth to one-seventh in 1951? It was because the Chancellor at that time argued that armaments were more important than insurance benefits. [An HON. MEMBER: "No, the burden on the Exchequer was too great."] It comes to the same thing. So, in this Amendment, we are asking for an increased amount on the Exchequer, and it would not be an insuperable burden, as has been argued, if we put the proper priorities first.
If we put the priorities in their proper order, then we as Socialists—and we should always look at these matters as Socialists—would place the benefits of such a scheme as this before armaments, and we would be prepared to support a Treasury contribution which would make a first priority the benefits to the old-age pensioners and to the industrially injured.
Mr. Michael Stewart: The hon. Member for Barry (Mr. Gower) suggested that if we impose further burdens on the Exchequer that would prevent savings and increased productivity reaching that degree for which we hope. But he is assuming, which is often assumed without proof, that a higher rate of taxation acts as a deterrent to the increase of wealth. In fact, most of the factual evidence we have does not point in that direction at all.
In the years immediately after the war high taxation was inevitable, particularly on large incomes. But it was during those years, as was very strikingly pointed out on one occasion by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Gaitskell), that production increased at a rate never before known in history, and at a rate even greater than today. Further, the relief given to taxation on large incomes three years ago has not resulted in increasing the rate at which productivity is rising. Indeed, if there is any result at all it has been in the reverse direction. It cannot be taken as proof that if there is a lighter burden of taxation, the rate of increase in the national income will become greater. The factual evidence which we possess shows that the trend goes in the opposite direction.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. King) pointed out, quite rightly, that this Scheme is not based exclusively on the contributory principle, and, indeed, cannot be. From the very beginning of the idea of any kind of insurance scheme, it has been financed in part by contributions and in part from the Exchequer. I think it would be more accurate to say that these schemes are financed by two different kinds of contribution. One kind of contribution is that a man pays by buying a stamp which he puts on his card, and the other is the contribution that he pays in his Income Tax, if he is an Income Tax payer, or in a large number of other ways when he is touched by indirect taxation.
The whole issue is: what proportions of the total finances of the scheme ought to be borne by what I will call the stamp contribution and what proportion by the tax contribution, because we have got to contribute one way or the other if there is to be any balance at all? We need not suggest that there is something
1446
immoral about reducing the proportion that is borne by the stamp contribution, because the people who do the country's work are the people who contribute to these schemes whatever the financial arrangements are.
The question that arises on this Bill is this: is there a case for increasing the contributions, particularly when that is related to increase of benefits? There is not, I think, a case on strictly actuarial grounds. The Actuary's Memorandum shows that the increased contribution is greater than actuarially will be required. That is due, as was pointed out in a leading article in "The Times," to the fact that all the time we are having to bear in mind the strain put on the Fund by pensions to comparatively late entrants into the Scheme, or to an increase of pensions for persons who are already drawing them, and, of course, in the nature of the case could not have paid an increased rate of contribution.
It seems to me that it cannot seriously be expected that the task of seeing, that our old people are properly provided for now, and the much bigger task that will face us in the future of seeing that the higher proportion of old people with whom we shall have to deal are properly provided for, can be fulfilled on the basis of the weekly contributions of particular contributors today. That is a problem which rests on the nation as a whole, and its real solution lies, not so much in financial arrangements, but in the raising of the productive power of the country. If we are not able to do that we shall not be able to provide a proper standard of living either for the young people or for the old.
It is not purely on actuarial grounds that one can justify this actual increase of contributions. We are forced to this conclusion that the effect of this Bill is to increase the amount of contribution and the financing of the Scheme which is done by stamp contributions as against that proportion of the finances of the Scheme which is met by tax contributions. Is that, in fact, a good thing to do? I doubt whether it is. Without entering into the whole argument of whether we ought to have a contributory scheme or not—and if I did I might be ruled out of order and, in any case I would unduly prolong what I have to say to the Committee, thereby preventing other hon. Members who may

1447
hope to address the Committee from doing so—the main question is: is it a good thing at this time to increase the contribution that is paid by the stamp contributor?
I should have thought not. I should have thought that the burden of proof is always on someone who wants to do that, because the stamp contribution itself, as has been stated already, is in the nature of a poll tax whereas the tax contribution, if the Chancellor of the Exchequer does his work properly, can be made a contribution according to people's capacity.
There is generally, therefore, a strong presumption, if any changes are to be made as the years go by, to suggest that it is desirable on the whole for the stamp contribution to become a smaller proportion of the whole and for the tax contribution to become a larger one. Without arguing for a completely non-contributory scheme, I believe that most hon. Members would accept that limited proposal.
That is not what we are doing here. For that reason, I hope that the Minister will be prepared to accept this Amendment. Let me look at it in the way it was put by my right hon. Friend the Member for Fulham, West (Dr. Summerskill), that really this Bill, with its increased benefits, is to meet an emergency situation which, in the opinion of many of us. might have been met a good deal earlier.
6.30 p.m.
Now, over and above that emergency situation there are the much more fundamental questions of National Insurance, of which this question—how much ought we to pay via our stamps and how much via our taxes—is one. The Bill, which we are all determined to hurry through, and which ought to be hurried through, is not, however, one in which we ought in any way to prejudge that question. Since, in the Bill, we cannot go into the whole question of what is the right proportion between those two forms of contribution, we ought to make, since we have to make a choice of some kind, the choice which is the better one generally, to increase the tax contribution rather than the stamp contribution until we have had time to look more thoroughly at the entire question of the financing of the National Insurance Scheme.
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To sum up, since this is really only an emergency Measure, we do not want to give here any final answer based on contributions as between stamps and taxes. We have to give a makeshift answer and, if we have to do that, it is much better to give one which makes the stamp contribution a lesser proportion than one which makes it a greater proportion. It is for this reason that I hope the Minister will accept the Amendment.
Mr. Summers: I want to make one or two observations on the remarks to which we have just listened. I was glad that the hon. Member for Fulham, East (Mr. M. Stewart) drew attention to the question of balance between the stamp contribution and the tax contribution, but he seemed entirely to overlook the fact that from the Report of the Actuary it is evident that the proportion borne by the tax contribution will go up severely in the years ahead, and that the stamp contribution will fall relatively. If, therefore, a small adjustment is suggested now, it will be infinitesimal compared with the major change which will come in the future.
The hon. Member for Fulham, East misunderstood my hon. Friend the Member for Barry (Mr. Gower), who spoke of the risk of overdoing the burden placed on the taxpayer. As I understood my hon. Friend, he did not allude to any link between taxation and productivity. What he alluded to was the grave risk, if taxation is excessive in the name of social insurance, of a recurrence of inflation. Ever since the war there has been considerable evidence to show that the period of highest taxation has been the time of greatest inflation. It is inflation which has done more than anything else to reduce the buying capacity of the benefits of social insurance. For that reason, my hon. Friend issued a warning against increasing beyond what is prudent that share of the burden falling upon what he called the tax contribution.
Mr. M. Stewart: What the hon. Gentleman has just said may well be what the hon. Member for Barry (Mr. Gower) would have liked to say if he had thought of it, but I submit that it is not what that hon. Gentleman said.
Mr. Summers: If the hon. Gentleman prefers to attribute to me the thoughts I have just expressed, I am ready to accept

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them because they are ones I have expressed already in an earlier comment on this topic.
Mr. Morley Mr. Morley rose—
Mr. Summers: I want to be brief and it is not worth the hon. Member interrupting me here.
My only other observation is this. If I were a pensioner or, perhaps, a prospective pensioner is better—[HON. MEMBERS: "You are."] Very well then, if I were a prospective pensioner, depending only on my pension, and I were listening to this discussion of the relative merits of the burden of the tax and stamp contributions, I should be rather concerned about those who speak disparagingly of profit, because it is from profit that taxes largely come.
If the pension, on which I should be solely dependent, is to be paid almost exclusively out of taxation, and hon. Members come to my constituency and pour scorn and contempt on the increased profits made by industry, I should fear that the members of such a party would probably not in the long run allow sufficient profits to be available from which to extract taxes to pay my pension. Hon. Gentlemen opposite cannot, in one breath, ask that the resources for pensions shall increasingly be laid upon the taxpayer and, at the same time, disparage those profits from which the taxes in question are drawn.
Mr. H. Hynd Mr. H. Hynd (Accrington)
rose—
Mr. Summers: I am about to sit down and it would be better if the hon. Gentleman would allow me to continue, so that he can have a chance of making his own speech in a moment. I felt that I should make these brief observations on the speech we have just heard, as it ought not to go unanswered.
Mr. Thomas Fraser: The steel workers of this country will be interested to read the remarks of the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Summers), who has just asserted that all taxation in this country comes from profits.
Mr. Summers: I did not say that.
Mr. Fraser: Now the hon. Gentleman says he did not say that, but he will read the OFFICIAL REPORT tomorrow and he will find that he did say it
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In any case, the logic of what he had to say was that the old-age pensioners look to the taxpayers of this country to yield them the pension they are drawing or will draw in the future—
Mr. Summers: "Almost exclusively" was what I said.
Mr. Fraser: Well then, almost exclusively—that the very poorest people of this country have their incomes supplemented to a figure which is paid almost exclusively by the taxpayers of this country. That is the tragedy. The benefits have been increased, but not to a subsistence level, and they are being increased by imposing a burden upon many people in this country who are scarcely able to carry it.
It goes without saying that the increase in contribution imposed upon the worker earning £5 or £6 a week is a much greater one than that borne by the worker earning £20 or £30 a week, and it is a much greater burden than would have to be borne by the taxpayer if he were to find the money that is to be provided by this increased contribution. None of these things can be refuted.
I listened to the Minister of Health the other night when he described two categories of people upon whom it might be said that this increased contribution was a burden. He spoke of the lower-income group. I think of the wage earners in Scotland who will have to pay a higher contribution, the 100,000 agricultural workers who save a wage of £5 16s. a week. We have been endeavouring to get those workers housed decently for the first time in their lives, and they are paying rents of about 17s. a week. They are to be asked now to make an insurance contribution of 6s. 9d. a week out of that £5 16s. The trouble about all this is that the old-age pensioners will very soon find that their greatest enemies are really their best friends, the people of the lowest-income groups. We must avoid that sort of thing.
I think also of a great many of the miners, who are often described as being among the higher wage earners. Miners who work at the surface or are on minimum wages in the pit take home less than £7 a week, and many of them are paying rents of 25s. for new houses in the developing areas. If they have to pay the

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increased contribution they will also become enemies of decent pensions for the old people. I see the hon. Member for Aylesbury shaking his head, indicating that the miners will not become enemies of pensions for the old people. Of course they will not, because they will do their utmost to ensure that there shall be decent old-age pensions; but apparently the hon. Member believes that the taxpayers would not be so willing.
Mr. Summers: I do not think that the miner will grudge the extra contribution if he knows that the bulk of it will go towards an increased pension.
Mr. Fraser: But the miner knows that the bulk of it is not needed for an increased pension. He has been told that in the Actuary's Report. That in itself will upset him, and, in any case, if he is having great difficulty in making ends meet from week to week, he will not welcome having to make an increased contribution which is not required for the increased pension which will be given.
There are other categories. I have had many representations from 10s. widows, who will get nothing under the Bill. Many are employed in the school meals service, earning £2 a week, out of which they will be asked to make an increased contribution. They are excluded from some of the benefits of the seasonal workers' Regulations, and in the summer months, when the children are on holiday, they are paid off, and then they have no unemployment benefit anti have nothing to live on but the 10s.
The Minister must appreciate that the increased contribution will be a difficult burden for millions of workers. If he insists upon retaining the provision, it will be very difficult for any of us to be convinced that this is an interim Measure or for us to convince any body of persons outside the House that that is so. If this is an interim Measure, let him give the increased benefits and take all the credit he likes for doing so, but let him do it without prejudicing next year's discussions by increasing contributions at this stage.
When we examine the structure of the Scheme next year, we shall have to consider whether there should be a poll tax or flat rate contributions, or whether there should be some form of graded
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contribution or social security tax. The discussions will be prejudiced if the Minister insists on increasing the contributions now to meet, not the immediate requirements of the Scheme, but the requirements at some time in the distant future.
The right hon. Gentleman must know that his hon. Friends are not unanimously in support of him. He heard the speech of his hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) the other week, and he has heard the speech of his hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Miss Ward).
Miss Ward: Call me "friend"
Mr. Fraser: Do I understand that I am getting into some trouble with the hon. Member for having referred to her as my friend? I do not think I did so. If I did so, I apologise, because I am not her friend.
Miss Ward: The hon. Gentleman misunderstands me. What I said was "Call me friend.'"
6.45 p.m.
Mr. Fraser: This is not a party political point. We are discussing, not an abstract matter, but something of very great importance to millions of workers. Let the Minister have second thoughts and earn the gratitude of millions of lower-paid workers by accepting the Amendment. That is the least we expect him to do.
Listening to some of the speeches which have been made, and, in particular, to an intervention by the hon. Member for Aylesbury, I got the impression that the Committee is not sufficiently appreciative of the inadequacy of the wages of millions of workers. We tend to think that, because they can make their contribution to the country's wealth while drawing wages which are inadequate, they should, therefore, he willing to live on a hopelessly inadequate pension in their old age.
Mr. J. Enoch Powell: With all due respect to the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser), it was the hon. Member for Fulham, East (Mr. M. Stewart) who helped the Committee most by the manner in which he formulated the question which is before us.

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The hon. Member for Fulham, East said that we had to decide what was to be the balance between the two forms of taxation by which, year by year, the social security benefits are financed. His recommendation was that no change should be made at present in the balance. He has got his wish; no change is being made in the balance at present. It is true, of course, that, in so far as the contributions now proposed contain an element towards the emergent cost of retirement pensions, if it happens that the emergent cost becomes a reality, then, as a result of the present increase in contributions, there will progressively year by year be a shift as compared with the present level of contributions and benefits. But until the emergent cost emerges, the proportion between general taxation finance and stamp finance will, after the Bill is passed, be exactly the same as it was left by the Labour Party.
Mr. M. Stewart: The hon. Member is not representing me correctly. I argued that there was always a general presumption in favour of increasing the tax contribution as against the stamp contribution. My contention as applied to the Bill was that where we have to provide a makeshift answer and have not time to go into all aspects of the matter, we ought not to make one which involves an increase in contributions.
Mr. Powell: —or rather "which involves an increase in the contribution element for the financing of the security benefits." That is the logic of the hon. Gentleman's contention.
During the next two or three years there will be no emergent cost falling upon general taxation, so that no shift will, in reality, occur. Hon. Members can satisfy themselves of this if they look at the right hand column in paragraph 15 of the Actuary's Report. They will there see figures of deficit ranging from £1 million to £121 million per annum in the next four years but they will remember that those figures are based upon an assumption about future unemployment rates—to mention no other assumptions—which the Actuary had to be given but which may not, we all hope it will not, become a fact. Therefore, during the next two or three years the balance between stamp-borne finance and general tax-borne finance will remain exactly what it has been during the past two or three years.
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We may test this another way. We may ask whether the proportion of the national output falling to the worker in the form of his wages which goes, through the contribution, to support the social security benefits is being increased by the Bill or not. We know that, in fact, it is not being increased. We know that the proportion which these contributions bear to the general level of earnings is less than the proportion which the contributions fixed in 1946 bore to earnings at that time. The burden of proof rests upon those who call in aid the lowest paid workers to show that the proportion for them is more unfavourable than it was in 1946, and I challenge any hon. Member to do that.
Mr. S. Silverman: Anyone listening to the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) and admiring, as I am sure we all do every time he speaks, the lucidity of his exposition and the orderliness of his thinking might be deceived into thinking that the hon. Member was in support of the Government on this Measure. But that would he to do him a great injustice. There are many of us who heard the speech he made in the old-age pensions debate which preceded the introduction of the Bill and I hope he will not think me offensive or discourteous if I say that as between the speech today and the speech on that occasion we should appeal from "Philip drunk to Philip sober."
I have an Amendment on the Order Paper to the same effect as this Amendment. I think it was defective, because had that Amendment been carried it would have cut away the increased Exchequer contribution as well as the increased contributions from other people. I think that the position would have been saved by a subsequent subsection and I thought that that risk might be taken for the sake of simplicity. But, in principle and in total effect, my right hon. Friend's Amendment has the same result without even seeming to interfere with the Exchequer contribution and is probably a better Amendment for that reason.
The simple question with which the Committee is faced is who is to bear the burden of the cost of the increased benefits which the Bill proposes? It is quite true that that simple issue has been considerably bedevilled by a variety of other issues which are no doubt related

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to it. Those other issues are interesting issues in themselves. I would like to take just two or three minutes, I hope no more, in referring to them.
It is a mistake to confuse what is called the insurance principle with what is called the contributory principle. The two figures are not at all the same. One could have a contributory scheme which is by no stretch of the imagination an insurance scheme. It is perfectly clear that no old-age pensions scheme either in operation in this country, or, so far as I know, in any country, has ever been an insurance scheme.
Nobody has ever attempted to finance old-age pensions by an insurance scheme. One cannot have an insurance scheme without a fund and there has never been a fund. That is the difference between this Amendment and the Amendment we discussed on Clause 1, because the Industrial Injuries Scheme is definitely an insurance scheme with an invested fund and some actuarial basis. But this is not and it is quite a mistake to try and examine either the question as a whole, or this particular Amendment, from that point of view.
Into what fantastic situations people get themselves when they try to deal with this as though it were an insurance scheme, was very well illustrated by the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Health when he wound up the Second Reading debate on Thursday night. He had been dealing with how to make the Insurance Scheme balance, and he worked out a number of figures and a number of ages. Let me read the really remarkable discovery that he made. I quote it from col. 1235 of HANSARD:
"In other words—and it is a wonderful thought—"
It occurred to him, even in parenthesis, as he was uttering it—
"if we were all 23 and all stayed 23 the Scheme would be perfectly balanced forever"—
I interrupted to say:
"And we should not need the old-age pension."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th December, 1954; Vol. 535, c. 1235.]
A sudden light broke over the right hon. Gentleman and I could not help thinking of Keats's sonnet about the Spanish discoverers who first found themselves gazing upon the Pacific:
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"Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—Silent, upon a peak…"
Whether ebullient or not, no one will ever know.
Of course the thing is fantastic and it is well to leave out the so-called insurance argument because it only—if I may be forgiven another pun—"Macleod's the issue."
I do not know why my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Morley) was so afraid of the non-contributory scheme that one could have without introducing an insurance principle. He knows very well that this party was for a long time committed to non-contributory pensions. It was not only Mr. Philip Snowden. Perhaps one might without offence remind the Committee that Philip Snowden, in the days about which my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) was talking, was in a smaller minority than my hon. Friend himself. He only had four, whereas we had six.
It was not only Philip Snowden, but the whole Labour Party for many years, right up to 1937, that was committed to the non-contributory scheme.
Mr. Peake: They have moved forward.
Mr. Silverman: I have known for a long time that the right hon. Gentleman's geographical position was different from mine so that what seems to him to be going forward seems to me to be going back and what seems to him to be going back seems to me to be going forward. That is why we sit on opposite sides of the House and there is no need to grumble about that. But it does remain a fact that we were for a long time committed to the non-contributory scheme.
People say, "Oh, if you have a noncontributory scheme, you will have to have a social security tax and that would be variable and if you have a variable contribution would you not have to have variable benefit?" But why not? Why hon. Members, who seemed to be in favour of inequality right through their life from birth to the grave, should think there was something sancrosanct about the flat rate principle when people are sick, or unemployed, or ill, I cannot understand.

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7.0 p.m.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen said that, after all, they may want to have two pensions, and he seemed to be very surprised at the notion. He told us—and I was sorry to hear it, but as he told us I accept it from him—that in his own profession they had agreed to a superannuation scheme, an occupational pension, budgeted and paid for according to a set insurance principle; and that they had agreed to take into account the State pension and to reduce the amount accordingly. If my hon. Friend says so, I must accept it, but I am sorry that they did so and I must point out that no one else in the country has done it. Town clerks do not do it—
Mr. Morley: We had to do it.
Mr. Silverman: If my hon. Friend says "We had to do it" I have no quarrel with him. But I would point out that no other superannuation scheme in the country accepts such a condition. Every other superannuation scheme, or at any rate most of them, do not even include a retirement condition. When the proper age comes and the contributions have been paid, and the pension has by contract become due, a man draws his pension. If he wishes to earn any amount of money in any other occupation, he can do so without his contractual rights and his superannuation scheme being affected at all. If that be good for town clerks and civil servants, I cannot see why it is not good for anyone else.
Mr. Douglas Houghton: May I point out that a civil servant must retire before he can draw his pension?
Mr. Silverman: No doubt. But when he retires from the Civil Service and draws his pension he can, and often does, obtain employment elsewhere at a salary that is not inferior to his retiring salary as a civil servant, and he still continues to draw his Civil Service pension. And why not? It is money he has paid for and earned, and if he goes on contributing to the national wealth he is entitled to his wages for so doing.
However, these are all matters extraneous to the one which we are discussing. One deals with them only because virtually every other speaker in the Second Reading debate—in which I
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did not take part—and in Committee, has dealt with it as if it were, on the one side, a defence of this extra 11d., and, on the other side. an attack upon it—when it is completely irrelevant.
All old-age pensions are paid out of current production. There is nothing else from which they could be paid. For that reason alone the insurance argument is quite irrelevant to the discussion. If, under this Bill, old-age pensioners are to eat a little more, it can only be if other people eat a little less, and the question is, who shall make the sacrifice? That is the only question.
The Minister of Health (Mr. Iain Macleod): Certainly not; there may be more to eat.
Mr. Silverman: The right hon. Gentleman is quite right, but I think he will agree that between now and the date upon which the Royal Assent is given to this Bill there is little to be added to the food stocks or food production of this country.
Mr. Jay: And it would happen irrespective of this Bill.
Mr. Silverman: If there is to be an improvement, it would happen irrespective of this Bill.
For the purposes of the present argument, I submit that it is fair to say that if the old-age pensioners are to consume more under the terms of this Bill, it must be only because other people consume less, and that the question we are asked to decide is, who shall make the necessary sacrifice? That is all.
Why should any sacrifice be made? What are the Government attempting to do by the increase of benefit for which they require this extra 11d. for food—or so they claim, but not correctly? They made their position perfectly clear. They said, "We are not proposing to do anything more in the Bill than raise the old-age pension to such a figure as will enable old-age pensioners to consume as much as they could have consumed in the then conditions with the 1946 pension." That is the object of the Government, and they do not claim to do anything more.
How have the facts changed since 1946 to the detriment of the old-age pensioner? They have changed to his detriment because the cost of living has risen. But there are a great many items that go to

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the constitution of the index figure which have little or no relation to the consumption of old-age pensioners. Those old-age pensioners with little or no other means spend the larger part of their pension on food. They may pay rent and buy some clothes, and have an occasional luxury, if they can afford it, but the great bulk of the money goes on food.
The price of food has risen against the old-age pensioner by 20 per cent. in three years. Why? Not because the world price of food has risen; that has gone down. The reason his food is costing the pensioner more is, in the main, because that portion of the price of his food which was paid by the State in 1946 is no longer so paid.
The Chairman: The hon. Gentleman is going beyond the Amendment before the Committee.
Mr. Silverman: I hope I may be allowed to continue, Sir Charles, and then the object of my comparison will become clear. I am saying that the need to be covered by this increased contribution arises because of the rise in the cost of food. That rise has, not entirely, but very largely and almost entirely, been caused by the withdrawal of the food subsidies. In the same year that the Government saved money on the food subsidies they made Income Tax concessions. I refer to this in order to deal with the inequity of the claim that this increased cost should be born by the insurable population at large and not by the taxpayer. I am saying that the taxpayer has benefited, qua taxpayer, out of the higher cost which has made the increase in pensions necessary. That is my point, and I hope that its relevance is clear, whether or not its accuracy is accepted.
The food subsidies were withdrawn. That sent up food prices—obviously so. But money saved by the withdrawal of the food subsidies was distributed in Income Tax reliefs which went to the Surtax payer at the full standard rate and to the Income Tax payer at a lower than standard rate, but which did not benefit those large classes of people who do not, in fact, pay Income Tax at all.
Mr. J. N. Browne: What about family allowances?
Mr. Silverman: I doubt very much whether a discussion upon family allowances would be accepted by the Chair as
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being relevant to the present argument, but if it were I should be glad to deal with the point. If the hon. Member thinks the matter out he will see that, whatever the point he wants to make about family allowances, it has no effect upon the point which I am now advancing. There may be something to be said about it, but it has no direct bearing upon my present argument. Family allowances, obviously, have nothing to do with Income Tax. It may well be that some part of the money saved by the reduction in food subsidies went in family allowances, but it must have been a very small part of the money so saved. The bulk went in Income Tax reliefs, as the hon. Member knows perfectly well.
All I am saying is that if it is the taxpayer qua taxpayer who has benefited by the saving of money which has caused the cost of food to rise against the pensioner, it is equitable that, if we decide to restore to the pensioner—and not to the rest of the population—what he lost by the removal of the food subsidies, it is also equitable that those who received the benefit of that removal should bear the burden of this Scheme. That is the simple point which I am making, and if there is an answer to it, it will no doubt be forthcoming later in the debate.
If it is said, "Ah, but everybody pays. It is not only the worker who pays the 11d. but also the employer," my reply is that that is true in the letter but completely untrue in the spirit. Most of the people who work do not pay Income Tax; most employers do. I think it will be found that those statements are correct. Therefore, since the increased contribution, like the rest of the contribution, is an allowable deduction for Income Tax purposes, the increased contribution paid by the employer will, in any case, largely be paid by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, because it will be deducted from the employer's profits, and he will not pay Income Tax upon the whole of it. The lower his income, the greater the proportion he will pay. The higher his income, and the higher his rate of Income Tax or Surtax, the more the Chancellor of the Exchequer will pay for him.
This way of financing these increased benefits provides the clearest possible instance of the principle of hon. Members opposite that
"whosoever hath, to him shall be given … but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath."

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It is wrong in itself. There is no actuarial justification for it and there is no justification in equity. It is merely another instance—as was the resistance to the last Amendment—of the fact that hon. Members opposite fight a stubborn, hard, rearguard action, every inch of the way, against every social betterment that they are compelled by public opinion to grant. What they give with the one hand they take back with the other, and they would take it back twice if they could.
Mr. Iain Macleod: We have had a very good debate upon what is perhaps the most important subject to come before us in the two days that we have allotted to this debate. I want to reply to as many points as I can, even if it makes my speech a little disjointed. The debate was opened by the right hon. Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay), who gave a rather colourful version of some of the things that I said in the Second Reading debate. He posed two questions which are fair, and which, indeed, are the main ones we have to face.
There is another matter for debate lying behind and fringing upon this one. That matter, which has been avoided by most people, concerns the question of the one-fifth and the one-seventh which, I understand, the Opposition wish to keep till later. The right hon. Member's two questions were, first, is it reasonable to pay this amount and, secondly, what is the justification for going beyond the actuarial figures necessary for these benefits?
7.15 p.m.
First, it is very relevant to look at what the relationship will be—assuming that the Bill becomes an Act—between contributions and average earnings in 1954 and in 1946. I appreciate the right hon. Gentleman's point but it must be of the first importance to see just where we stand. The figures which I have obtained show that in 1946 the contribution was 3·9 per cent. of average earnings, and, if the Bill becomes an Act, it will be 3·2 per cent. That seems to be a very significant point, which is a little difficult to argue against, and it takes a little gilt off the allegation that these contributions are monstrously unfair whereas, by implication, they were reasonably fair in 1946.
A point was also made with regard to those people with the lowest earnings.
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Statistics are also available for that group. In 1946, 4·9 per cent. of the earnings of the lowest-paid workers went in contributions, and if the Bill becomes an Act, without amendment in this respect, the percentage will be 4·2. Therefore, it is very clear that in the case of all workers, including the lowest-paid workers, the percentage of contribution to earnings is very much more favourable under the Bill than it was in 1946.
Mr. H. Hynd: What does the Minister call the lowest earnings.
Dr. King: The right hon. Gentleman's argument has been perfectly logical, but in the event of a rise in the average wage the greatest injustice of the new charges would fall upon those whose wages do not increase by the average amount or, in some cases, whose incomes do not increase at all.
Mr. Macleod: We are all familiar with the difficulties that arise when we talk in averages, but we know perfectly well that when we are arguing national matters we have to do so. There were averages in 1946, and the same problems and anomalies arose then. I am making a direct comparison, which I think is of value.
Mr. Jay: Is the right hon. Gentleman not going to deal with my point, that since our production has risen by 50 per cent. or more since 1946, when the immediate post-war difficulties were prevailing, one would have expected the lower-paid workers to have received some of the benefits, and would not, therefore, have expected the proportion to have remained so high.
Mr. Macleod: There is a substantial benefit to the lower-paid workers. The increase in production is also reflected in the substantial increase in average earnings. I concede straight away that no scientific judgment is involved in deciding upon the 6d. It is a fair point, and I want to answer it absolutely honestly. There is no scientific basis for the 6d., just as there was not for the 4d. in 1946. In both cases—and in this matter sauce must be for the goose and the gander alike—it was thought right to have an amount against the emerging weight of these claims.
It has been argued by many people—and especially by the hon. Member for

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Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan)—that our dictionary is out of date, and that we should not use the word "insurance" any longer in relation to this subject. With great respect, I think that, literally, is perfectly correct. But I think it shows something of a confusion between State insurance and personal insurance, which is a very different thing indeed. The main difference between the two is that the State compels everyone to insure, whether the individual is a "good" life or a "bad" life.
The classic example is in the field of industrial insurance, in which many millions of people in this country are paying contributions for industrial insurance, and keeping the contributions low, when it would be almost inconceivable that they could have such an industrial injury unless they impaled themselves on their fountain pens or something like that. That sort of principle runs all through State insurance, and I do not accept the view that, because there are obvious contradictions in the terms used in State insurance and personal insurance, we are necessarily wrong to go on using these words.
Surely, the main point is this. There is nothing whatever new in the idea of a margin for the emerging weight of the cost of industrial injuries and the emerging cost of retirement pensions in these schemes. There was nothing new in the 1911 Act; there was nothing new in the 1925 Act; there was nothing new in 1946 or in 1951; and there is nothing new now. So we cannot accept that, as the right hon. Gentleman says, this is a new question of principle, because that is the one thing that it cannot be. If we like, we can argue that this is unfair weighting, but we cannot argue that this is a new principle when, for more than 40 years, as far as I know, without exception, every Minister has, in greater or lesser degree, adopted that principle.
When the right hon. Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths), in 1946, made some provision for a margin to be introduced, there was no supplement to that. There was the supplement of the one-fifth in his scheme, but there was no supplement to the supplement, and in this particular case there is a contribution—and this is a very fair point,
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although it only amounts to 2½d.—from the Exchequer towards the emerging cost of this scheme.
I want to make another point which is linked to what I said on Second Reading, which gave rise to a pleasantry or two about the conception of the actuarial year of age 23. I think it is of great importance and has a bearing on this matter, for this reason. If we know that it costs one-third more at 25, twice as much at 35, three times as much at 45 and seven times as much at 55, it is of great importance to realise that everybody at 23 is in fact paying less, even with an Exchequer supplement of one-fifth, than the actuarial benefits he is to receive.
I think that my hon. Friends the Members for Aylesbury (Mr. Summers) and Barry (Mr. Gower) were quite right in what they said about the cost of this Scheme. We are dealing with enormous sums, but, as I said on Second Reading, and I repeat it now, the future does not frighten me, though we must be very careful about the burdens which we are to lay upon the Exchequer and on the people of this country, and must look very carefully at the cost of this Scheme. It is not just a question of £75 million, about which the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) was speaking, or even of £75 million a year.
The extra supplement which the Opposition are proposing would cost £184 million, and, in addition, they would put up the deficiency on the Scheme from £326 million to £588 million, or an increase of £262 million, and a net burden for the next five years of £446 million. We have a responsibility to the people of this country, when we make such a proposal, to say what we will do about it, and how we propose to carry it out. In regard to armaments, we heard a one-word answer, but I doubt if that is the whole answer.
There is one other matter which I think we ought to discuss, and I am really thinking aloud to a certain extent here. As I listened to some of the speeches, I was not sure that we were right in assuming automatically that employed persons would be so well off if we tried to raise this money entirely from taxation.
It is perfectly true on the face of it that taxation falls more heavily on the rich than on the poor, but there are a

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great many more people employed than there are employers, and if, in the light of this Bill, even taking into account the point about Income Tax relief which has just been made, we imagine a case in which a man has 19 employees, those 20 people would have to find roughly the same amount of money as is found from them at the moment in contributions.
I should have to hear some more convincing arguments to satisfy me that the employer will not be better off if we laid the whole of the sum for his 19 employees on the Budget. We should have to have a pretty steep method of taxation before we could make it effective in that field, if we put the whole sum on to direct taxation, and, if it was on indirect taxation, it would obviously be paid by everyone in the same way.
Mr. Mitchison: Would not the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that no doubt the employer pays it in the first instance, but that a great deal of it is passed on in at least three ways? First, by way of Income Tax, which the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned; second, because it comes out of profits which the employer would otherwise have; and, third, in many other cases, by being put on the price of goods and thereby becoming a form of indirect taxation?
Mr. Macleod: I admit all these things. I merely say that this is a very big proposal which we all ought to look at, but I am not absolutely certain by any means that it would have the result which hon. Members opposite seem to think.
Before I come to the speech of the hon. Member for Fulham, East (Mr. M. Stewart)—and I quite agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) that it brought us up very sharply against the real issue here—I should like to say a word or two in response to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Miss Ward). On Second Reading, the Minister announced, as appears in column 963 of the OFFICIAL REPORT of 8th December, 1954, that he had referred the question of contribution arrangements for people of low income to the National Insurance Advisory Committee, and my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth called out "Hear, hear," which is recorded in HANSARD. She asked me to enlarge a little on that question.
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I am very sorry that I cannot do so, for the obvious reason that I have no idea, nor has the Minister, what this Committee will recommend, but the matter is before it and it still has to report upon it. Although I have made inquiries, I am afraid that I cannot give a date when we may expect that report, although I am certain that there will be no undue delay.
The speech of the hon. Member for Fulham, East really brought us up against the big issue here, which, after all, is whether we are being unfair. We can argue this in all the ways we like, but I have shown, I hope with at least some conviction, that it is difficult to sustain the argument in regard to wages and say that in any way we are being unfair. I have tried to show that in this case it is impossible to sustain the argument that there is here a new principle, or that there is something particularly satanic in having a margin to meet emerging costs. There is not.
7.30 p.m.
The hon. Member for Fulham, East asked what proportion should be borne by the Exchequer and what proportion by the contributor. He was brilliantly answered on this point by my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West in a speech which, if they did not hear it, I think hon. Members would like to read, because it seemed to me to meet the point at once.
There is also another way of looking at the matter. If we take into account both the rates of benefits and the rates of contributions—and quite clearly we must do that—then the percentage of value of benefit not covered either by contributions from the employee or from the employer, represented 49 in 1946 and will amount to 47 after the Bill becomes an Act. I agree that there is a difference, but it is a fairly marginal difference.
I believe that these amounts are reasonable in relation to wages and earnings, and overwhelmingly reasonable in relation to the benefits that will accrue. On the question of whether we are right to take something more than the age 16 contribution, I have no doubt at all. I am sure that we are right, just I am sure that the right hon. Member for Llanelly was right in 1946, and as all the Ministers who preceded him were

1467
right. I think it wholly right that some small measure of the burden should be borne by those who come in at the beginning of the Scheme, remembering that we can only object to it if we contemplate that benefits are not going to change for 49 years. I do not think that the Opposition have made out a ease, other than a political case, on these points, and I ask the Committee to reject the Amendment.
Mr. Jay: Is the right hon. Gentleman not going to reply to my question why, if the Government waited for the Actuary's Report in order to decide, the contribution now proposed is not based on anything in the Actuary's Report at all?
Mr. Macleod: It certainly is. The point that I was arguing was the point at which one goes beyond that. The right hon. Gentleman is quite right. We have gone beyond the contribution proposed by the Actuary to the extent of 6d. I have said quite frankly that there is no scientific basis for it, but that it is a matter of judgment, and that it was so in 1947.
Mr. J. Griffiths: The debate today illustrates the fact that the Government have compelled both the House of Commons and the nation to do two things at the same time which we ought not to be asked to do. Here is an interim Measure, and we are treating it as such. In order to get the Bill on to the Statute Book and enable the Government to keep to their timetable for the payment of benefits, we have agreed to let the Committee stage, the Report stage and Third Reading go through in two days.
We have done something quite out of the ordinary on a Measure of this kind. It will limit us severely on the ground that this is an interim Measure and that we ought to have further opportunities of considering the quinquennial review, the Phillips Report, and the other reports that will come along, before making up our minds about the future of the scheme.
The purpose of this Amendment and of others which we shall be moving later, particularly the one which has relevance to the Exchequer contribution, is that we should not disturb the financial structure laid down in 1946 until we have had a full opportunity of considering these problems. There is a large number of
1468
questions to be considered. There is the fundamental question which, as I indicated on Second Reading, I had been thinking about in 1946. It is that we ought to consider, first, whether there should be a major change in the structure of the Scheme.
Accepting that, in the end, we are going to have a contributory scheme, we ought to consider whether a flat rate contribution is the best. It is quite true that from the figures quoted by the Minister of Health, taking average earnings, the proportion of the new contribution to average earnings is slightly less than it was in 1946. It has gone down from 3·9 to 3·2 and for the lowest earnings group from 4·9 to 4·2. The Minister of Health will note, as I noted in 1946, that on a flat rate contribution the proportion of the contribution to the earnings of the lower paid man is higher than the proportion to the earnings of the higher paid man. That was so in 1946, and it is now.
There have been some very considerable changes in the wage structure and in the incidences of Income Tax to wages since 1946. As a matter of fact, in prewar days it was only a very small proportion of wage earners who paid Income Tax at all. Since the end of the war, the proportion has become very much bigger. Therefore, I put it to the Minister—and I am sure that he will be seized of the point—that these changes do not represent a full and fair picture, because the percentage taken is that of the flat rate contributions to gross earnings. As a matter of fact, a very large percentage of the higher income group will be able to offset their contributions against Income Tax, whereas the people in the lower income group will not. Therefore, the net burden carried by the lower-paid workers is now higher, at least in my view, than it was in 1946.
The T.U.C. said quite frankly in its evidence that the contributions could he raised because at the moment they represented actually a lower proportion than did the old contributions. At the same time, it said that to speak of average wages conceals wide variations. For that reason, we thought that we ought to leave the structure where it was in 1946 until we had had an opportunity of considering these problems.
One of my complaints is that all these problems should have been carefully examined by the Minister and reported

1469
upon to the House under the provisions of section 40 of the 1946 Act so that the House might come to a final conclusion about them. We ought to treat this Bill as an interim Measure and not prejudge any of these matters.
The Minister of Health admits that the proportion of the emerging costs placed on the contributor under the Bill is more than it was in 1946. Is that permanent? Is it proposed that this increased weighting—I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that there is no change in principle—as regards the emerging costs is to be placed permanently on the contributor? Supposing that in two, three or five years' time, we have to make other increases in benefits. When we make them, we shall have to handle this same problem. Is this Committee now being asked to commit itself permanently to this weighting? Perhaps the Minister will answer that question now?
Mr. Peake: Nothing that Parliament does is permanent, and particularly is that so in this Scheme, where there has in any case to be a review every five years.
Mr. Griffiths: I know that there has to be a review; but let me put the matter in a different way.
Is the Minister assuming that this weighting is to remain as it is for five years, even though during those five years there will have to be a further increase in contributions? We ought not to be asked to accept any new principle or new weighting, but in this interim Measure we are being asked to accept a new weighting which will prejudice the whole consideration of these problems in the future.
Because we think there should be no weighting of that kind, we have been discussing this Amendment, which is related to another Amendment. We say, "Keep the 1946 proportion, and put the Exchequer contribution back where it was." If that is done, the amount of contribution increase required will be only 1d. or a fraction of 1d. In those circumstances, there is no case for increasing contributions now, as we are treating this as an interim Measure.
Now I come to the important point which was put by my hon. Friend the Member for Fulham, East (Mr. M. Stewart), about the future of the Scheme. Are we to accept the present distribution of the burden among the State, the employers and the workers? That question
1470
ought to be examined, and I see no reason why we should not examine also the distribution of the burden between employer and worker. Beyond that, are we to continue the flat rate? If so, what is to be its effect? My own view now, as it was in 1946, is that the time has come when we ought to re-examine the position and consider some method of financing other than the flat-rate contribution.
Another change has been made, and I want to ask questions about it because it has come out rather inadvertently. I understand that the Government has made a change affecting only one class of insured person, in the way in which the burden is distributed between the contributor and the Exchequer. In this case, as I understand the matter, the Exchequer is to pay a bigger proportion of the contribution in regard to the self-employed person. This is a new principle. I asked the Parliamentary Secretary to tell me the cost to the State each year of increasing the State's proportion of the total contribution of the self-employed person. By increasing the Exchequer contribution we are reducing the size of the increase to be paid by the self-employed under the Bill. The Minister told me that the figure was £3½ million.
Nothing much has been said about this point. Is this a Government decision? Has it been recommended to them by any committee? In this class of self-employed person is a very wide variation, from the barrow boy to some of the very richest people in the country, who are self-employed. One question I had to decide when I was Minister of National Insurance was in which class to put Members of Parliament. They could not be in Class I, as employed contributors, because they had no contract of employment with the State. They were put into the second class of self-employed, which contains a wide variety of people, and a larger proportion of the amount required for the new benefits for them will be paid by the State. The Exchequer has been generous enough to provide extra money to reduce the size of the increase not only payable by the barrow boy but by Members of Parliament and others.
7.45 p.m.
Two new principles are, therefore, being introduced, one in regard to the new weighting, which I think is unfair, and the principle which I have just mentioned.

1471
Does that not show that the right thing to do is that which is suggested in the Amendment, to preserve the financial structure of the 1946 Act and the way in which the burdens are distributed, until Parliament has had an opportunity of considering the whole problem of financing and distributing of the burden among the State, the workers and the employers?
We should consider the part that would be played by a contribution made from general taxation by a graduated system of taxation, and the part played by this flat-rate contribution in which the lower-paid worker bears a bigger proportion of burden than anybody else. We should retain the 1946 Act substantially as it is, and the new benefits might be met by an increase in the Exchequer rate. In that way we should not prejudice future consideration of the way to finance the Scheme, a matter which deserves fuller consideration than it has had. For all these reasons we shall, when the time comes, divide on the Amendment.
Mr. Keenan: I shall not speak for long, but I have spent three hours trying to get a word in, and have listened to quite a lot of matters. A great deal of confusion has been introduced into the debate by discussing the basis upon which the Insurance Acts rest, the contributions from workers, employers, and the State. Is that the right and proper way? It does not seem to me that we can talk about scrapping the contributory system, unless there is a safeguard. That safeguard should be that there is no means test attaching to any pension, even if the State foots the bill for the lot.
I think that the hon. Member for Tyne-mouth (Miss Ward) asked how long the Bill was likely to remain in operation, with all its faults, failings, and weaknesses. The Minister of National Insurance is responsible for this Measure, and I suggest that there will be no further Measure for the next two or three years. The apprehensions of the hon. Member for Tynemouth will certainly not be dealt with by a Government for a considerable period.
I am worried about the way in which the contributions are raised. Nearly half
1472
the 23 million workers do not pay Income Tax. About 7 million or 8 million were not assisted when a reduction was made in Income Tax some two years ago, because they did not pay Income Tax. As a consequence of that, nearly half the workers will pay the full contribution of 6s. 9d. although hon. Members here, and other people, will get a rebate when their insurance contributions are taken into consideration for Income Tax purposes. In most cases it means that those paying Income Tax will pay one-third, or two-thirds, or whatever it may be, less than is paid by the man who does not pay Income Tax at all. Something must be done about that.
It is suggested that the Exchequer pays about £70 million; that, except for the one-seventh Exchequer contribution, the contributions of employee and the employer should meet the cost of the increases. Is it not true that there is already an accumulated surplus of about £1,300 million in the National Insurance Fund? That being so, I cannot understand why not only this but the previous Government were, and are, concerned about building up the Fund? For what purpose is it being built up? Even while we talked about the ability or inability to pay, there was a surplus in the Fund of over £1,000 million. During the last few years we could, had we wished, have increased pensions by the use of that surplus.
To insist, as the Bill does, on 1s. extra from each contributor will relieve the Exchequer more than is neecssary. The Minister of Pensions and National Insurance and the Minister of Health say that the £350 million paid over five years is quite generous. It is not generous at all. At 6s. 9d. a week, the amount of the contribution is rising to a fantastic level. I am satisfied that the majority of workers, both men and women, will be concerned about it, and will resist—and justifiably—this increased payment. There is no need for the increase. Taxation is the fairer way of meeting the increased pensions.
Question put, That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause:—
The Committee divided: Ayes 274, Noes 255.

Division No. 5.]

AYES

[7.54 p.m.

Aitken, W. T.

Galbraith, T. G. D. (Hillhead)

Maitland, Comdr. J. F. W. (Horncastle)

Allan, R. A. (Paddington, S.)

Gammans, L. D.

Maitland, Patrick (Lanark)

Alport, C. J. M.

Garner-Evans, E. H.

Manningham-Buller, Rt. Hn. Sir Reginald

Amery, Julian (Preston, N.)

Glover, D.

Markham, Major Sir Frank

Amory, Rt. Hon. Heathcoat (Tiverton)

Godber, J. B.

Marlowe, A. A. H.

Arbuthnot, John

Gomme-Duncan, Col. A.

Marples, A. E.

Armstrong, C. W.

Gough, C. F. H.

Marshall, Douglas (Bodmin)

Ashton, H. (Chelmsford)

Gower, H. R.

Maude, Angus

Assheton, Rt. Hon. R. (Blackburn, W.)

Graham, Sir Fergus

Maudling, R.

Astor, Hon. J. J.

Gridley, Sir Arnold

Maydon, Lt.-Comdr. S. L. C.

Baldock, Lt.-Cmdr. J. M.

Grimond, J.

Medlicott, Brig. F.

Banks, Col. C.

Grimston, Hon. John (St. Albans)

Mellor, Sir John

Barber, Anthony

Grimston, Sir Robert (Westbury)

Molson, A. H. E.

Barlow, Sir John

Hall, John (Wycombe)

Monckton, Rt. Hon. Sir Waller

Baxter, Sir Beverley

Harris, Reader (Heston)

Moore, Sir Thomas

Beach, Maj. Hicks

Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)

Morrison, John (Salisbury)

Bell, Philip (Bolton, E.)

Harvey, Air Cdre A. V. (Macclesfield)

Nabarro, G. D. N.

Bell, Ronald (Bucks, S.)

Harvey, Ian (Harrow, E.)

Neave, Airey

Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)

Harvie-Watt, Sir George

Nicholls, Harmar

Bennett, William (Woodside)

Hay, John

Nicolson, Nigel (Bournemouth, E.)

Bevins, J. R. (Toxteth)

Head, Rt. Hon. A. H.

Nield, Basil (Chester)

Birch, Nigel

Heald, Rt. Hon. Sir Lionel

Noble, Comdr. A. H. P.

Bishop, F. P.

Heath, Edward

Odey, G. W.

Black, C. W.

Henderson, John (Cathcart)

O'Neill, Hon. Phelim (Co. Antrim, N.)

Bossom, Sir A. C.

Higgs, J. M. C.

Ormsby-Gore, Hon. W. D.

Bowen, E. R.

Hill, Dr. Charles (Luton)

Orr, Capt. L. P. S.

Boyle, Sir Edward

Hill, Mrs. E. (Wythenshawe)

Orr-Ewing, Charles Ian (Hendon, N.)

Braine, B. R.

Hinchingbrooke, Viscount

Osborne, C.

Braithwaite, Sir Albert (Harrow, W.)

Hirst, Geoffrey

Page, R. G.

Braithwaite, Sir Gurney

Holland-Martin, C. J.

Partridge, E.

Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. W. H.

Hollis, M. C.

Peake, Rt. Hon. O.

Brooke, Henry (Hampstead)

Holt, A. F.

Perkins, Sir Robert

Brooman-White, R. C.

Hope, Lord John

Pete, Brig. C. H. M.

Browne, Jack (Govan)

Hopkinson, Rt. Hon. Henry

Peyton J. W. W.

Buchan-Hepburn, Rt. Hon. P. G. T.

Howard, Gerald (Cambridgeshire)

Pilkington, Capt. R. A.

Bullard, D. G.

Howard, Hon. Greville (St. Ives)

Pitman, I. J.

Bullus, Wing Commander E. E.

Hudson, Sir Austin (Lewisham, N.)

Pitt, Miss E. M.

Burden, F. F. A.

Hudson, W. R. A. (Hull, N.)

Butcher, Sir Herbert

Hughes Hallett, Vice-Admiral J.

Powell, J. Enoch

Campbell, Sir David

Hulbert, Wing Cmdr. N. J.

Price, Henry (Lewisnam, W.)

Carr, Robert

Hurd, A. R.

Prior-Palmer, Brig. O. L.

Cary, Sir Robert

Hutchison, Sir Ian Clark (E'b'rgh, W.)

Profumo, J. D.

Channon, H.

Hutchison, James (Scotstoun)

Raikes, Sir Victor

Clarke, Col. Ralph (East Grinstead)

Hyde, Lt.-Col. H. M.

Ramsden, J. E.

Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmouth, W.)

Hylton-Foster, Sir H. B. H.

Rayner, Brig. R.

Clyde, Rt. Hon. J. L.

Iremonger, T. L.

Remnant, Hon. P.

Cole, Norman

Jennings, Sir Roland

Renton, D. L. M.

Colegate, W. A.

Johnson, Eric (Blackley)

Ridsdale, J. E.

Conant, Maj. Sir Roger

Johnson, Howard (Kemptown)

Roberts, Peter (Heeley)

Cooper, Son. Ldr. Albert

Jones, A. (Hall Green)

Robertson, Sir David

Craddock, Beresford (Spelthorne)

Joynson-Hicks, Hon. L. W.

Robson-Brown, W.

Crookshank, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. F. C.

Kaberry, D.

Rodgers, John (Sevenoaks)

Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.

Kerby, Capt. H. B.

Roper, Sir Harold

Crouch, R. F.

Kerr, H. W.

Ropner, Col. Sir Leonard

Crowder, Sir John (Finchley)

Lambert, Hon. G.

Russell, R. S.

Crowder, Petre (Ruislip—Northwood)

Lambton, Viscount

Ryder, Capt. R. E. D.

Darling, Sir William (Edinburgh, S.)

Lancaster, Col. C. G.

Sandys, Rt. Hon. D.

Davidson, Viscountess

Langford-Holt, J. A.

Savory, Prof. Sir Douglas

Deedes, W. F.

Leather, E. H. C.

Schofield, Lt.-Col. W.

Digby, S. Wingfield

Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H.

Scott, R. Donald

Donaldson, Cmdr. C. E. MoA.

Legh, Hon. Peter (Petersfield)

Scott-Miller, Cmdr. R.

Donner, Sir P. W.

Lennox-Boyd, Rt. Hon. A. T.

Sharples, Maj. R. C.

Doughty, C. J. A.

Llewellyn, D. T.

Shepherd, William

Drayson, G. B.

Lloyd-George, Maj. Rt. Hon. G.

Simon, J. E. S. (Middlesbrough, W.)

Drewe, Sir C.

Lloyd, Rt. Hon. Selwyn (Wirral)

Smithers, Peter (Winchester)

Dugdale, Rt. Hon. Sir T. (Richmond)

Lockwood, Lt.-Col. J. C.

Smyth, Brig. J. G. (Norwood)

Duncan, Capt. J. A. L.

Longden, Gilbert

Snadden, W. McN.

Duthie, W. S.

Low, Rt. Hon. A. R. W.

Soames, Capt. C.

Eden, J. B. (Bournemouth, West)

Lucas, Sir Jocelyn (Portsmouth, S.)

Spearman, A. C. M.

Elliot, Rt. Hon. W. E.

Lucas, P. B. (Brentford)

Spens, Rt. Hon. Sir P. (Kensington, S.)

Errington, Sir Eric

Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh

Stanley, Capt. Hon. Richard

Erroll, F. J.

McAdden, S. J.

Stevens, Geoffrey

Fell, A.

McCorquodale, Rt. Hon. M. S.

Steward, W. A. (Woolwich, W.)

Finlay, Graeme

Mackeson, Brig. Sir Harry

Stewart, Henderson (Fife, E.)

Fisher, Nigel

McKibbin, A. J.

Stoddart-Scott, Col. M.

Fletcher-Cooke, C.

Mackle, J. H. (Galloway)

Storey, S.

Ford, Mrs. Patricia

Maclay, Rt. Hon. John

Strauss, Henry (Norwich, S.)

Fort, R.

Maclean, Fitzroy

Summers, G. S.

Foster, John

Macleod, Rt. Hon. lain (Enfield, W.)

Sutcliffe, Sir Harold

Fraser, Hon. Hugh (Stone)

MacLeod, John (Ross and Cromarty)

Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)

Galbraith, Rt. Hon. T. D. (Pollok)

Macmillan, Rt. Hon. Harold (Bromley)

Taylor, William (Bradford, N.)

1474

1475

Teeling, W.

Tweedsmuir, Lady

Wellwood, W.

Thomas, Rt. Hon. J. P. L. (Hereford)

Vane, W. M. F.

Williams, Rt. Hon. Charles (Torquay)

Thomas, Leslie (Canterbury)

Vaughan-Morgan, J. K.

Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)

Thomas, P. J. M. (Conway)

Vosper, D. F.

Williams, R. Dudley (Exeter)

Thompson, Kenneth (Walton)

Wade, D. W.

Wills, G.

Thompson, Lt.-Cdr. R. (Croydon, W.)

Wakefield, Edward (Derbyshire, W.)

Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)

Thorneycroft, Rt. Hn. Peter (Monmouth)

Wakefield, Sir Wavell (St. Marylebone)

Wood, Hon. R.

Thornton-Kemsley, Col. C. N.

Wall, Major Patrick

Woollam, John Victor

Tilney, John

Ward, Miss I. (Tynemouth)

Touche, Sir Gordon

Waterhouse, Capt. Rt. Hon. C.

TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

Turner, H. F. L.

Watkinson, H. A.

Mr. Oakshott and Mr. Redmayn.

Turton, R. H.

Webbe, Sir H. (London & Westminster)

NOES

Acland, Sir Richard

Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)

Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.)

Adams, Richard

Freeman, John (Watford)

Mann, Mrs. Jean

Albu, A. H.

Freeman, Peter (Newport)

Manuel, A. C.

Allen, Arthur (Bosworth)

Gaitskell, Rt. Hon. H. T. N.

Marquand, Rt. Hon. H. A.

Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)

Gibson, C. W.

Mason, Roy

Anderson, Frank (Whitehaven)

Gooch, E. G.

Mayhew, C. P.

Awbery, S. S.

Gordon Walker, Rt. Hon. P. C.

Mellish, R. J.

Bacon, Miss Alice

Greenwood, Anthony

Mikardo, Ian

Barnes, Rt. Hon. A. J.

Grenfell, Rt. Hon. D. R.

Mitchison, G. R.

Bartley, P.

Grey, C. F.

Monslow, W.

Bellenger, Rt. Hon. F. J.

Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)

Moody, A. S.

Bence, C. R.

Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)

Morgan, Dr. H. B. W.

Benn, Hon. Wedgwood

Griffiths, William (Exchange)

Morley, R.

Benson, G.

Hall, Rt. Hon. Glenvil (Colne Valley)

Morris, Percy (Swansea, W.)

Beswick, F.

Hall, John T. (Gateshead, W.)

Mort, D. L.

Bevan, Rt. Hon. A. (Ebbw Vale)

Hamilton, W. W.

Moyle, A.

Bing, G. H. C.

Hannan, W.

Mully, F. W.

Blenkinsop, A.

Hardy, E. A.

Murray, J. D.

Blyton, W. R.

Hargreaves, A.

Nally, W.

Boardman, H.

Harrison, J. (Nottingham, E.)

Neal, Harold (Bolsover)

Bottomley, Rt. Hon. A. G.

Hastings, S.

Noel-Baker, Rt. Hon. P. J.

Bowden, H. W.

Hayman, F. H.

O'Brien, T.

Braddock, Mrs. Elizabeth

Herbison, Miss M.

Oldfield, W. H.

Brockway, A. F.

Hewitson, Capt. M.

Brook, Dryden (Halifax)

Hobson, C. R.

Oliver, G. H.

Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.

Holman, P.

Orbach, M.

Brown, Rt. Hon. George (Belper)

Houghton, Douglas

Oswald, T.

Brown, Thomas (Ince)

Hoy, J. H.

Owen, W. J.

Burke, W. A.

Hubbard, T. F.

Padley, W. E.

Burton, Miss F. E.

Hudson, James (Ealing, N.)

Paget, R. T.

Butler, Herbert (Hackney S.)

Hughes, Cledwyn (Anglesey)

Paling, Rt. Hon. W. (Dearne Valley)

Callaghan, L. J.

Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)

Paling, Will T. (Dewsbury)

Carmichael, J.

Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)

Palmer, A. M. F.

Castle, Mrs. B. A.

Hynd, H. (Accrington)

Pannell, Charles

Champion, A. J.

Hynd, J. B. (Attercliffe)

Pargiter, G. A.

Chapman, W. D.

Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)

Parker, J.

Chetwynd, G. R.

Irving, W. J. (Wood Green)

Parkin, B. T.

Clunle, J.

Isaacs, Rt. Hon. G. A.

Paton, J.

Coldrick, W.

Jay, Rt. Hon. D. P. T.

Pearson, A.

Collick, P. H.

Jeger, George (Goole)

Peart, T. F.

Collins, V. J.

Jeger, Mrs. Lena

Plummer, Sir Leslie

Corbet, Mrs. Freda

Jenkins, R. H. (Stechford)

Popplewell, E.

Cove, W. G.

Johnson, James (Rugby)

Price, Philips (Gloucestershire, W.)

Craddock, George (Bradford. S.)

Jones, Rt. Hon. A. Creech

Probert, A. R.

Cullen, Mrs. A.

Jones, David (Hartlepool)

Proctor, W. T.

Dalnes, P.

Jones, Fredrick Elwyn (West Ham, S.)

Pryde, D. J.

Darling, George (Hillsborough)

Jones, Jack (Rotherham)

Rankin, John

Davies, Harold (Leek)

Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)

Reeves, J.

Davies, Stephen (Merthyr)

Keenan, W.

Reid, Thomas (Swindon)

de Freitas, Geoffrey

Kenyan, C.

Reid, William (Camlachie)

Deer, G.

Key, Rt.Hon. C. W.

Delargy, H. J.

King, Dr. H. M.

Rhodes, H.

Dodds, N. N.

Kinley, J.

Richards, R.

Donnelly, D. L.

Lawson, G. M.

Robens, Rt. Hon. A.

Driberg, T. E. N.

Lee, Frederick (Newton)

Roberts, Albert (Normanton)

Dugdale, Rt. Hon. John (W. Bromwich)

Lever, Harold (Cheetham)

Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)

Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C.

Lewis, Arthur

Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)

Edelman, M.

Lindgren, G. S.

Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)

Edwards, Rt. Hon. Ness (Caerphilly)

Lipton, Lt.-Col. M.

Ross, William

Edwards, W. J. (Stepney)

Logan, D. G.

Royle, C.

Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)

MacColl, J. E.

Shackleton, E. A. A.

Evans, Edward (Lowestoft)

McGovern, J.

Shawcross, Rt. Hon. Sir Hartley

Evans, Stanley (Wednesbury)

Mclnnes, J.

Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E.

Fernyhough, E.

McKay, John (Wallsend)

Short, E. W.

Finch, H. J.

McLeavy, F.

Shurmer, P. L. E.

Fletcher, Eric (Islington, E.)

MacMillan, M. K. (Western Isles)

Silverman, Julius (Erdington)

Follick, M.

McNeil, Rt. Hon. H.

Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)

Foot, M. M.

MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)

Simmons, C. J. (Brierley Hill)

Forman, J. C.

Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)

Skeffington, A. M.

1476

1477

Slater, Mrs. H. (Stoke-on-Trent)

Thornton, E.

Wigg, George

Slater, J. (Durham, Sedgefield)

Timmons, J.

Wilcock, Group Capt. C. A. B.

Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)

Turner Samuels, M.

Wilkins, W. A.

Smith, Norman (Nottingham, S.)

Ungoed-Thomas, Sir Lynn

Willey, F. T.

Snow, J. W.

Usborne, H. C.

Williams, David (Neath)

Sparks, J. A.

Viant, S. P.

Williams, Rev. Llywelyn (Abertillery)

Steele, T.

Wallace, H. W.

Williams, Ronald (Wigan)

Stewart, Michael (Fulham, E.)

Warbey, W. N.

Williams, Rt. Hon. Thomas (Don V'H'y)

Strachey, Rt. Hon. J.

Watkins, T. E.

Williams, W. R. (Droylsden)

Stross, Dr. Barnett

Webb, Rt. Hon. M. (Bradford, C.)

Wilson, Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)

Summerskill, Rt. Hon. E.

Weitzman, D.

Winterbottom, Ian (Nottingham, C.)

Swingler, S. T.

Wells, Percy (Faversham)

Winterbottom, Richard (Brightside)

Sylvester, G. O.

Wells, William (Walsall)

Wyatt, W. L.

Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)

West, D. G.

Yates, V. F.

Taylor, John (West Lothian)

Wheeldon, W. E.

Thomas, Iorwerth (Rhondda, W.)

White, Mrs. Eirene (E. Flint)

TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

Thomas, Ivor Owen (Wrekin)

White, Henry (Derbyshire, N.E.)

Mr. Holmes and Mr. J. T. Price.

Thomson, George (Dundee, E.)

Whiteley, Rt. Hon. W.

Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 4.—(SUPPLEMENTARY PROVISIONS AS TO CERTAIN CLASSES OF PERSONS.)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr. T. Fraser: I wonder whether the Minister will say a word about this Clause. I take no exception to subsection (1), but I wonder why the Minister, even though he may think it difficult to do something for the non-contributory pensioners, should set out in clear terms in subsection (2) his determination to do nothing for them. For many years we have conceded to the non-contributory pensioners, those over 70 year of age, a maximum pension, on a very strict test of need, of a sum not exceeding the retirement pension paid to the contributory pensioners at 65 years of age. The limit was raised to 26s. in 1946. It was not interfered with in 1951 or 1952.
I wonder why nothing is being done for these people at this time. They are a diminishing number; they will disappear altogether by 1958, I believe—10 years after the introduction of the 1948 Scheme under the 1946 Act, which operated from 5th July, 1948. They are very old people. They cannot qualify until they are 70 and cannot get a pension at all except through a very strict test of their need. The maximum they can get at the present time is 26s. Why does not the Minister widen the Bill a little by providing for a maximum pension of 40s. for those old people, those non-contributory pensioners? Why does he not take out subsection (2)? He might also ease the test of need a little. The amount of money involved cannot be great.
Mr. H. Hynd: I wish to reinforce the plea of my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) by putting an additional reason why the Minister should listen to it. Many of the people who were non-contributors, and, therefore, come under this heading, were in that class through no fault of their own.
I have in mind retired railway officials, railway superannuitants. They were not in the Scheme because they were members of a superannuation fund. They were, therefore, exempted originally from the Acts which governed National Insurance. Because they were non-contributors they are in the same position, through no fault of their own, as the class mentioned by my hon. Friend. Apparently they cannot be helped through any other statutory source. At least, no progress has been made despite the attempts in Parliament to help them. I therefore think the Minister should have a further look at their case.
The Deputy-Chairman: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Member, but it seems to me that he is now advocating an Amendment to the Clause, as, it seemed, the hon. Member who spoke before him did, too. It is in order to draw attention to an omission from the Clause, but it is not permissible to discuss an Amendment now.
Mr. Hynd: I understood that my hon. Friend was asking the Minister to explain subsection (2).
Mr. Bernard Taylor: I regret that once more those over 70, the non-contributory pensioners, have been overlooked. It is certainly a very serious omission from the Bill. It is a very serious thing that the non-contributory pensioners are not included among those who are to receive the increased benefit. I would remind the Minister that this is

1479
the third time that they have been left out. They were left out in 1951 and 1952, and now, again, in 1954. I recall that in Committee on the Bill of 1952 many of us pleaded for these non-contributory pensioners.
It will be within the knowledge of the hon. Members that these people form the oldest class of old-age pensioners. The class came into operation in 1909 and until 1946 the maximum rate of benefit was 10s. per week. In that year my right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths) increased the maximum from 10s. to 26s. The omission is all the more serious because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) said, these non-contributory pensioners are a diminishing number. They are diminishing at the rate of 20,000 to 25,000 a year. According to the latest Report of the National Assistance Board, the number in this class is about 344,000. That is a reduction since 1948 of about 120,000.
Another point is that 75 per cent. of these 344,000 non-contributory pensioners are in receipt of the maximum amount of 26s. On that basis, the majority of them have very slender resources. More than half of the 344,000 are not receiving supplementation from the National Assistance Board. The conclusion which we can draw from that is that they are living on their pension and any slender resources which they may have.
The Deputy-Chairman: Do I understand that the hon. Gentleman's argument is directed really to the Amendment in Clause 4, page 3, line 23, to leave out subsection (2)? If that is the case, those pensioners come under Section 74 (6) of the National Insurance Act, 1946. Being under that subsection, they are outside the scope of the Money Resolution and it would not be in order to discuss the point.
Mr. Taylor: With respect, I am trying to point out that it is a serious omission that this class of pensioner is being excluded from any increase in benefit. This class of people, like everybody else, has been hit by the rising cost of living and changing money values and I am asking the Minister whether he intends to come to their aid. There is not one of these non-contributory pensioners who is under 70 years of age. Their ages range from
1480
that age to 80 and 85 and perhaps 90 years in some cases. We feel that they have been excluded long enough.
Mr. Houghton: On a point of order. In my name and in the names of some of my hon. Friends there is on the Notice Paper an Amendment to Clause 4, page 3, line 23, to leave out subsection (2). We have been advised that that Amendment is out of order because it is outside the Money Resolution. In 1952, when a similar Clause appeared in a similar Bill some of my hon. Friends and myself placed on the Notice Paper an Amendment to leave out the first two words of the subsection, those words being "Nothing in …". We were then told that that was out of order because it was outside the Money Resolution. May I ask you, Sir Rhys, how the Committee can take this sort of provision out of the Bill? It may be outside the Money Resolution, but surely we can take it out of the Bill.
The Deputy-Chairman: The hon. Member can regret that provision for these people is not included, but the matter cannot be raised because the Amendment comes under Section 74 (6) of the Act. That Section and the subsection are not covered by the Money Resolution and, therefore, a discussion of them would not be in order. The point can certainly be made on the Question, That the Clause stand part of the Bill. Hon. Members can regret omission or inclusion, but cannot argue the point itself.
Mr. Houghton: Further to that point of order. I understand that we cannot put anything into the Bill which is outside the scope of the Money Resolution. But what I cannot understand is why we cannot take this out of the Bill.
The Deputy-Chairman: Because taking it out in this case would add to the financial responsibility.
Mr. Tom Brown: I understand that we are now discussing the Question, That the Clause stand part of the Bill. The rubric of the Clause is:
"Supplementary provisions as to certain classes of persons."
If I can read the minds of my hon. Friends aright, we are trying to ask the Minister whether he is prepared to consider bringing into the Bill those who

1481
have been left outside these provisions for a large number of years. It is the old story. As the House of Commons has journeyed along the road of legislative enactment it has always left somebody out. It is a somebody who has been left out that we want to bring in. We are asking the Minister whether he is prepared to give consideration to the old non-contributory pensioners.
The Deputy-Chairman: The hon. Member is now raising the point which I have already ruled to be out of order.
Mr. Brown: I ask the Minister, if he is in a generous mood—and he has not been in such a mood so far—to give an assurance that he will give consideration between now and the Report stage to bringing these unfortunate people within these provisions.
8.15 p.m.
Mr. Houghton: Without suggesting that this provision should be taken out of the Clause, may I express regret that it is staying in? I understand that to keep within the rules of order I must not suggest that the Clause should be amended, and I am not suggesting that. I am merely saying that it is a pity that the Clause is as it stands and that we would be much happier if it stood differently. It is a matter of great regret that we have to see the Clause stand part of the Bill in this form. Were it not for the other merits of the Clause we on this side of the Committee would probably feel that we should oppose it, but we cannot do that. We cannot ask that it should be amended, but we can go on expressing regret that the Clause is as it stands.
The Minister must fed a little conscience stricken, if that is not too much to expect, that the Clause does not make different and more favourable provision for a body of people who are deserving well of the State, and many of whom have been compulsorily shut out of the contributory scheme in past years. Many of them were employers and paid many employers' contributions for their workpeople but now, in the end, find themselves in hard times. I am very sorry that we have to pass the Clause as it is, but if I say a single word more I shall probably be out of order.
Dr. King: I rise simply to call the attention of the Committee to Clause 4 (2) which states:
1482
"Nothing in the provisions of this Act relating to retirement pensions shall be taken as affecting the provisions of section seventy-four of the National Insurance Act, 1946, relating to non-contributory pensions."
The provisions of the Bill do affect the provisions which have already been made for non-contributory old-age pensioners by the fact that benefits given to one section of old-age pensioners are not given to non-contributory pensioners. The sense of justice of non-contributory pensioners is thereby outraged, and justice does matter in this case. I would merely call the attention of the House and the Minister to the fact that by not making provisions for non-contributory pensioners subsection (2) has really no meaning.
Mr. Mitchison: I wish to ask one short question, which I hope the Minister will answer. We understood from you, Sir Rhys, that we could not move to delete subsection (2) because the Money Resolution did not cover that particular point. What puzzles me is, what difference would it make if we did remove it? Perhaps the Minister would tell us.
Mr. PeakeI gather from your numerous interventions, Sir Rhys, that it is not very easy for anyone to keep in order in speaking to the Question, That the Clause stand part of the Bill, but I should like to tell the Committee what the purpose of the Clause is. Subsection (1) is to adapt the transitional provisions of the National Insurance Act, 1946, to the new benefits which are provided by the Bill and to enable me to make the necessary regulations. Subsection (2) prevents the confusion into which we should get unless some reference was made to Section 74 of the principal Act.
As has been pointed out, that dealt with non-contributory pensions, and subsection (6) provided that:
"There shall be defrayed out of moneys provided by Parliament … any such increase in the sums authorised to be so defrayed as may he occasioned by regulations under this section…"
As the Financial Resolution under which we are operating today makes no provision for any increase in the rates of non-contributory old-age pensions, it would, therefore, be out of order for us to delete this subsection from the Bill. thereby increasing the charge to be thrown upon the Exchequer.
On the general merits, I dare hardly venture one word except to say that we

1483
are following a precedent set by the right hon. Lady in 1951 and by ourselves in 1952. I would add that those forms of pension are subject to a means test, and as half or more than half of the recipients are now receiving supplementation from the National Assistance Board, we should get into a state of great confusion indeed if we tampered with the rates of pension.
Mr. Mitchison: Could the Minister tell us what the confusion would be if this subsection were left out? It seems to me to be wholly unnecessary.
Mr. B. Taylor: The Minister has made reference to precedents in 1951 and 1952. If he is so much in love with precedents, may I ask him to follow that established in 1946 when non-contributory pensions were raised from 10s. to 26s., or by 2½ times the amount. Let us have that precedent instead of those in 1951 and 1952.
Mr. H. Hynd: I would not criticise your Ruling, Sir Rhys, and I have no doubt that the Minister is technically correct in what he says about the scope of the Money Resolution, but I would remind him that he was asked the other day, by one of my right hon. Friends, what was the scope of the Money Resolution and whether it was wide enough to permit Amendments to provide for increases of benefit, alteration of contributions, and so on. His reply gave the impression that the Money Resolution was wide enough to cover the discussion of any Amendments that we were likely to put down.
The right hon. Gentleman must have foreseen that we on this side of the Committee would have some regard for the people who are the worst-off section of the community and would table an Amendment to cover them. While I would not accuse the right hon. Gentleman of misleading the House, I think it is unfortunate that he did not indicate that the scope of the Money Resolution would not be sufficient to cover this particular type of Amendment.
Mr. Peake: If I may, I should like to reply to the hon. Member for Accrington (Mr. H. Hynd). It was the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay), who asked me for an assurance that three particular
1484
matters would be in order for discussion in Committee. This is what he said.
"First, we shall seek to move Amendments to reduce the contributions of the contributors into the Fund.… Secondly, in certain cases we shall seek to move Amendments to increase some of the benefits.… Thirdly, we may wish to move that the Exchequer supplement ought to be increased."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th December, 1954; Vol. 535, c. 1242.]
I gave the right hon. Gentleman the assurance that the Money Resolution had been so drawn that the three points mentioned would be debatable. As far as we know, all three matters, to which he specifically referred, are in order on the Committee stage. I made no reference to the non-contributory old-age pensioners, because I was fully aware of the point that reference to them would be out of order, as they had not been selected for discussion in the Bill of 1952.
Miss Ward: I think I shall be in order in saying what I propose to say. I do not think it is at all a good idea to say that the case was rejected because it was a precedent set by a Bill introduced by right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite, because I do not think that they have ever done anything satisfactory for the non-contributory pensioners. As to the Ruling from the Chair that it was possible to say, on this Clause, how much one regretted that they were not covered by the Money Resolution. I want to say to the Minister that he must be aware that at our Margate Conference he said he could do almost anything without a committee and, therefore, he could help.
This very deserving section of the community always seem to get left out because they have not got any powerful voices to talk for them. I am extremely disappointed. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] It is no good hon. Gentlemen opposite saying, "Hear, hear." They have never done a thing for the non-contributory pensioners. I hope that in due course my party will do something for them, because they have to pay indirectly for all sorts of benefits for other people. I think it ill becomes the Conservative Party not to say something in support of this very deserving section of the community. I am bitterly disappointed.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 5.—(PROVISIONS AS TO APPOINTED DAY.)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Clause stand part of the Bill.
8.30 p.m.
Mr. W. R. Williams: I want to deal with the question of the appointed day as it was dealt with in the debate on 9th December. If I am in order in doing so, Sir Rhys, I will refer, purely in an exploratory way, to some of the statements made by the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance in connection with the position of the trade unions of the Civil Service on that question.
I want to give an opportunity to the Joint Parliamentary Secretary, if he feels so inclined, to augment, or perhaps to correct, his statement here and there. Unfortunately from my point of view, I was not in the House when the hon. Gentleman made his speech but, after reading HANSARD carefully, I gathered that there was a pretty good knockabout. There one can read his speech—when he was allowed to speak—from my point of view with a good deal of incredulity.
I have not read anything so funny for a long time as the record of the perambulations of a Minister and, when he invited my hon. Friend the Member for Spark-brook (Mr. Shurmer) to join him in his perambulations. I thought that he became funnier still. To expect any Minister to attempt to resolve such a highly technical matter in such a casual way as to talk to the staff over a public counter about whether they could do this, that, or the other, seems to me unprecedented, and it is one of the funniest things I have seen in HANSARD for a long time.
The point I want to make this evening is that there was a suggestion—I put it no higher—in the speech of the hon. Gentleman that the trade unions concerned had made it clear to him and to the Government that they would not be able to regard a payment at Christmas of any increases or lump sums as being a practicable proposition. I gathered that this was the basis of the remarks of the Joint Parliamentary Secretary and his counter-remarks to some of my hon, Friends.
He made it clear that not only had he had consultation with the so-called back-room boys whom he visited casually, but that he had also been in correspondence,
1486
discussion, and negotiation with the trade union leaders, the real leaders, the people who could be expected to give him the considered views of Post Office workers and civil servants in regard to the practicability of official proposals.
To my utter amazement, after reading those assurances to the House on 9th December, I found in the "Manchester Guardian" of 10th December two statements which raised some doubts in my mind, though they may not raise any doubts in the mind of the Minister. I feel sure you will allow me, Sir Rhys, to quote those two statements because they are important. The first was made by Mr. L. C. White, General Secretary of the Civil Service Clerical Association. This is what Mr. White said, after having read the statement of the Joint Parliamentary Secretary in the House on 9th December:
"A statement made by Mr. Marples, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance in the House of Commons on Thursday regarding the difficulty of paying increased benefits under the Pension Bill before Christmas, has given the impression that a Civil Service trade union representing clerical staffs of the Ministry has been consulted on this subject and had agreed that to make these additional payments before Christmas was impracticable. The C.S.C.A., which represents exclusively the clerical workers employed in the Ministry, wishes to make it clear that it has never been consulted on this matter."
Mr. White went on to say that the Association had not only never been consulted, but—
"has never expressed any opinion as to the practicability or otherwise of making these additional payments before Christmas, and indeed was only informed of the arrangements"—
The Deputy-Chairman: Order. This Clause is confined to the appointed day. I do not know what the argument of the hon. Gentleman about payments before Christmas has to do with that. There is no date here.
Mr. Williams: With due respect, and I do not want to challenge your Ruling, Sir Rhys, I was leading up to the point that the Minister has made the appointed day later because of, among other arguments, the argument that the Civil Service organisations and associations had told him that an earlier appointed day would not be possible. I thought, therefore, that on this Question, That the Clause stand part of the Bill, I ought to

1487
try to correct the impression made in this House by the Parliamentary Secretary, which in my opinion did not correctly reflect the approach of these trade unions towards the appointed day.
Mr. Mitchison: Further to that point of order, Sir Rhys. The question we have to consider is whether or not we approve of a Clause containing rather wide provisions for an appointed day. Upon that question, surely we are entitled to express our views, and make inquiries of the Minister as to what the appointed day is likely to be, since it may well be that if the appointed day were to be before Christmas, we should support the Clause, whereas if it were to be after Christmas. we should oppose the Clause?
In those circumstances, as the Joint Parliamentary Secretary appears to have made a statement about the possibility or impossibility of an appointed day within a certain time, we are entitled to find out how far that statement was really an answer to the suggestion that there should be an earlier appointed day. With great respect, I submit that my hon. Friend's argument is in order.
The Deputy-Chairman: If that was the point of the argument, I agree with the hon. and learned Member that it is in order, but I thought the hon. Member put it in a rather wider form than that.
Mr. Williams: If I had had the legal training that my hon. and learned Friend has had, I might have been able to put the argument more succinctly, but when it is boiled down, you have correctly interpreted, Sir Rhys, what I am seeking to do. I am sure that, with your guidance and on those lines, I shall be able to lead the Committee to the conclusion which I believe it is only right and proper it should. in the end, reach.
Perhaps I might now finish the quotation—
"and indeed was only informed of the arrangements that had already been settled on the day"—
that is, the appointed day; that is the point that we are on all the time; we want to make quite sure that the House of Commons does not commit itself to something because it has not been properly guided as to the views of those who have to do the work at the Post Office counters—
1488
"the increased payments were announced in Parliament."
I am staggered that the Joint Parliamentary Secretary should come here and give the views of individuals in various post offices, which he has casually obtained, as being that it is not practicable to do this, that, or the other, and should omit to tell the House that one of the most important Civil Service organisations, the one representing the people who will prepare the necessary forms and allowances, knew nothing about it and had never been consulted. If the Civil Service Clerical Association had been consulted much earlier, and, in particular, immediately after the important pronouncement made in the House on 19th March, it is possible that, with the concurrence of the Staff Side of not only the C.S.C.A. but also the Union of Post Office Workers and other Service associations, emergency arrangements could have been made to make it practicable for the increased pensions to be paid before Christmas.
I have a quotation here also from the "Manchester Guardian" of a statement made by Mr. Charles Geddes, the General Secretary of the Union of Post Office Workers, of which I was once a member and to which I am still attached in an honorary capacity. Mr. Geddes says:
"The Union of Post Office Workers has expressed the view that any system of paying out the increased pensions which did not clearly define the amount due might lead to fraud or to confusion or to losses which might render the counter-clerks liable to disciplinary action. The U.P.W. took the view that it would be better for pension books to be issued which indicated the amount."
I am giving all these points because they might be regarded as favourable to the Joint Parliamentary Secretary's argument. Mr. Geddes
"… saw no reason why the books should not have been printed."
The Government should have planned ahead sufficiently to have the books printed much before Christmas. Mr. Geddes added:
"Moreover, there is no question whatsoever that our objection had anything to do with pressure of work on the counter clerk or anyone else. It would be just as easy to pay out £1 as it is to pay out 15s 6d."
From my experience of paying out such pensions many years ago, it would be easier to pay out £1 than 15s. 6d.

1489
There is some information which has come to me about which I shall be very circumspect, contrary to the action of the Minister, who has made all sorts of pronouncements, although the seal of confidence about what happened between the Postmaster-General and the unions is still maintained.
I want to put a serious point to the Joint Parliamentary Secretary. He gave us only half the story. Mr. Geddes has made it quite clear that the Union of Post Office workers, like a good union, responsible for the efficient working of the service, and wanting to see that its people are not confused, and that there is no possibility of fraud and losses, asked for the maximum inquiry into the possibilities of any system which might be imposed upon their members.
The point on which the Joint Parliamentary Secretary is inclined, inadvertently or otherwise, to mislead the House is that the union—after discussions with other organisations, Post Office headquarters, and representatives of the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance; realising the position of the old-age pensioners; realising the desire of all Members of Parliament to make sure whatever increases and benefits were approved should be implemented as early as possible—within a day or two made it perfectly clear to the Post Office that it had no desire to press for any arrangement which would unduly delay implementation of a Government decision to increase pensions and allowances.
For that reason—and it is one which I want to underline—the union had said to the Department that it would be prepared to accept the Department's proposals despite the difficulties and inconveniences which would undoubtedly arise for its people. The House has not been fair to this trade union, which is prepared to waive some of the principles that it has held dear for many years, to try to meet the needs of these old people. In fairness to these trade unions, some of which have not been consulted, it would be the magnanimous thing if the Joint Parliamentary Secretary tonight enlarged upon the statement which he made on 9th December.
Mr. Mitchison: I hope that we shall have a very definite statement from the Joint Parliamentary Secretary on this matter. He told the House, on 9th
1490
December, that, by comparison with what happened in similar cases in the past, the appointed day for most purposes would be 25th April next. That is on the last line of c.1147 of HANSARD of 9th December, 1954.
A suggestion was made to him by my hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Shurmer) of a 5s. stamp on the books, and I think it is exceedingly interesting to see how the hon. Gentleman treated what seemed to me to be a very sensible suggestion.
The OFFICIAL REPORT of 9th December records, in col. 1144, that my hon. Friend asked him what difficulties would there be about stamping 5s. on each slip torn out of a book. My hon. Friend said:
"There is no difficulty at all. It takes no time."
The Joint Parliamentary Secretary replied to that by what I may call a double answer. His first was:
"That is what the hon. Member thinks, That is not what the trade unions of the various interested workers think. The hon. Member is quite at variance with the official trade unions whom we have consulted."
On that point he was then asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Waltham-stow, East (Mr. Wallace):
"Which trade unions?"
He replied:
"There are several unions, among them one representing sub-postmasters."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th December, 1954; Vol. 535, c. 1145.]
I should be the last person to comment in any way on the importance of sub-postmasters. They are, no doubt, very important people. In fact, I know they are. I have several in my constituency. But it is a bit odd when one is asked which are the trade unions, to select this particular union and altogether omit the union of which my hon. Friend the Member for Droylsden (Mr. W. R. Williams) has for long been such a distinguished member and official.
8.45 p.m.
One wonders, what does it come to? We now have at any rate two of the principal unions concerned saying that something could have been done by Christmas. As practically the only defence to a particular suggestion made to him in the House, we have the hon. Gentleman saying, "Oh, but the unions don't agree with you. The unions say

1491
it could not be done, and particularly the sub-postmasters say it could not be done."
The second suggestion was he hoped that the hon. Gentleman would go round with him the next day. We all appreciate the light and merry wit of the Joint Parliamentary Secretary. We like him for it; it is pleasant. But he must remember that the date of the payment of these pensions is not a very appropriate subject for humour. On any showing, these old folk have had to wait an uncommonly long time for an increase which everyone in the country who was not blinded by political prejudice knew was overdue.
When we come to the timing of this Bill, and the Bill itself could have been brought earlier, the best we get from the Joint Parliamentary Secretary is an answer which, in the light of what has been said now, is exceedingly unsatisfactory— I do not want to say any more about it than that—and the statement that the whole business is to wait until 25th April.
Suppose the Joint Parliamentary Secretary can convince us that, willing though the unions and their members were to put their backs into it, and to do something quite exceptional to make good the excessive tardiness of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite; willing though they were—and with "Leo" behind them, if he would be any help—it still could not have been done, surely he will offer us something better than 25th April as the appointed day? I would remind him of the presence of some very distinguished hon. Friends of mine from across the Border, for there at any rate Christmas does not have the same importance as here. He might make a timely concession to Scotland and get it through before Hogmanay if not before Christmas.
It is not treating the House and these old people properly simply to give a rather uncomplete, unsatisfactory—I do not want to say any more—excuse when dealing with a sensible suggestion, and then to say, "Oh, it has got to be 25th April." Today the hon. Gentleman has an opportunity for sense and repentance, and I hope that he will take it.
The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (Mr. Ernest Marples): It may be for the convenience of the Committee
1492
if I say a few words in reply to the hon. Member for Droylsden (Mr. W. R. Williams). I am grateful to him, for giving me notice, just after the previous Clause had been discussed, that he proposed to raise this matter. I am obliged to him—
Mr. W. R. Williams: It was after the third Clause.
Mr. Marples: Yes, but it was the previous Clause which we were discussing at the time.
Let us be clear about how this matter arose during the Second Reading debate. The hon. Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Shurmer) had made a number of attempts to interrupt me, and he interrupted me to say:
"I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He tells us that he has been to a post office. We are claiming that something should be done for old-age pensioners before Christmas."
The hon. Member went on to describe the way he had in mind for it to be done before Christmas. He said:
"The old-age pensioners have to pass their books over. Therefore, what difficulty would there be about stamping 5s. on each slip torn out of the book? There is no difficulty at all. It takes no time."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th December, 1954; Vol. 535, c. 1144]
The suggestion was that the existing pension books should be used; that the counter clerks at the post offices should stamp them in some way, and should give the extra 5s. upon them.
My reply was that if that was what the hon. Member for Sparkbrook thought, it was not what the trade union of the various interested workers thought. The interested workers are not the mineworkers or the bricklayers, or, in this respect, the civil servants. This is the job of the men who represent the counter clerks, who have to pay out the money.
Mr. W. R. Williams Mr. W. R. Williams rose—
Mr. Marples: I cannot give way. I did not interrupt the hon. Gentleman.
Dr. H. Morgan: This is an important matter. Give way.
Mr. Marples: I agree that it is important.
I went round the post offices on a personal investigation. I would say to the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison), who was a little less

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than fair, that I did not go round the post offices because I had a sense of humour; I did so in order to exhaust all the possibilities of doing anything speedily. I do not think it was unworthy to go round. If any Member thinks that a junior Minister should not make such a personal investigation, I hope that he is not on these benches, at any rate.
The clear issue was whether cash could be paid out before Christmas upon the existing books, and not upon new books. I said that I thought that it was impossible. What did the trade union say about it? The hon. Member for Droylsden quoted fairly extensively from what Mr. Geddes said, as reported in the "Manchester Guardian" but I should like to read on from the point at which the hon. Member finished.
"… Mr. Geddes, secretary of the union and president of the T.U.C.… said that the U.P.W. had expressed the view that any system of paying out the increased pensions which did not clearly define the amount due might lead to fraud, to counter clerks and the public being confused as to the amount due and to losses over the counter (which render the clerk liable to disciplinary action). The U.P.W. took the view that it would be better far pensions books to be issued which indicated the amount due."
Mr. Geddes went on to say that if there had been new books printed it would be as easy, or easier, to pay £1 than it is to pay 15s. 6d.
After finishing his quotation, the hon. Member for Droylsden said that the U.P.W's. objection was merely to some system of using the present books to pay out the increased pension. I submit that what I said to the House in answer was correct, namely, that the union concerned did not think it possible, in the interests of its own members, to pay out the increased sums upon the existing pension books.
I believe there has been some misunderstanding on this matter. I think that hon. Members know me well enough to know that I should not try deliberately to mislead them, but I think some misunderstanding has been caused by an article in the "Manchester Guardian." That article is the most misleading I have known in a newspaper of its standing. Its first headline was,
"As Easy For Post Office To Pay Out £1 As 15s. 6d."
What it omitted to say was
"but only on new books; not on existing books."
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The next headline said:
"Union Denies Having Been Consulted On Pensions Increase."
What it did not say was that the appropriate union did not deny it. In the second part of the leading article, in small print, it gave the correct views of the U.P.W. I do not want to make a lot of this point, but I want to say that the discussion at the time was confined to the question of an increased sum of money being paid out on existing pension books, as suggested.
The Deputy-Chairman: This discussion seems to have gone very wide of the Clause. The Clause provides for the Minister to make the appointed day by order, and that is all that is in order in this discussion.
Mr. Marples: I am most obliged for your Ruling, and I beg you pardon, Sir Rhys, if I was out of order, but I felt that, after what the hon. Gentleman had said, I ought in fairness to be allowed to make a reply to him.
Mr. W. R. Williams: In order that I shall be on the record as saying what is correct, may I say that the hon. Gentleman had better consult some of his advisers, because when he says that the Civil Service Clerical Association is not concerned, he is showing abysmal ignorance?
The Deputy-Chairman: I do not think I should allow this discussion to range so far from the terms of the Clause.
Mr. E. Fernyhough: What we are anxious to obtain from the Parliamentary Secretary is a promise that the idea given in a previous debate that the appointed day will be 25th April shall be reconsidered, with a view to making it much earlier.
The Deputy-Chairman: With regard to that point, I assume that it would be in order to debate it on the actual order itself, but not on this Clause. What can be argued here is only whether the Minister shall have power to make the order or not.
Mr. J. Griffiths: Under the principal Act, the Minister is entitled to fix the appointed day. but, as far as I know. there will be no order which is debatable in this House. I do not think that any order will come before this House which

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will give the House an opportunity of accepting or rejecting it.
The Deputy-Chairman: According to the Clause, the appointed day is to be a day such as the Minister "may by order appoint."
Mr. Mitchison: Are we not entitled to have information about the appointed day which will enable us to decide whether or not to vote for the Clause?
The Deputy-Chairman: Questions about the appointed day might arise when the order comes before the House, but do not arise on this Clause.
Mr. Jay: Surely, in this Clause, we are giving the Minister the power to say when the appointed day shall be, and we cannot decide whether to do that or not unless we are satisfied that he will name the sort of appointed day which we would like to see? I should have thought that hon. Members discussing that point would have been in order.
The Deputy-Chairman: It may be argued whether the Minister should have the power to make the order or not, and that is in order here, but the actual date is another matter.
Dr. Edith Summerskill: May I draw your attention, Sir Rhys, to subsection (1), which says:
"in this Act the expression 'the appointed day' means. subject to the following provisions of this section, such day as the Minister may by order appoint, and different days may be appointed for different purposes of this Act or for the same purpose in relation to different cases or classes of case."
Surely, on that subsection alone, we could conduct a debate on whether we consider the date suggested by the Joint Parliamentary Secretary a suitable one or not?
The Deputy-Chairman: What this Clause says is that the Minister may fix such day as he "may by order appoint," and until he makes the order fixing the appointed day, the question seems to me to be premature.
Mr. Fernyhough: What we are anxious to do is to make sure that, when the Minister fixes the appointed day, it will be sufficiently early. What is the argument which the Minister has to far used for delaying the appointed day until 25th April? Administrative difficulties. I should like to put this problem to the
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Minister. Let us suppose, for the sake of argument—and heaven forbid that it should happen—that this country became involved in war next week.
The Deputy-Chairman: There is nothing in this Clause at all to indicate what is the date of the appointed day. No one knows what that day is until the order is made.
Mr. Mitchison: Surely, if the proposition before the House were to give the Minister a blank cheque, we should be entitled to discuss how much he was going to fill it in for?
The Deputy-Chairman: It is quite in order to discuss whether the Minister shall have the power to do this, but until he does it, and if he has the power to fix the date, no question can arise about the date itself.
Dr. Summerskill: In view of the fact that it all depends on the order and that, when the order is before the House, we shall not be able to amend it but only to accept or reject it, does it not therefore follow that unless we discuss this matter now we shall be denied for all time the opportunity of discussing the date?
The Deputy-Chairman: The right hon. Lady knows that that might be an argument for saying that the Minister should not have the power to make the order. It is quite in order to argue against giving the Minister the power to fix the appointed day, but to discuss the actual date before the Minister makes the order seems to me to be premature.
9.0 p.m.
Mr. R. Williams: Further to that point of order. Would it not be entirely in order, Sir Rhys, to submit arguments why the House should not give the Minister power to appoint a day at all unless he gives satisfactory undertakings as to the day which he is going to appoint?
The Deputy-Chairman: Any arguments directed to declining to give the Minister power would be in order.
Mr. Fernyhough: In view of your last Ruling, Sir Rhys, I suggest to the Committee that we ought not to give the Minister power until we are satisfied that the appointed day is more in keeping with what the general public desire.

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I was putting to the Minister a problem which I want him to think about. Supposing—heaven forbid—that war broke out next week, and that tens of thousands of people were immediately called up for service in the Forces. Is it suggested that the wives and children of the men called up would not get their allowances? Of course not. The machine would work with top speed in order to see that everyone got what they were entitled to, because the Government would know that there would be a terrible row throughout the length and breadth of the country if the money was not forthcoming.
I suggest, likewise, that if there were a great disaster, such as floods, we should obviously not wait until "the appointed day" before bringing succour to the people in need of assistance. If the Minsiter was not so concerned about saving money, I am quite sure that the appointed day could be much earlier. I beg the right hon. Gentleman to understand that the old-age pensioners will be very bitter indeed if they are kept living on hope deferred.
I am sure that, if he were to put it to the people who have to work the machine, that, provided they put their backs into it and did the necessary overtime, he would be able to pay the benefits much earlier, he would get the necessary response. It ought to be his privilege to make the appointed day much earlier. If he does not, his name, with the approach of Christmas, may go down in history as a second Scrooge.
Mr. T. Brown: The last few minutes of this discussion have obscured the real issue. My hon. Friend the Member for Droylsden (Mr. W. R. Williams) raised a point on a statement made by the Parliamentary Secretary on Second Reading. The question which we on this side of the Committee wish to ask is whether it is true that the trade unions were consulted as to whether it was possible for the Post Office workers to pay out the increased benefits at a much earlier date than that suggested by the Government.
With all due respect to the Parliamentary Secretary, he has not answered the question put to him by my hon. Friend. However much he may try to evade it—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I invite hon. Members opposite to examine what was said on 9th December and what has been
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said today. The Parliamentary Secretary has not made the statement expected from him in view of the disclosures made by my hon. Friend the Member for Droylsden.
The impression created in the country is very disturbing, because the Post Office workers have been brought into the picture more forcibly by the statement made by the Parliamentary Secretary on 9th December than they were before. There are now some people who think that not the Government but the postal workers are to blame for the late date. Surely, in view of the valuable service that these Post Office workers render to the nation day after day, and of the heavy demands made on their time and energy, we ought not to let that go by. The Parliamentary Secretary ought to be good enough to say that the trade unions concerned were not consulted in the sense that we understand consultations as between Government Departments and trade unions.
My hon. Friend the Member for Droylsden made a very strong point, apart from the argument which appeared in the "Manchester Guardian." We attach some importance to the honesty of the "Manchester Guardian." Oh, yes, the Parliamentary Secretary may smile, but he uses the "Manchester Guardian" when it is in his favour and refrains from using it when it is against him. There has been a conflict of opinion, as to what has actually taken place. Post Office workers feel keenly the statement made by the Parliamentary Secretary.
Surely it would be easy to say, and it would be true, "I mentioned this rather glibly, without giving it thought." It arose from an interjection by my hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Shurmer). It would be a gracious gesture and the right thing to do—especially when he knows the effect which his statement is having on the minds of the old-age pensioners and of the men in the Post Office—for the Parliamentary Secretary to stand at that Box and say, "I am sorry for what I said. These people are not to blame."
Mr. H. Hynd: I want to return to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Mr. Fernyhough) because I agree with him that it is asking a lot of this Committee to give the Minister the full authority set out in the Clause

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to make the appointed day as and when he likes.
We are under the impression that the pensions will be paid towards the end of April or in May but, unfortunately, we have to try to tie the Government down in a specific way in these matters. Only a few minutes ago the Committee found itself unable to discuss a certain Amendment which on this side of the Committee we considered to be of great importance, because of the precise wording of the Financial Resolution. Therefore, it is no use the Minister saying, "You can trust me to put the best possible interpretation on the Clause." We want him to give us a definite promise about the date that he has in mind.
Suppose that after committing himself to the date suggested previously, the Minister, under the compulsion of the Chancellor of the Exchequer or even of the Cabinet, decided that as the date of the General Election was to be postponed the date of the operation of the benefits could likewise be postponed. He would be expected to give that information to the House for anybody who cared to do so to criticise him for altering the date in that way.
I suggest to the Minister that to get this considerable power for which he is asking in the Clause he ought to promise us that the pensions will not be paid later than a certain date. Let him give us a date beyond which a day will not be appointed. Furthermore, he should give a promise that the full resources of his Department will be stretched to the uttermost in an effort to pay the benefits at an earlier date than that.
We have agreed to rush this Bill through before Christmas. For what purpose? If the benefits are not to be paid until April or May there is no necessity for the Bill to reach the Statute Book before Christmas. We are rushing it through in an endeavour to help not the Government but the old-age pensioners and other beneficiaries under the Bill. If we do take the unprecedented step of putting through an important Bill such as this in such a short time, the only purpose we have in mind, and the only purpose which the Government should have in mind, is that it may enable them to fix a date earlier than they originally anticipated.
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If the Minister will say, first, that the appointed day shall not be later than—whatever he agrees to suggest; and, secondly, that he will do his utmost to bring it even further forward, I think he can justifiably ask us to give him a blank cheque in respect of the appointed day, as laid down in this Clause. If not, I think we should be justified—although I am quite sure that my hon. Friends would hesitate to do so—in refusing him such a large measure of power.
Mr. G. M. Thomson: The more I have listened to the discussion the more unsatisfactory this Clause appears to be. The central point in all our controversy over this Bill, and in the discussions which have preceded it, has been the date on which the increase in basic pension should be payable. Here, because of the nature of the Clause, we are presented with the astonishing position in which it becomes very difficult to demand from the Minister that a particular day be fixed.
I listened very closely to the interesting revelations of my hon. Frend the Member for Droylsden (Mr. W. R. Williams) about the position of the trade unions. I found the Minister's replies extremely inadequate. It seems to me that what the Government have been trying to do is to suggest to the country that the real obstacle to an early increase in the basic pension has been not the Government but the workers—the trade unions—concerned. My hon. Friend's speech should have very effectively disposed of that. There is no doubt at all that the only reason why an immediate increase is not being given is a lack of will on the part of the Government, and not a lack of willingness on the part of the workers—however great the inconvenience—to try to make an earlier increase possible.
I very much regret that this Clause gives no indication that the Minister was willing to follow a suggestion which I made in a Question some weeks ago. It was then being stated by the Government that the only reason for not giving the increase in time for Christmas was administrative difficulty; I suggested that, if that was the reason, and if the increase could not be given across the counter efficiently before that, he might arrange to back-date the increase to Christmas. That, of course, he turned

1501
down. He did so on the ground that it interfered with the insurance principle.
During the course of this Bill we have had a number of discussions as to whether or not this is an insurance system. Hon. Members opposite, as well as those on this side, have begged leave to doubt how much of a system of insurance it is. I would draw a distinction between the contributory and the insurance principles. If the Government had been really willing to meet the real difficulties—the hardships—of our old people in time for Christmas this year, then, in the context of the Bill, they should have found a means of doing it by fixing the appointed day at Christmas, 1954, instead of, as is likely, finally fixing it for April, 1955.
Mr. W. R. Williams: Although there are a number of points I should like to make, I do not wish to prolong the debate. I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary just one question. Is he aware that, at the end of my speech, I said that, on 15th October, the unions concerned in the discussions of 7th October made it clear to the Post Office that they had no desire to press for any arrangement which would unduly delay the implementation of a Government decision to increase pensions and allowances, and, for this reason
"… would be prepared to accept your proposals despite the difficulties and inconveniences which will undoubtedly arise for our people."
Was he aware of that? If he was not aware of it, what would his views have been had be been aware of it?
9.15 p.m.
Mr. Houghton: I wish to object to the Clause standing part of the Bill. I do so on the ground that the Minister is not the proper person to have these powers put into his hands. I think he is an unfit person because he has an insufficient sense of responsibility, because he is lacking in a sense of urgency, and because he lacks the power of bold decision. I think that that is a strong indictment of the Minister, and if the Committee approves it, it is quite clear we ought not to allow the Clause to stand part of the Bill. I do not think it would do much harm to the Bill if we rejected the Clause, because the Government would have to think it over and come back with a better one.
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I think the Minister has made clear that he is lacking in a sense of responsibility by his allowing the Parliamentary Secretary to cast some responsibility, which was apparently unjustly cast, upon the trade unions for impeding progress in regard to the payment of these benefits. The Parliamentary Secretary suggested that the unions were not as forthcoming as he had hoped they would have been. He gave the impression that the Civil Service unions had behaved quite contrary to the traditions of the public service, and that the Minister had failed to do anything about it. He said:
"We have pressed the trade unions as hard as we could, and we ought to thank them for the way in which they met us on 'his problem."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th December. 1954; Vol. 535. c. 1145.]
The Minister undoubtedly thrust upon the trade unions a responsibility which he should not have thrust upon them and should not have allowed them to carry. The Minister, if he was having any trouble with the unions, should have told the House frankly what the difficulty was. He would then have been fortified and assisted in any action he thought it necessary to take. What this discussion has shown is that the Civil Service trade unions, and, in particular, the Union of Post Office Workers, can be completely exonerated from any suggestion that they put a brake on the Minister's action or failed in any way to co-operate in the fulfilment of his desires. Having dismissed the unions from this, we find the charge of a lack of responsibility must rest fairly and squarely on the Minister.
He lacks a sense of urgency. If he had felt a sense of urgency in this matter he would not have mentioned the date of the last week in April as that from which these benefits will be paid. He owes it to the Committee to explain why it takes so long to do the job, and to explain the steps he has taken to cut down the timetable and so to get the benefits into the hands of the old-age pensioners earlier than the apparent time-table.
The Minister has shown a want of bold decision. Here is an emergency operation, which it surely should not be beyond the wit of the Government to get through in a shorter time than that proposed. Nobody can understand why it takes until the last week in April to do

1503
this job, and nobody has satisfactorily explained the reason for it. I charge the Minister with lack of the power of bold decision. He is clearly unfit to carry the responsibility which this Clause would put upon him, and I object to it.
Dr. Summerskill: I have every sympathy with the objection of my hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton to giving the Minister power to make an appointed day and I endorse what my hon. Friend has already said. It is quite clear that the Minister lacks a sense of urgency, and I believe that he has also shown that he is incapable of taking the initiative. I want him to tell the Committee precisely what he is prepared to do to bring the appointed day forward.
I devoted some time on Second Reading to the question of timing, but I must remind the Minister why he has had to endure such harsh comments from this side of the Committee during the last five minutes. Surely, it is all justified. He will recall that the first promise was given to the House of Commons on 19th March of this year—a half-promise certainly—that pensioners would have their pensions increased. We waited patiently. I remember that the Minister's former Parliamentary Secretary charged me with being the only contentious voice in the debate. He said that everybody else was prepared to accept his promise, but I was not. But it seems to me that my suspicions were justified.
Then we waited for the Budget, which came within three weeks after the first promise was made. Again, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that he was very sympathetic and that if only we were patient for a few months longer something would be done. We sat back. Winter passed to spring and spring to summer. July came and we put a Motion of censure on the Order Paper. I thought that the Minister was then sympathetic. Indeed, he accepted it. Then came the Conservative Party Conference. Does the right hon. Gentleman recall what was said at that conference, when he made the most sympathetic noises from the platform? I saw him on television bend forward and at least indicate that he was sympathetic towards these proposals. Again, nothing happened and we were compelled to place on the Order Paper
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another Motion of censure at the end of last Session. It was quite clear by then that back benchers opposite were feeling very strongly about the matter. They compelled the Minister to take action.
There was evidence of that, because the Minister will recall that a very special meeting was held upstairs and that the Prime Minister found it necessary to attend that meeting to quell a revolt on the back benches. This is the record which we are condemning from this side of the Committee and this is why we are now suspicious that the Minister has no intention of bringing the date forward. That is why we are having to speak strongly. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us precisely what he intends to do so that old-age pensioners shall have these pensions a little earlier than the end of April or the beginning of May? If he does that, he will satisfy us.
Mr. Peake: I apologise for not having heard the whole of the discussion on this Question, but I had to leave the Chamber to obtain a little necessary refreshment. I wish to say at once in response to what the hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) said, that I take full responsibility for the time-table. I do not propose for a moment to pass any responsibility for the administrative difficulties on to anybody else's shoulders. I know what an enormous operation it is.
I remember the administrative breakdown in 1946. It was true that there was not the network of local offices which we have established today. I also recall the length of time which it took to carry out a much smaller operation in 1951, when an improvement in pensions was announced in the middle of April and was not fully effected until 1st October.
I prophesied, when the Motion of censure was moved a month ago by the Opposition, that when I made my proposals they would complain, naturally, that they were too little and too late. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] They have not at any rate complained that they are too little, so that they are driven back on to the proposition that they are too late. I do not think we need go over all that ground today. What I am doing in bringing these proposals forward is acting under the statutory obligation imposed by Section 40 of the 1946 Act, which was carried by the then Labour Government.

1505
I have told the Committee that if everything goes well we shall get the retirement pension improvements into operation in the last week in April. We have got other things to do before that. There will be improvements in the National Assistance payments which are going to come into force in the first week in February, and improvements in the war disability pensions.
Mr. J. Griffiths: We are for the moment discussing the appointed day for the purposes of increases under this Bill, but the increases granted by the Assistance Board will be done by a separate organisation entirely.
Mr. Peake: That is perfectly true. I was mentioning the scale of the office operation which is here involved. My staff had to carry out improvements in the war disability pensions which operate from the beginning of February.
Mr. H. Hynd: That is a separate staff.
Mr. Peake: Also it will take place at a much more difficult time of the year, when my office staffs are depleted by sickness, and when they are overwhelmed very often by sickness claims which have to be dealt with expeditiously We shall be carrying this operation out in a much more difficult time of the year than the operation carried out by the right hon. Lady in the summer of 1951. I certainly do not intend to adopt a timetable which would involve a serious risk of a complete breakdown. Nothing could be more tragic from the point of view of old-age pensioners than to be promised something on a given date and then not to receive it.
I, therefore, adhere to my statement that it will be the last week in April before the new retirement pensions come into operation, and that depends on us making the progress which I think we all want to make with the Bill now before the Committee. After it becomes law, there is a great deal of work to be done in the making of regulations and so forth. I adhere to the time-table, and I invite the Committee to accept this Clause, which enables me to fix the appointed days for the different new benefits to come into operation. The Committee would be taking a very grave risk if it were to delete this Clause from the Bill.
Mr. J. Griffiths: On many occasions the Minister has recalled what happened in 1946 and I accept full responsibility for that. But let me put this to the right hon. Gentleman. In 1946 we had no organisation whatsoever because it was scattered all over the country. In spite of that many pensions were paid on time. Some were not, but, eventually, the pensioners got them. Now there is an organisation with a head office in London, a magnificent office in Newcastle, none of which the right hon. Gentleman created, 13 regional offices all over the country and 1,000 local offices.
We are now told that it will take four months before the pensioners receive these increases. I am very disappointed that this organisation, of which I think we have every right to be proud and particularly of the men who serve in it and in whom I have very great confidence, cannot bring into operation in less than five months the scheme of improved benefits.
There is nothing to prevent the Minister ordering the new books now. He knows that this Bill will go through this House and that the other place is not likely to throw it out. Indeed, I expect that new books have been ordered already, which means that we are taking more than five months to bring the new payments into operation. I am profoundly disappointed that this magnificent machine which we have built up cannot operate more quickly. Indeed, I find it difficult to believe that.
9.30 p.m.
Mr. H. Hynd: We have had a series of excuses about the delay in paying these increases. Only a short time ago the Minister told the House that, if the old-age pensioners really needed the money, emergency action could and would have been taken, but that in his opinion they were not in dire need. Since then we have been told first, that the administrative machinery was such that it would require several months. Then we had the excuse that it was the trade unions, which were the stumbling block.
Tonight, we have had two more excuses: first, possible sickness in his Department and, secondly, that regulations cannot start to be drafted until after the Bill goes on to the Statute

1507
Book. On that last point, if the Department has not started to put those regulations into draft it is high time this was done, because it is obvious that the Minister will not make many concessions in the course of the Bill, and the Department ought to have a rough idea what the Bill will look like by the time it reaches the Statute Book.
On the second but last excuse about possible sickness in the Department, supposing that sickness is not as bad as the right hon. Gentleman thinks it might be, is he not now in a position to say that in this event he may be able to bring the date slightly forward. He has not even said that he will try to do so. Would he not at least say that?
Mr. Cyril Bence: I was struck by the suggestion made by the Minister that it would be a frightful thing to make a promise to the old-age pensioners that the new pension would be paid on 1st January and then for the machinery not to be ready to pay them. I agree that would be a terrible thing. In the trade union movement, however, in negotiations with employers on increases in wages, it has been known—and I believe it has been known in the House—for it to be possible to make a decision that certain increases would be paid on a specific date, and that they would be back-dated to when the decision was taken. I suggest that the Minister should tell the old people of this country that they will receive the increases in their benefits from 1st January, and that he should explain to them that, if the machinery is not ready, it may be that they will be paid in the last week in April, but that they will get back pay from 1st January. Could he do that?
Mr. M. Turner-Samuels: It is very difficult, sitting here and listening to the Minister, to believe that this is an adult assembly. The reasons, or the lack of reasons, which he has attempted to put over to this side of the Committee—no doubt being confident that his own side will swallow them—are more fit for a nursery than for a deliberative assembly. Does the Minister ask us to accept the position that, having conceded increases in pensions, there is any difficulty in making those increases effective immediately, except lack of the will to do so.
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Here the Minister has a structure that has been built up, and is operating at the present moment over the precise field that these increases will cover. It is not too much to say that the payment of the increases would be part and parcel of, and concurrent with, the action which his Ministry is taking at the moment for the payment of pensions. The truth is that the difficulty is not in paying out the money; the trouble is that the Treasury will not give the Ministry the money to pay out.
It is no use whatever the Minister trying to put over this piece of sheer humbug, saying that he cannot pay the money until April. He could pay the money very quickly indeed. I doubt whether there is need for any delay whatever. All the Minister would have to do would be to put into the packets for the retirement pensioners the little extra that they are to have. For him to tell the Committee that with the machinery that he already has it will take four months is not only ludicrous, but completely wrong.
Mrs. Jean Mann: This welcome Measure has been introduced very quickly. At the time of the Budget we expected something like this, but the Chancellor told us that he must await the Report of the Phillips Committee. The Bill was ready before we had the Report, so we can congratulate the Minister upon some measure of speed. It will be nice at Christmas to know that the old people are to be so much better off.
However, I have a family of doctors, and they constantly tell me that the dangerous months for babies and old people are January, February and, particularly March. Cannot the right hon. Gentleman out of the goodness of his heart—[An HON. MEMBER: "Goodness? "I—everybody has some goodness in his heart—advance the date of payment a little, even to the beginning of March? If it is not to be until the end of April, the snows will have melted and the spring will be here and the need for coal and electricity will not be so clamant, although the money will be welcome; but if the old people could get the increase in March or at the end of February it would pay some of their bills for heat and light, and it would help them in other ways, because

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we must remember that the mortality rate among the elderly is highest in March.
I appeal to the right hon. Gentleman. I know quite well that he has a kind streak in his make-up. If he realised how much it meant to the old people he would put on a spurt, because
"He gives twice who gives quickly."
Question put and agreed to.
Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 6.—(EFFECT OF AWARDS MADE BEFORE, OR IN RESPECT OF THE PERIOD BEGINNING BEFORE, APPOINTED OR PRESCRIBED DAY.)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr. R. Williams: It would be quite wrong for me to refer to the Amendment on the Order Paper, and I do not propose to do so. But the Committee should not part with this Clause without very carefully scrutinising its effect, and considering the cases which it covers, and the circumstances in which these cases are covered by the Clause.
The Clause is in many respects very convenient for persons who are receiving benefits, but the increased benefits can be paid only if certain conditions are fulfilled. I propose for a short time to indicate what appear to be those conditions, and if the Minister agrees with me, the Committee will have a better idea about the range of cases which are covered.
First, it should be noted that the Clause opens with an exception:
"Except in such cases as may be prescribed by regulations made by the Minister …"
Those cases are excepted from the provisions of the Clause. It is important for the Committee to have an idea as to which cases are included before we can fairly see which are likely to be excluded under these regulation-making powers which are vested in the Minister.
We are not here dealing with a Clause which is merely convenient for those who happen to be receiving benefit, but we are also impliedly saying to the Minister that he has the power to exclude other cases. That may be a very formidable power indeed, because it may result in many people who think they ought to have benefits under this Clause not having them at all.
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It will save the time of the Committee if, instead of specifying the cases by categories, one indicates what conditions must be satisfied before anyone could receive a benefit under this Clause. The basic condition is that the person must have been injured by an accident arising out of and in the course of his employment and must be in receipt of a benefit. Beyond that he must be in receipt of a benefit under an award. Then it must appear that he is receiving less money than he would, in fact, be receiving under the Bill.
If he satisfies all those conditions, then the Clause provides most satisfactorily and clearly that the benefit shall, without any claim being made, become payable as from that day at the higher weekly rate. The important point is that this supplementation, with which this Clause is dealing, shall apply automatically when the conditions to which I have referred are completely fulfilled. That is the effect of the Clause.
Behind all that is the Fund itself out of which these additional payments will be made, because quite obviously additional payments could not be made if that Fund were short of the money available. Added to the conditions which apply to the men making claims one must consider the conditions which must apply so far as the Minister is concerned if he is to pay the money.
9.45 p.m.
Provided that he finds that all his questions are sufficiently answered, it seems to me that such persons as I have referred to should benefit under this Clause. The supplementation which the Minister can make along lines which, if not identical, are so closely related to this Clause that they could easily be adjusted by some adjustment in another place at a later stage—
The Chairman: There the hon. Gentleman is going a little too wide of the Question.
Mr. Williams: I take it that the only point at which I have gone a little too wide is in suggesting that the Minister may do something in another place. I withdraw that suggestion, and say that, within the terms of the Clause, the Minister may make certain explanations to us this evening. He may explain how it is that, with all these regulation-

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making powers which he has; with all these supplementation powers; with all the funds he has available to implement those powers, people who can satisfy all the conditions—to which I referred when I was, in my submission, entirely in order—but who happen to have sustained their injury before 5th July, 1948, should not be included here. If the Minister gives procedural reasons—
The Chairman: If the Minister tries to answer that, he will be out of order. He can deal only with what is in the Clause.
Mr. Williams: With respect, Sir Charles, my submission is that if the Minister admits all the conditions to which I have referred, which, if they are complied with should carry a supplementation here, he may very well, without going outside the terms of the Clause at all, explain why it is that these categories to which I have referred should be excluded as exceptions under the prescribed regulations which he is to make. If he does that he will be giving a clear picture of the effect of the Clause, and in my submission he can do so without being out of order.
What he should not do—and what I for one would not suggest that he should be invited to do—is to attempt to use this occasion to bring in a supplementation to the workmen's compensation cases. That would be quite wrong. If in every respect those cases were to comply with the conditions, the Minister might invite harsh criticism, but he could say, "I am sorry, but I cannot discuss those cases."
However, without discussing the workmen's compensation cases in terms—they are a very deserving class of case and there are about 30,000 of them in the mining industry alone—the Minister could give a clear explanation about why they are not specifically excluded by his regulation-making powers; or why he does not feel that with a little ingenuity they could be in this Clause.
Were he to refer to those cases, and the great hardship which they suffer, and the need for supplementation; were he to say there are provisions in this Clause, looked at in a very liberal way, which would enable him to make some provision for them, I can assure the Com-
1512
mittee that he would not be spoken of in such harsh terms as he will be if he says nothing; or that that is something entirely outside the scope of the Bill, and that he cannot make any observations at all. It will then be said that these people are being sent empty away, and the Minister would, I think rightly, be subject to bitter criticism. Let us have his explanation—entirely in order, of course—in relation to the deserving cases to which I have referred.
Mr. Peake: The hon. Member very nearly got out of order once or twice, but he asked for a short explanation of the Clause, and I should like to give it to him. It provides that
"Except in such cases as may be prescribed by regulations"
—and it is very doubtful whether it will be necessary to make any exceptions to the rule; these words are put in out of an abundance of caution—the awards in force shall have effect at the higher rates without any necessity for any claim being made.
The Clause also provides that awards made after a day has been appointed, and before that day, are to be at the new rate for any part of the period to which they relate which falls on or after the appointed day. Subsection (4) deals with special transitional powers needed to introduce the new scheme of disablement gratuties.
Mr. J. Griffiths: We are obliged for the Minister's explanation. Perhaps he will turn to the principal Act, to which, in a sense, this Bill is an addendum and not an amendment. There he will see that the Minister has power to make the provisions of that Act available to those who were entitled to benefit before the Act came into operation in 1946. This Bill will continue that power of the principal Act of 1946, and it will increase the benefits. Has the Minister, under this or any other Clause, power to make regulations which will extend these new benefits to persons who were provided for in the principal Act and can be provided for again? Section 82 of the principal Act says:
"Regulations may provide for conferring on persons who
(a) are or have been on or after the appointed day entitled in respect of any injury or disease to weekly payments by way

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of compensation under the Workmen's Compensation Acts, or under any contracting out scheme duly certified thereunder …"
and certain benefits are made payable to them. My hon. Friend has asked if that overriding provision is continued in this Bill. Would it be possible for the Minister to provide that some arrangement should be made out of the Industrial Injuries Fund for a supplement in respect of those who are entitled not only to the benefits prescribed here but to any benefits under the old Acts?
Mr. Peake: I can put the right hon. Gentleman's mind at rest by saying that I am advised that the increase in the unemployability supplement and the constant attendance allowance will extend to those cases which are covered by Section 82 of the principal Act.
Mr. J. Griffiths: It is true that those specific benefits are mentioned in Section 82, but subsection (1, a) makes it possible for the Minister to apply benefits to those who were entitled to benefits under the Workmen's Compensation Acts before the appointed day. Is it possible for him, under the Bill and the 1946 Act put together, to consider any scheme—without further legislation—by which these benefits could be made available to those who were entitled to the benefits when the 1946 Act came into operation?
Mr. Peake: No. I am advised that this Bill will have the effect only of extending the unemployability supplement and the constant attendance allowance in the class of case mentioned in Section 82.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 7 to 10 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

New Clause.—(AMENDMENT OF S. 65 OF NATIONAL INSURANCE ACT, 1946.)
(1) On the appointed day regulations made before the passing of this Act in exercise of the power conferred by subsection (2) of section sixty-five of the National Insurance Act, 1946, to prescribe modifications of, and additions and exceptions to, the foregoing provisions of that Act, in relation to existing contributors and existing beneficiaries, shall cease to have effect in relation to widows.
(2) On the appointed day (which shall not be later than the thirty-first day of March, nineteen hundred and fifty-five) the Minister shall make regulations (hereinafter called "new
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regulations") in exercise of the said last-mentioned power and in relation to widows so as to increase the widow's basic pension payable under regulations made before the passing of this Act and to make such other increases of pensions or other benefits payable to widows as may seem to the Minister proper to be made in exercise of the said power:
Provided that such new regulations shall not be made unless a draft thereof has been laid before Parliament and has been approved by resolution of each House of Parliament.
(3) Nothing in this section shall affect the validity or continuance of regulations made before the passing of this Act, save in so far as such regulations relate to widows, and nothing in this section shall restrict or affect what may be included in new regulations in relation to persons, other than widows.—[Mr. Houghton.]
Brought up and read the First time.
Mr. Houghton: I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.
Behind the rather formidable terms of this new Clause lies our concern for what we know as the 10s. widows. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) has skilfully drafted this new Clause to give us a certain latitude in debate and to avoid mentioning the amount by which we desire the 10s. benefit to be increased. It may be undesirable to get involved in a discussion of whether the 10s. benefit should be raised to 15s. or 20s. or some other amount. Our main concern is that we should invite the Minister to give us reassurances about his intention to do something for this diminishing but still deserving group of widows who still draw the original 10s. benefit under the old scheme.
We were encouraged in doing this by a remark which the Minister made in his statement during the Second Reading of the Bill. He referred to certain benefits not in the Bill which were being considered by the National Insurance Advisory Committee, and among them, he said, were the provisions for widows. He added:
"May I say, in passing, that that review includes the question of the 10s. widow about whom so many hon. Members have from time to time put questions to me."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th December, 1954; Vol. 535, c. 963]
I am not going into the history of the people known as the 10s. widows. We know that, in general, these widows are those who were either beneficiaries before the 1946 Act came into operation or have become widowed since and had certain rights from the early scheme, but who

1515
do not qualify for the new benefits under the new approach to widowhood which was embodied in the 1946 Act. Table 11 on page 20 of the Report by the Government Actuary on the review shows the number of these widowed pensioners in this year at about 170,000.
This is not by any means the first time that the invidious and unhappy position of these 10s. widow pensioners has been brought to the notice of the Committee or the House. When we were considering the Family Allowances and National Insurance Bill in Standing Committee upstairs on 15th May, 1952, there was a long debate on an Amendment which I moved to improve the 10s. basic pension of these widows.
I was, perhaps, unwise on that occasion to propose the amount by which I thought the 10s. pension should be increased, and, as a result, there was much discussion on whether my figure was too high or too low, whether it represented a proper relationship to the percentage rise in the cost of living, and on a great many other technical details which happily we need not bother about when discussing this new Clause, because no amount is proposed in it regarding the amount of the increase in the 10s. pension.
These widows are now getting on in years, and many of them are struggling trying to do a bit of work and pay their contributions under the present Scheme in order to qualify for the full retirement pension when they reach the age of 60. We think that something should be done to improve the 10s. pension which they now draw. We all remember that under the old scheme, when a married woman was widowed and she qualified for a widow's pension, she received 10s. per week whether she was fit or frail, old or young. She had that pension whether she went to work or not, and she had it for life. If she had any children, then she received an additional payment for those under school-leaving age.
10.0 p.m.
But under the new Scheme, following the recommendations of the Beveridge Report, the approach to the provision for widowhood was quite different. Now, as we know, many widows who have young children, and who are under the age of 50, receive no widows' pension at all. It is true that they receive the widows' initial allowance, but they do not receive
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a widows' pension. There are certain provisions regarding widowed mothers who are under 40 when their children cease to be of school age, and they, again, are not entitled to continuing widows' pensions.
Our approach to widowhood under the 1946 Act was quite different. It must be admitted that there are some widows under the new Scheme who receive no benefit at all, but who would under the old scheme have received the 10s. widows' pension. Our concern is that the 10s. is by now well below the 1946 purchasing power, and on those grounds alone we are of opinion that something should be done to bring that meagre benefit more into line with the current price level and with the level of other benefits.
When this matter was under discussion in Standing Committee in May, 1952, the then Parliamentary Secretary defended doing nothing for these widows on the ground that even in 1946 nothing was done to improve the residual benefits under the old scheme where the beneficiaries did not qualify for any addition under the new scheme. In effect, the then Parliamentary Secretary said that as nothing was done in 1946 or in 1951, there was no need to do anything in 1952. We have already heard that argument once again today.
We expect the Minister to break away from both precedent and tradition in matters where the remedy is called for. Conditions in 1954 are vastly different from what they were in 1946. We have seen many things about the new scheme which do not entirely fulfil the expectations which we had when the new scheme came into operation.
It is a miserable thing to leave these widows entirely out of any improvement in the meagre benefits which they now receive. They cannot qualify for the full benefit under the new Scheme except for sickness, unemployment and retirement pension. They have no other means of getting benefit under the new Scheme except those of the ordinary contributor moving towards age 60 when, if they qualify under the retirement conditions, they may be entitled to a full retirement pension. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will have something encouraging to say about the 10s. widows' pensions.

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I am not quite sure of the circumstances in which this matter has gone to the National Insurance Advisory Committee. If it is in good hands there, who are we to take it away, so long as the Minister makes sure that the National Insurance Advisory Committee deals with this matter especially, and with the others as well, we hope, and makes an early report?
Then new Clause fixes an appointed day upon which new regulations affecting widows are to be laid before the House. We fix the appointed day; we do not leave it in the hands of the Minister. It is fixed at 31st March, 1955, and that should give time enough for the Minister to get the report from the National Insurance Advisory Committee, reach conclusions upon its recommendations, and lay his proposals before the House.
Mrs. Lena Jeger: I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the Committee hope very much that the Minister will take advantage of the opportunity that the proposed new Clause gives him to do something for these widows. I am told, in a Written answer today, that there are 165,000 widows in the country still receiving the old 10s. benefit. They are a diminishing band because they are an ageing part of our population. Therefore, the Minister's liability is a decreasing one.
I asked in a Written Question today what it would cost to put these 10s. benefits up to the level of the purchasing power they had in 1925, and the Parliamentary Secretary replied that the cost would be about £2¾ million. That is a very small sum compared with the amount that we are talking about in this great National Insurance Scheme. I am sure that all hon. Members often receive letters, and very often bitter letters, from widows who are in these difficult circumstances, showing that the women feel they are very much a forgotten legion, or, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Fulham, West (Dr. Summerskill) referred to them last week, the "Cinderellas of the Welfare State."
They are, in fact, a forgotten legion, except when contributions have to be raised. Although their benefit has continued unchanged at 10s., each time there has been an increase in contributions
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they have been called upon to pay it. Many women getting 10s.—which, in terms of pre-war values, is worth about 4s., considering the prices of some things today—are to be asked, under the Bill, whether they want to keep up their payments entitling them to retirement pensions, to pay 5s. 2d. if they are not at work.
These are the only beneficiaries from whom we are taking something away. Under the proposals of the Bill we shall be leaving them worse off than they were before. If they are working, the rates will go up according to whether they are earning more or less than 30s. It will be 4s. 7d. under 30s. and 6s. 9d. above. In many cases these women are doing little jobs, like helping in school canteens or doing domestic work, and are not earning a great deal more than 30s. a week. For these women, the contribution will go up to 6s. 9d.
This is an opportunity for the Minister to do something. He has not done much today to commend himself to the people of this country and I very much hope that he will help these women. Many of them have fulfilled all the obligations that were incumbent upon them at the time their husbands died. Their husbands' cards were fully stamped up, according to the legislation then obtaining. The only fault so far as these women are concerned is that in many cases their husbands died too soon. They have fulfilled all the obligations relating to contributions. It seems most unfair that they alone should be excluded from the benefits which we are now considering.
The Minister suggested last week that he could not help the 10s. widows at this time because their case was before the National Insurance Advisory Committee. There are two ways of approaching this matter. I quite agree that there is a case for considering the whole problem of the status of these women in the pattern of the Welfare State, and it is very important that the Advisory Committee should be doing that.
I understood—I hope I am right—that the purpose of the Bill is not to increase benefits, but merely to raise them to a purchasing power equivalent to that which obtained when the benefits originally came into force. I cannot see, therefore, why the important question of the status of these pensioners should not be

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left before the Committee; and why they should not be included in a purely routine Measure raising their benefit to a purchasing power equivalent to that which the original 10s. conferred.
It is difficult to tell people who are getting the 10s. that their case is before a committee and that that is all there is to be said about it. They cannot tell the coalman that—or the landlord. Landlords are not interested, especially at a time when increased demands under the Housing Repairs and Rents Act are fast coming in. When the 10s. widow tells the landlord that perhaps she may be a little better off later, and may be able to pay the rent, he is not interested.
I plead with the Minister to be sympathetic to break away from the rather bureaucratic approach that sometimes rather confuses this problem, and to accept the new Clause, which, I am sure, will be welcomed by people of all shades of opinion.
Dr. King: We are all in this together. We all have to accept some responsibility for the fact that, although, in the National Insurance Scheme we have looked after the aged and the fatherless, we have never been quite clear as to the fair way to treat widows. We have tried to improve things in recent years by raising the amount a widow can earn. I want to remind the Committee just who are these groups of widows who receive unjust treatment, and whom this clause seeks to benefit.
Some widows get less than the full rate because their late husband's contributions were not fully paid up. That is a very small group. If the husband was unable to pay through sickness the National Assistance Board made up his contributions. This group will consist largely of the widows of Class 2 contributors, self-employed people, or people coming from abroad. That is one small group.
The largest group of unjustly treated widows is the now well-known group called the 10s. widows. Before 1948, many of them were married to men who were qualified under the previous Act for a 10s. benefit. Their husbands, however, died before qualifying for the benefits under the present Act. Others—after the 13 weeks of help which all widows get after bereavement—either because they have no child, or because they were under
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50 when the husband died, or because, being over 50, had not been married for 10 years, receive only the 10s. benefit because their late husbands had pre-1948 qualifications.
Many of these receive nothing at all—except the benefits of National Assistance, about which I shall speak in a moment—from the National Insurance Act, 1946. All the reasons which I have mentioned as disqualifying those widows are reasons over which the widows themselves could have no control whatever. They are either acts of God or accidental dates on the calendar. What makes it much more grave is the fact that such a 10s. widow cannot expect, on the strength of her husband's contribution, to draw her retirement pension at 60.
10.15 p.m.
Widows who receive full benefit earn the right to retirement pension at 60 on the strength of their late husbands' insured position. Not so these widows. They have to go on paying National Insurance contributions to qualify themselves as insured persons for the retirement pension at 60. They have to have paid at least 104 contributions; they must have paid an annual average of 50 contributions; otherwise, they have to wait for the non-contributory pension later in life. So that the 10s. widow, the so-called basic widow, has to keep up her contributions out of her earnings to avoid being one of those waiting for the noncontributory pension, and her contributions to National Insurance are to be raised by this Bill. She is a woman who, far from receiving any benefit from the Bill, suffers financial injury as a result of its provisions.
Moreover, there is a group of widows whose late husbands may have been earning just enough to have been above the opportunity of making contributions to National Health Insurance before the National Insurance Act, and this group is not receiving even the 10s. pension. So we have not only 10s. widows but no-shilling widows suffering very greatly.
It is true that this is only part of the story. My right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelly (Mr. J Griffiths) could never have left this quite large group of women in the position I have described. Obviously. among these widows those who are really poor, those in real distress, are Picked up by National Assistance.

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National Assistance was created parallel with the great National Insurance Act to pick up and deal with such anomalies as these, and it is doing grand work.
We have argued all the year, however, and, indeed, it is the deep, implicit thought behind the Bill, that we should try to raise the national level of pensions as of right. The Minister himself is boasting that he is lifting some old-age pensioners from National Assistance because he is raising their basic pension. I believe that he has gone too far in the disparity in the amounts by which he has raised the two, but he subscribes to the principle of granting people their benefit as of right, which is one we have been arguing on both sides of the Committee for quite a long time.
Many of us have been trying to assure people who go to National Assistance that there is no stigma in that, that is part of the pattern of the Welfare State which is doing a grand job, but there are still thousands of people who are unwilling to go to National Assistance. When we debated this in March cases were mentioned of people who had to be found out and urged to take National Assistance, because they were unwilling to seek what they still regarded as old public assistance.
I had in my "surgery" last weekend a widow, a dear, refined old lady, living alone—and how lonely elderly people can be—who was paying an exorbitant rent for two rooms. Her husband had been careful and thrifty all his life. He had cared for his own widowed mother, too. When National Insurance came in he rejoiced because he thought that it meant that if anything happened to him, at any rate his widow would be all right. He died three weeks before he had enough National Insurance contribution stamps to qualify his widow for benefit.
The woman has to seek National Assistance, but she feels it keenly. She wept as she described her position and as she attempted to explain that she wanted her pension as of right and not as a grant from National Assistance. My job that day, as is the job of many a Member with some of his constituents, was to persuade her to regard National Assistance as something that she could accept without any shame at all. It seems to me, however. that it is our job in this Committee tonight to attempt to
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persuade the Minister to remove this group of widows from the necessity of having to go to National Assistance.
I have said many times that nothing hurts more than an injustice. If one widow compares herself with another widow, when each receives from the State different rates of benefits and both have suffered the same bereavement and have faced the same problem, the only difference between them being some technical matter of dates or of the time of the husband's death, then the widow who suffers financially for a reason which she cannot understand not only has a financial problem to face but feels a deep sense of injustice. I hope that the Minister will put this right.
Mr. Peake: I do not want to curtail the debate, but I think that it would be helpful to hon. Members if I intervened for a short time. I was going to begin by commending the draftsmanship of the new Clause, which I believe is to be attributed to the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison), but I have to add that I have never before seen a Clause which compelled a Minister to make regulations on a particular day, namely 31st March.
Mr. H. Hynd: It states "not later than" the 31st March.
Mr. Peake: One only has to mention the word "widow" in conjunction with the rate of 10s. for everybody immediately to assume that here must be a very hard case where a remedy is urgently called for, but I would point out to hon. Members that the approach to widowhood, as such, changed when we adopted the Beveridge proposals. The hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) put this very clearly.
Before that date, it was thought proper that widowhood by itself, whether or not there were young children, and whatever the age of the widow, should attract a permanent, regular, weekly payment of compensation from the contributory insurance scheme. After 1946, and after the 1946 Act came into force in 1948, there was a new approach and long-term provision for widows was made in only three cases. It was made where they were incapable of self-support, or where they were over 50 at the time that they were widowed—and then only if they had been married for 10 years—on the

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grounds that at that age it was unreasonable to ask them to enter the labour market and seek a job. The third case was that where there were young children in the home.
One has heard this point put in different ways, but from 1948 onwards, the loss of a husband was no longer thought to be a circumstance which properly called for a regular weekly payment out of the National Insurance Fund. I have heard it put in the form of the statement that the mere loss of a husband did not call for a regularly weekly payment. I have also heard it put that the loss of a mere husband was not something which called for a regular weekly payment. However, that was the new approach of the 1946 Act. But the right hon. Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths) made a curious provision among the transitional arrangements. I am not quite sure, even now, whether he was right or wrong. I accept part of the responsibility, because I was a member of the Standing Committee at which we discussed all the details of that Measure.
The right hon. Gentleman provided that any woman who was married to a contributor before 5th July, 1948, should have a kind of reserved right, on widowhood, to the old 10s. pension. The result of that is that these pensions on this low rate of 10s., made under certain circumstances, can continue to be granted for as far ahead as 1980.
In the case of men having retirement pensions a different system was adopted. There the right to a 10s. automatic pension was abolished after a period of five years, and they were forced to take a pension dependent on retirement. They could not claim a 10s. pension which they had a right to automatically when they attained the age of 65. I am beginning to wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman was right in preserving a kind of vested right for persons who happened to be married before a certain date and in denying it to spinsters who were not married by a certain date, that vested right to go on for another 30 years from today, with an entitlement to a pension at a very low rate. At any rate that was done at that time.
This Bill improves the rates for the first 13 weeks of widowhood, which are generous at 55s., and it also provides
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the new 40s. rate as a permanent rate for the pensions. But the reasons hitherto given not only by me but by the former Minister of National Insurance in the Labour Government for not making these 10s. widows' pensions up has been that under the new Scheme the people can be widowed without any entitlement to a pension at all. It has been held that, for that reason, it would be scarcely equitable to increase a rate of pension which finds no counterpart at all in the new approach to widowhood which was adopted in the 1946 Act.
I want to give the Committee the fullest possible information about this matter. Just before the 1946 Act came into force, 485,000 women were drawing the old 10s. pension. The numbers, of course, have decreased steadily as those widows were either upgraded to a higher rate in 1948 by virtue of the fact that they had young children or by virtue of the fact that they were invalids. Many of them have now got into the retirement pension class by virtue of having passed the age of 60, and the result is that the numbers of widows with this low rate of pension has fallen to about 165,000.
Our information, as a result of the inquiries undertaken in 1952, seemed to show that the great majority of these 10s. widow pensioners were in regular employment, and they also show that of all classes being supplemented, or having insurance benefits or pensions supplemented, by the National Assistance Board, these 10s. widows provided a smaller proportion of supplementation cases than any other class of insurance beneficiaries.
Nevertheless, I want to say this to the Committee. I am not altogether happy about the provisions for widowhood embodied in the 1946 Act. Hon. Members will remember that at that time we adopted new maternity provisions. We devised what we thought were the best possible provisions that could be devised or imagined, but the right hon. Lady, three years after the appointed day, early in 1951, found that the machine was creaking in the matter of maternity provisions.
She referred the question to the National Insurance Advisory Committee, a most eminent body, and I should like at this stage to pay tribute to it. It includes members of the Trades Union

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Congress, together with employers and other distinguished people. I think it produced an extraordinarily good new scheme which we were able to embody in the Act which we passed two years ago.
I have referred this question of the widows to the National Insurance Advisory Committee. I will tell the Committee of some of the matters about which I do not feel convinced that what we did in 1948 was necessarily right. I am not altogether happy about the age of 50, which was rather arbitrarily chosen. I am not altogether happy about what I call the 10-year rule—that is, having to be married 10 years. And there are various refinements of that rule which enable one to link marriage to one person, who dies, with a marriage to some other person, provided that the death and remarriage are not separated by too long a period.
10.30 p.m.
Again, I am not altogether happy about the transition which occurs from a higher to a lower rate of benefit, sometimes for quite a short period, at the time when the youngest child reaches the school-leaving age. All this needs to be looked at again.
Another thing I am not happy about is reserving a right to persons who happened to be married before a certain date—this was done in the case of the widows but was denied to men—for the purpose of the retirement pension, thereby putting us in the position of going on granting to persons who happened to be married before a certain date pensions at what will look in the future a quite derisory rate, perhaps as late as 1980.
I want the National Insurance Advisory Committee to look at the whole subject, and it is for that reason I have referred it to them. In conjunction with that reference to the Committee, we are undertaking a new inquiry in the Ministry, with the help of the National Assistance Board, to try to find out more about the present position of the group drawing this 10s. widow's pension. I am inclined to think, although our records about them are not up-to-date, that a great proportion of those who were getting elderly in 1948 are now passing, or have passed, into the retirement pension class, and their places in this group of pensioners are being taken by comparatively young
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widows who happened to be married before 1948, but had no qualification for the higher rates of pension given by the 1948 Act.
I hope with that statement, which I trust will be understood to be a sympathetic one, the Committee will not insist upon passing this rather arbitrary provision into the Bill. I want to give the National Insurance Advisory Committee sufficient time to have a good look at this subject. In the case of the maternity provisions, the right hon. Lady will remember that the Committee took about 18 months to arrive at a conclusion, but when it was reached, it was a good conclusion. I hope, therefore, that the Committee will not be unduly hustled or pressed in this matter and that we shall be able to consider its report upon this matter as a part of the wider non-statutory review of the great insurance Scheme which is progressing at the present time, and to which I referred in the Second Reading debate.
Mr. Mitchison: Before the right hon. Gentleman sits down, will he answer one question? I wonder if the Minister will agree with me that while one can properly raise the question of the 10s. widows under this Bill, many other matters concerning widows involve introducing new beneficiaries or perhaps the stopping of pension altogether, and therefore would not appear to be within the scope of this Bill or within the Long Title, so that this proposed new Clause was necessarily limited to a particular class of widows?
Mr. Peake: Certainly, I agree that there are probably many things which hon. Members in many parts of the Committee might want to provide widows with which would be outside the scope of this Bill.
Dr. Summerskill: I believe that I detected a note of real sympathy in the voice of the Minister tonight. But he will agree that he has deceived us before by that note, and so we are inclined to be a little suspicious. I was disappointed when he opened once more by pointing to the precedent of 1946 and subsequent years for a scheme of this kind. Surely he would agree that there is no virtue in always being consistent.
He has already provided an example of where I was prepared to eat my words

1527
about the question of a maternity scheme, and he would agree that in this Scheme there are already so many anomalies that to create a few more does not call for an apology. Therefore, although I agree that after 1946 we told the particular widows about whom we are now talking that it was necessary to maintain the rate at 10s., because they did not qualify. I feel, at this stage, while the original Act is undergoing so many amendments, that this particular category calls for our sympathy.
The Minister said that few of them asked for a supplementary grant. But surely he must also realise that these women are for the most part unskilled and in the lowest-income groups. They do not call for a supplementary grant, but it does not mean that they are not in want because they are the lowest-income groups. The great majority of our scrubbers in Whitehall—our "Mrs. Mops"—are widows. Therefore, I do not think that we can find such comfort in analysing the figures and discovering that they are not asking for supplementary benefits.
I wish to ask, when did the Minister give instructions to the Advisory Committee to examine the whole question? Although it took the Advisory Committee 18 months to produce a report on the maternity schemes, and the final schemes were rather complicated in character, this question of widows' benefits has been examined many times, and an increase in benefit to these widows is not of such a complicated character, and does not involve plans for midwifery in the home or institution and so on.
I hope, therefore, that the right hon. Gentleman will not tell the House that, because the maternity schemes took 18 months to devise, the question of widow's benefit will take a similar time. Will he tell us when he gave the instructions; where he made the inquiries; how the discussions are going forward; and when he hopes to receive a report.
Mr. Peake: The right hon. Lady will have observed that in my Second Reading speech I mentioned three important questions, of which this was one, which I have referred to the Advisory Committee. They were the provisions for widows and other dependants; the question of contribution conditions for the
1528
receipt of benefits—and that is a pretty wide question—and contribution liability for small-income groups in which my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Miss Ward) was particularly interested.
I announced at the end of March, or the beginning of April, in connection with the statutory review, that I was referring these three questions to the National Advisory Committee. I cannot give the Committee any real information about the progress of the Advisory Committee. It is going ahead and, as the right hon. Lady knows, it does not waste time. But I suppose that it will be some months before we have a report.
Miss Margaret Herbison: I join with my right hon. Friend in asking the Minister to get this report quickly. The right hon. Gentleman suggested that it would not be right for us to try to hustle this Committee. But it depends on what one feels about the importance of the matter before the Committee. I understood from the reply of the Minister to my right hon. Friend that this matter has been before the Advisory Committee since March this year. That means that it is one of three matters which have been before the Committee for about nine months.
It seems to me that that is a considerable time because, on this matter of the "10s. widow"—those women who receive only 10s.—the problem is not nearly so complex as the one on which recommendations had to be given before. I am quite sure that there are many hon. Members on this side of the Committee, as well as on the Government side, who want to hustle that Committee so that it will get out its report as soon as it possibly can.
We ask in this new Clause for certain regulations, and I understand that, even when we get the report from the National Insurance Advisory Committee, we shall have to wait for legislation, and, that being so, I expect we shall be told that after that legislation is on the Statute Book, several months will have to elapse before payment can be made.
I say all this because, if one goes in a leisurely fashion, it will be a very long time before there is any improvement of the kind which we want for these widows who are receiving only 10s. I have had

1529
some correspondence with the Minister and his Department about representations from certain people, not only in my own constituency, but from all over the country, on this question.
I think that this is the only time today when the Minister has not fallen back on some precedent set by this side of the Committee, and I must say that I feel somewhat heartened because I think that the Minister intends to do something; but, at the same time, I fear that that something may be long in coming. The Minister has said that there are about 165,000 of these widows receiving 10s. I expect that a great many of those are women who are not in regular employment; that is, women not doing a full-time job; and many of us on this side would point out that though they are doing part-time jobs they are paying the full contributions, although denied any rights of unemployment benefit because they are considered to be casual workers. It makes matters very difficult for these women.
Our new Clause asks for regulations to be made, and a number of my hon. Friends have suggested that we should try to raise the purchasing power of the rate given until it has the same value as when the 10s. was first decided on some years ago. I do not think that that is nearly enough. I think that we should still be doing an injustice to many of these women if we merely raised the 10s. to its purchasing power in the days when it was first given.
I would like to see these women receive the same widows' pension as other widows who are getting the full rate today and, when I say that, I add that I would be willing to apply the same restrictions to those widows as apply to those who became widow's after 1948. I am not asking for the full widows' pension as we know it today to be given to these 165,000; what I ask for is that the full rate should be given to a certain number of them.
These are the points which I make, and which I hope will be considered by the National Insurance Advisory Committee because they may well help it in its work. It may be of assistance to the Committee if it knows what is in the minds, not only of hon. Members, but of many people throughout this country.
10.45 p.m.
Mr. Kenneth Thompson: I hope that the Committee will not consider it remiss if a word is said from this side of the Committee—
Mr. Emrys Hughes: Hear, hear.
Mr. Thompson: It is a great relief to the Committee to know that the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) has woken up—in order to express our appreciation of the approach of the Minister to this very difficult problem. There are probably no Members who have not at some time or another been gravely disturbed in their minds over the position of those whom we refer to somewhat lightheartedly as the 10s. widows. It is perfectly true that many of these women sustain themselves by taking the lowest-paid jobs in various industries, including the distributive trades.
Many of us are aware of extremely hard cases existing among this class of widow pensioner, and there are probably no Members who have not been greatly impressed by the courage and fortitude of many of these women, who do jobs which are not very congenial or easy to do, in order that they can keep themselves in respectability and independence. The fact that there are now being applied to this problem, through the action of the Minister, the best and most knowledgeable brains among those who are interested in insurance problems, will be a great comfort to many people in my constituency.
I was greatly interested in the remark of the hon. Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) that on this question, for the first time, the Minister had departed—so she said—from pleading in aid the example set by the last Labour Government and the predecessors of my right hon. Friend in the office he now holds. It is significant that this should have been the first occasion upon which my right hon. Friend has managed to secure the approbation of both sides of the Committee. If he departs more frequently and dynamically from the examples set by his Socialist predecessors he may find even greater favour, not only on this side, but on the opposite side of the Committee. I have the greatest pleasure in commending the action of my right hon. Friend, and join

1531
with all Members in hoping for a speedy solution of this very difficult problem.
Mr. Thomas Steele: The argument of the Minister tonight indicated that he ought to accept this new Clause. We are not now concerned about the date when the new regulations should come in, but if he accepts the Clause, once the National Insurance Advisory Committee has reported he will have the power to bring in any provisions which are suggested by that body, and we need not await any further legislation.
Mr. Peake: The hon. Gentleman has been Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry and is probably aware that I have power by regulations, quite apart from this new Clause, to deal with this matter. The new Clause is simply a peg on which to hang a debate.
Mr. Steele: So long as it is not a peg upon which to hang widows, I do not mind.
I have some sympathy with the Minister in his task of answering the points which have been raised. In my experience at the Ministry of National Insurance, and in my travels through the country, nothing has caused me more difficulty than explaining the position of the 10s. widows. I was interested in what the Minister said about it, but before any of my hon. Friends who welcome the Minister's statement leave the Chamber I hope that they will note that one of the suggestions he made was that the Ms. pension should be abolished altogether.
I think that it will be difficult to point out the problem to many of my hon. Friends, because I have argued it with them on many occasions and still they are unable to see the point which was made in 1948 with regard to these pensioners. Change 17, on page 64 of the Beveridge Report states:
"There is no reason why a childless widow should get a pension for life; if she is able to work, she should work."
That is a bold and clear statement. When Lord Beveridge made that recommendation, he had in mind that no childless widow should have a pension if she was under 60 years of age. But when the 1946 Bill reached the Statute Book, the age of 60 had been reduced to 50. Therefore, some improvement was made in that respect. I am glad to note that
1532
the Minister is recommending to the National Insurance Advisory Committee that the question of age should be considered.
My next point is that in 1948 we were faced with the problem that the new provisions were entirely different from the old with regard to widows, and I think that the Committee has to face that fact. The problem arose concerning the transitional payments, and as to what we were going to do with the people receiving benefit at that time.
Widows with children received the new pensions, and incapacitated widows received the new incapacitation benefit, but widows who were childless and who were able to work were not given any increase at all. They were left with the 10s. pension in accordance with the provisions of the new principles embodied in the Beveridge Report.
After 1948, it was clear that widows who were childless and who were not incapacitated would not get a pension at all, and that, I think, should be borne in mind. When we discussed the matter on the National Insurance Advisory Committee at that time, it was felt that the contract was such that those insured persons who had contributed under the old Act would qualify for the 10s. widows' pension without any conditions whatsoever. My right hon. Friend suggested that that right should be maintained. Indeed, the Minister himself has said that he also agrees with this.
As the right hon. Gentleman pointed out, this means that any widow whose husband contributed under the old Act and who qualified under the old Act was entitled to the 10s. as of right, even if after the 1948 Act she was not entitled to the full widows' pension. At that time, we thought that we were conferring a benefit on that widow, but it seems to me that we did the very opposite.
That is exactly what has happened. At present we could have the case of two widows of 30 years of age who were widowed during the same week. The one whose husband had contributed under the old Act would get a pension of 10s. and the other widow whose husband had only contributed under the new Act would get nothing at all.
All the argument in the Committee tonight has been in favour of the widow who receives 10s. and no plea has been

1533
made for the widow who is receiving nothing at all. That is why I am glad that the Minister is sending this matter to the National Insurance Advisory Committee, so that all the provisions can be considered.
I am concerned about widowhood in general, and, if my conscience troubles me about the 1946 Act at all, it is because we have never made proper provisions for widows with children. I regret that in his recommendations to the National Insurance Advisory Committee, the Minister is not asking it to consider whether the widows' pension is adequate at the present time.
Change 17 also states:
"Replacement of unconditional inadequate widows' pensions by provision suited to the varied needs of widows,"
and that:
"The rate of guardian benefit proposed is designed to be sufficient, in combination with children's allowances, to meet subsistence needs, even if the widow does not undertake any gainful occupation while she is looking after the children."
Therefore, what the National Insurance Advisory Committee ought to consider is whether this benefit is adequate at the appropriate time.
I think that we have been troubled all the time in the consideration of this matter by the insistence of Lord Beveridge on the flat rate of subsistence benefit. I know the arguments for that, and I also know the old argument about whether a person should have sickness or unemployment benefit, and so on. Looking back on it, it seems to me that the arguments for a flat rate of subsistence benefit, where it applied to sickness and unemployment benefit, had no application at all to widowhood, which was an entirely different benefit.
The Bill proposes to pay to an old couple the sum of 65s. a week, while to a widow with two children living at home it proposes to pay only 63s. In all fairness, is this right and proper? The 63s. is made up of the widowed mother's allowance of 51s. 6d., the family allowance of 8s. and the increment for the second child of 3s. 6d. The rent factor applies both to the old couple and to the widow.
11.0 p.m.
Is it to be argued that an old couple living alone require as much food and
1534
nourishment as a widow and her two children? We have only to think of what is necessary for the growing child to know that the old couple require less food. Again, an old couple do not require as much clothing as does the family I have instanced—the widow with two children. Every parent knows the sort of bills that have to be met for children's clothing, boots and shoes, and so on. Even for the ordinary pleasures and interests of life, that little family needs more than does the old couple. Even the National Assistance scales make greater provision for the old couple than for the widow and her two children. If the children are under five years of age the payment is 61s. 6d., as against 63s. for the old couple. If one child is over five years of age, an extra 2s. 6d. is paid.
The Minister should put the whole question of widowhood benefits before the National Insurance Advisory Committee. The conscience of this House should be stirred at the thought of the widow's struggles. It should recall that the Beveridge proposal was to give to her an adequate pension, which would ensure, irrespective of gainful employment, a livelihood for her and for her children. The problem should be studied afresh. If we can have an assurance from the Minister that, in addition to the matters which he is to put before the Advisory Committee, he will ask it to consider the amount paid to the widow, I shall be satisfied.
Miss Alice Bacon: As the Minister himself has mentioned my chief point, I shall be brief. It is a point which I have raised on many occasions with my right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths).
The truth is that with regard to widows' pensions we have got into a complete muddle. That was to be expected, because after 1948 we carried forward the potential benefits of pre-1948. It was then said that we could not take away the rights which had already been paid for; that it would be unfair to deprive future widows of the 10s. pension to which their husbands had contributed. The fact remains that we had already set a precedent in regard to the retirement pension.
I think that what I said at that time has come to pass. I said that, as the years

1535
went by, the insurance part of the pension, and the pre-1948 Act, would be forgotten, and that what would be looked at would be what was in operation at the particular time. I think that is what has happened. In one street we can have four childless widows. A widow of 25 can be receiving a pension of 10s.; a widow of 35 can be receiving nothing; a widow of 51 may receive 32s. 6d., and a widow of 59, 10s. That shows that in regard to widows' pensions we have got into rather a muddle, and I am pleased that the matter is to be examined.
Reference has been made to the widows over 50 who are receiving a pension of 10s., and I want to make my position on this matter clear. I do not think we could take away from the widow any money she is receiving; but it would be reasonable to say that in future we are not going to pay the 10s. pension to young widows. If we fix 50 as a reasonable age at which a childless widow shall have the pension, then I think we ought to say that a widow of that age is a widow of 50, no matter what the insurance contributions were previously.
I think there is a good case for saying that in future we will pay no more 10s. widows' pensions to those under 50, and to counteract that we will give to those over 50 a pension equivalent to the pension they are now receiving under the 1948 Act. We would be taking from those able to do without, and giving to those in need. Most of those over 50 are employed, or are drawing National Assistance. If they are employed, the earnings rule will apply. If they are drawing National Assistance, then it will not be any extra. I hope that the Minister will look at this matter as quickly as possible, and that we shall be able to bring the various pensions into line with one another.
Mr. H. Hynd: For a long time it has been evident that hon. Members on both sides of the Committee have been troubled about this class of pensioner, and it has been refreshing to hear the back-bench contribution to the discussion. No doubt many other hon. Members on the other side of the Committee would wish to give their views in a more private place, bringing pressure to bear on the Minister on this subject.
1536
The Minister's sympathetic tones this evening must have been welcomed on all sides. Unfortunately, he spoiled matters when talking of reference to the Advisory Committee. He seemed to give the impression that it would be a long time before we could have the results of the Committee's consideration of the matter. I would suggest to him that if the Committee is to be bogged down considering the three questions he has submitted to it, he might ask the Committee for an interim report on the matter we are discussing. Then we could get on with the necessary alteration in the 10s. widows' pension, a matter which all hon. Members want to see dealt with.
All hon. Members must recognise that there are anomalies, and that we have widows who are receiving nothing. There are also a considerable number who are getting only 10s. Whatever arrangements we may make for the future, they are on the books, and we shall have to do something about them. We cannot be satisfied with their receiving only 10s., particularly as, if they wish to continue their insurance so as to get retirement benefit at 60, they have to pay more than 5s. for an insurance stamp. That just cannot continue, and something must be done about it.
I have a suggestion I want to put to the Minister. If he cannot immediately give these widows a financial increase, he could allow them to continue their insurance for the retirement pension at 60 either by giving them a free stamp or by allowing them to continue to pay a nominal sum, as in the case of a married woman in employment. People receiving sickness benefit, unemployment benefit, retirement benefit are not expected to pay for insurance stamps at the same time, and it may be possible that those widows who are receiving this small pension could be excused payment for the stamp and allowed to continue their insurance on a free membership basis.
I hope the Minister will think this suggestion worthy of consideration and pass it on to the Advisory Committee, and that something will be done for these widows quickly.
Mr. F. H. Hayman: I do not wish to detain the Committee unduly, but I cannot let this debate pass without making a plea for sympathy for these widows. I do not

1537
mind if I am accused of being sentimental about it. I am the son of a widow of the days before there were 10s. pensions. I could tell some horrifying stories of how this country treated its widows 40 years or more ago and it has been made evident in the debate that hundreds of those sorts of widows are still being harshly treated in this society of ours.
I would beg my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Miss Bacon) not to put the widows' pensionable age at 50 but 40, because anyone who has any knowledge of the working classes must know that women who have had children are, at 40, no longer fit to go into the labour market to compete with younger women. I am ashamed to say that some local authorities today are not prepared to give preference to widows when they have vacancies for women employees. They allow them to compete in open competition with younger and stronger women, sometimes married women whose husbands have good employment.
I believe that the Committee generally sympathise with the claims of the widows. I am sure nobody in our society deserves it more. At one meeting at the last General Election three of the 10s. widows asked me the same question, why they could not get a pension of more than 10s. I do not want to say any more now. I may have spoken with sentiment, but I am not ashamed of it.
Mr. Keenan: There is one point that has not been made yet and which I want to put to the Minister. I put it to his predecessors for consideration, without success. More than three years ago I asked what was the number of 10s. widows. I think the number then was 300,000. It has decreased, but, obviously, Some of those women have died.
Here is my suggestion. There is a very large number of 10s. widows who are not working, and who have not worked for a variety of reasons. Will the right hon. Gentleman consider the desirability of making it possible for them to qualify for pension at 60? I suggest that at the age of 60 it is desirable to let the 10s. pensioner qualify for the higher pension.
Question put and negatived.
11.15 p.m.
Mr. J. Griffiths: I beg to move, That the Chairman do report Progress and ask leave to sit again.
We have made good progress today and I think we have reached a convenient stage at which we could break off until tomorrow. I do not think it would be wise now to embark on the Amendments to the Schedule, which are the next batch for consideration. It would be better if we took them tomorrow, when we can come fresh to our task. I hope, therefore, that the Leader of the House and the Minister will agree that this is the proper time at which to stop consideration of the Bill for today.
The Lord Privy Seal (Mr. Harry Crookshank): We certainly have done well today. We have made good progress and we are not too late. From all the reports I have heard, the debate has reached a high standard, with everybody anxious to get on with what all sides of the Committee desire, to pass this Bill on from this House and as soon as possible get it on the Statute Book. If we were to proceed in the same sort of way tomorrow, it would be better to stop now and start then with the new block of Amendments. The Government are, therefore, willing to accept the Motion.
Question put and agreed to.
Committee report Progress; to sit again Tomorrow.

HOUSING, COVENTRY
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Oakshott.]
11.18 p.m.
Miss Elaine Burton: I think that the speed with which we have reached the Adjournment has rather caught the Parliamentary Secretary of Housing and Local Government unawares. I seem to be here before he is.
The question of housing in Coventry, of course, preceded the war. I have raised it twice before in the House, and I think our case is such a strong one that there is no need for me to make it in any party sense. Therefore, I want to go

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through the reasons as quickly as possible, setting out why we in Coventry think that particular attention should be paid by the Minister to our problem.
First, Coventry is producing in value two-thirds of the total British rearmament programme. It has also, as I believe everybody knows, played a great part in the export programme, particularly through the motor car industry. Indeed, some hon. Members may remember only last week reading of a more powerful jet engine than has hitherto been developed being produced and type tested in Coventry. In fact, the Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire Seven is adding new lustre to the industry of our country. The part that Coventry is playing in defence and the export programme is, I know, fully realised by the Government.
The second point I want to put to the Parliamentary Secretary is this. In 1939, the population of Coventry was 190,000; today, it is approximately 264,000. In 1947, we had a review of the people already on our housing list. At that time, and after the review, we found that 11,300 applicants were actually on the list. There were also a further 500 in temporary accommodation and a further 1,500 in seriously unfit property. That, as the Parliamentary Secretary will know, gave us a total of 13,300 people actually waiting for accommodation, and I would emphasise that it is clear from those figures that we have in Coventry a hard core of housing applications which remains around the 10,000 mark.
There is little or no chance, I would say, of our clearing these off within a reasonable number of years, unless the Minister will allow us to build to the maximum capacity of which we are capable. So we are saying to the Minister tonight that because of these two factors—the heavy and continued migration to our city and the desire of the Government that we should continue to play our part in this defence and export programme—we believe that Coventry justifies a claim for special treatment in the 'housing of its workers.
On 21st October, during a debate in the House, I asked the Minister if we could undertake in Coventry immediately the construction of a further 500 houses. This we were in a position to do because of
1540
the long-term planning of the Coventry Corporation. It was necessary to stress, and we did so, that all the administrative arrangements had been made, and, indeed, with the encouragement of the previous Minister, that roads and sewers were available to deal with a further 4,200 houses. This was ample for an extended programme for 1954, and for a substantial proportion of the 1955 programme. Something which is important is that every one of these 500 houses could have been, and would have been, produced by non-traditional methods; such as those used by Messrs. Wimpey who have, for example, built the very fine neighbourhood unit of Tile Hill, in my own constituency.
Following that debate my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman), whom I am glad to see here tonight, and I went to see the Parliamentary Secretary. I know that the hon. Gentleman will not mind my saying that he sent us both a letter afterwards agreeing that we had been able to establish for Coventry the fact that it had a special position, distinguishing it from other local authorities. What was the result of that interview? The Parliamentary Secretary told us that we were to have had a programme for 1955 of 1,250 allocations for municipal housing, but in view of the representations made by my hon. Friend and myself he agreed that to this should be added a further 250.
This means that we were to have a total of 1,500 municipal housing allocations for 1955. Although I expressed gratitude for the extra 250 when I wrote to the hon. Gentleman, I told him that we were far from satisfied, and I was afraid that he might think we were rather unappreciative, but I wondered whether he realised that this new total, with the addition that he had given us, was still a cut of 500 on the number allowed in the current year?
I would like to go on from there and explain to the hon. Gentleman why my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East and I felt that this figure was not good enough. We have in Coventry more than 2,000 applications for council tenancies every year, and, therefore, the rate suggested, which was 1,500 for new municipal housing, was not enough to cope even with the number of new applicants. That would be serious enough,

1541
but if we take into account the fact that we have a hard core of 10,000 names on our housing list, apart from the new applications every year, it becomes even worse.
To be perfectly fair, the Parliamentary Secretary said that his figures for municipal housing must be added to those houses to be put up by private builders. That we accept, and there is no doubt that his reasoning will give private builders greater scope for building houses for sale. I wish to stress that this is not a party point, but I think it will have a most unfair result. In view of the heavy migration of workers to Coventry, who are needed to take part in the defence and export programmes, it means that people coming into the city, if they have the money, will be able to buy houses put up by private enterprise, and to obtain those houses long before those who have been on the housing list for so long are able to get municipal houses. We believe that that is indefensible.
I wish to say two things to the Parliamentary Secretary of which he may not be aware. This week-end I was in Coventry and spoke to the chairman and other members of the housing committee. They assured me that they had had discussions with private estate agents whose opinion was that the shortage of privately-owned sites provided with roads and sewers would mean that the production of private enterprise sponsored housing is unlikely to exceed the present level; and in his letter the Parliamentary Secretary assumed something quite different.
Secondly, the hon. Gentleman may not realise the high rents demanded of workers coming to Coventry. Only on Saturday a young man told me that he had to pay £2 a week for two unfurnished rooms, and I can assure the Parliamentary Secretary that he was lucky. I would emphasise that some of the rents charged are exorbitant. But workers have to go somewhere and those who cannot get council houses have to pay. We feel that if we are not allowed to build to the limit of our capacity, this unfair profiteering will go on.
On the other hand, the members of the housing committee assured me that they had in hand sites already provided with sewers and roads for an increasing
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tempo of house building based on an anticipated progressive increase of the allocation of 2,033 for this year. We have always been told in the past, and we could understand it, that we could not build more houses because we had not the labour or the materials. We tell the Minister now that we have the labour. It has been brought into the city by, for example, Messrs. Wimpey, and we have the materials.
Unless the Minister changes his mind, or, if it will make it easier, I will say that unless he changes the mind of his predecessor, it means that this Government will prevent the Coventry Corporation from starting to build, and substantially completing, 1,837 dwellings for which the land, sewers, roads, plans and tenders are all available. Some of these could have been started this year had the allocation been sufficient.
Perhaps I need not tell the Minister that 576 of these dwellings have actually received the final approval of the Corporation and the financial approval of his own regional office. It seems to me that the position is so clear and the need of Coventry so self-evident in this matter that there is no need to make it a party matter. I am particularly glad that in the Coventry City Corporation this position is realised and that we have complete all-arty agreement on this plea that I am advancing to the Minister tonight. That, I think, will perhaps make him consider the position more carefully.
In discussing this matter with the chairman of the housing committee this weekend, I was asked if, when I raised the issue tonight, I would give an invitation, on behalf of that committee, and its chairman, to the Minister—and this, of course, is in no way intended as a discourtesy to the Parliamentary Secretary, as I know he will appreciate—to come to Coventry and see the position for himself.
We give that invitation for two reasons. First, we know that as past Minister of Supply, he appreciates the great part being played in Coventry in the export field and for defence. Secondly, if he would come to Coventry to see the real need of which I speak, we are certain that he would be convinced after having judged the position for himself on the spot. I hope that I have not been too

1543
long in putting my case, and that, if there is time, my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East will support what I have had to say.
11.34 p.m.
Mr. Crossman: There is very little that I can add to the admirable case which has been put by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South (Miss. Burton), although there are two things which I would like to say. First, I should like to underline the invitation which she has made, and to say that we are always anxious to welcome a new Minister to Coventry because we find, particularly in the matter we are discussing tonight, that it is difficult to get an understanding of the peculiar problem of that city.
I think that perhaps one of the reasons for this cut is that the time has come for an increase in the proportion of houses for sale as against those for renting, and I agree that we have a wage level in Coventry which would enable large numbers of workers to buy their own houses. A large number of the solid Labour workers who vote for me own their own houses, but then we have the immigrant worker and he is the lowest paid when he comes into the city. He comes probably as casual labour, and it is only later that he graduates to the higher rates.
We are not dealing only with those people who work in motor vehicle factories. We have a large number of people for whom houses for sale are out of the question and we have, in fact, made a special study to see how many people on our housing lists might be capable of buying houses; and, in common with other cities, we have seen that those whose social need is the greatest are the people who are not able to buy houses. Therefore, the need for municipal housing is as high in Coventry as anywhere else in the west Midlands.
Furthermore, it is true in our city—and I do not claim any great credit for this—that immediately after the war we put industrial development above municipal housing. Much of our building trade labour went into the motor vehicle and other industrial factories, and we could not recruit sufficient local labour able to do the job. It is only because large firms,
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like Messrs. Wimpey, for instance, being in their own labour force that housing on a large scale has been made possible at all. What we in Coventry say is that if the rapid, large-scale house construction which we require for our own immigrant population is to be completed, then it is necessary that Messrs. Wimpey and other large firms should be there.
But the Minister's action is preventing the building of what can be built not only during this year, but also in the next. The figures have been given. We could have built hundreds more houses this year. Nearly 1,800 houses will be forbidden us next year by a Minister who is proud of releasing people from building controls. I am beginning to get a new understanding of what the end of building controls means. It means the end of limitations upon building for sale and the imposition of bans upon municipal building for rental. It means setting the private builder free and shackling the corporations and preventing them from building as much as quickly and efficiently as they can.
I hope that I have not said something unfair, but I should very much like to hear the Minister's reply to that problem, because from a Government which claim to say, "We want to build as much as we can" it is surprising to find, in Coventry, the Government saying, "You are not to build 1,800 houses, which you could have built in the next 18 months." Three weeks after being told that building controls have been abolished, I find that a surprising paradox. I should like the Minister to give an explanation of that paradox, not in terms of the numbers of houses for sale and the number for renting, but in terms of the ability of Coventry to solve its urgent housing problem. I hope that the hon. Member can answer this point.
11.36 p.m.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. W. F. Deedes): First, I should like to apologise to the hon. Member for Coventry, South (Miss Burton) for missing the first moment or two of her speech. Secondly, I congratulate the hon. Lady upon her persistence. Although she does not always get what she wants, she never gives up trying. I think that this is our third encounter upon this subject within even the short span of my term of

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office. In this instance perhaps I should not count upon the magic of the figure 3.
I begin by saying that I and my right hon. Friend recognise the unusual position of Coventry in respect of development. Industrially, it is a phenomenal town, with a legacy of war-time destruction and, at present, tremendous industrial pressure from within. We discussed that fact when we met some time ago. It is generally recognised, and in answering I want to refer to a letter from the Coventry Council, addressed to my right hon. Friend, concerning the Coventry case. That case is understood by us, and I hope that the hon. Lady does not think otherwise. Our differences in this field—which are not very great—lie in our respective estimates of Coventry's physical capacity to meet her undeniably great needs. To meet the hon. Lady's points requires a certain number of figures, but she and I are tolerably familiar with them, and at this hour we shall not confuse anyone's statistics except those who are specially interested in them.
First, I should like to say something about the 1954 programme, on the known figures. On 30th October, 1954, Coventry had completed 1,125 local authority houses and had 2,347 in hand. It is fair to add that 779 private enterprise houses were completed and 1,401 being built. Our estimate is that by 31st December, Coventry will have completed 1,425 local authority houses and 975 private enterprise houses—a total of 2,400.
Before dealing with the current allocation I should say that Coventry will begin 1955 with 2,050 local authority houses and between 1,600 and 1,700 private enterprise houses in hand. Taking the question now only in terms of local authority houses, with an allocation of 1,500 there is a programme of 3,550 houses in hand or in prospect at the beginning of the year. I would make the point that that is very far from being a contemptible figure, and it is fair to compare it with an estimate of 1,500 applications for this year.
To show the hon. Lady that I understand Coventry's problems—and I take up the point made by the hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman)—I make no reference to, or play with,
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figures for construction between 1946 and 1051. I appreciate that those are not in the least relevant to what is now under discussion. The completions in 1954 are, I think, a fairer yardstick—indeed, they are the fair yardstick—given the increased tempo which, I acknowledge, is going on in Coventry more than in most places.
Private enterprise housing in Coventry is going ahead extraordinarily well. I would associate that, perhaps not unfairly, not only with the high wages in the town caused by the high industrial potential, but also with the wealthy immigrants to whom the hon. Lady referred. If one is to assume that the local builders know what they are doing, those houses are being built in response to some local demand, so it is fair to treat them as an integral part of Coventry's construction programme. There were 1,401 under construction at the end of October, and this should rise to 1,500 completions in 1955.
May I just take up the hon. Lady's point by saying that our estimate for 1955 and 1956 is about 1,500 private enterprise houses. That, naturally, is a very broad estimate As there were, on 31st October of this year, 1,400 under construction and 220 waiting to be started, we are not assuming any great increase from now on in regard to private enterprise building. That means that, with local authority completions, there will be about 3,300 houses built in 1955.
All predictions for the future are most hazardous, but it looks as though, in 1956, building might be running at about 3,600 a year, or a little more. At least, at this point, one can see no reason why it should be less, judging by the prospective local authority programme and the way private enterprise figures are running.
I join issue with what the hon. Member for Coventry, East suggested. The programme is based on an ascending scale. The difference between us is how sharp that ascending scale should be. The argument is not that we are not giving Coventry all she wants—I frankly admit that we are not—or that more should be built each year, because I think it is incontestable that more will be built. I have to argue whether the figure is fair and reasonable

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in all the circumstances and will not damage the momentum of Coventry's housing drive. On the figures I have given that cannot be damaged, but I want to stress that there is a danger—in fact, a greater danger—not of underloading but of overloading Coventry's programme, bearing in mind the work going on in other constructional fields there. The result of overloading would be to delay completions.
The hon. Lady has referred to a possible visit by my right hon. Friend. Knowing that this invitation was likely to be extended, I have spoken to him. He and I have already a fairly ambitious itinerary for January, but my right hon. Friend will certainly consider whether he can make a visit to Coventry, not, perhaps I should stress, for the specific purpose of discussing housing allocation,
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but to see and admire—as I should wish to on such a visit—the reconstruction and other matters of a general nature going on there. He has asked me to tell the hon. Lady that he will most certainly consider that invitation and see whether he can accept it.
The hon. Lady will not be satisfied by what I have said—I know her far too well for that—but I do not think she can conclude that either she or Coventry has been hardly or unfairly treated. If she will examine the figures which I have given, I think she will agree that, on balance, we are providing Coventry with a programme which, in fairness to Coventry, represents about the best which we think Coventry can achieve.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at a Quarter to Twelve o'Clock.