NATIONAL ASSISTANCE (DETERMINATION OF NEED)

HC Deb 27 November 1957 vol 578 cc1178-246

4.28 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (Miss Edith Pitt)

I beg to move, That the Draft National Assistance (Determination of Need) Amendment Regulations, 1957, a copy of which was laid before this House on 6th November, be approved. Hon. Members are, I think, familiar with the procedure which has to be followed when we propose to improve National Assistance scales. My right hon. Friend told the House on 6th November that he had received proposals for increases from the Board and that he had accepted them and he then laid the necessary draft Regulations. It is those draft Regulations which we have now to consider. They have already been approved in another place and if they are now approved by this House the Minister will make substantive Regulations in the terms of the draft, and the National Assistance Board will then be able to proceed with the necessary action to give effect to them.

The effect of the new Regulations is to increase as from 27th January next the amounts allowed for requirements other than rent. The principal increases are to be 5s. for a single householder and 9s. for a married couple. These improvements will bring the rates on the ordinary scale to 45s. for a single householder and 76s. for a married couple, and the special scale rates will be 65s. and 96s. The special scale, I may add, although I think most hon. Members will know this, applies to families where either the husband or wife is blind and to those who are suffering from tuberculosis and who incur loss of income in order to undergo treatment. It means that the margin of 20s. for blind and certain tuberculous applicants is maintained.

To the sums provided—both scales, the ordinary and special scale—allowances for rent are, of course, added. On that, I should like to say a little more later. To both scales appropriate increases are being recommended for applicants in other categories and dependants, including dependent children.

In 1948, when National Assistance was first introduced in its present form, the rate for a single householder was 24s. and the amount now proposed will represent an increase of 87.5 per cent. on that figure. The rate for a married couple was originally 40s. and the amount now proposed represents an increase of 90 per cent. For children, the percentage increase over 1948 averages again 90 per cent. During this time, may I add for the benefit of hon. Members, the Index of Retail Prices has gone up by 52 per cent.

If we take the comparison from another date, in 1951, when there was a further increase, then for a single householder the present recommendations represent 50 per cent. increase; for a married couple, 52 per cent.; and for children, on average, 49 per cent. Since that date, the Index of Retail Prices has gone up by 281 per cent. In giving these figures I have not forgotten tobacco tokens, but even allowing for cases where tobacco tokens have been available to National Assistance recipients—and at its maximum where tobacco tokens were used by both partners of a married couple—the proposed rates still show a considerable increase both over 1948 and 1951.

In fact, only a minority of all National Assistance applicants qualified for tobacco tokens. As the House knows, people on unemployment benefit, sickness benefit, or with no resources at all do not qualify for tokens. It may be useful if I point out that last year there were about I million retirement pensioners receiving supplementary assistance through the National Assistance Board. Of these, about four-fifths were women. It is not possible to say what proportion of people receiving National Assistance had tobacco tokens.

It was possible in last week's debate to state this proportion for National Insurance, and then we advised the House that the figure was about half. Supposing that the figures were the same for National Assistance recipients, it would mean about half a million retirement pensioners would be affected, but I think that the proportion is likely to be smaller because of the heavy preponderance of women, which is much greater than among retirement pensioners as a whole. These women belong very largely to the higher age groups, in which case smoking would, I think, be fairly rare, because it was not a habit which they acquired in those days; in fact, it was one very much frowned upon.

Of about 800,000 women retirement pensioners on National Assistance, 130,000 are over the age of 80 and 380,000 are between the ages of 70 and 80. These figures are very interesting, and I hope that hon. Members will find them useful. I think that it is not unreasonable to suggest that less than half the number of pensioners on National Assistance will be affected by the withdrawal of the tobacco tokens. Indeed, taking assistance as a whole, it seems likely that at least two people out of every three will not be affected by the withdrawal of the tokens.

To return to the recommendations, I said that I would like to say a further word about rents. I feel that it cannot be emphasised too often that the National Assistance scale rates do not include rents. Rent is allowed as an addition, and it is my experience, which is, I am sure, also shared by other hon. Members, that this point is frequently overlooked and, therefore, leads to misunderstanding when people are talking about National Assistance scale rates.

Rent addition is covered by the principal Regulations, so there is no need for amending regulations to say anything about rents when scales for requirements other than rents are being considered in the way that we are doing today. My right hon. Friend explained in Answer to a Question in the House on 6th May this year that the Board has all the powers it needs to deal adequately with rent increases.

The Board's policy is to meet rent in full unless accommodation is shared by someone not on assistance and well able to pay a share of the rent, or the rent is excessive. For example, a married couple living alone and paying rent at 15s. a week would have as income as from 27th January next at least £4 11s. a week, that is, 76s. plus 15s., and it may be larger if they have special needs, because the increase in basic rates will not affect the discretionary powers of the Board's officers to adjust allowances to meet special circumstances.

This discretionary power is a most valuable and important feature of assistance, and is given according to individual need. A great deal of use is made of the discretionary powers. An inquiry conducted by the Board towards the end of last year showed that two out of every five allowances then being paid contained additions for such things as extra nourishment, domestic help, and laundry charges. For retirement pensioners alone, the figure was even higher, nearly three out of every five.

There was a suggestion, when amending Regulations were being debated in the House in December, 1955, that the Board might be tightening up a bit in the use of its discretionary powers. I should like to anticipate any suggestion of that kind today by assuring the House that the reverse is the case. The figures show that these powers were used more freely in 1956 than ever before.

In 1955, allowances in payment contained about 642,000 discretionary additions, an average amount of 5s. 7d., involving expenditure of nearly £9,400,000 in that year. The corresponding figures for 1956, which is the latest available date, were 748,000 allowances, averaging 6s. each, and costing around £11,600,000 a year.

For example, of the total load in November, 1951, the proportion then receiving discretionary allowances was 34 per cent.; of the total load in December, 1955, on the figures which I have just given, the proportion receiving discretionary allowances was 40 per cent.; and of the total load in December, 1956, the proportion was 45 per cent. This will be confirmation, if there is any doubt, of the extent to which the Board uses these powers.

Paragraph 6 of the Board's Explanatory Memorandum on these draft Regulations refers to certain cases which cannot be dealt with on the basic rates now proposed. People living in accommodation provided under Part III of the National Assistance Act, 1948, are given such allowance as enables them to pay the minimum charge prescribed by the Minister of Health—or, in Scotland, by the Secretary of State—and to keep a weekly sum similarly prescribed as being necessary for personal requirements. That sum, which is usually referred to as the "pocket money" allowance, is at present 7s. 6d., and I understand that the Health Ministers are proposing to introduce amending regulations to increase this.

In the case of people paying an inclusive sum for board and lodgings, the scale rate, which is for requirements other than rent, is not appropriate. The Board's officers, therefore, use their discretion to grant assistance at a rate which will leave a reasonable amount for other expenses I understand that, in practice, a grant made to meet board and lodging expenses, provided that it is not an extravagant charge, and to leave some extra for personal expenses, including clothing. This additional amount is now usually 12s. but, again, I understand that the Board proposes to increase it to 15s.

People in hospital are maintained free. They have no need for board and lodging allowance, but may need pocket money. The Board fixes that at 7s. 6d., but proposes that it should be increased to 10s. If a patient has outside commitments, as some may, either for keeping up the rent or helping dependents, it is reasonable that the Board should meet those expenses, and it does so.

This will be the sixth increase in National Assistance basic rates since they were first introduced in 1948. It will not only make good the loss caused by price changes since the last increase, but will also allow for the withdrawal of the tobacco token concession though, as I have said, that applies only to a minority of the people on assistance. Even for this minority, the increase proposed will provide an allowance which has an appreciably higher value, in real terms, than that provided by the 1948 rates. For all the others, the improved value must, of course, be correspondingly greater.

All this is evidence, if evidence were needed, of the way the Board discharges the duty put upon it, of the growth of its experience and of the great humanity that it has brought to its task, as, I think, all hon. Members will readily acknowledge.

4.42 p.m.

Mr. H. A. Marquand (Middlesbrough. East)

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary has reminded the House that we are working to a time-table. As the House knows, we on this side certainly want that timetable to be adhered to. We are glad that on this occasion it is proposed that the changed Assistance allowances will become payable at the same time as the increased benefits which the House approved last week. Therefore, on this side, we shall not do anything to delay the passing into law of the Regulations which the hon. Lady has just moved. We hope, however, that we can have, and that many hon. Members will join in, a discussion this afternoon about the welfare of the people with whom we are concerned.

We are discussing the welfare of 2¼ million of our fellow subjects. Indeed, although that is the estimate given by the National Assistance Board in its Report for the year 1956, I believe that the figure is now slightly higher. However, at least 2¼ million people—half the population of the administrative County of London, and perhaps twice the population of Birmingham—are today living, to some extent, on National Assistance.

That represents a problem deserving the most serious attention of Parliament and of the nation. The Press sometimes refers to some of our debates here as being dull, but those debates are not an occasion for any kind of Parliamentary entertainment, and this is surely an occasion when we might well ask the Press, and public opinion generally, to pay a little more attention to our proceedings than they sometimes do nowadays. As a legislative assembly we are here to do a serious job, and not to entertain Press sketch writers.

Today's discussion is particularly serious. We are here to ask whether we are completely satisfied with the provision the nation is making for one in 22 of the population. During 1956, the total expenditure on National Assistance was £120,780,000. The total number of allowances current at the end of 1956 was 1,656,000, and for the last month for which we have any figures it was 1,667,000. In the former figure there were included 329,000 children under 16 years of age. Those were the figures at the end of 1956, and, as I say, they are slightly larger today.

It is inevitable, I think, that in the course of our remarks I and other hon. Members will have to use a great many figures. Responsible legislators are bound to look at the overall dimensions of the problem; to refer to the numbers of people involved, to the purchasing power of pensions, and that kind of thing. These, I know, are not very fascinating expositions, but before going any further I do say that in the minds of all of us who may have to quote figures this afternoon there remains the picture of the people involved.

We meet in our regular work as Members of Parliament the people who are involved in this consideration. We think of the old people who, as the years pass by, though their monetary income may be looked after by some reference to an index of prices, find difficulty in keeping going. Carpets wear out, furniture becomes dry and rickety with age, and old people find difficulty in replacing such items. On some reference to a price index their standard may be as it was years ago, but to those directly concerned it is not. Their position is difficult, and it is getting worse. The struggle to keep going becomes harder with the passage of the years.

We think of the sick; the wage earner who is taken ill and has to remain on sickness benefit for a long time and has to supplement that benefit with National Assistance. He is confronted by the same sort of problem—the difficulty of keeping his children in the state that he would like for them—because, through no fault of his own, he is sick.

We think of the deserted wives with children to look after; women whose husbands have disappeared and are not paying maintenance allowances. Those women have to go to the National Assistance Board, and it is a struggle for them to keep their children as they would like and to save them from injury resulting from the father's wrong. And there are the widows in somewhat similar circumstances.

I recall the despairing wife who saw me not very long ago whose husband had, for the third time, broken open the gas meter and taken the money. He had been sent to prison on this occasion for quite a long term. As a result, through no fault of her own, she was faced with a very considerable debt to pay to the Gas Board. She had to go to the National Assistance Board. The Board was unable to pay the debt for her, and she is thus faced with this terrible problem in her domestic life.

In talking figures, we have not forgotten the people behind them. The figures are only the summary of all the daily problems that we, as Members of Parliament, continually meet. From the case presented to us last week, we know that it is expected that the State will make a saving of £8 million a year on National Assistance, due to the increases in insurance benefits that last week were authorised. That saving could come about in two ways: in part, by some people being eligible for smaller allowances than they had previously, and in part by a reduction in the numbers entitled to allowances.

I was sorry that the hon. Lady did not give any estimate—unless I misunderstood her—of the reduction expected in actual numbers of persons. Will the £8 million saving which we are promised arise in part from a reduction in actual numbers expected to resort to National Assistance? If so, how much? Perhaps the Minister, if he speaks, will try to answer that question. He cannot answer it with complete accuracy, but perhaps he can give us some idea of the expectation of the Board.

In December, 1956, there were 379,000 people drawing National Assistance of less than 10s. Assuming that all such persons were enabled to go off assistance—that would be a very big assumption indeed; it is the maximum assumption—the numbers still drawing assistance would be 1,288,000—say, 1,800,000, taking into account their dependants. If we take the lesser sum and assume that only those receiving 5s. or less from the Board will be able to go off assistance, then the number still on National Assistance would be 1,577,000, or in total more than 2 million people. Although there will be a saving and some people may in consequence of the recent increases in benefit no longer need to resort to assistance, the total numbers remaining on assistance will he very large indeed; in fact, too large.

I now turn to the tobacco concession about which a great deal was said last week and about which I spoke. I therefore do not want to take too long over this subject this afternoon. I would remind the House that the Minister last week justified the withdrawal of the tobacco token from retirement and old-age pensioners on the ground that as it was an anomalous institution it could be withdrawn only when the increase in pension was substantial. It was the unanimous opinion of hon. Members on this side of the House, as shown in the Division Lobby, that we did not think the proposed increases in the benefit rates were substantial enough to justify the withdrawal of the tobacco token.

We all said that a 10s. increase in benefit is not substantial enough to justify the withdrawal of the token; and, if that is so, what about an increase in assistance of only 5s.? How can it be argued that that is a substantial enough increase to justify the withdrawal of the tobacco token? Or will the Minister rely on some other argument? The argument last week was that here is a substantial increase and this now justifies the withdrawal of a concession made in order to enable these people to have a slightly more comfortable life than otherwise.

What is the argument today? Will we be told that an increase in National Assistance scale rates of 5s. is substantial enough? It leaves, as the hon. Lady rightly said—she did not shirk it—the pensioner recipient of National Assistance at the bottom end of the scale with an increase of only 2s. 8d. I had a letter from a man and wife who are both smokers and where, in consequence, the increase in the joint assistance allowance will be only 4d. a week—a derisory amount.

The Minister of Pensions and National Insurance (Mr. John Boyd-Carpenter)

How does the hon. Gentleman arrive at that figure? The gross increase for a married couple is 9s. Nine shillings less 4s. 8d. does not leave 4d.

Mr. Marquand

I beg the Minister's pardon; it was a slip of the tongue and a silly thing to say. I made too hasty a calculation. I should have subtracted from nine shillings. The reduction, however, is larger for a married couple in proportion than for a single person.

Surely the proposed increase of 5s. and the increase of 9s. in the joint pension are not sufficiently substantial to warrant the concession withdrawal. Could not something be done about it? What has been done about it? The total number of retirement pensioners drawing assistance in September was 960,000. We were told that 53 per cent. of such pensioners are smokers and receive cheap tobacco. I should have thought that to say it was 50 per cent. for this group might be a fair estimate. The hon. Lady thinks that it must be less than that. Even if it is less than 50 per cent., there must be not very far short of 400,000 people drawing National Assistance, who if they continue to smoke will receive an increase of only 2s. 8d. a week.

The Assistance Board in putting forward this proposal tell us that "they have taken into account"—those art the words they use in their Memorandum—this change. How have they taken it into account? Those who do not smoke will receive an increase of 5s. Those who continue to smoke will receive an increase of 2s. 8d. Frankly I do not understand the phrase "have taken into account".

What do they mean by saying they have taken it into account? It seems to be a question still without any satisfactory explanation, and I hope that the Minister will attempt to give, a rather better explanation than merely saying that it was "taken into account". Why was it right, then, to give to a certain group of people on National Assistance a much larger increase than that given to the other group? Is it felt that those in the other group are less in need, or is it hoped in this way to persuade them to change their habits and give up smoking?

What are the old people supposed to do who receive this increase of 2s. 8d. and who, in their declining years, find smoking a solace and comfort? One wonders whether some way could be found to give an extra monetary concession in lieu of the tobacco token to those who buy tobacco. I am in no position to know whether or not some adjustment might have been administratively practical. We should like to know whether any tempering of the wind to the shorn lamb was considered and, if so, why it was not adopted.

Passing from the tobacco concession, how are the new levels of assistance which we are asked to approve this afternoon calculated? We have not peen told this in the recent debates. No real explanation has been given. We have been told in effect, "Taking everything into consideration, we feel that the increases now proposed are about right." We have always had to accept the increases proposed. We are glad that an increase has been given; but even if we find the increase insufficient we cannot amend the proposals put before us. We have to accept them. It is an unsatisfactory position to be in.

We have been told in the past that the increases proposed are intended partly to compensate for past price increases which have taken place in the interval since the last increase was made, and partly to guard against possible price increases in the future. How are these two elements provided for here? The rise in the index of retail prices since January, 1956, has been 7 per cent. It so happens that the base figure of 100 is taken to apply to January, 1956, and there has been since January, 1956, a 7 per cent. rise. The index now stands at 107.

The increase in the scale rate proposed for non-smokers is 12½ per cent., but it is only 6.6 per cent. for the smoker: so that for the smoker, it seems to me—I am subject to correction; my calculation may be mistaken—that the increase in allowances proposed is less than the increase that has taken place meanwhile in the general level of prices since the last increase. The hon. Lady said she thought that the increase proposed even for the smoker would make good the rise in prices in the interval. I should like to have a further comment about that from the Minister, because what the hon. Lady says does not seem to me to be accurate.

Our arguments in all these matters are always vitiated by the lack of a proper criterion by which to measure whether the increases are accurate and whether they will really represent an adequate standard of living and a satisfactory rise in allowances when price increases have taken place. The arguments are unsatisfactory because we have no special index to which we can refer. We all know perfectly well that the general index of retail prices is based upon calculations which exclude altogether the expenditure of persons like retirement pensioners and those drawing National Assistance. They are left out of the calculation. The index is based upon a middle-range group of incomes and expenditure. There is no special index for the kind of commodities which these very poor people buy—or if there is an index we have never been permitted to see it.

At long last—indeed, at very long last—we have had what I have been pressing for for some time in Questions to the Minister of Labour. We have had the publication of the results of the household expenditure inquiry containing some information, I think rather scanty, about the expenditure of what they call "pensioner households." These are not necessarily all pensioners, but they are persons whose incomes are so small as to resemble those of pensioners, and they must include very large numbers of pensioners.

In page 246 of this report of the household expenditure inquiry we get at last an official picture of how a person in this sort of income group spends his money. It would be impossible to quote all these figures and far too difficult for anyone to follow them, but I can refer to one column which gives the expenditure of one-person households in this very low income group. As it happens, the total expenditure of these households was found to be 55s. 11d., and the amount spent on housing was 10s. 7d. The difference between those figures is almost exactly the new figure of the Assistance scale rate for an adult person. So it must be a pretty fair picture of how a person going on to the new scale rate will be able to live, because if one excludes the rent which the Board pays in addition to the allowance, the amount left is almost exactly 45s. It shows that such a person, having only 45s. to spend on things other than rent, can afford only 21s. 10½d. for food.

In page 247 we find, if we make a calculation, that 25s. 3d. is what the person in the average household was spending on food. It is lower than the national average, which was even higher than 28s. in the national food survey. The average person in the country—at least, those in the middle-income group—require about 25s. for food. The one-person householder living on National Assistance scales at the new rate will find himself able to spend only 22s. at the outside on food—not because he needs less food than other people, for I am sure he does not, but because of the high cost of the other essentials which he has got to buy. He has to spend 7s. 81½d. on fuel, light and power. He has to spend 2s. 11½d. on clothing and footwear—a terribly small amount on clothing and footwear compared with the expenditure of the average middle-income group where the figure works out at something over 8s. on clothing and footwear.

The person on Assistance who has to eke these things out as well as he can in order to leave himself enough on which to live in the way of essential food has to cut his expenditure to 2s. 11½d. We know from what we see ourselves that the old people make their clothing last very much longer than anyone would want to if he could help it. Therefore, from this table I conclude from these figures that the increases now proposed for the adult person from 40s. to 45s. are barely sufficient to maintain what I would regard as an inadequate subsistence level.

The increases must, therefore, by the same token, be much less than sufficient to maintain the person who has acquired the habit of smoking and cannot give it up. Those who are to receive only 2s. 8d. a week in increased purchasing power as a result of these allowances will be very badly off indeed. The total increase of 5s. can only just make good the increase in prices which has taken place, and the 400,000 or more who are to have half that increase, roughly speaking, are not getting enough.

Let me say something about other groups than these older people. I have often spoken during these debates on families and children in particular, and I am glad to see that some increases have been made here and that proportionately some of them are larger than the other increases. It is notable that the increases for the younger dependent children still do not bring the allowances up to a level sufficient to cover the full cost of food, clothing and other necessities which they need.

It will still be necessary for the parents of such children who have to resort to National Assistance to supplement their children's diet by school meals and from their own allowance. They will still find that children are the chief cause of poverty. I cannot help feeling that those parents who have to maintain four or five children will themselves, if they do their duty by their children, have to exist on a standard a good deal lower than that of some other people.

The examples which the National Assistance Board gives in paragraph 5 of the Explanatory Memorandum show, I know, incomes which at first sight appear quite substantial. It gives an example of a family with three children and shows that at present such a family would have an income of £6 8s. 6d. and that under the new increases it would have an income of £7 2s. 6d. a week.

It seems to be that from the examples which the Board gives it must be thinking very much along the lines to which I referred last week, that allowances of this kind should never, if possible, be allowed to go very much above basic rates of wages lest there be an incentive to the parent or the income owner not to go to work, but to try to remain in idleness and live on National Assistance.

As I said last week, far too much importance is attached to that argument. I referred to the sanctions which already exist in the rules governing the drawing of unemployment and sickness benefit to prevent anything of the kind happening, in addition to the sanctions which the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Health can use to prevent people trying to live on the Welfare State, the National Assistance Board itself has power to ensure that people do not use these allowances for their own benefit and against the interest of their children.

The hon. and gallant Member for Buckingham (Sir F. Markham) tried to persuade us during the course of the last debate on this subject that there were large numbers of people living in idleness in this way, who were drawing allowances and multiplying the number of their children all the time and living as parasites on the Welfare State. I wonder whether the hon. and gallant Gentleman is aware of what is in page 13 of the National Assistance Board's Annual Report. It says: A man in a position to maintain his wife and children who persistently refuses or neglects to do so lays himself open to prosecution under section 51 of the Act. During the year there were 350 prosecutions of this kind; the husband was convicted in all but two instances and in 223 cases was sent to prison. The idea that in this country it is possible for people to live in idleness on the Welfare State, to take more than their fair share and to make their children suffer is a myth. The Board takes action in all these cases and the penalties imposed are quite severe, quite apart from the protective devices woven into the National Insurance scheme. Therefore, I do not think that there is any real danger at all in the total income of a large family in receipt of these allowances going above the lowest rates of wages.

There is no danger at all of abuse, and if we go on the wrong assumption that we ought to keep down the total allowances paid to the level of the lowest wages paid in the country we run the far greater risk that children will not be properly cared for, not due to their parents' neglect, but through their inability to provide them with the necessities of life from the small incomes available to them. Even if it were not true that there were all these sanctions, it would still be wrong to penalise the many for the sake of the few or to visit the sins of the fathers upon the children. I welcome the increases, but I must make it clear that I am still not happy with the final result.

The Parliamentary Secretary reminded us quite correctly that, of course, the National Assistance Board pays the rent of persons who resort to it over and above the scale rate of allowances. I know that, but I want to know whether there is to be any change in the Board's policy in this respect. I hope there is not, but I am bound to ask the question. The hon. Lady said—and I wrote down the words to be sure that I made no mistake— The Board's policy is to meet the rent in full. Is that still its policy? Can we have an assurance that there will be no change?

The reason I ask this question is, of course, because we have read Circular No. 55/57 issued by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government on 20th November this year, in paragraph 3 of which, in reference to housing accommodation for old people, it says: Some old people may be affected by the decontrol provisions of the Rent Act, and a number may have, within the next twelve months, to find accommodation better suited to their means. That is a wonderful phrase. What it is really saying to the old people is, "Your landlord will increase your rent and if you do not pay you must get out."

If a person is drawing a National Assistance allowance and if the Board is now paying the rent, will it follow the policy laid down by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government? Will it say, "You had better find 'accommodation better suited to your means'"? Is the Board to ally itself with the landlord in pushing such an old person out of his house? I do not believe that the members of the Board would personally ever want to do such a thing—I am making no accusations against them at all. This is the policy of the Government, and the circular merely puts into very carefully chosen words what we know to be the policy of the Government.

Have the Government indicated in any way—I hope they have not—that the Board should do this? I hope to have an assurance that this is not so. Will the Minister say whether it is still the Board's policy to "meet the rent in full"? This is a very important question, and I am sure that it will be treated as such. I hope that we shall be given a straight answer.

I have already spoken longer than I intended, but before I sit down I should like to ask what of the future of all this. What is to be the future of National Assistance to which we can look forward after these increases have come into operation and when we have had time to reconsider the whole problem of the welfare of the retirement pensioner which we discussed last week? Surely we want to see that people who resort to National Assistance are not merely sustained in the level of consumption which we all thought was all that the nation could afford in 1946.

We want to see that they are given not merely increases in allowances in accordance with the rise in prices which will keep them always at the same levels of purchasing power and consumption which were appropriate in 1946, but that they, along with the drawers of benefit, get a share of the increasing wealth of the community. We want to see that they shall be entitled, as time passes, to a rise in real standards as well as a rising standard in money terms. The scale rates from time to time must move more quickly than the level of prices.

We want also to see that the total numbers of persons drawing National Assistance are reduced. Particularly I want to see that happen so that the National Assistance Board can concentrate on the task, which I know it likes doing, of looking after welfare. As the right hon. Gentleman knows. I had the pleasure, as he did, of addressing the annual summer school of the National Assistance Board. That was a very great pleasure.

Having given them a talk about some of my ideas on welfare, I was much impressed to see the great extent to which officers of the Board, at all sorts of levels and in different parts of the country, were doing their best to carry out a welfare policy and drawing the attention of the welfare committees of local authorities responsible in each district to cases where special help was needed, discussing with individuals problems and trying to help them to a solution of many of these human problems.

They do not regard their job merely as one of doling out pounds, shillings and pence. They cannot do this job as we want them to do it if the load is too heavy and the total mass of people resorting to the Board so numerous that the officers have no time, or insufficient time, left beyond that devoted to mere routine payment.

I hope that in future we can work out a means of ensuring that the total numbers needing to resort to National Assistance can be reduced. Too many persons entitled to National Assistance benefit are drawing assistance. There are plenty of others who are not entitled to National Insurance benefit but who are afflicted, and will be for some years, and who, therefore, have to go to the National Assistance Board. We must care for them through National Assistance as there is no other way of helping them. If we are to concentrate on the welfare of those people we have somehow to reduce the numbers of those entitled to benefit who are now obliged to seek assistance.

I think that the solution lies not in keeping the National Assistance rate intolerably low and well below the pension rate so that people cannot resort to National Assistance. The solution surely lies the other way. It lies in getting really satisfactory rates of benefit and pension under the insurance Acts so that people can draw what is necessary to obtain a really reasonable and decent standard of living without the need to go to National Assistance at all. It is along those ways we must look for a solution. A solution of the National Assistance and National Insurance benefit problems can be found by building now, on the foundations well laid in 1946, a better and more satisfactory system of insurance which will give people when they retire, or become sick, or unemployed, a really satisfactory subsistence standard of living.

5.24 p.m.

Dr. Horace King (Southampton, Itchen)

I wish to begin by paying tribute to the professional workers doing field work in National Assistance. I know that when I speak from experience of the capability, keenness, kindly sympathy and tradition of generous and sympathetic help which has been built up by the National Assistance department in my town, I am saying what is true of every corner of England. I am glad that in opening the debate the hon. Lady the Joint Parliamentary Secretary referred to the mass of supplementary and extra help for exceptional circumstances in which every National Assistance officer has to use a tremendous amount of personal discretion and personal sympathy. I want to pay tribute to the way in which I have found them doing that.

If I begin with a small local grievance, I hope the House will forgive me, for it has wider implications. One of the anomalies that arose early this year was the position of men out of work for a few days before a strike takes place and who, under the twelve-day rule, are ineligible for unemployment pay, ineligible for National Assistance and ineligible for strike pay from their union. The local National Assistance officers and National Insurance officers in Southampton, dealing with 400 or 500 men, were generous and swift in action and did all that was necessary and the matter was sent to the centre, yet it was some five or six months before those workmen—out of work through no fault of their own before the strike had begun—got what they were entitled to receive. I do not blame the Minister. I found the Minister quite courteous in all the correspondence dealing with this matter, but there was something wrong and I hope he will see that it is put right in case there should he any application of the twelve-day rule in future.

Mr. E. Fernyhough (Jarrow)

Surely the Minister has some obligation because some of the men actually drew unemployment benefit and then had it stopped because of the strike?

Dr. King

This illustrates the complexity of the problem and the sense of injustice, felt by my fellow workers of Southampton. No one hates anything so much as injustice.

May I also say how I like the way National Assistance officers went out of their way to mitigate the evils of the Rent Act, before I put a question to the Minister on that matter? Hundreds and thousands of old folk made anxious and miserable by the acts of this Government, had their anxieties relieved by the swift behaviour of the local officers and by the action of the Minister himself at the Dispatch Box. When I raised this question with the Minister before he misunderstood me. I did not suggest that any old folk are suffering because landlords are doing illegal acts and charging illegal rents. I am asking whether the Minister and the National Assistance officers are prepared to meet increased rents not when rents are illegal, but when they are excessive.

If an old-age pensioner is living in a controlled house, the increase cannot be more than twice the gross rateable value, and in July the Minister said that he was prepared to meet that, but if the old-age pensioner is in a decontrolled house there is no limit to the rent which a landlord can charge. The Minister in July said that National Assistance would meet reasonable increases in rent. I hope that that means all increases. I hope we can have assurances this afternoon that the National Assistance Board is prepared to meet even the profiteering charges of the worse landlords in the country where old-age pensioners are living in decontrolled houses. I cannot imagine that there are many, but there may be some. Incidentally, I think it a bad thing that we should have to subsidise this greedy landlordism out of National Assistance.

I wish to raise the question of procedure. The House is inclined to take the Regulations we are now discussing as something decided for us by the National Assistance Board and to assume what we do is to say, "Yes," or "No". It is true that Ministers of both political parties have encouraged this passing of the responsibility to the Board. It is true that the Board was deliberately set up away from Parliament, and that no Member of Parliament can become a member of the Board. I would pay a tribute to the effectiveness of this method by saying that more adjustments have been made to the basic rates of benefit under this system than would perhaps have been made had we proceeded each time by means of the ordinary method of legislation in this House.

Reference has been made to the fact that there have been six changes in the basic scale of National Assistance. I notice that hon. Members opposite and the hon. Lady the Joint Parliamentary Secretary, when making comparisons for political purposes about the treatment of old folk, always begin with 1948 for those arguments, when we broke the old Poor Law and set up National Assistance. They always begin with 1946 when referring to old-age pensioners and forget the fact that in 1946 and 1948 we made revolutionary changes both in National Assistance and in the basic pension scale. There have been six changes.

In 1948 the figure was 24s. to begin with; in 1950 it was 26s.; in 1951, 30s.; 1952, 35s.; 1955, 37s. 6d.; 1956, 40s., and now in 1957, it is 45s. All that was done by means of Regulations of the kind we are discussing now. It is a much swifter way of proceeding and a tremendous advantage of the machinery we have set up; but the power is always with Parliament. Obviously Parliament will not turn down the increase proposed in these Regulations. But under the current Act—Section 6 of Part II of the 1948 Act—the instructions to the Board are that it submits draft Regulations to the Minister and if he approves them, he submits them to Parliament, either in the form of draft as submitted or with such variations and amendments as he thinks fit. So that if the Board does not award enough to the poorest old-age pensioner, the Minister can say so; except that the Act lays down that if he alters the draft, for better or for worse, he must send it back to the Board to look at it again. Therefore, if my argument is right, it is the responsibility of the Minister that we are raising the rate of National Assistance by the 5s. and the 9s. as we are doing tonight.

The Minister could have made these more generous Regulations had he so chosen. I feel that the right hon. Gentleman would have done so, had the Treasury permitted it. If the hand is the hand of the Chairman of the National Assistance Board, the voice is not even the voice of the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance, but that of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. If I am not right in what I have said so far, all that the Board is doing is an exercise in mathematics and statistics, and we sometimes question the validity both of mathematics and statistics. It is simply calculating the necessary amount to the nearest shilling to equate what we are now paying with what we paid in 1948, and then adding on a bit for increases in the cost of living which may occur a little later. If that is so, I think that when the party on this side of the House returns to power we shall have to alter the structure and terms of reference of the Board.

I have never been shaken in my view that we ought to have separate statistics accessible to Members of Parliament as well as to the Board to provide a special index of the cost of living of those people with whose welfare we are concerned under the terms of these Regulations. I understand that the Chairman of the Board has his own index but we have never been able to have one available to Members of Parliament so that we might debate and discuss it. The simple fact is that for the poor people of England the main expenditure is on food, heat and shelter. While National Assistance takes care of shelter completely, the costs of food and heat are rising out of all proportion to any other rises in the cost of living.

In our debates on National Assistance we have come to discuss the problem of the relative claims for stepping up the basic insurance pensions and supplementary pensions respectively. I suppose that theoretically my right hon. Friend was right when he said that the goal should be to have such a generous basic scale that nobody would need to be on National Assistance. But that can never be for a long time yet. I hope to show the House the kind of people who are on National Assistance, but, roughly speaking, it covers first many people who in the nature of things cannot qualify for the basic insurance benefit.

There are the chronic sick and unemployed and those with no means at all. There are the widows, still being treated unjustly by Ministers from both sides of the House. The fact that so many widows are on National Assistance is an indication that we are inadequately providing for the widows of the country. There is a whole group of people from the pre-insurance days who can never qualify for the full benefit of the basic scale of National Insurance. More than that, we have never yet got the basic scale to anything like enough to maintain anyone solely dependent on it at a decent standard of living. I hope to show in a moment that many people on National Assistance are getting everything to which they are entitled from National Insurance, but because they have no other income than what they receive by way of National Insurance, they must be helped by National Assistance.

We are now discussing people who are at the rock-bottom. Many of the people getting a 10s. increase in pension have other means of income, and we discussed them last week. The people we are discussing now, many of whom are getting not 10s. but 5s.—the Minister said there were half-a-million of them—are the poorest in the country. To some of us this state of affairs seems utterly wrong. Some of us believe that to him that hath not shall be given and from him that hath, including the Surtax payer, shall be taken away the money to do it.

It is important, and I agree with the hon. Lady, that we should know just what National Assistance people are getting out of this. I read today in a north country newspaper, the Sunday Sun, a moving and human article on what the new benefits mean to old-age pensioners. The newspaper quoted the case of an 82-year old lady. The article stated: She will put her extra 10s. a week towards building up a stock of coal to last the winter and to paying a rent increase of 3s. 4½d. This statement is incorrect in two ways, as I hope to show. The two ways almost cancel out, but the old lady is worse off even than the writer of the article thinks. She will not get 10s. a week, for she is on National Assistance, and she will get an increase of only 5s. Fortunately, the rent increase has already been met, I am quite certain, by National Assistance, so that may be cancelled out. What she is really getting is an increase of 5s. plus coverage for the extra 3s. 4d. a week rent.

Her income is £2 basic pension plus £1 13s. 6d. National Assistance. Incidentally, that is a tribute to the little things which the National Assistance Board does to help, because she is receiving more than merely her rent. Her total income will rise from £3 13s. 6d. to £3 18s. 6d., plus another 7s. 6d. rent increase which she has to face next April but which, I am happy to say, National Assistance will meet. All she is getting out of this increase, therefore, is 5s.

She has given her budget, and I would refer hon. Members to the Sunday Sun for them to see how poor old folk spend their money. She spends 12s. 9d. on food and 37s. 6d. on her month's coal. She buys five bags of coal a month, and old folk need warmth more than young folk do. The price of her coal is to rise by 3s. 9d. In giving her budget in the Sunday Sun, which is not exactly a Labour paper, she has worked out that she has only 3s. 9d., after she has met her essential requirements to meet the cost of coal, shoe repairs, warm clothing, sweets, entertainment and bus fares. The stark poverty of the poor was thus dramatically illustrated. Provided that this old lady does not smoke, she will receive 5s. a week more as a result of these Regulations, but if she smokes she will receive only 2s. 8d. out of them. This will hardly meet the increased cost of her coal.

I want to examine for a moment the kind of people who are getting National Assistance. In this respect I commend to the House the Report of the National Assistance Board for this year. Three-quarters of them are getting National Assistance because their National Insurance is inadequate. Thirty per cent. of them are getting it because they have been sick for a long time and because their sickness insurance benefit under National Insurance is not enough. Those sick folk will get an extra 5s. If they have children, they will get an extra 2s. for the first child and 1s. 6d. for each subsequent child.

A quarter of those on National Assistance are widows. The statistics given in the book show that, excluding the 10s. widow and the no-shilling widow, the widows who are worst off in the country, nearly a quarter of all widows are getting National Assistance because what we are giving them as of right under the National Insurance scheme is inadequate. I hope I am wrong when I say that this group of widows on National Assistance will get an increase of only 5s. In other words, I believe that the stepping up of the widow's basic insurance benefit will benefit them by only 5s. apart from children's increases as before mentioned.

A quarter of those on National Assistance are old folk on retirement, and I will say a word about them in a moment. One-fifth of those on National Assistance are unemployed. I want to follow up a point made by my right hon. Friend, particularly in view of references in an earlier debate to the alleged idleness of unemployed who receive National Assistance. Altogether, 55,000 unemployed are receiving National Assistance. The Report excludes those who are over 60 and those who have been unemployed for a short time and are likely to go back to work, perhaps, next week. We are left with 32,000 unemployed. Of those, two-fifths had been out of work for two years. Fourteen out of fifteen were unskilled. Of those 32,000, 25 per cent. were in poor physical health, 63 per cent. had some definite physical handicap and 24 per cent. were handicapped mentally. In all, 23,000 were handicapped physically or mentally, while many more were in poor health. The Report also points out that these figures for mentally handicapped are bound to be lower than the actual figures, as the officers could only judge very obvious cases.

Of these figures, 7 per cent., or 2,000 people in the whole country, were labelled work-shy, and of those 2,000, 670 were in poor health and almost an equal number were in bad mental health. We are therefore left with only a tiny fraction of people in this country taking National Assistance benefits because they are unwilling to work. I quote from the Report that …wilful idleness as distinct from an understandable lack of keenness arising from physical or mental disability or other causes would seem to account for the lengthy unemployment in very few cases indeed. I am grateful to the Report for the tribute to the honour and honesty of the British worker. I agree that we must punish the rare shirker who takes advantage of National Assistance, and I am interested in the reference to what has been done in that connection, and especially to the promising attempts at re-establishment of some of them. Nevertheless, on the whole, National Assistance is helping worthy and honourable but unfortunate people.

I have so far mentioned the main categories. Let me mention two others. We are helping 71,000 wives, 25,000 of them with young children maintained by the State because the husbands and fathers refuse to keep them. We are doing that at a cost of £81 million. I do not grudge what we do out of National Assistance for the discarded wife and the neglected child, but I welcome the news that the Government propose to do what my right hon. Friend the Member for Warrington (Dr. Summerskill) and the hon. Lady the Member for Devonport (Miss Vickers) have tried to do by Private Bills—try to make some recalcitrant husbands of England live up to the marriage responsibilities which they undertake when they marry and breed children.

Another group consists of illegitimate children. I always feel inclined to protest against the expression "illegitimate children," because I do not think there is an illegitimate child in the world. The illegitimacy is nothing with which we can reproach the child. We are paying for some 22,000 illegitimate children under National Assistance, and I am happy about that expenditure of about £1¼ million because it is helping to keep the child in the home of the unmarried mother. Even from the lowest point of view, it is much cheaper for the State that a child should be cared for in its mother's own home. It is certainly infinitely better on all kinds of spiritual and other counts.

I welcome this debate as an opportunity of paying tribute to a great social work being steadily carried out by a great public institution—the National Assistance Board. My only regret tonight is one which has been expressed by my right hon. Friend: it is tragic to think that of the money which the Minister is giving to help the pensioners of the country, those who need it most will get least. I want to be fair; it is true that for a man, wife and three children the increase will be 14s. and not 9s. and for a man, wife and one child it will be 11s., but I doubt whether that increase would buy the fruit which such a family ought to have in one week.

We ought to remember, too, that the rent increases for these people are covered, as the Parliamentary Secretary said, but in my opinion the real and bitter hardship will be to the old married couple and to the single old ladies and gentlemen who smoke. These single people will receive 5s. but will lose their tobacco token, which is worth 2s. 4d. No old persons ought to be asked or can be expected to deprive themselves of the luxury of smoking. Consequently, the old lady or gentleman who smokes will get 2s. 8d. out of these new provisions. If Darby and Joan both smoke, then instead of getting an increase of 9s. they will get 4s. 4d. I think it is wrong we should have put them in that position, and it is because of this treatment of the poorest old people that, while we shall support this Measure and not vote against it, we express our bitter regret that it is not more generous.

5.50 p.m.

Mr. Philip Bell (Bolton, East)

I think it would be a pity if some observations were not made from this side of the House in view—if I may say so without unction—of the very interesting contributions which have been made. But I would make my little mild protest on this melancholy subject—and poverty is a melancholy thing. Dr. Johnson, I think, said poverty made some virtues impracticable and others impossible.

What interests me very much about this is that nobody ever thinks that, with our education and with our growing wealth, the majority of the people might somehow by their own earnings and their own skill save enough for their old age. Gone, apparently for ever, is the hope of the British workman, which his grandfather and great-grandfather had, of ever being in a position in our economic system to save for himself. It is a reflection upon us that we should be so defeatist that poverty is at our throat.

The other interesting thing is this balance between pension and National Assistance. The hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) said, among many other things which touched me and with which I agreed, that the sad thing about this regulation of Assistance is that those who need it most get least.

It would be a good thing if we could get rid of National Assistance except for a small minimum and hand all a pension. For myself, I should prefer to see it provided by themselves. That provision is growing in industry. About £1 million a year now is paid out in insurances by private firms; some 8 million people are covered already by insurance schemes; and the numbers will go up, although those schemes will never carry the whole of the population. I think that would be best.

The next best is that the State should devise a system by which people could themselves, by uniting together, have a pension which would take more people off National Assistance. But we must not be hypocrites about it, for if they do not earn and buy their pensions it is a face-saving device to talk about pensions as of right when they have not paid for them. It is an odd thing that although the pensioner does not mind saying, "Part of my pension I have earned, part is given to me", although it does not matter if it is given to him by a pensions board, it does matter if it is given to him by the National Assistance Board.

It seems to me that in our limited resources the first thing must come first, and it is National Assistance. I wish we could put up the old-age pensions to £5 a week. Everybody wants that. However, if I am to choose between giving to old-age pensioners, irrespective of means, and half of whom have other incomes, and to those on National Assistance, my mind supports the loading of the scale of National Assistance. That is what I should like to see.

I was delighted to hear the publicity given to the Report of the National Assistance Board for this year, and I certainly associate myself with the compliments paid to the officers of the Board. It is true that people who are now drawing National Assistance are, on the whole, doing so bona fide. There is no doubt about that. Let us not, however, be too sentimental about it. People waste their substance. They waste their health. They ignore their opportunities. Nearly every man who is old and poor has something on his conscience. We are a Christian nation and we must help them, but let us not go round making out that old age itself is a virtue. It is not necessarily a virtue. Therefore, while I would regard it as a duty to support people in need, whatever the circumstances which caused it, I do not think we ought to make it altogether a matter of merit. I have no strong objection, and no party objection, to anything which has been said, and I welcome very much these provisions which certainly will, to an extent, relieve poverty.

One final thought. Is it necessary every time we discuss Regulations of this sort to make those critical remarks about those who pay Surtax? Is it really thought that if we take from everybody earning over £2,000 a year every £ they receive in excess of £2,000 and spread it amongst the people it would add to the wealth of the old-age pensioners or of those drawing National Assistance? That distinguished Member of this House, Sir Stafford Cripps, worked out exactly how many shillings per head per working family per week it would come to. If I remember aright, it came to the big sum of 1s. I do not think it is necessary to overload our debates with that sort of argument.

5.56 p.m.

Mr. Bernard Taylor (Mansfield)

The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Bolton, East (Mr. Philip Bell) referred to one aspect of the National Assistance Board's work which, I admit, is very important, the care and protection of the old. But he made no reference at all to that other section of the community who, because of their disabilities, have to go to the National Assistance Board for the relief of their poverty. I am referring to the special cases of sickness about which my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Sir F. Messer) is an expert. No doubt, if he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, he will have something to say about them.

I was rather sorry that the hon. and learned Member for Bolton, East said what I do not think is true, that the people of the last generation and of the one before that were more thrifty than this generation. They may have intended to be thrifty, but they certainly had not the means, and I do not accept the hon. and learned Gentleman's argument that those generations were more thrifty than people are today.

When I heard the Minister announce the proposed scales, and still more when I had had time to reflect upon them, I felt a very keen sense of disappointment, for the reason that the most favoured are not to get more than 5s. while those who indulge in what is described as the pleasurable habit of smoking will get only 2s. 8d. I ask the Minister, can he completely and sincerely justify the proposals which have been put forward at this moment by the National Assistance Board? I had hoped that it would have taken a less niggardly approach to this very special problem than it has taken by putting forward these proposals.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary said some very interesting things and gave some very interesting figures about rents. There is only one observation I would make about that now. Let us assume for a moment that under the operation of the Rent Act of this year the average increase in this item of household expenditure of those in receipt of National Assistance is to be not more than 5s. That is the same amount as the Board is giving to meet the remaining two-thirds of the household expenditure.

I want to make one or two observations about the question of discretion to which the Parliamentary Secretary referred and to ask the Minister whether he can give us a little more information than was offered to us by the hon. Lady on this matter, particularly as it affects the long-term sickness cases. I know of people who have been in receipt of public assistance continuously, either from the old board of guardians, from the public assistance committees of county councils and county boroughs and, finally, from the National Assistance Board. Throughout that period these people have been in receipt of assistance yet they are still not old people.

I have had a letter from a constituent with whom I have profound sympathy. He has been on sickness benefit since 1937. His case has fallen between two stools. He served in the First World War and he is of the opinion that his chest condition was caused by exposure to gas in that war. When, as a coalminer, he was turned down by the Ministry of Pensions, he applied to go before the pneumoconiosis medical panel. That panel agreed with the medical evidence of the Ministry of Pensions that he had a very bad chest and was suffering from a severe lung condition, but, whilst the Ministry of Pensions medical evidence was to the effect that his condition was not caused by gas, the pneumoconiosis medical panel said that he was suffering not from pneumoconiosis but from bronchitis.

All that he has been receiving since 1937 in respect of that chest condition is sickness benefit. In 1937 this was disablement pay of 10s. 6d. a week and he received assistance from the public assistance committee. This case is typical of a large number, and I should like the Minister to consider the position of these recipients of National Assistance. They have been in receipt of £2 or £3 and now it is proposed that they should receive £3 16s. per week, plus an allowance for rent. Does any hon. Member think that people of that kind, after a long period on the standard of life that I have described, are in anything but a state of poverty today? Their furniture has become worn out and their household goods and utensils need replacement.

I appeal specially to the Minister that in cases of this kind he should suggest to the National Assistance Board that, without being asked by the individuals concerned, the Board's welfare officers should be sent round to investigate these cases and that these people who have never worked for 20 years and will never work again should be looked after. The nature of their illness is not immediately killing, but it certainly is very crippling. It means suffering and poverty to a degree that cannot be described. I know that the Minister is not inhumane and I hope that the words uttered in the debate will not fall on deaf ears.

In connection with the administration of the National Assistance Act, 1948, there is a point on disregards which I regard as very important in all the proposals to increase the benefit. The Parliamentary Secretary said that this benefit has been increased six times since 1948, and the National Assistance Act has been in operation for nearly seven years under the present Government. The hon. Lady spoke of comparisons between the rates now proposed and the rates in 1951. I do not know whether the present Government have any respect for the disregards which are statutorily provided for by the 1948 Act. I have failed to obtain any expression of opinion at all from them on the point. I have put Questions to the Minister but the answers have not been satisfactory from my point of view.

My case on the disregards is that if the value at which they were fixed in 1948 was right, then, with the change that has taken place since in money values, that unaltered rate of disregards cannot be right today. The people who are the beneficiaries under the disregards provision are, in the main, the people who have been the most thrifty. They have paid for very small superannuation benefits. I am thinking, for instance, of the miners in Nottinghamshire where, in addition to the national pension, there is a local pension scheme which provides 15s. a week. Since 1948, 10s. 6d. of that pension has been disregarded. If that rate of disregard was right in 1948 it certainly is not right today.

The Minister will confer a real blessing upon the people who are in receipt of these small payments to supplement their existing low incomes if he will have another and favourable look at this matter. This is not the Board's responsibility. It is the Minister's responsibility, if he thinks fit, to alter this piece of legislation. I appeal to him to consider the matter.

There is no doubt that, if they have the opportunity, some of my hon. Friends will ventilate this grievance which has been so sorely felt in many parts of the country. I conclude, as I began, by expressing my keen disappointment at the miserable proposals which the National Assistance Board has put forward and which means not more than 5s. to the most favoured and can mean as little as 2s. 8d. to the least favoured.

6.10 p.m.

Sir Frederick Messer (Tottenham)

I shall touch only briefly on two points concerning extra scale benefits. I remember very well that when we were debating the 1948 Measure special consideration was given to the peculiar position of blind people. The blind had been taken out of public assistance and the difficulty was how to incorporate in the new Bill an allowance that would be distinctive and separate from the ordinary insurance or assistance.

At the time it was considered that 15s. would probably represent a fair average, taking into consideration the scale benefits for National Assistance and what was generally being given by the authorities then responsible for the maintenance of the blind. I am referring to the rates for a married couple. I shall not go through all the grades, because that would complicate what can be a clear and simple issue. It was decided at that time that the amount of 40s., which would be the scale rate for a man and wife, should be increased by 15s. for blind people.

There was a second problem, namely, how to deal with another and rather strange category. During the war Memorandum 266T gave a benefit of 27s. 6d. a week to tubercular people who suffered any loss of income by taking treatment. It was then considered that if the blind and the tubercular people in that class were assimilated, that was as near to a reasonable arrangement as could be made.

I will not say that these people are being very unfairly treated. Indeed, the organisations representing the blind—the National League of the Blind, the National Institute of the Blind, the Workshops for the Blind and other associations—at the time considered that a very fair arrangement had been made. I want to press the point touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Mr. B. Taylor); it is not just money that matters, it is money's worth. Therefore, if 15s. worth was the right difference between the ordinary scale and the special scale in those days, then that proportion ought to continue until now.

That has not happened. It is true that the Board and the Minister have recognised that it would not be right to give exactly the same increase in every case, and so, in 1952, when the basic rate for a man and wife was 59s., the special scale rate was increased to 18s. I am not saying that was a correct proportion, but my point is that the principle has been conceded. The Ministry recognised that there was a right on the part of these special categories to have not just the same increase as others but a proportionate increase which would give them the same degree of exceptional benefit.

In 1955, when the basic rate was raised to 63s. for a man and wife, 1s. extra was given to these special classes, who then received 19s. extra. In 1956, when another increase was given, the basic rate was 67s. a week with 20s. for the special category. This time, however, there has been nothing more than the bare increase by which all recipients will benefit, and nothing extra for the blind and the tubercular.

I shall not attempt to cover the great variety of scales, because if I did so I should not then focus attention on two classes of people who, if anybody, want special treatment, particularly the blind. I have always considered it was a good arrangement to take blind people out of public assistance. People who are unemployed, and who it is known will be unemployable throughout their lives, should not have to depend on Assistance. Public assistance should be transitory, and so it was right to take them out of public assistance and put them under the county and county borough councils.

I believe that a case has been made out for a proportionate increase in the case of the blind and the tubercular because they are a diminishing quantity. Since, fortunately, there are not many of them, it might be argued that this increase would not cost very much. At any rate a case has been made out for the blind, and I shall be glad if the Minister will tell us why in this instance he has not copied what has been done previously and given them a proportionate increase.

6.17 p.m.

Mr. Harold Finch (Bedwellty)

I support my right hon. Friend and other hon. Members in their contention that the majority of the increases proposed in the National Assistance Regulations are not sufficient. We have been reminded that we are here dealing with a section of the community which is existing on the lowest possible standard of living. With rising prices the 9s. proposed in these Regulations for a married couple will still leave their situation very little different from what it is at present, because 76s. plus rent will hardly meet the bare necessities of life, to say nothing of those smaller items which can give some added comfort and some little pleasure to the older generation in the evening of their days. After all, life can be very grim without a little pleasure or a little comfort, and there is not a right hon. or hon. Member in this House tonight who can say that 76s. is adequate to meet the present situation of this section of the community.

My next point has been put already, but it would be interesting to know how the right hon. Gentleman arrived at these cold, naked figures. We should have knowledge of the basis of the increases suggested in the regulations. The Index of Retail Prices does not reflect properly the cost of living for those in receipt of National Insurance and National Assistance. We have already been reminded by my right hon. Friend that in March, 1956, the Cost of Living Advisory Committee submitted recommendations which were adopted by the Government. It submitted a new index by means of which retail prices should be fixed. It went out of its way to point out that there were certain groups which should be excluded from its calculations in arriving at the new index. At the top level were households the head of which had a recorded gross income of £20 per week or more, and at the lower end households in which three-quarters of the total income was derived from National Insurance benefits, retirement pensions and similar pensions, and National Assistance. Having made an exhaustive investigation to arrive at the new index, the Committee felt that such sections of the community should be excluded from the calculations. The reason was that the expenditure of such households was considered not to be typical of the average pattern of expenditure for the country.

It is only recently that the Ministry of Labour has been able to publish in greater detail how the Committee arrived at its findings. It is evident from the figures which have been published that in the average household the amount spent on rent, fuel, light and food is about 48 per cent. of the total expenditure, but in the case of those on pension, National Insurance and National Assistance, where there is one person in the household, the figure is 72 per cent., and where there are two in the household it is 64 per cent., the average of these two being 68 per cent. Thus, the difference between the ordinary householder and someone on pension is 20 per cent.

I try to be practical in these matters, and I would urge upon the Minister the need to get a yardstick in order to assess the payment of National Assistance. Here we have something which could very well be adopted in present circumstances—a separate index for those on pension and National Insurance benefit. I should be glad to learn from the right hon. Gentleman whether he is prepared, with the Minister of Labour, to go into the matter and give the House some information on these lines in the New Year. After a great deal of consideration, the Trades Union Congress has recommended that there should be a separate index for pensioners and those on National Insurance benefit. Thus, the great trade union movement supports the proposal. In the circumstances, the case is unanswerable.

Apart from the figures, we know from experience that considerable hardship is suffered by pensioners and those on National Insurance benefit. Recently I met in my constituency a lady who was looking for wood so that she might be able to light a fire. She had no coal. She told me that she spent most of the daytime in winter in bed in order to keep warm. This is a terrible state of affairs. There are no doubt many people in similar circumstances.

I urge the Minister to inquire into the matter of coal for those who are in dire need. The National Assistance Board is doing a very good job, and in many cases its officers show the spirit which has dispelled a great deal of the criticism which was voiced in the old days. Nevertheless, I would impress upon the Minister the fact that for the old-age pensioner coal is dear, and I urge him to look at the problem and consult his officers about it.

Reference to disregards has been made by my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Mr. B. Taylor). The Regulations make no change in this respect. As my hon. Friend has pointed out, in the case of those in receipt of superannuation or pension any income above 10s. 6d. is taken into consideration for National Assistance purposes. That figure was fixed in 1948 and has never been changed, although there have been six changes in National Assistance rates since then. The same thing applies to those in receipt of workmen's compensation and Industrial Injuries benefit. In that case the figure is £1, and it was fixed in 1948. There are miners who have paid into pension schemes. At one time the miners pension from that was 10s. a week. By arrangement, the National Union of Mineworkers and the National Coal Board have been able to pay pensioners in the mining industry £1 a week, but every penny above 10s. 6d. is taken into consideration for National Assistance purposes. The effect is that much of those pensions goes to the National Assistance Board. The same thing applies to a number of industrial injured.

Pensions of this type are small, being only 10s. or 15s. a week. My hon. Friend referred to the Nottingham scheme which provides a pension of 15s. a week. I repeat that the disregard figure was fixed in 1948 and has not since been changed although there have been changes in the earnings limit for retirement pensioners and increases in National Insurance benefits. In our recent debate I referred to the people who continue working after 65 and are able to earn a few shillings extra in pension increment. Yet that increment is taken into consideration for National Assistance purposes at a time when we are trying to encourage people to continue at work to help our economy. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will pay special attention to disregards, especially in relation to pension and superannuation schemes, people receiving workmen's compensation, and those who continue to work after they are 65.

There are also those individuals who are in local authority accommodation. They gel a pension of £2 a week from which 32s. 6d. has to be paid to the local authority for maintenance. That leaves a balance of 7s. 6d., in addition to which they have had the advantage of the tobacco token, giving a total of 9s. 10d. That is the equivalent of about 24 per cent. of their pension. I understand that under the new Regulations they are likely, in many cases, to get 10s. pocket money. I should have thought that the same percentage of 24 or 25 would have been applied, giving 12s. 6d. instead of 10s. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will consider those cases where hardship will be caused.

I have dealt with one or two aspects of the problem. Like other hon. Members, I look forward to the time when insurance benefits will be so raised that fewer people will require National Assistance. I hope that until that time comes, at least one result of this debate will be that we shall get a separate index of the cost of living for those receiving National Assistance and National Insurance.

The Government have every encouragement to do that. The trade union movement is behind them in this matter as are the Report of the Cost of Living Advisory Committee, hon. Members on this side of the House and, I believe, hon. Members opposite. If out of the debate comes an assurance that a separate index will be used as a basis for calculating National Assistance, then the debate will not have been without a beneficial result.

6.31 p.m.

Mr. R. E. Prentice (East Ham, North)

I want to make three brief references to matters already raised in the debate. I want first to support my hon. Friend the Member for Bedwellty (Mr. Finch) on the need for a special cost-of-living index for pensioners and others living on National Insurance benefits and within the scope of National Assistance. For a very long time there has been evidence that the pattern of spending of people in those categories is very different from the average pattern of spending throughout the country.

I realise, of course, that the objection can be raised that there are dozens or hundreds of different patterns of spending among different classes of people, but there is a special need for an index for these people so that we can get our facts right. We have no objective means of measuring whether the increases proposed in these Regulations will be adequate, nor of measuring what increases would be adequate, without some information about how the cost of living for the people concerned has altered since the last increases.

That means that the figures which the hon. Lady gave in opening the debate cannot be taken at their face value. She said that there had been proportionate increases in the rates of assistance since 1948 and since 1951 which outstripped the rise in the cost of living, but we have to have regard to the fact that the index applies to the country as a whole. Food obviously plays a bigger part in the spending of poorer people than it does among the population as a whole. We know that since 1951 the cost of food has increased more than the cost of goods in general.

There is the additional factor that throughout most of the period which the hon. Lady reviewed, rents were stabilised by rent control. Rent control is at an end and so its stabilising influence on the cost of living has ended. However, people receiving National Assistance have their rents paid for them and so that stabilising factor has been absent. For those reasons, and many others, the figures which the hon. Lady gave should not be taken at their face value.

I want briefly to refer to the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Bolton. East (Mr. Philip Bell)—I am sorry that he is no longer present. One must congratulate him on being the only speaker in the debate not to have come from this side of the House. It is a very sad reflection on the state of mind of the Government party. The House is discussing provisions to be made for the poorest and weakest members of the community. That is a subject which should arouse concern in all parts of the House, irrespective of party, and it is significant that the benches opposite have been practically empty for the whole of the debate and that only one Member has spoken from the Government side of the House.

The hon. and learned Member said that there had been a recent development of pessimism about poverty—I think that that is a fair interpretation of what he said. He argued that in the good old days people made provision for their own old age by saving and so on, and that now we are being pessimistic. He should consult his history books. Since 1601 there has been public provision for extremes of poverty caused by old age, sickness, or other things. Even before that, provision was made by monasteries and other bodies. It is not a new problem.

Our ideas and policies have changed, but the problem has been with us for centuries. I make that comment because the hon. Member's views are typical of the myth often spread by reactionary people, that, in some way or other, the development of the Welfare State has bean sapping our vitality.

I want to follow the argument put by my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, lichen (Dr. King) who complimented the staff of the National Assistance Board on their welfare work. We have all met examples of officers of the Board who have gone far beyond their purely statutory duties and who have done a great deal, for example, in encouraging old people to take advantage of local welfare services, introducing them to Darby and Joan clubs and so on. However, most of us recognise that among some people, especially old people, there is still a reluctance to go to the National Assistance Board. I am sure that all of us in our constituencies have met that attitude and I hope that we all do what we can to combat it.

A further stage in the development of National Assistance should be the abolition of the National Assistance Board as such and the merging of its work into a wider Ministry of Social Welfare, so that the step from having a basic National Insurance benefit to having it supplemented by National Assistance would be taken in the same Department and in the same building and so that the people concerned would not feel that that step was as large as now appears to them to be the case. We should investigate that whole problem to see what other administrative measures can be taken to make it easier for those who need assistance to get it.

I share the disappointment expressed by many of my hon. Friends about the rates of assistance and the small increases which are to be given. That disappointment reflects the disappointment of many thousands who are affected. Let us remember that not everyone is well informed on the details of this legislation and that many pensioners will have read in the Press that they are to get an increase in pension of 10s. for single people and 15s. for married couples. They will have a shock when they find that if they are drawing a supplement to their retirement pension, they will have only 5s. or 9s., and that if they are smokers it will be only 2s. 8d. or 6s. 8d., as the case may be.

If I had to give a figure, I should have liked to see the Government proposing increases in National Assistance rates similar to those which have been approved for National Insurance rates, in other words, 10s. for a single person and at least 13s. for a married couple. In suggesting that, I point out that since January, 1956, the basic National Assistance rate for a single person has been the same as the National Insurance rate, 40s., and 2s. higher for a married couple, 67s. as against 65s.

From next January it will be 5s. less for a single person and 4s. less for a married couple, so that many people who are getting these small supplementary pensions at the moment will lose the right to them. These fluctuations have occurred before. If we look at the figures in respect of National Assistance grants we see that there was a drop in the number of grants paid in April and May, 1955, after the last rise in National Insurance rates and that then, month by month, the figures crept up again until they reached their present level.

When changes of this sort take place people who have hitherto been able to get supplementary pensions find that they can no longer get them, but later they may again qualify. This movement in and out of the National Insurance field causes much confusion and resentment, and it is not much use for members of the Government to put forward sophisticated arguments illustrating the way in which one benefit is worked out against another. People will say, "The Government have given me something with one hand and they are going to take it away with the other."

This will be a specially difficult problem next year. Some people will come out of the Assistance range in January but will qualify for it again in April and in the months following, when the large increases under the Rent Act come into effect. I hope that some of the people whose cases are on the borderline and who lose their right to Assistance in January will realise that if their rent goes up later they will again qualify, and that the Board's officers will do what they can to explain the position to the people concerned.

There is a case for saying that so long as our basic rates of National Insurance pensions are so low, and so long as we do not have a national superannuation scheme which gives proper provision for old age, National Assistance rates should at least equal the basic National Insurance rates, so that people will at least have that to draw, plus the amount of their rent. We should see that people do not fall below that level of subsistence. If that principle could be recognised it would be a step towards further improvements in the standard of living of the people of whom we are talking tonight.

As other speakers have said, those drawing National Assistance are not the workshy and shiftless people which reactionary elements sometimes pretend they are. The House has been reminded that the Board has ample powers to take steps against those who fail to maintain themselves and their dependants. For people who are able to work the payment of National Assistance is made contingent on their registering for work and is paid through the employment exchange. In the main we are talking of people who are in real need, and who are in that position through no fault of their own.

We know that the largest group are those who are drawing National Insurance benefits but cannot live on them. Discussion has largely centred on those people, and I have concentrated on their needs myself. But there are other groups who do not qualify for any benefits under National Insurance, and even when we have a national superannuation scheme—as I believe we shall—and improve the National Insurance scheme, some people will still slip through the net who will need the special kind of assistance which can be given only if it is based upon some sort of means test administered by the National Assistance Board or through some other arrangement.

There are many wives who are separated from their husbands, and who have young children to bring up; there are unmarried mothers, and many other categories of people who, although they are in need, would not qualify for National Insurance benefit, but would need assistance given by the Board. We are dealing with people who have plenty or problems to worry about apart from having an impossible job to make ends meet. In the years that lie ahead one of our priorities should be to make more adequate provision for people in these categories.

I realise that I am speaking with the glorious irresponsibility of a back bencher, who does not have to think in terms of the cost, but I suggest that if, in the years ahead, our national product goes up and we become a more prosperous community, we should aim at giving these people a larger share of the cake. Not long ago a member of the Government spoke of doubling our standard of living in twenty-five years. I am sufficient of an optimist to believe that that is possible, but I would add that in order to achieve that situation we need a change both of policy and of Government, and I am optimistic about that as well. I believe that we shall have a change of both.

If we double our standard of living, or increase it materially, the extra wealth that we produce as a community ought not to go only to the owners of capital and to the workers in work; it should go to the whole community. We are here discussing about 2¼ million people—the poorest and the weakest members of our community—and one of the tests of our civilised standards in the years ahead will be our solution of the question whether we can make better provision for them.

6.45 p.m.

Mr. E. Fernyhough (Jarrow)

I should like to endorse the remarks which my hon. Friend the Member for East Ham. North (Mr. Prentice) has made. Like him. I only wish that the Ministers responsible for the introduction of this legislation could understand some of the difficulties, anxieties and distress of those living on National Assistance. My hon. Friend referred to the Lord Privy Seal's optimism in saying that the standard of living could be doubled in twenty-five years. If hon. Members were in receipt of twice the income of the people affected by the legislation that we are passing tonight, I wonder how any of them would begin to try to spend it so that he lived decently and comfortably. If we doubled it we should be giving to the married couple £7 12s. I wonder whether hon. Members can visualise what their lives would be like if they suddenly had to try to meet all the commitments involved in keeping a house open with a meagre income of that kind.

I was in a home a month ago, talking to a couple who were in receipt of National Assistance, when the light bulb fused. They did not have another bulb in the house and they had not the money to get one. I went out in my car and brought two. Little things like that amount to economic crises for these people. An electric light bulb may go; a bowl may be broken or a pair of shoes may require mending—such things are perpetually happening, and for the people with whom we are concerned it is a struggle every day, week in and week out, for fifty-two weeks a year.

I have never been able to understand why, whenever we are trying to do something for people in this category, we count every penny—measure it to the last farthing—as though it were gold that we were paying out instead of coppers. And it is coppers in this case, the married couple who do not smoke receive 9s. extra a week. With all the increases that there have been in the cost of living in the last two years, the increase is 9s. a week. By the time these scales become operative it will be two years since those in receipt of National Assistance obtained any improvement in their scales. In two years there has been an increase of 9s. to cover all the rises in the cost of living which these people have had to meet just as much as everybody else in regard to coal, electricity, food, clothes—and one could go through the whole gamut of commodities.

Speaking at a meeting on Saturday I asked if anybody could tell me anything that had gone down since the Tories had been in office. One member of the audience said, "Two things have gone down—the value of the and the stock of the Tories in the country." Those are the only two things that have gone down. Everything else has gone up, and yet these people are to have only 9s. more to meet all those additional expenses.

In view of the perpetual rises in the cost of living, I want to ask the Minister why he thinks that those who are at the bottom of the ladder should receive the least. If we examine the increases in retirement pensions for married couples we find that they have benefited by 15s. over a period of more than two years, whereas the married couple in receipt of National Assistance have benefited by only 14s. In other words, they are, relatively speaking, a shilling worse off.

I cannot understand the kind of mind that believes that those without resources should not be equally as well treated as those with resources. It means, for example, that a retired civil servant with a pension of £1,500 a year will receive the full increase. But a miner who has worked during the lean and bitter years, with no opportunity to make provision for his old age; who is dependent solely on the minimum pension rights and has to seek National Assistance, will get only 5s. I think that a disgrace to a nation which is willing to spend so much in other directions.

I agree that many people are reluctant to go to the National Assistance Board. Many people still think it is like the old Poor Law. But I always advise my constituents that there is a difference between the two. In the old days there was a means test to see how much could be taken from a person. But the inquiry under the National Assistance machinery is to see how much can be given; and there is a vast difference between being questioned to see how much one may receive and being questioned to see how much should be taken away.

A further problem I would like to raise relates to men and women who ate victims of industry, those receiving industrial Injuries pensions. They are no longer able to follow their own normal employment and may have been told to seek lighter work. But many are of an age when employers are not prepared to employ them and they cannot find alternative work. When their unemployment benefit is exhausted they are compelled to go to the National Assistance Board where they find that only £l of what they are receiving by way of pension is disregarded for the purposes of National Assistance. These people, who may have been injured in the service of the nation, eventually find themselves among the poorest of the poor. I hope: that the Minister will advise the Board to disregard a larger amount of what they are receiving in the way of hardship allowance or pension. If the right hon. Gentleman does not deal with this matter, sooner or later there will be a big outcry, and some Government will have to resolve the difficulty.

Like other hon. Members, I wish to pay tribute to the officers of the Board as distinct from the members. Miserable and mean though the scales may be, I know from experience that the officers who have the job of administering the Regulations do so with a sympathy and wisdom which one sometimes feels is lacking among those responsible for framing the Regulations. The officers do what they can, but they are limited in their endeavours by what is done in the House. I think it disturbing that today, when this country is supposed to be doing so well, and after five years of Tory Government and the promise that our finances would be restored and we should become great once again, we are prepared to devote to the poorest and weakest section of the community only the miserable amounts denoted by these scales.

Some day poverty will not be a disgrace. Some day the poor will not be despised. Some day we shall realise that they are human beings with stomachs which need filling and bodies that require clothing and that they need accommodation which it is not beneath human dignity to occupy. I do not think that day will come under the present Administration, but I believe that it will be a little nearer after the next General Election.

6.57 p.m.

Mr. E. G. Willis (Edinburgh, East)

I wish to pay a tribute to the officials of the National Assistance Board in the Edinburgh area. I have found them most helpful, but they are bound by the decisions of this House and the instructions of the Board. I do not think that anyone examining what we are doing tonight can be very proud. We are, of course, pleased at being asked to increase these scales, but nobody would suggest that the increases are so magnificent as to cause us any pride. On the contrary, I consider that they are a cause for anxiety and for a little heart searching.

Why is it that a vast number of people dependent on National Assistance have to live in the circumstances in which they now find themselves? During the debate on the National Insurance Bill I expressed my feelings forcibly on this subject. I referred to a report of the needs of the aged in Edinburgh, an excellent and highly technical report, not given to exaggeration, prepared by members of the Public Health Department in Edinburgh and the Department of Public Health and Social Medicine, University of Edinburgh.

Some of the needs and the services required by these old people are interesting and give us cause for thought. Of 17,000 needs of the aged in Edinburgh, 3,000 are for meals on wheels. The Report states that there are 3,000 people in Edinburgh requiring meals on wheels. These are the elderly people, many being in receipt of public assistance. This does not express the total need and the Report says that there is evidence that the elderly are under-nourished. This is not a propagandist publication. It refers to the Report of Hobson and Pemberton in 1955. It says: As we did not ask for data on under-nourishment, we cannot be sure of having all those who were under-nourished included in the recommendation. So there were more than the 3,000 recommended in the Report requiring meals on wheels. I admit at once that not all those people required that service simply because of under-nourishment. Some required it because of loneliness and some because they were not fit to prepare their own meals. The Report also says: It is, however, certainly probable that many of those recommended for whom no obvious signs of inability to prepare meals were shown (i.e. mobile and fit for all tasks) are indeed people whom the interviewer recommended purely on a nutritional basis. Surely at this time in 1957, with a Prime Minister telling us "We have never had it so good," to have hundreds of people in the City of Edinburgh—that is only one of many large cities in the country—under-nourished is a startling indictment of the Government. It is something we ought seriously to consider. In these proposals a person living alone is offered 5s. a week more. What a magnificent sum! He cannot even buy a bag of coal with that. It would not buy half a bag of coal, not in London certainly. Even a married couple can scarcely afford an extra bag of coal out of this increase.

It is all right for the Parliamentary Secretary and the Minister to give us statistics; all of them may be important, but they are meaningless unless they are interpreted in terms of how people live. People live in terms of bags of coal, pints of milk and that sort of thing. How many pints of milk will 5s. buy? How much additional butter, additional bread or additional meat will 5s. buy? Housewives know about this much more than we do, but anyone with any knowledge at all knows that it is really ridiculous to give such a small amount when thousands of people in Edinburgh require meals on wheels, many of them for nutritional reasons.

I do not know whether the Minister will tell us, as I think the hon. Lady once did say, that this is because these people do not know how to spend their money. I hope we shall not hear that tonight. It is certainly a curious situation if when a person reaches the age of 60 or 65 he has to become an expert dietitian in order to know how to live out of the money he gets. There is something wrong with 'that. This Report also tells us that 3,000 or 4,000 people require changes in accommodation. It says: …there emerges a compelling picture of poor housing… and also enumerates all the difficulties under which these people are living. In Edinburgh the Corporation is building houses for the aged, but they are at much dearer rentals than many of these people have to pay at present. Therefore, if the aged and those in receipt of National Assistance are to take advantage, they require the full help to enable them to do so without limit. The Report follows a report previously prepared dealing with certain other factors concerning the aged in Edinburgh and amplifies my experience on going round my constituency that the condition under which many of these people are compelled to live is deplorable.

It is not good enough to say, "Well we have increased this amount by such and such per cent., which is slightly more than the cost-of-living figure." I agree with my hon. Friends who have said that that cost-of-living figure is misleading. Everyone knows that the weighting figures ought to vary for every category of person. The weighting figures for the aged are vastly different from those of other people. There ought to be a special cost-of-living index prepared for the aged. It should also be remembered that the productive capacity of this country has increased since the years about which the Government are so fond of talking when the Labour Government were in power. That capacity increased under a Labour Government very much from 1946 to 1951. It has not increased so much since then thanks to this Government, but it still has increased. Surely these people who paved the way for that increase are entitled to their share of the increased wealth of the country.

When we talk of doubling the standard of living, we ought to be talking in terms of the poorest as well as the well-to-do. In my view, the standard of the poorest people ought to be raised much faster than that of those who are better off. That is social justice. That is the way we ought to be looking at these things. If we cared to rearrange our structure of personal incomes rather differently, we could give these people a satisfactory standard of life without injuring anyone very much; in fact, I doubt whether it would cause any great hardship to any section of the country. Of course, the Government have no will to redistribute our national income more fairly and to give poorer people a better deal. Almost every measure they undertake increases the gaps in society. They do less for the poor always.

Even in Measures such as we have recently considered, like the National Insurance Bill and these Regulations dealing with National Assistance, the Government follow the usual policy of the poorest getting the least. That is the philosophy of the party opposite. I cannot remember an occasion on which the Government have come forward with something which would benefit poor people more than it would benefit well-off people. Always it is the well-to-do who benefit most. I do not understand that philosophy at all.

We have a duty to these people. They have contributed their fair share to the greatness of this country. They have fought for this country in its difficulties, some of them to the injury of their health and the detriment of their careers. They have suffered unemployment in years gone by and suffered poverty. Some of them have brought up families of five or six children in conditions of immense difficulty and worked sixteen hours a day to rear those children to become good citizens capable of making a worthwhile contribution to society. At the end of the day we tell them that they must live on £2 5s. a week because they have not been able to save and because they have not worked where there was a superannuation scheme. We tell them that if there are two of them, they can live on £3 16s. a week. Anyone who has tried to live on that knows how difficult it is.

Incidentally, the Government ought to consider once again the proposal very frequently made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ince (Mr. T. Brown) that they should disregard for National Assistance purposes the additional increments earned as a result of working after 65. While I am glad that we are increasing these scales, they are not being increased sufficiently. My views on these increases are the same as my views on the pension increases; they are far too small and very, very late, because they ought to have been made long ago.

7.11 p.m.

Miss Margaret Herbison (Lanarkshire, North)

This has been a short but I think extremely interesting debate. We have been discussing not merely figures of increases and comparisons but the welfare and well-being of over two million people. In the main, these are the old, the chronic sick, the unemployed and the children of these men and women.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough, East (Mr. Marquand), speaking first in the debate from this side of the House, dealt with a great many figures and asked the Minister to reply to a number of questions about them. I will not go over them, but I hope that in his reply the Minister will be able to give the answers requested.

One interesting feature of the debate has been that only one back bencher from the Government side has participated. That was the hon. and learned Member for Bolton, East (Mr. Philip Bell). I noted his words. He spoke about "by own earnings and own skill saving enough for old age". He spoke about a defeatist attitude. He went on to talk about those who waste their substance and their health, and said that if they did this, the State took care of them. I have here a booklet which many hon. Members on both sides of the House will have received. It is a report from the City of Salford of a survey into the lives of the elderly people in Salford—a complete survey of every elderly man and woman in that city. In the report, we read these words: One can only express the highest admiration of the indomitable spirit of the 'not so young' in this industrial dockland city, evident throughout the Survey, who having weathered the distress of two world wars; called up to bear the dire misery of poverty occasioned by the trade depression of the year preceding 1930 in which Salford suffered bitter experience to my knowledge, whilst I was in close touch with the people at that time relieving hardship and destitution; managed to afford every care to growing families, many of whom are now left alone in the eventide of life unable on their meagre incomes to afford themselves bare necessities to exist in any sort of comfort or purchase the common commodities such as bedding, coal, etc., which might at least give comfort to their bodies, the price of such severely minimising their purchasing power in this direction, even to preservation of a minimum standard. That is about the old people in Salford, and the report was published in April of this year. I am sorry that the hon. and learned Member for Bolton, East is not in his place, because I imagine that the old people of Bolton, and indeed of any other city or rural area in this country, are no different from the old people of Salford in the way their lives have been spent.

Last week, when we were debating the National Insurance Bill, the Minister spoke time and time again about the substantial increases which that Bill would give. In opening the debate today, the Parliamentary Secretary spoke of the appreciably higher value, even for those losing the tobacco coupon, of what was being given under these Regulations. What is being given is 5s., or, if the tobacco coupon is taken away, 2s. 8d. Before I became a Member of Parliament I was a school teacher, and, in the context of how old people live today, if I had asked my pupils what figure of speech was either "substantial increase" in the context of the Bill or "appreciably higher value" in the context of these Regulations, I should have expected them to give me the figure of speech as hyperbole. It is nothing more than exaggeration to use words such as these to describe the increases which are to be given in the Regulations. If we put the small increases against the estimated saving of £8 million about which we were told last week, we realise more than ever how inadequate they are.

As I said, during the debate we have been talking about the old, the chronic sick and the long-term unemployed—in the main, the weakest people in our community, the people who need all the help that we as their representatives in the House can possibly give them. I suggest to the Minister that, twelve years after the war, the question which we should be posing to ourselves today is not, "Are these new rates better in real value than those of 1948?", but "Are they adequate?". That has been brought out in various ways from the speeches made from this side of the House.

I contend that these new rates are not adequate, particularly in the light of the researches which have been made in cities. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) quoted the survey which had been made in Edinburgh into the lives of old people. I have here the survey which has been made in Salford. A survey has been made in Rutherglen, in Scotland. Wherever a survey has been made in those years, we have undoubted evidence of the misery of the lives of our old people.

If the Minister replies tonight by telling us how much better are the provisions in these Regulations than those of 1948, then I tell him that that is no answer at all to the misery and the poverty of our old, our chronic sick and our unemployed. Again I stress a point which has been stressed time and time again on this side of the House—that it is nonsense to quote the increase in these rates against the increase in the retail index.

I think of those old people who live near me. I think of the long-term unemployed, whose problems were raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Mr. Fernyhough). I will deal with them later. I think of the kind of lives which they are living. I can see the old and the chronic sick with their homes becoming poorer and poorer and they themselves becoming more miserable as each month passes. I am certain that if we examined this question from the adequacy of the amounts rather than from these useless comparisons—useless if we are talking to the old people—we might get from the National Assistance Board much better rates than we have in these Regulations.

There is a further point that was made by the Parliamentary Secretary. She said that in a previous debate doubts were voiced from this side of the House about discretionary allowances, and the fear was expressed that the National Assistance Board had been tightening up on discretionary allowances. She quite rightly gave today figures to show that this was not the case. She said that the discretionary powers were used more freely in 1956 than ever before. So freely were they used that, in 1956, 45 per cent. of all those who were receiving help from the National Assistance Board had also given to them discretionary allowances.

I should like the Minister to tell us the number of discretionary grants that are given. There are weekly discretionary allowances and there are discretionary grants given for clothing, bed clothing and so on. I should like to know what has been happening about discretionary grants, and whether we have had the same increase in discretionary grants as we have had in discretionary allowances. I would say to the Parliamentary Secretary that when she said that there had been no tightening up of these allowances she gave us adequate proof that the basic payments are completely inadequate. Surely, if it comes to the stage that 45 per cent. of all people in receipt of National Assistance must be given extra by the National Assistance Board in the form of discretionary allowances, the basic rates are completely inadequate.

Again, I would say to the Minister that she should examine very carefully why so many discretionary allowances have to be paid. Like other hon. Members on this side of the House—and as, I think, the Parliamentary Secretary did I should like to pay my tribute to the area officers and the other officers of the National Assistance Board. In my own constituency I find that they are most helpful in all the work that they do for these people.

I turn to a point which has been raised on various occasions by my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow. He has always been disturbed about the fate of the industrially disabled men. There are many of them in my constituency. These men are in the difficulty described by my hon. Friend because the Government decided to delete Section 62 of the Industrial Injuries Act. When that decision was taken, we on this side of the House made a strong plea that Section 62, which had been put in as a temporary measure when the Act was introduced, ought to be made permanent; but instead of making it permanent the Tory Government decided to delete it.

Those of us, like the hon. Member for Jarrow, who have a great many industrially disabled men in our constituencies find that these men are perfectly willing to work. They would love to find a job, not just for the money which it would give them, although that is important, but because it is much better from their own point of view to be in work. In my area, they cannot find work. I am sure that is the position in many other areas, so by the previous action of the Government they lost their unemployment benefit, and when they went to the National Assistance Board many of them found that they could not get a penny from the Board. No care at all is taken of these people under the provisions of these Regulations.

I would say to the Minister responsible that perhaps there was nothing that he could do for them in these Regulations, but since he has found how this has been working he ought now to have discussions with the other Ministers concerned to find if it is possible to reinstate the former Section 62 of the Industrial Injuries Act.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Sir F. Messer) referred to two specific categories of people. I would say again, particularly of the blind, that they are the weakest in our community. They have always had a rate higher than the ordinary rate with which we are dealing in these Regulations. Under these Regulations, although an increase has been made in the basic rates, no increase has been made for the blind. If the Minister is basing the present increases on the rise in the cost of living—and the Parliamentary Secretary in her speech did try to make that out—then there has been a rise in the cost of living for the blind, and it seems to me they ought to have had an increase under these Regulations. Concerning tubercular patients, the differential has been lessened under the Regulations, and I should like the Minister to tell us why.

My right hon. Friend asked about the question of rents. We should like the Minister to give a specific assurance tonight that, no matter what the increases in rents may be under the Rent Act, every old person who is on National Assistance, or those who are to go on National Assistance because of the increases under the Rent Act, will have the full rent given to them. This is important, because I do not think that the Parliamentary Secretary made it clear that, whatever the rent may be, it will be paid.

Finally, I would say, on a matter which has been mentioned by one or two of my hon. Friends, that when we look at the number of people on National Insurance who are in receipt of National Assistance and the number of people on unemployment benefit who are in receipt of National Assistance, we can come to only one conclusion, that the rates for National Insurance sickness benefit and the rates for unemployment benefit are too low. It seems to me that there must be much more examination of these matters than there was by the Government when they produced the Bill which we discussed last week. When we consider the number of old-age pensioners who are receiving the full old-age pension, the contributory pension, and at the number of those old people on National Assistance we must come to the conclusion that the pensions are too small.

I do not think that we can go on any longer looking at this in just a piecemeal way. It must be examined radically, and the Labour Party has been doing that. We have given to the British public for examination and discussion a policy statement on pensions and superannuation. We are now engaged in examining the consequences on National Insurance and unemployment benefit. I wish that the Government had done the same thing—and what a much better position they were in than were those of us on the working party on that national superannuation scheme.

By this time the Government ought to have been able to have brought forward proposals that would have made whatever these people were getting in benefit adequate to meet today's needs. I press the Minister to take account of all the points of view put forward by the Opposition, and to realise that our old people, even with the miserable increases that are given under these Regulations, will still be living a life of poverty and hardship.

I want again to quote from the report on the Salford survey. It says: To those in doubt of the plight of elderly in 1957, following this total survey, I ask 'take a walk with me on the daily round' and see in cold reality homes where replacements or repair of footwear is 'luxury'; a hot mid-day meal for six days a week almost a miracle; warm winter clothes (so necessary in this part of Lancashire to old people) a mere fancy; see cinders sifted minutely from old fireplaces until they are reduced to fine ash…the ability to buy sufficient coal alone I feel might be the relevant inducement for them to remain in their own homes with at least the comfort of warmth. As I said in the beginning, I am convinced from my own contacts, particularly with the old people and the chronic sick, that that is the kind of life they are living, and no figures proving that this Government have been better than a previous one will be any comfort to them. If the Minister cannot do anything about these Regulations, I hope that new ones will soon come from the National Assistance Board, so showing that the Board and the Government have really taken account of these serious surveys among our old people and are ready to make life more tolerable for them and to allow them to live in dignity in their advanced years.

7.34 p.m.

The Minister of Pensions and National Insurance (Mr. John Boyd-Carpenter)

If one compares the course of this debate with that on similar Regulations on the last two or three occasions on which the assistance scales have been increased, one is very much struck by how much calmer and more objective has been today's debate. I am sure that that is a good thing because, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Middlesbrough, East (Mr. Marquand) very rightly reminded us, this is a matter of major importance to the people directly concerned and, indeed, to the community as a whole. It is one which I am sure the House is right to take, as it has today, calmly and objectively, and not one that is helped if we get too passionate or too excited about it—

Mr. Willis

It is not a question of passion. It is a question of poverty.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

The hon. Gentleman is always passionate and I would except him from what I have said, but I think that the House as a whole is at its best in discussing a great and important issue if it does so calmly, and I would say to the hon. Gentleman that calmness is by no manner of means inconsistent with sincerity.

Another interesting feature of this debate, which I thought very fair and proper, has been the tributes paid again and again to the officers of the Assistance Board for the humane and sensible way in which they administer this great system. I would, if I might, confirm those tributes. I believe that the way in which the system is administered is the best possible answer to the objection raised from time to time—and I think mentioned at any rate once today—that some people feel an unwillingness, even though they are qualified, to obtain help from the Board.

I am perfectly certain that when people who have had that feeling have been able to overcome it they have certainly found that the Board's officers have treated them with humanity, discretion and fairness, and have learned, therefore, that their doubts and hesitations—however worthy and admirable—were completely unfounded.

I will endeavour, first of all, to deal separately with a number of important issues that have been raised and then, if I may, devote the closing part of my remarks to an argument on the adequacy and propriety of our proposals.

As it is somewhat extraneous to the main issue, let me first deal with the point put by the hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) a few moments ago. I think that her reference to Section 62 of the Industrial Injuries Act was really to Section 62 of the National Insurance Act, because, from the subject matter of her speech, I gathered that it was extended unemployment benefit that she had in mind.

As the House knows, that Section was put originally in the 1946 Act—by right hon. Gentlemen opposite, of course for a limited period of five years. It allowed extended unemployment benefit over that period because it was then contemplated that there might be serious post-war unemployment. But I would stress that, from the beginning, it was intended to be a temporary provision to deal with a feared temporary situation which, in the mercy of Providence, did not arise here after the 1939–45 war.

What was done in 1953 was to allow that Section to lapse, but, as the House remembers, to make a somewhat more generous provision for added days. In fact, the maximum period for which unemployment benefit can now be paid is up to 19 months, which is a longer period than under the old Act. I do not think that the hon. Lady's proposal to reverse the decision of 1953—or the intention of the 1946 Act—is a sound one, or one that is justified by the country's employment situation—

Miss Herbison

The Minister is basing his case on the fact that we have full employment. What worries many of us, and what worried the Labour Opposition when the Government decided to allow Section 62 to lapse, was that in some areas there is still serious unemployment, particularly long-term unemployment, These are the people who have suffered greatly, and I would say to the right hon. Gentleman that he must well remember when this Section was allowed to lapse the case that was put up from this side by those who had been responsible for the Act in the first instance.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

That was a case that the House of Commons did not accept. The hon. Lady cannot avoid the fact that her own right hon. Friends brought forward this provision in the contemptation of large-scale unemployment, and in today's employment situation it is not sound or reasonable to argue that a provision specifically designed not for pockets of unemployment in certain areas but for large-scale unemployment is appropriate or necessary—

Mr. B. Taylor

I am sure that were he here my right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths) would say that whilst Section 62 of the National Insurance Act was put in for a period of only five years, there was also provision that the whole Act should be subject to quinquennial review. I am quite certain that it was never in his mind that extended unemployment benefit should he abolished, as it was by the Government.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

The hon. Gentleman, of course, was with his right hon. Friend at the time of the Act. I can only go by the statements published at the time of the intentions of the then Government. But it is perfectly clear that the provision was designed to deal with a situation which did not arise and which has not arisen. Therefore, the point is not a relevant contribution to thought on this matter.

Mr. Fernyhough

rose—

Mr. Taylor

rose—

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

I will give way to the hon. Member for Mansfield (Mr B. Taylor).

Mr. Taylor

The right hon. Gentleman, who is now Lord Ingleby, was giving his observation about the lapsing of this provision and the right hon. Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths) pleaded for its retention.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

I am well aware of that. Indeed, I referred the hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North to the debates in this House and to the fact that the House did not accept those arguments. My point, as the right hon. Gentleman appreciates, relates to the original intention in making this, as has been undisputed, a temporary provision compared with the permanent provision in the 1946 Act.

The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Middlesbrough, East raised very properly the question of how many people would be taken off National Assistance by the combined effect of the changes embodied in these Regulations and the improvement in National Insurance benefits which the House approved last week. It is difficult to give a precise figure because, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, the needs of people on National Assistance vary and fluctuate with varying circumstances.

I suppose the best rough answer I can give him is to say that it would appear at first sight that those who will come off assistance altogether will be single people at present receiving assistance at 5s. or less, which is the difference between the increases in the National Insurance benefit and the National Assistance scales, and also married couples in receipt of 6s. assistance or less. The number in those two groups at the end of 1956 when the last calculation was made was about 92,000. Therefore, although I will not make any precise forecast, because, as I have said, these are figures that reflect all sorts of different circumstances, the number to come off National Assistance would not be greater than that. The main body, therefore, of the saving, on National Assistance resulting from increased expenditure on National Insurance benefits will be undoubtedly in connection with those who remain on assistance, although they will have less need for assistance owing to the improvement in National Insurance benefits.

The right hon. Gentleman then said that the numbers on assistance in any event were too large. He will appreciate, of course, that the effect of these Regulations will be to make the numbers larger than they otherwise would be. It is sometimes said that the size of the number on assistance is of itself a severe criticism of social service administration generally. If assistance scales are raised, as they are being raised, and therefore more people brought within their possible scope, the effect is to offset in some measure the diminution in numbers on assistance which would have resulted if we had raised National Insurance benefits and left assistance as it was. It is the purpose of these proposals to improve the National Assistance scales, and the result will be that the numbers of those on assistance will be higher than they otherwise would be.

The right hon. Gentleman asked me about the reference by the Assistance Board in the White Paper, which was laid at the same time as the Regulations, to the fact that the withdrawal of the tobacco token had been "taken into account." Those are the words of the White Paper. This factor was taken into account by the Board, as the terms of the White Paper clearly show, in deciding what improvement in the scales of assistance to propose. It would have been a matter for criticism of the Board if in making up its mind, as it is its duty to do under the Act, it had ignored the fact that some of the recipients of the benefits would be affected by the withdrawal of the tobacco tokens. The hon. Lady has given an estimate of the numbers who will be affected. The answer to the question of how this point was taken into account is in deciding upon the scales to recommend to the Government.

Then the right hon. Gentleman and one or two of his hon. Friends asked about the treatment of rent by the Board in the context of the Rent Act. The right hon. Gentleman may remember that in the debate in the House on 1st August, I made a statement of the Board's intentions. Perhaps it would be convenient if I read that statement as it stands: I am able to tell the House precisely the way the Board intends to handle this question of rents. I am informed that, except in cases where accommodation is shared by a son or daughter or other person in employment, and in a position to meet some of the increased rent, it is the intention of the Board to provide in an assistance grant for the full amount of any permitted increase in a conntrolled rent; and for any reasonable increase where the rent is not controlled."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 1st August, 1957; Vol. 574, c. 1613.] That certainly does not mean that it would be the Board's duty to subsidise indefinitely payments of rents illegally or unlawfully claimed.

Mr. A. E. Hunter (Feltham)

Could the Minister explain the word "reasonable". It is not clear to me what a "reasonable" amount is.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

"Reasonable", of course, is a word with which the House is familiar in Statutes, and hon. and learned Members have often favoured us with a great deal of prolonged wisdom on its precise interpretation. I am not, in the technical sense, learned. I leave to the House the untechnical aspects of the matter, with due modesty.

I was almost about to say that the position is "reasonably" clear. Quite clearly, it would not be the Board's duty to pay a rent unlawfully demanded and which it would be within the power of the tenant to resist. I think that was an example which the hon. Member for Itchen (Dr. King) put to me in the shape of a Question the other day. I am sorry if I misunderstood his question. The tenant must be expected to behave reasonably and not, because the Board is supporting him, to acquiesce in illegalities by his landlord or in unreasonable and extortionate demands. The tenant must behave as if he were himself responsible for the rent. That is probably the best guide.

Miss Herbison

The Minister has spoken about reasonable increases and said that the Board will not pay any increase that is illegal. The point that is worrying Members on this side of the House and which we should like to have made clear is that under the Rent Act the landlord of a house that is decontrolled may choose any rent he likes to ask. If the landlord asks what the National Assistance Board considers is not a reasonable rent, then what happens to the old woman, old man or old couple?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

I do not think there is much difficulty about that if one applies the test I gave in reply to the hon. Lady's hon. Friend. They would be expected to behave as if it were their own money they were paying in rent. A tenant who is asked a rent far higher than that for which he can get comparable accommodation will not indefinitely remain and pay it. Nor would it be right to expect that the Board should finance him if he so desires to remain. But there would certainly be no immediate action by the Board any more than there would be immediate action by the individual. The Board would behave just as a reasonable individual would in dealing with his own personal affairs. [interruption.] I do not follow the hon. Lady when she suggests that it is shocking. I suggest that to take any other line in this matter would be shocking, and I think that when the hon. Lady studies in HANSARD what I have said—I am sure she desires to be fair minded—she will come to the same conclusion.

Miss Herbison

When I say "shocking," I do not mean it from the point of view of the National Assistance Board or of the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance; but it appears from the answer that we got from the Minister tonight that as a result of the provisions in the Rent Act there will be old men and women who, although they may think the rent is not reasonable and the National Assistance Board may think it is not reasonable, will have to leave their homes in which they have lived most of their lives and spend their last few years somewhere else. That is what I think is shocking.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

The hon. Lady is not entitled to jump to any conclusion at all. I answered a question on a hypothetical basis put by her and her hon. Friends. I was not saying—nor is it, indeed, my duty to say—that in any particular case an unreasonable demand has been or will be made. I answered in order to deal with any possibility of anxiety on the part of any tenant concerned as to what was the Board's attitude.

It is quite wrong for the hon. Lady in those circumstances to try to make a political point in a wholly different context merely because she does not happen to like the Rent Act. The hon. Lady will find when she studies my words in HANSARD tomorrow that I have made quite clear what is the attitude of the Board, and I have not urged or accepted or acquiesced in any view which she on political grounds may wish to take on the operation of the wise and beneficent Measure which my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government introduced.

Mr. Marquand

If in those circumstances a tenant thinks that the refusal of the Board to meet the rent which the Board deems unreasonable is wrong and mistaken, will he have the right of appeal to the tribunal which deals with Assistance appeals? Secondly, in these circumstances, if the Board finds that one of the people to whom it is paying an allowance is liable to be evicted, will the Board draw the attention of the local authority to the circumstances and ask the help of the local authority in finding different accommodation?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

The Board's general attitude is one of helpfulness to tenants, but it is not expert in the law of landlord and tenant. It has many other obligations and duties imposed upon it. Therefore, I can only say in reply to the right hon. Gentleman that each case will be looked upon on its merits, from the point of view of the desire of the Board to be helpful.

As regards the question of appeal to the tribunal, that is a matter of law to which I would prefer not to give an answer off the cuff. It would depend upon the provisions of the Act, but I can certainly ascertain what legal opinion is on that matter and convey it to the right hon. Gentleman in due course if he is interested in it.

The hon. Members for Mansfield and for Bedwellty (Mr. Finch) referred to the question of National Assistance disregards—

Mr. William Ross (Kilmarnock)

Before the right hon. Gentleman leaves that last point—

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

I have left it.

Mr. Ross

Even if the right hon. Gentleman has left it, is he not prepared to go back to it?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

I have given way to a great many interventions on that point and I must now deal with some of the other matters raised.

The hon. Members for Mansfield and Bedwellty referred to the question of National Assistance disregards. That does not strictly arise on these Regulations, which are designed to increase the scales of benefit. To alter the disregards would in any event involve not regulations but legislation. Therefore, I would only say this at this stage. The matter is not anything like as clear and obvious as the hon. Gentlemen seemed to think when they pressed their suggestion on the change in money values since 1948 and said that figures which had been right then could not for that reason be right now.

The difficulty about the disregards is this. Ex hypothesi if we increase them we are providing more money for those less in need than others because they have some other income to be disregarded. That is why it has been the policy since 1948 of successive Governments to put into the assistance scales themselves, thus helping those most in need, such money as they think proper to provide, rather than to amend the disregards which, in the nature of things, give money to those at any rate less in need than others. That is all that I can usefully say at this stage on that admittedly very interesting and not uncomplicated matter.

The hon. Member for Tottenham (Sir F. Messer) raised the question of the provision of additional payments for blind persons and persons who give up their work to undergo treatment for tuberculosis. We are preserving the full differential of 20s., but the hon. Gentleman is quite right—we are not increasing that differential. The hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North was quite wrong when she said that no increase was being given for the blind or the tuberculous. I think those are the words the hon. Lady used.

Miss Herbison

On the question of tubercular patients, I said that although there was an increase, the differentiation was not so big as it had been previously.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

When the hon. Lady studies HANSARD she will see that she said in a moment of natural eloquence that there was no increase for the blind.

Miss Herbison

I referred to the tubercular.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

They are being treated in exactly the same way. They are both getting precisely the same increase as all other recipients of National Assistance. The hon. Member for Tottenham is quite right. The differential itself is not being increased. I thought the hon. Member for Tottenham fell into error when he said that it always had been on previous occasions.

Sir F. Messer

Not always. I quoted the dates.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

In fact, it was not so increased in 1950 or 1951. It was in 1952 and 1956. We did consider it in this context, but of course, as the hon. Gentleman will recall from his own experience, this is not an additional payment which has so precise a relationship to changing prices as have the main scales themselves, which is no doubt the reason why on two previous occasions the differential was not increased.

In fact, the margin is not the result of any precise estimate of the special expenses attached either to blindness or to tuberculosis. If in a particular case such expenses resulting from either amount to more than the 20s. differential a week, the Board's discretionary powers are available and can be used to allow more. By way of example, since the hon. Gentleman spoke I have obtained the figures of the tuberculosis cases where an extra payment is being made. Out of the 28,000 such cases in the last year for which we have figures, 5,700 were receiving an additional supplement.

As I say, I fully understand the point of view which the hon. Gentleman has put, and I would say to the House and to those interested outside that the decision on this occasion not to increase the differential but to move only to the extent to which the scales generally have been raised certainly does not indicate any desire not to leave it quite open for future occasions whether the differential should be further increased or not. It relates only to these Regulations. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that point, because I believe it has caused some concern on those grounds among people interested in this matter outside.

The hon. Member for Bedwellty raised the question of a separate pensioners' index, as did one or two other hon. Members. I will say in the first place that indices of this sort are not my Departmental responsibility. They are published by the Minister of Labour and National Service. We have studied the document, which the right hon. Gentleman, I think, also had in front of him, on the recent inquiry into pensioners' expenditure. It is perfectly clear that preparation of such an index would not necessarily be either easy or satisfactory. One clear result of that report is to bring out very clearly from the specimen of cases how often retirement pensioners are in households with other income, perhaps with other members of the household with income, and that of itself makes the preparation of a separate index of perhaps less value than may appear at first sight. In any event, we have been giving some study to this document, but I am frankly doubtful, I must say to the House, on consideration whether the production of a separate index of this sort would really be valuable or helpful.

Dr. King

Were not we informed over twelve months ago that the National Assistance Board itself had such an index and was using it?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

I do not know what the hon. Member was informed twelve months ago. I can only say that it is the Assistance Board's duty under the Act to get as much information as will help it to do that duty.

Mr. Ross

On a point of order. I have been looking through the scales. I do not see any reference at all to an index. I was wondering, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, whether you would allow me, if I decide to follow the right hon. Gentleman, who would not allow me to intervene to ask a question a few moments ago, to carry on this discussion about something which I do not see in the Regulations at all. Will that be in order?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Gordon Touche)

It will not be if it is not in the Regulations, but a passing reference to it would be tolerated.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

I am grateful to you for your kindness, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, because, as the House is aware. I did not myself introduce this subject. I think at least three hon. Members opposite raised it. It is a point of general interest, and I think I should have been guilty of some discourtesy if I had not attempted to reply.

Mr. Ross

Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. The Minister has just said it is a point of general interest. Does that mean you will allow speeches to be carried on in relation to a point of general interest?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

The right hon. Gentleman did not say that it was in order because it was a point of general interest. He said merely that it was a point of general interest.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

I should have been guilty of gross impertinence to the Chair if I had ventured to express an opinion as to whether something was in order or not. I was merely paying a tribute, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, to your habitual kindness and forbearance. I think I have dealt with the point now and I will pass from grounds the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) was good enough to warn me off.

I propose now, as I promised I would, to say a word or two about the scales. As the House knows, under the Act of 1948 the initial responsibility is based. I think very properly and appropriately, on the Assistance Board. On its past record in this matter, in proposing the higher increases which it has proposed and which successive Governments have adopted, I think it has fully merited the confidence of the House and of the country.

It has, as I said in reply to an interjection, many sources of knowledge of this subject, certainly not confined to statistical material. Indeed, I felt a good deal of sympathy with what the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) said a few moments ago, when he said that real knowledge of how people live is at least as valuable as statistical material. That is available to the Board, because its officers are in direct contact with the people concerned, not only in the Board's offices, but through the continual visiting in their homes of persons on assistance or applying for it. Thus the Board has very direct knowledge of the conditions of the people requiring assistance, and I think that that is a very valuable factor in the matter. This knowledge is not confined to the Board's officers. The Board's members themselves are constant in their visiting in various parts of the country, and I think the House ought to be grateful to them for the immense amount of work they put in in that respect.

Then we come to these proposals, the sixth increase, as I said, since 1948. The Board, in putting forward these proposals at this time, is following the policy it has operated since 1952 of proposing increases before the value has fallen to the 1948 value. On earlier occasions, as the House will recall, the value fell below the initial value before the proposal for an increase was made.

The present position—before the increases come into effect at the end of January, if Parliament authorises them—under the scales at the moment is that in money terms they are 67 per cent. above 1948, compared with a movement of the Interim Index of Retail Prices over the same period of 52 per cent.

Mr. Ross

Can the right hon. Gentleman give the exact date when these calculations were made, because he will appreciate that since the announcement was made of the new scales the cost of living index has increased by one point?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

These calculations are just about as up to date as they could be in time to be delivered to this House today. Of course they are up to date.

Mr. Ross

But when were they made?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

I am not going to say the day of the week. They take into account all the latest information, and they do provide, as I say, for a 67 per cent. increase in cash value above 1948, compared with a 52 per cent. movement in the Interim Index of Retail Prices.

I was warned by one or two hon. Members that I must not on any account consider the 1948 scales as adequate, and, indeed, one or two hon. Members indicated great indignation. I can only say this, that when they were put forward they were recommended as being adequate.

The hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, West (Mr. Steele), then the Parliamentary Secretary at my present Department, said, in introducing them: The new scale is, therefore, intended to provide a reasonable standard of living for those requiring long-term assistance. A little later he said: The scales of requirements allow an appreciable margin over bare subsistence, since it is desired that no one should be denied a reasonable standard of living."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th June, 1948; Vol. 452, C. 559 and 564.] I think it is fair to take that, not as an ultimate solution, but as a base from which subsequent calculations can develop, and on that it is clear, as the Joint Parliamentary Secretary said, that they do provide a substantial improvement over the 1948 level.

The new rate for a single householder of 45s., even allowing for his being a smoker and losing the 2s. 4d. value of the token, will be 77.8 per cent. above the 1948 level, against an increase in the index of retail prices of 52 per cent. to which I have just referred. Similarly, even in what one may call the extreme case, that of a married couple who are both smokers—I think one hon. Member opposite, quite rightly, put that as the extreme case—they will still be 78.3 per cent. in cash terms up on 1948. If only one smokes, they will be 842 per cent. up on 1948. The non-smoking retirement pensioner, and, of course, the other beneficiaries of National Assistance who, not being retirement pensioners or non-contributory old-age pensioners, never were entitled to the tobacco tokens, will be, of course, proportionately better off—87.5 per cent. in cash terms above 1948 single: 90 per cent. married.

Therefore, I can say, as my hon. Friend said, though she was criticised for saying so, that these do amount to a real improvement.

So they do in respect of children. I share the concern expressed by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Middlesbrough, East on this aspect of the matter. The House will see that the proportionate increases for children may, if anything, be a little higher than those for adults, and there is, of course, the additional and not unimportant factor in the case of children of parents who are on assistance, that, in general, the local education authorities provide school meals free.

But the improved scales are not, of course, the whole story. Reference has been made already in this debate, and properly, to the discretionary additions which, as the Joint Parliamentary Secretary told the House, cover in the latest year for which we have figures some 45 per cent. of the recipients.

The hon. Lady sought to suggest that that was itself a criticism of the basic scales. I really do not follow her in that. These discretionary additions are designed to enable, and were designed from the beginning to enable, the Board to deal with the enormous variety of personal circumstances which are apparent among recipients of assistance, as they are among other members of our society. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, East is quite right in bringing out the variety of personal circumstances which arise and the danger of relying simply upon statistical scales. It is in this way that many of the difficulties to which reference has been made in the debate can be met.

I was asked about lump sum grants. In 1956, there were 138,000 of these, very often, as has been suggested, for clothing. The use both of the discretionary additions and the lump sum payments indicates that we are not simply concerned with immutable scales which may not in all circumstances meet the needs of individuals and families but that we are concerned with scales which, in general, provide the basis on which these things can be dealt with in the sensible and flexible way in which the Board's officers deal with them.

A comparison was made with National Insurance rates. I do not think that that is a very useful comparison because one is not comparing like with like. National Insurance scales are complete in themselves. As the Joint Parliamentary Secretary has reminded us, National Assistance scales are exclusive of rent and can, and do, have rents added to them in the case of householders. Therefore, when one contrasts the level of National Insurance with National Assistance it is not a very useful comparison, unless one adds a second figure, varying in individual cases, for rent. Nor is a comparison very useful when one remembers the discretionary additions to assistance to which I have referred. Therefore, we cannot form a useful view of the right level of assistance scales simply by comparing them with National Insurance or by arguing that we should raise assistance scales, exclusive of rent, to the National Insurance level which does not have a rent addition.

As I have said, these are the sixth in the line of proposals which the Board has put forward for improvement in these scales. It is very much a matter of judgment, in the first place for the Board and in the second place for the House, whether we have arrived at precisely the right figure. The House knows the Board well enough to know that it would not have put forward proposals without considerable thought and study. In accepting the proposals, Her Majesty's Government have given careful attention to what it is right in the circumstances to do. These scales provide an improvement where we all agree it is most needed. I very much hope that the House will give these draft Regulations its approval, so that we can operate these scales at the end of January at the same time as the National Insurance lone-term benefits come into effect.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved, That the Draft National Assistance (Determination of Need) Amendment Regulations, 1957, a copy of which was laid before this House on 6th November, be approved.