HC Deb 13 June 1966 vol 729 cc1050-73

Question proposed, That the Clause stand part of the Bill.

4.2 p.m.

The Chairman

Although the new Clause standing in the name of the hon. Member for Chelsea (Mr. Worsley), entitled "Social Research Unit"— There shall be established within the Ministry a Unit, to be known as the Social Research Unit, charged with the following duties—

  1. (a) to collate such information relevant to the work of the Ministry as is now available;
    2. 1051
  2. (b) to initiate further research into such matters.—
is not selected, it will be in order to discuss that new Clause on the Question, That the Clause stand part of the Bill.

Mr. Marcus Worsley (Chelsea)

The purpose of the new Clause which I have put down, and which you, Sir Eric, have been kind enough to say can be discussed on this Question, is to carry out a policy which my hon. Friends and I put in the election manifesto of the Conservative Party. It is to include within the Ministry a social research unit. I offer this piece of policy to the right hon. Lady to strengthen this rather timid little Bill. She need have no fear about adopting Tory measures: all her right hon. and hon. Friends are doing that at the moment.

The right hon. Lady will be aware, of course, that it was the intention of my party to set up a wider health and social security Measure, that we wished to include, in particular, health in a wider Ministry, one which would cover the whole range of social policy and which would, therefore, produce a really concerted social policy. The right hon. Lady said something about this matter in her speech on Second Reading. She will forgive me if I say that she did not answer the criticisms which we have made about the much more limited proposals which she has put forward.

Were these provisions which I am suggesting to be part of a wider proposal for a wider Ministry, it would make better sense, but no doubt we shall find other occasions. If I pursue this subject further I will be ruled out of order, hut it makes good sense, even within the limited provisions of the Bill.

Our case is simply this. Social policy must be considered as a whole, and that cannot be done unless the Government are constantly provided with up-to-date information about society. We live in a society which changes very fast. Over most of the field, full employment and rising earnings have brought relative affluence, but certain groups get left out—this is what the Bill is about—through physical or mental inadequacy or for financial reasons, and especially through the workings of inflation.

It is not a matter of class, as perhaps it once was. Some hon. Gentlemen oppo- site seemed to misunderstand this on Second Reading. There are areas of need in all parts of our society. In the old days, when we were talking about much wider areas of need, there was perhaps nothing which could be done beyond the flat-rate, blanket provisions based on the Beveridge Report. But today we need more delicate machinery to locate those areas of need and to prevent new areas of need developing. At present, the machinery is woefully inadequate.

One simple example of this relates to what has become known as family poverty, the question of how many families with children in households where an income is below National Assistance Board standards. Obviously, this is a key question, as is that of what has been happening in this respect in the last year. On 22nd February last year, in answer to a Written Question, the Minister of Labour said that he thought that there were between 50,000 and 150,000 such families. He thought that the average number of children was probably something over three.

Luckily for him, the right hon. Gentleman admitted that the only figures he had were subject to wide margins of error. Luckily, because only five months later, on 26th July, his hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary gave the figures as being between 150,000 and 200,000 families. Then, on Second Reading, the week before the Recess, the right hon. Lady the Minister said that between 200,000 and 300,000 families were involved.

The right hon. Lady also said that she intended to set up, during the summer, a sample survey into such families. This is not good enough. It is too amateurish for words that we should take so long to find out the basic simple facts about a real area of need in our society. What we believe is needed in the Ministry is a unit which is constantly seeking out need. which would have been looking out for this particular problem, collecting the information well in advance—not waiting for Questions in the House necessarily—knowing the facts and not making an error of the size of that contained in the Answer on 22nd February. Nor should such a unit wait for Ministerial initiatives. It should be constantly in operation, constantly searching, constantly looking out for new areas of need.

As I said, the speed of change in our society makes this more and more urgent. We visualise that such a unit would serve other Ministries than that of the right hon. Lady, that it would receive and collate information from other Ministries than hers. After all, we are no longer in the situation that we were in when Sir William Beveridge, as he was then, wrote his Report on the social services. We have a mass of information now about social matters which was not then available.

Like other hon. Members, no doubt, with a view to discussions on the Bill, I have been rereading the original Beveridge Report. What stands out over and over again in that Report is the limited nature of the evidence on which it was based. Things are quite different today. Today, a mass of research is going on. We contend that the Government are not at present getting the full advantage of this research, that if they were there could not have been in this instance which I have given the ignorance about the extent of the problem and there would not have been such a long delay before something was done to find out more about it. We contend, therefore, that there should be built into the Ministry a social research unit.

I am, of course, aware that there is a certain amount of social research work being done within the whole Government orbit. I understand, for example, that the Central Office of Information does work of this kind. I hope that the Minister will indicate the amount of work that is going on and whether recent rumours that there are to be cuts in the amount of social research work being done are correct.

My hon. Friends and I feel that the unit which I have been describing should be within the right hon. Lady's Ministry, although it would presumably work closely with the Registrar General's Department. I am aware that this is a Ministerial responsibility of her right hon. Friend the Minister of Health, and this brings me back to my original point of the need for a unified Ministry. It is essential that central to the right hon. Lady's Ministerial activities should be a constant source of information.

As I pointed out, we realise that a mass of information is constantly being produced and that universities and others are doing much work in this sphere. However, there will be occasions when such a unit, looking at the information that is published and is available, will discover other areas where work is not being carried out.

It is, therefore, part of the idea I am adducing that the unit should itself be able to undertake or commission research where it is thought necessary; that it should look over the whole sphere and make absolutely sure, as a statutory duty, that the facts are known—and that is why I would like it to be a statutory provision of the Bill—so that the right hon. Lady may provide herself and her colleagues with up-to-date information about social policy. As I explained, this is very much second best to a unified Ministry, but as a first stage it would be a useful start towards getting a really contemporary and active social policy.

Mr. Bernard Braine (Essex, South-East)

My hon. Friend the Member for Melton (Miss Pike) made it clear on Second Reading that we welcome the Bill in general for what it seeks to do. However, she made it plain that a major criticism of the Bill is that it is being brought forward before the completion of the Government's comprehensive review of the social services. That review has already taken 18 months and, for all we know, it may be another 18 months before it is completed. Since it is obviously desirable to bring assistance to those who are manifestly in need, the Bill serves a useful, though limited, purpose.

So far, this review has been the Government's excuse for doing nothing about a number of things; the earnings rule for pensioners, bringing help to non-pensioners, widows, and so on—and the Bill could be improved in a number of ways. One such way—and in this sense it could be improved without cutting across the review which is being undertaken; indeed, it might help it—would be for the Minister to accept the new Clause which was spoken to so compellingly and persuasively by my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea (Mr. Worsley).

4.15 p.m.

My hon. Friend pointed out that the new Clause embodies proposals made in the Conservative General Election manifesto, in which we said that we would attach a central research unit to a much enlarged Ministry which would also embrace the Ministry of Health. The thinking behind this is simply that what is needed today in the social services is what Mr. Timothy Raison described in a recent valuable article in New Society as "a strategy of social provision". In other words, today we need to fit our administrative arrangements to meet contemporary and likely future needs rather than to undertake an administrative reform before developing any clear idea of what these administrative arrangements are designed to do.

There is little evidence in the Bill that the needs which exist have been recognised, let alone assessed. For example, while the Bill provides a special scale of allowances for the blind, which merely continues the present practice, something which we all warmly welcome, it misses the opportunity of helping other categories of the severely disabled. We will be talking about this at later stages of the Bill. Why has this opportunity been missed? Most of us suspect—and there are some of us who know—that the physically disabled comprise one of the most deprived groups in the community.

Writing recently in New Society, Lady Hamilton drew attention, in an article of considerable importance—because it threw new light on a problem which has been known to exist for a long time—to the fact that people do not know very much about the disabled; how many of them there are, the kinds of problems they face, and so on. I will not go over the ground at this stage, but I and others will seek, when discussing later Amendments, to amplify this matter.

Suffice to say that I suspect that the difference between the two sides of the Committee is nothing like as great as the doctrinaires like to believe. Both sides are edging towards a more just and humane provision, both are conscious of the need to reform and improve and both are doing this substantially in the dark.

The truth is that we do not know nearly enough about society and its needs. It is not that there is a dearth of studies and inquiries so much as the need to interpret and co-ordinate the facts which these studies and inquiries are revealing. For example, there have been many valuable surveys in the last 20 years into the problems associated with the care of old people. Thirty-three of them are listed in the appendix to Townsend and Wedderburn's valuable survey of the aged in the Welfare State, which I take it all hon. Members have read.

The task of interpreting the surveys—of finding out the gaps which exist in our knowledge and of informing ourselves of what is really needed in public policy—is a task essentially for Government and not for academics or private organisations. The Government must decide on, for example, the shape and scope of the hospital plan, the community services, staffing requirements and the finance that is needed.

This is work for the Government, because studies conducted by university organisations and individuals tend to concentrate on fragments of the problem. If we are to estimate, for example, the need for geriatric beds, we need a nation-wide study and not a local study conducted by a particular hospital group. We need a nation-wide study into the condition and treatment of people in different types of hospitals, nursing homes and old people's residential homes and we need to compare that with cases of similarly old and frail people living in their own homes.

How many elderly patients in psychiatric hospitals should really be in geriatric hospitals or residential homes? How many people in local authority welfare homes should really be living in specialised housing provided by local authorities with all the necessary services? How many specialised houses shall we need? How many old people are really incapable of looking after themselves and what services do they need to make life tolerable?

I will not argue this any further, because these are matters which will be referred to in the course of discussion on the Bill over and over again, but there are two requirements. The first is that there should be a wide range of inquiry into every—

The Chairman

I do not want to interrupt the hon. Member, but he was going rather wide. I hope that he will not pursue those matters that he has just been saying will be referred to over and over again, because the Bill is limited to setting up a Ministry of Social Security. It would not be in order to discuss matters in relation to the National Health Service and geriatric schemes in the way that the hon. Member was doing.

Mr. Braine

I accept that entirely, Sir Eric.

What I was about to say was that there are obviously two requirements against the background which I have described. The first is that there should be a wide range of inquiry into every aspect of community life—this is what social security is about—so that we can be sure that the social services of the 1970s, which the new Ministry is designed to administer, really meet the needs of a fast-changing society. There is a great deal of room for the kind of patient and devoted private and university research that has been going on quietly for some time, and which the Government encourage.

Secondly, we must make sure that research is not limited to trying to fit the fact to the theory, which is very often the case with some inquiries, but rather the other way round, so that it is applied objectively in social policy at an earlier stage than at present, and as a means of suggesting policy initiatives to the Minister, with the Minister taking hold of the situation, as it were.

There is an unanswerable case for the kind of organisation suggested in the new Clause in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea. We are building new towns, and new housing estates are going up. Hospitals and clinics are being built which involve intricate and detailed physical planning, often without any element of real sociological study. As a result, we never seem to know in advance—we find out afterwards—what is really needed to produce a truly purposeful and dignified community life.

Therefore, this proposal ought to recommend itself to the Minister and be accepted by her. It would provide her with an instrument to strengthen her hand in every way to ensure—although I know that this is difficult—that she is better informed. It would give great encouragement to all those who are engaged at present in social research and pave the way for social policies designed to meet real needs and thereby build a kinder, more purposeful and more worth-while society.

Mr, W. R. van Straubenzee (Wokingham)

We have much work to do and I know that both sides of the Committee want to make good progress. Therefore, I shall put my points very shortly. We are very obliged to you, Sir Eric, for allowing us to discuss the new Clause in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea (Mr. Worsley) on the Question, That the Clause stand part of the Bill.

I realise the technical difficulty we are in. There is no form of words that we are seeking to persuade the Minister to accept, because we are technically only talking about the Clause standing part. Nevertheless, I hope very much that when the right hon. Lady the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance replies she will be able to indicate some of her thinking about research in her Department, because without question the proposal for a social research unit is a very helpful one, though it must be said that in the context of this limited Bill its use is very severely restricted and it would have been very much more valuable in the kind of Bill which would have been introduced were the party on this side of the Committee in office.

I want to give three short examples of the sort of problem with which I would hope this research unit would deal. The right hon. Lady is in quite good company. We recognised some years ago that we were badly lacking in research knowledge of future educational requirements, and this was put right some years ago in the Department of Education and Science. There are very good precedents for this in Government Departments. We are surely agreed on both sides of the Committee that the problems with which the Bill inadequately attempts to deal, in part, arise from some of those limited areas of hardship with which we ought to be dealing, and into which we shall go much more fully at later stages in our discussions.

We on this side of the Committee are afraid that the Government machinery is not sufficiently delicate to locate and identify these areas of hardship. My hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea has, for example, referred to the problem of the disabled. We are fast moving into a world where the skill of the doctor is keeping large numbers of these people not only alive, but usefully alive. I do not want to elaborate this, or to breach the rules of order, in any way, but there are many examples of ways in which people who were never able to do so before are enabled to lead useful lives. Yet such people are very often in real difficulty and poverty. I am not at all satisfied that we have the facilities for identifying them and bringing their plight to the attention of those who can do something about it, and ultimately to this House.

There should be better co-ordination by the right hon. Lady's Ministry of the many excellent research projects which are being carried out by those who are interested in and concerned with the disabled. A fascinating study was recently made of the problem of the fatherless family. I was not entirely convinced, although I recognise the excellence of the work, of the particular claim for the fatherless as such. But this is precisely the sort of field—the problem really of the large family—which ought to be under continuing review, rather than the limited survey the right hon. Lady announced in the Second Reading debate.

This is one of the growing problems of our time because, as we all know, the number of large families is growing. It is one of the consequences of growing affluence. The number of families with six children, for example, is sharply increasing proportionately over the years, and bringing with it social difficulties and sometimes hardship.

Finally, I come to my third example—the problem of addiction to drugs and drink, which is a growing social problem. It often brings social and economic difficulties in its train, particularly to the families of those concerned. Very worthy persons are busily at work on this in certain limited ways, but one finds that there is a wide range of unco-ordinated effort, although I do not wish to be critical of those who are involved, for we depend a great deal on voluntary effort in these and other fields.

Because the modern affluent society has left behind pockets of people of this kind it seems to us on this side of the Committee that we need new machinery for dealing with it, I hope in the constructive way in which this has been put forward. I hope that the right hon. Lady, while not accepting any form of words, for none has been put, will nevertheless feel able to accept the spirit of the new Clause had it been put. I am very grateful to you, Sir Eric, for allowing it to be discussed.

4.30 p.m.

Miss J. M. Quennell (Petersfield)

I want to pursue the eloquent pleas made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. van Straubenzee) and my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea (Mr. Worsley). I urge the right hon. Lady at any rate to consider the full thinking that lies behind the new Clause. It is a very innocuous request, and it could not do the Government very much harm if they decided to be generous and couragous and accept it.

Looking through the report of the debate on the Second Reading I was struck by the variety, diversity and number of people who are living below the accepted definition of the poverty line, that is, the National Assistance Board scales. My hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea mentioned the variation between the various Ministry figures quoted from time to time in HANSARD. The hon. Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Hugh D. Brown) quoted a Ministry of Labour study which suggested that there were about 7½ million such people—a substantially greater number than that quoted by the Minister of Labour at Question Time in the House. This illustrates the enormous discrepancies between the various figures that are used, and on which we try to work.

I want to tell the right hon. Lady about some of my own efforts to discover something of the numbers involved in the narrow group of incapacitated people to which I referred in my Second Reading speech, namely, the incapacitated housewives. It was purely by acciment that I discovered that they were not eligible for National Assistance. An incapacitated housewife at home is not eligible for any of the social benefits now provided by the State.

I tried to discover how many housewives were living at home in these conditions. After about six months, during which time I had the willing help of the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Labour and the right hon. Lady's own Department, I retired defeated. I asked Questions in the House, and communicated with the various Departments in writing, privately. At the end, however, I was faced with the fact that although these people exist there is no clear picture of the numbers involved within the central administration.

I want to quote the last paragraph of a letter I received from the Ministry of Health, because although it seemed to me that incapacitated people would come into contact with the medical services and that there was, therefore, a glimmer of a beginning of the construction of some index which would give some idea of the numbers involved, this was not the case. The letter says: Hospital figures are not available for the categories of people you describe. We could let you know the numbers of patients in geriatric and chronic sick wards, but these of course include many people who are not long-stay patients. We also have some figures for those 'chronic sick' patients who are in the age group 16-60. So some figures are available in connection with these people, but not many. Yet the people of this country suffer very much from having to deal with the questionaires and the attentions of the Registrar-General, and all over the country there are files galore relating to everything under the sun, from the number of water cisterns in houses and the number of elderly people to the numbers in various age groups and birth groups. Centrally, however, these figures are not available.

Every hon. Member who tries to pursue this matter and obtain information centrally about some narrow aspect, whether it concerns the youth employment service or people who are in need of help from the State, comes up against this block. Centrally, there is an almost complete lack of statistics upon which we can work.

This means that we are driven back on to the private foundations in order to try to discover where need lies. I am sure that all hon. Members agree that some excellent work is sponsored by private foundations all over the country. My hon. Friend the Member for Essex, South-East (Mr. Braine) referred to the work done in universities. We must also remember the work which is undertaken by those who are preparing their theses for doctorates. Very often, after the success of the candidate, these theses end up in the university library, and very seldom see the light of day again. A great deal of enormously valuable information is wasted in this way.

We are standing on the threshold of an age in which our society is becoming much more mobile and much more rapidly changing in its pattern. What we need is an instrument available to the State which can identify and locate these changing patterns in our society, especially developing patterns of poverty, before they become established and formidable and present an almost national problem.

This modest new Clause would provide the right hon. Lady with just this weapon, and I therefore beg her to accept it. It cannot do her any harm, and it might do her some good. It would certainly do a great deal of good to many of our people.

Dame Irene Ward (Tynemouth)

If we had been able to establish this research unit inside the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance it would have been of the greatest help to the right hon. Lady. I do not want to go into the matter in detail, but I am sure that we have all had experience of communicating with a Department on the many problems arising in respect of people who are covered by our social security schemes and receiving an answer from that Department that the matter is the responsibility of another Department.

The right hon. Lady's Department is very good in sending on our letters to the right Departments and seeing that the various problems are examined by them, and we eventually receive answers from those Departments. But if there were a unit which the right hon. Lady herself could use when information came forward from the people handling the various cases it might be possible to make the excellent work which her Department does much more effective.

Reference has been made to the disabled. Under the National Insurance Scheme some are adequately provided for and others are not. Very often we find that although a lot of money and thought goes into the question of the future of these people, the variations in the regulations which operate at local authority level mean that the lives of some of these disabled people are improved while others are made much worse.

Some local authorities take people in strict rotation from their housing waiting lists, on the basis of an examination and of the operation of their own ideas of how certain houses should be allocated. There is, however, great variation in the way in which this problem is dealt with. Some local authorities pay no attention to the need to find ground-floor accommodation for disabled people, or make them wait for a very long time, sometimes in overcrowded conditions, before dealing with them. The help that we give to these people under our national security schemes is not followed up in a way that makes the life of these individuals as fruitful, happy, and free from pain as possible. The Minister must know from her own experience how great is the variation in local government administration.

We believe that it would be of profound advantage if a research unit were available for use at the Minister's discretion. The Minister will know that in some areas a certain type of disability arises from the employment which is most prevalent in the area and that this disability will be quite different from physical disabilities prevailing in other areas. If such a research unit were available, the Minister's position would be made very much stronger and much more realistic.

There are wide variations between the amount of Part III accommodation available in local authority areas. In some areas there is much more accommodation available for those for whom the Minister is responsible under the National Insurance Scheme, because of the democratic processes of the freely elected representatives of the local authority concerned. In other areas the emphasis is in quite another direction. The attitude of a local authority towards the problems of life often depend on the individual crusading spirits within the authority itself. Some authorities have gone very far ahead. The experience and information that the progressive authorities have acquired would be of invaluable use if the Minister could direct a research unit to gather all of it together and set it at work in other local authority areas which perhaps have not had the specialised crusading spirit. This suggestion opens up such a wide vista that one could go on talking about it for hours.

I want now to refer to a problem which caused great distress at one time. It was never satisfactorily settled within the Ministry. I came to be concerned with the case of a young apprentice working on the Tyne—not in my constituency, though he wrote to me. He was working in one of the big shipyards. He had the usual love affair with a very young girl. The apprentice was 17. The girl was 16. They had their first baby before they got married; but they got married. The young apprentice took a very responsible attitude towards the part he had to play in the life of this girl and his child.

It is not often that I leave any stones unturned. I went through the whole range, but, because of the regulations which existed within the National Assisstance Board, although everybody said that that young family was living below the subsistence level, nothing could be done.

This was a very distressing thing to have to say in this great country. The W.V.S. kindly supplied clothes. All sorts of people came forward with their good will in organisation but the fact remained that, although this young apprentice did the right thing and married the girl, because there was no provision under the National Assistance Board procedure for, shall I say, subsidising wages, that family had to live below the subsistence level.

This was one isolated case that came to my notice. I wonder how many such cases there are spread throughout the country. When it was discovered that the boy had married the girl and that they were trying to set up home together, we managed to get them housing through the local authority. I doubt whether the country would agree that it was a good idea that this family, the boy having done the right thing, could not be helped because of some regulation which is no doubt a very good regulation when taken in the overall context of industrial life, but not in the context of the life of an apprentice.

This is the sort of anomaly which a research unit would help to bring to the Minister's attention. I know how deeply and keenly she feels about these matters. We feel that a research unit of this type would strengthen her position. Such a unit would give tremendous impetus and confidence to many organisations which are overwhelmed by the problems which still exist in life and which are always delighted to know that Parliament realises what needs to be done and is making an effort to help them to carry on with their very excellent work.

The Minister may well say that this is a good idea and that she will think about it between now and Report. I hope that she will put it into effect. This suggestion is put forward as a genuine basis for strengthening the power of Parliament and of the Minister to look after the great number of people who need our attention.

4.45 p.m.

Miss Mervyn Pike (Melton)

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) that in her heart the Minister must welcome this proposal. Our arguments are ones that the Minister may use to strengthen any efforts she may make to build up such a research unit in the future. I accept that it would be difficult at this stage of the Bill. I know that the Minister, like us, wishes to ensure not only that we collate all the information which is available at present, but also that we are in a position to forecast future patterns and initiate new researches into what we can do. We all recognise that at present the pace of change is very rapid. We all recognise that society is particularly sophisticated and integrated. It is no good us being behind public opinion in our formulation of social service. We must have the weapons necessary for us to lead public opinion into new patterns.

I hope that the Ministry will think again on the lines of building up a research unit to collate all the information. It would be very valuable if more regional information could be collated. I know that the Yorkshire Council of Social Workers is at present engaged in regional surveys of different problems. This is very good work, but we have nothing with which to compare the results. If the Ministry would initiate such surveys, we could compare the different problems arising in the regions.

To go a step ahead, it would be valuable in international talks to have the results of such surveys, because the cross-fertilisation of ideas is particularly help- ful. When I am trying to compare like with like in other Western countries, I find it difficult to know what this country is doing and where I can find the information. One of the most valuable exports that the country could make is that of new ideas and new techniques of social security, social justice and compassion. We have led the world in the past, and we want to go on doing so in the future.

I hope that people will not ride off on the fact that this has not been done so far. I am sorry that it has not been done before. I took a degree in sociology and, although I am not all that old, it was regarded as something very odd. I was one of very few who took such a degree. There were three of us at the university at that time studying the subject, and everybody thought that we were studying fortune telling. In fact, I suppose we were. We were studying the fortunes of this country. Now the disciplines of social anthropology and sociology are building up in our newer universities, and some very exiciting studies are being undertaken in this field. This is surely the time to build up this research unit.

I stress to the right hon. Lady that we are putting forward this idea to help her in the work that I know she wants to do. I hope that she will do her best to make certain that in the future we can have this sort of unit ranging as widely as possible, collating as much information as possible and helping us to cross-fertilise ideas not only in this country, but in the Western countries as a whole.

The Minister of Pensions and National Insurance (Miss Margaret Herbison)

We have had a very wide-ranging debate on Clause 1. We have, indeed, touched on Amendments and new Clauses which I hope we shall be discussing later. I do not think that there is much between the attitudes of the Government and of the Opposition on this question of research and the collation of information. What I want to be sure of is that the job is done in the best way possible to help people who need help.

The hon. Member for Chelsea (Mr. Worsley) was rather critical of the Government. He spoke of a long delay and referred to this question of the low-wage earner. I must tell him that we on this side of the Committee have known about the low-wage earner in this country not only during the last two years, but for many years. As a back bencher and as an Opposition Front Bench Member I continually spoke on this subject, and since becoming the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance, I have been trying to find the best ways and means of dealing with this very serious problem of the low-wage earner, to which we shall come later when considering other Amendments. I do not think that it helped the hon. Member's case when he referred to the long delay by the present Government in dealing with the matter, when we have not been in power for two years, whereas his Government were in power for 13 years.

The Government do not question in any way the importance of collating all the information which bears on social security, to which the hon. Lady the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) referred. A number of hon. Members have made excellent speeches, the only one of which I am critical being the speech of the hon. Member for Chelsea. Some hon. Members have referred to the invaluable work that is being done in our universities and by other bodies, such as local authorities, on the problems of the old. All of that work is of the greatest importance. Any Government, and particularly the new Ministry of Social Security, ought to be aware of what is happening and should do as much as possible in collating all the information that is available not only from Government sources but from other sources as well. That, indeed, is the intention of the present Government.

The very fact that we have before us this Bill, which brings together the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance and the National Assistance Board, is evidence that we are concerned with the subject and will facilitate this bringing together of the information which both sides of the Committee consider to be so important.

Mr. Braine

Would the right hon. Lady go one step further? I hope she intended to go on to say that the Ministry will not merely collate and interpret what is being done by private investigation, but will initiate research as well. This is, of course, the major point in the proposal which is before the Committee.

Miss Herbison

I should imagine, having examined the proposed new Clause and having listened to the debate, that there are two angles—the collation, and the research. I am dealing first with the question of collation, and then I intend to deal with research. They are both of great importance.

All the information that is collected and collated will be available for consideration in connection with problems arising in the field of contributory and non-contributory benefits, for which the Ministry will be responsible. Almost all of the suggestions which have been made, with the exception of the example given by the hon. Member for Tynemouth, who spent at least part of her speech dealing with housing, are of the greatest interest and, as I have said, many of the points that have been made are covered by Amendments which I understand will be raised later, concerning the provision of contributory or non-contributory benefits. Having the two Departments under one Ministry will be of great help to us in the collection and collation of information which becomes available.

If I may refer to the point raised by the hon. Member for Essex, South-East (Mr. Braine), the need to undertake research into social problems is fully accepted by the Government. We were convinced long before we came into power how scrappy was the research into so many of the social problems, and we are determined that much more research shall be done. I had thought that during my Second Reading speech I made it very clear that we as a Government felt that much more needed to be done in this respect. Indeed, I referred to our present programme of research into social problems.

I do not know whether hon. Members are aware that the report of the inquiry into the financial and other circumstances of retirement pensioners, which took place last year, has just been published. That survey was decided upon by the previous Government. We had been asking for it for a long time. My right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelly (Mr. James Griffiths), who was dissatisfied with the situation, raised the matter on the Adjournment, as a result of which the then Minister, my predecessor, announced that this survey would be undertaken. When hon. Members examine the findings of that survey I think that they will be more and more impressed by the value of research, because it is a piece of social research which will be very helpful to us in the kind of work which we want to do.

On Second Reading, I also referred to he field work in connection with the inquiry into the circumstances of families with two or more children, which will begin this month. This fieldwork will begin on 20th June. Again, this touches on some of what I consider are important Amendments and new Clauses which the Opposition and one of my hon. Friends have on the Notice Paper. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Chelsea was a bit scathing about the smallness of this survey. We want to get it done quickly. It is amazing what information can be obtained from personal visiting of over 2,000 homes. One hon. Member talked about regional research. The homes which will be visited will cover the length and breadth of the country.

In my Second Reading speech I stressed—and this seems to have been forgotten by the Opposition—that the Commission has a very important part to play in research. I said that I had thought when I began to examine these problems that I would not want anyone in place of the Board. I changed my mind for a number of reasons which I then gave. One of them was the value that I thought that we should get from the Commission in terms of research, a two-way traffic between the Commission and the Minister. Even in the Bill as it is, and on what the Government have already initiated by way of research, we have shown very clearly the importance we attach not only to the collating of information, but also to the initiation of research.

5.0 p.m.

The establishment of a social research unit, which is what the Opposition are asking for, to collate information relevant to the work of the Ministry… to quote from the new Clause, although it has not been possible to move it, would not necessarily be the best way to secure what am sure both sides of the Committee want. The collation of informa- tion is largely statistical and is necessary for many purposes other than research. That was made clear by some of the other speeches today. It does not seem appropriate to me that the collection and collation of operational statistics, required for, say, the Estimates or other financial purposes, should be remitted to a social research unit, when there would perhaps be limitations.

The phrase "initiate further research" could mean that the social research unit would provide not merely technical support for inquiries, but would be responsible—and I think that this is what some Members opposite were suggesting—for deciding the matters requiring further research and for settling priorities in research projects. This is surely the job of the Minister, who will consult with the Commission where appropriate and decide where research is most urgently needed.

Mr. Worsley

This was the whole point of putting the unit within the Ministry. It would be part of the Minister's responsibilities, and she could have been questioned about it. This is why we put it this way and not as an independent authority outside the Ministry.

Miss Herbison

If that is so then it seems to me that both sides of the Committee can question the Minister upon whatever she is responsible for. The Minister must be responsible for collating information, whether or not she has a special unit in her Department. She must also be responsible for research and again this means that the Opposition can question her. I want to make it perfectly clear that I and the Government believe that it is the job of the Minister to decide how research should be carried out and to supply priorities in research projects.

The second thing which I stressed in my Second Reading speech was: …we intend that the members of the Commission shall cover a wide variety of interests, that they will be a source of advice to the Minister on many social problems, and that, in particular, they will assist the Minister's programme of research into these problems. I think everyone in the House and I am sure most people in the country would agree that research into social problems until fairly recently has been largely neglected. The Commission can be a power house of ideas in this and other fields."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th May, 1966; Vol. 728, c. 339-40.] As I envisage it, we would have this body of knowledgeable people who will have assistance from the various sections in my Department and will be able to bring with them a great deal of outside knowledge. This is the proper way to achieve the kind of results which I think both sides of the Committee want.

Miss Pike

I would like to press the right hon. Lady on that. We accept that the Minister has final responsibility for judging the priorities and for initiating research. Our point is that society is moving very quickly. With great respect to the right hon. Lady, and to all of us here, we do not know what we do not know. We are amateurs and many of her advisers in the Ministry, and in the Commission, are enlightened amateurs, but still amateurs. Our aim is that there should be a scientific unit, under the responsibility of the Minister, which should advise the Minister about research. The unit could give the Minister the details.

The Minister mentioned that although we all knew that there were low-income families we did nothing about it. This was an assumption on our part. It came from our experience. The Minister will know from her term of Government that one has to have the tools to get money from the Treasury. One needs facts and figures and arguments. If we had had this sort of research unit and the number of research workers, had we had the computers to compile the information, we could perhaps have seen this picture sooner and we would have had the ammunition to go to the Treasury and solve this problem.

This is why we are saying to the Minister, "Do not rely upon amateurs, however enlightened and however well intentioned." We do not want to rely upon good intentions. We trust the right hon. Lady's good intentions, but she will not always be at the Ministry and that is why we would have liked it written into the Bill that there should be a responsibility upon the Ministry to have a scientific unit giving the finest possible technical advice.

Miss Herbison

What the hon. Lady is now saying is that if this scientific unit had been in existence some years ago we should have had the information and we might have moved on the subject of the low-wage earner. Without such a scientific unit we have taken the initiative, in conjunction with certain advice, in making this survey. Apart from the survey, we have done a great deal of steady work.

The Opposition are under a misapprehension. They think that the setting up of a small group of people in the Ministry will solve almost all the problems. I do not accept that for a minute. The joining of these two Departments will bring a great deal of information to us. The Commission will also bring a great deal of help and advice to us. It will be for the Minister to decide the priorities. I am sure that that is the right way to deal with the matter.

I stress that we have every intention of providing adequately within the Ministry for the collection and analysis of information bearing on future policy. The Government attach the very greatest importance to research into the circumstances and problems of those who receive benefit, whether contributory or non-contributory. It is because of that that I said at the beginning that there is little between the two sides of the Committee. I warn the Opposition that the mere setting up of this kind of body would not solve the problem. We must have, within the Ministry and the Government, the will and the desire to tackle these problems, and I think that we have shown that we have that will and desire.

Mr. Worsley

The Minister has said that there is a little difference between the two sides of the Committee. There are, however, some differences.

The right hon. Lady seems to think that the present machinery of her Ministry has proved adequate in the past for this task and will prove adequate in the future. She thinks that there is no necessity for a professional, skilled research unit in her Ministry. This is where the difference between the two sides of the Committee lies. We do not wish to take away her responsibility; we want to increase it. We want to increase the width of responsibility of the Ministry of Social Security. I wish that the right hon. Lady had gone further and had said that she would have in her Ministry really skilled people to deal with these matters. Then we should have been able to agree with her much more.

Miss Herbison

I have tried to stress my belief in the importance of collating information and of research. Of course, we shall have skilled people within the Ministry to do this job.

Mr. Worsley

The right hon. Lady has gone much further than she went in her original remarks. I am very glad about that.

I am sorry that the Minister did not like my speech. I liked much of her speech. However, I did not like it when she turned to us, as so many of her hen. Friends have done, and said, "Why did you do nothing about this?" Both sides of the Committee appreciate that we have got to the stage in the development of our social security policy in which the emphasis is changing because our society is changing. To look back to the past when a great deal was achieved is wrong. What the country wants, and what the Committee wants, is to look forward to the future, and on this I am sure we all agree.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.