HC Deb 13 June 1966 vol 729 cc1073-82

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

5.15 p.m.

Miss Pike

We all recognise that this is one of the most important Clauses in the Bill. It is the heart of the Bill. It s the Clause which unifies the two Ministries and gives the Minister the wider responsibility about which we have been talking.

On Second Reading, the right hon. Lady said that under the Clause four things would happen. It would help to co-ordinate policy. Secondly it would help the unification which would ensure that people getting contributory benefits would get all the necessary help in getting non-contributory benefits. Thirdly, the new Ministry would develop a new and comprehensive service to the public so that inquiries over the whole range of social security benefits could be dealt with at one point of contact. Fourthly, it would end the sharp distinction between contributory and non-contributory benefits and, therefore, would do a great deal to remove the present stigma.

The Minister has said in this Chamber that the idea of merging the two Ministries was conceived 11 years ago. If the right hon. Lady and her right hon. and hon. Friends thought of this 11 years ago, they constitute 11 of the most barren years of political talk. Once we start thinking of co-ordinating social security policy so that we have a really comprehensive service we are driven inescapably to the conclusion—and everything said this afternoon drives us to this conclusion—that this is a very much wider field than the mere payment of benefits and pensions.

We have been talking about changes in our society—the changing needs and changing patterns. We are not looking back to the pre-1939 years when there was poverty, unemployment and misery. We are looking forward to the future when we have full employment, high wages, and good pension schemes. People of good will on both sides of the Committee are determined that real financial security will be built up. The problem will be less and less one of benefits and of giving financial aid. Of course, financial aid is tremendously important; but it is the easiest part of the problem. If the need is financial aid, the problem is comparatively simple; we can give the benefit and meet the problem.

In dealing with the problems of National Assistance and pensioners, we shall need, not the doctrine of uniformity. much though the right hon. Lady and her colleagues love this doctrine, but the doctrine of the flexible giving of help where it is needed most and of giving care as well as cash. Very often, an hour's help in the house is far more valuable than an extra £2. Very often a visit from the health visitor, the proper type of grouped accommodation with a warden, the proper type of welfare service, such as meals-on-wheels, meets, not only the financial need, but the desperate loneliness and feeling of insecurity and fear which people have. It meets the insecurity which we are trying to conquer.

In setting up this new Ministry, the Minister and her right hon. Friends have missed a most valuable opportunity. She has taken this step forward and we wish her well in all her work. We have been talking about research which would help her in her work. Much of this matter is the responsibility of the Minister of Health. Much of it could be done with the help of the local health authorities—the local medical officer of health, and so on. So much of the help is given by the voluntary services. These come not so much under her jurisdiction, but under the Ministry of Health. There is the wonderful work done by the W.V.S. and by all the voluntary workers. If we are talking about co-ordination and a comprehensive service, we must bring more of this care into our thinking.

The Bill is a disappointment to us because it has missed this opportunity. Not only that, but there is the question of taking away the stigma of National Assistance and of charity.

The Chairman

Order. I hesitate to interrupt the hon. Lady, but the Clause deals only with the transfer of functions. It is not appropriate, on this Clause, to have a Second Reading debate on the Bill.

Miss Pike

We had a very short Second Reading debate, Sir Eric, and in describing the Clause—although I do not wish in any way to go out of order—the Minister said that the purpose of merging the two Departments was to give a comprehensive, co-ordinated service and to get rid of the stigma of National Assistance by bringing it under the umbrella of the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance. I was merely developing that argument—and I certainly will not go any further than you wish, Sir Eric—to say that, although the Bill will do much of what the right hon. Lady wishes to do, we have our reservations that it will not achieve all that she hopes.

Merely by changing the name, which is how most people will see it, we are not doing all that much. We hope that the change in the name will achieve the purpose, but very often a new name soon gets the old attributes of stigma attached to it. I know that …a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet", but it could be that something else by any other name might stink as much That is the reason for our great hesitation.

If the Minister had been able to go wider and take in a field which embraces the voluntary services, she would have achieved her hopes much more quickly and powerfully. As we all find in our constituency work, the people whom we are trying to help do not mind taking the help from the lady who comes round to do chiropody, from the health visitor or the meals-on-wheels service; they do not regard that so much as charity as National Assistance.

If we could have gone wider, we would have got rid of this stigma, because we would have embraced the whole field of security. We would have built up good neighbourliness, which is surely what we are trying to do. We are trying to tell these people that we are giving them this added help because we want as a society to be good neighbours to them, because we care for them and because we feel as a community that we have a debt to them. These are older people who very often are frightened, lonely and ill-informed. They accept this much more if they can have it in the context of all that they can think of as good neighbourliness.

But there is more to it even than that. We are very short of money for these purposes. The Minister quite rightly can take credit for giving extra benefit in the Bill, and we are all grateful for it, but she must known from her fights with the Treasury how difficult it is to get more money, particularly at this time, how difficult it is to get the extra staff who are needed and how difficult it is to increase expenditure. The right hon. Lady is fighting all the time in the Cabinet against other people with high priorities for her share of the cake.

People whom we use in this work are, or should be, expensive people because they are highly trained. The people working in National Assistance are highly trained and dedicated. We want more of them. We want more welfare workers and more social workers. The great danger is that we are not using our resources as economically as we could. We do not have the co-ordination that the right hon. Lady has talked about. We do not have a comprehensive system. Very often there is overlapping and we are not using our resources or our manpower to the best possible effect.

I suggest to the Minister that, good though this amalgamation is, it really is not good enough, because it will not do the things that we all want to do. The right hon. Lady says that we must have a social strategy to plot the course ahead and vision for the future. To do this we must have a wider conception of our whole responsibility.

Let us get away simply from thinking of this as a financial problem. It is not only financial. The Bill will be on the Statute Book for many years; it will he a long time before we have another Bill of this nature. In the future, it will be far more a question of preventing trouble happening. We have all heard the proverb that for want of a nail the shoe was lost; Very often, for the loss of a few pounds' worth of some sort of care, a whole family has broken down. Very often the family breaks down because the mother is a bad manager or is inadequate. Very often an old person has to go into a home, costing the community a great amount of money, because she has not been able to cope and things have gone beyond the stage where she can be brought back into her own home. I say "she", but very often it is "he", also.

If, as the Minister says, we are looking for unification and a comprehensive service, if she is looking for the one point of contact where everybody can get the social security and justice that we need, if we are looking to get away from the stigma which, unfortunately, was attached to the old National Assistance, we have lost a great opportunity here, because we should have gone a good deal further than merely putting the Ministry of Pensions and National Assistance together. We should have brought in the Ministry of Health.

Having worked in the Home Office and in the children's department—I say this purely personally, without committing anybody else—I wish that the children's department could come into this, too, because that is where so much preventative work could be done. We are sorry that we could not have gone further. We shall continue to press the Minister to widen the scope so that we have far greater vision for the future and so that we get all these problems coming under one umbrella and one responsibility with one strategy for the future.

Mr. Braine

As the Clause deals with the transfer of functions and liabilities consequent upon the dissolution of the Ministry of Pensions and the National Assistance Board it would seem appropriate to raise a small point, which is touched upon in the Financial Memorandum, as a consequence of the transfer of responsibilities from the local authorities.

The Memorandum points out that the local authorities will lose £1 million in a full year and it goes on to state that The resultant increase in net expenditure will lead to some increase in the general Exchequer support to local authorities. That is quite good news, but it has caused a little perturbation in one local authority which I have consulted and I think that the position should be spelt out in a little more detail. I wonder whether, when the Minister replies, she will say something about this.

The local authorities are already having to find an additional £9 million a year. There is their 25 per cent. share of the cost of rent rebate schemes, and ratepayers should not have to bear any additional burden. It does not look as though they will have to, but I would like to know whether the local authority associations were consulted about this and are happy about it and whether it has been taken into account in the new scheme for local authority grants which, I believe, the House is shortly to discuss.

Miss Herbison

The hon. Lady the Member for Melton (Miss Pike) has once again stressed her disappointment that the new Ministry will cover the work only of the present Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance and of the National Assistance Board. Her right hon. and hon. Friends wish to see the Ministry of Health taken in, also.

My first reaction to that is, what a very unwieldy Ministry we would have. I am sure that if hon. Members opposite give serious thought to all the work for which the Ministry of Health is responsible, apart from that mentioned by the hon. Lady today, and to all the work for which the new Ministry of Social Security will be responsible, they would realise that it might not be such a good thing after all.

I am sorry that the hon. Lady again repeated what she said on Second Reading. Then, scarcely anybody else made the same charge. This time I took down her words. She said that merely by changing the name we are not doing very much. I am sure that she has examined the Bill, and if she were less prejudiced about it she would realise that we have done a good deal more than change the name.

5.30 p.m.

Miss Pike

I was speaking on this very narrow point. I congratulated the right hon. Lady on the increased benefits, but on this point we are simply changing the name. We are not going much further than that and we are not bringing in any new functions.

Miss Herbison

Presumably, the hon. Lady thinks that if we brought in the Ministry of Health it would be all right. She has not realised the other changes. The 9s. allowance is not merely a money change. It is to ensure that we take care of many of the things which she has stressed. My mother lived until she was 86, and in the village in which I live I am surrounded by old people, and I therefore recognise that although money is important—and we ought not to belittle its importance—there are other things of great importance, too.

One of the tragedies which comes to old people, particularly those who live to what is called a ripe old age, is loneliness, because so many of their erstwhile friends have died before them. Loneliness can be a very great problem for these people and sometimes may cause tragedy among them. There are other matters of great importance—which I will deal with on the next Amendment—apart from financial aid to old people. The fact that we have not made a huge, unwieldy Ministry by bringing in the Ministry of Health does not mean that we shall not attend to these things.

May I return to the 9s. allowance which will be paid to the old, the long-term chronic sick and widows? One of the reasons—although not the only reason—is to give the old people a stable income.

The Chairman

I hesitate to interrupt the Minister, but on this Clause we are dealing only with the transfer of functions. It might be more convenient to the Committee if the points which she is mentioning were dealt with on Amendments.

Miss Herbison

I am simply replying to points developed to a great extent by the hon. Lady. As she has developed them, surely it is important that within the context of the Clause I should indicate what we hope to achieve. Not so many visits will be paid to those people who are getting the 9s. a week, but the officers who go will have more time to do the kind of welfare job which I and the Government want them to do—not only to find out the financial needs of the old people but also to find out what are the welfare needs.

Despite what the hon. Lady said, it is not a question of duplicating services. These officers will contact—as do the National Assistance Board officers in the time available to them at present—local authorities and voluntary organisations in the area. The provisions which we have made in the Bill—I will deal with many more of them on the coming Amendments —will ensure that more time is available for what I consider the important welfare work which we want the old people to have, the problem families to have, and many others to have who need this assistance. This can be done under the new set-up of the Ministry of Social Security.

Dame Irene Ward

The hon. Lady is making a very important point when she says that these officers will be able to contact the local authorities. Will they have any power or authority? If they make representations on certain aspects to local authorities and the local authorities do not respond, where do they go from there?

Miss Herbison

The officers will follow up the case. No one can force a local authority to do these things, but in some areas local authorities provide many services about which old people know nothing, just as voluntary organisations provide many services about which old people do not know. We hope to help them to use the services which are provided, and also I hope to show local authorities which are not providing them the need to provide such services. I believe that the follow-up of the officers will prove of the greatest help.

Miss Pike

I have said how much we welcome the step forward which we are taking and how much we welcome the right hon. Lady's Ministry. I am not putting forward carping criticism. But what the right hon. Lady said bore out my argument that if these welfare visitors had not a divided responsibility but were working under the umbrella of one Ministry, their work would be much easier and the whole system much more satisfactory.

Miss Herbison

Is the hon. Lady suggesting that the work done by the health visitors of local authorities ought to be clone by a central body?

Miss Pike

If the Ministries of Health, Pensions and National Insurance were all one Ministry, this work would be coordinated to give comprehensive, overall responsibility. The right hon. Lady said that this Ministry would be too unwieldy. I had some responsibility in the last Administration in the Home Office where there were a number of departments, with Ministers of State looking after departments under the general supervision of the Secretary of State.

This works remarkably well. It means that we have highly responsible Ministers, with status, prestige and responsibility in the House, working in their own departments but constantly in touch with each other and co-ordinating their work. They have rooms next door to each other; they do not have to go to a different Ministry, which may be over the road or even on the other side of London. This provides the cross-fertilisation of ideas and responsibility which can arise at the level of Minister of State.

This need not be a cumbersome Ministry. I accept that it would be a very responsible Ministry. The right hon. Lady may call this criticism, but I call it putting forward constructive ideas. We want to see social security made into something which is good neighbourliness. I do not wish it to go out from the House of Commons—I am sure that it will not—that I think that changing the name will do no good at all. We all hope that it will achieve what we went to achieve, but we have to be realistic. We know that only changing the name is not going very far.

We believe that by having this more comprehensive service, and bringing in the voluntary workers about whom the right hon. Lady talked, we can create that. feeling of good neighbourliness which would go a little further to remove much of the suspicion and doubt which unfortunately still surrounds so much of the wonderful work being done at present. The right hon. Lady knows from her own mother and I know from my elderly relatives how much these old people trust and even love those who make these visits to them.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.