REGULATIONS

HC Deb 01 December 1970 vol 807 cc1212-38

Mr. Meacher

I beg to move Amendment No. 21, in page 5, line 3, at end insert: (k) for prescribing that any claimant or recipient of family income supplement who makes an appeal to the Appeal Tribunal against any determination of the Supplementary Benefits Commission under this Act shall be informed of his right to representation before the Tribunal. My purpose in introducing this proposal is to achieve, by what I hope is a small concession, the aim that the regulations will substantially stiffen the meaningfulness of the appeals machinery. The present situation of appeals in regard to awarding social service benefits is most unsatisfactory. There is scarcely any benefit for which a system of appeals is provided where the proportion of those affected who avail themselves of this opportunity is not nugatory. This is particularly so with non-contributory benefits and cases in which there is a substantial element of discretion.

This is true, not merely of disputes concerning the positive level of benefit—whether it be more or less than a particular sum—but even where benefit is being terminated and where possibly severe hardship or temporarily acute deprivation may ensue. I am thinking, for example, of the operation of the four-week rule which curtails supplementary benefits for both single and married men after four weeks or three months' warning, as a result of which no other benefits at all may be available, yet the level of appeal is around a minute 3 per cent.

These figures may be interpreted as a symbol of the considered justice meted out by the various relevant authorities. Although I would not entirely discount the accuracy of such an argument, nevertheless I believe there are several other crucial considerations. Perhaps the most important of these is the matter of client representation. In the matter of fair rents, for instance, there could be no doubt that a central reason for the reluctance of tenants to use the rent-fixing machinery is their inability to match the legal expertise employed by landlords when an appeal is made to an assessment committee. Under the Rent Act tenants wishing to query a rent officer's assessment can call on more articulate friends to argue the case for them, but—and this is the point of this Amendment—this provision is not well-publicised and regrettably is little used.

The proper and complete answer to this problem would be the provision of legal aid for the use of appellants at tribunals concerned with social benefits and social rights; but, in the absence of that full answer, I would ask that the regulations should stipulate that appellants be informed, at least orally but preferably also in writing, that they are entitled to representation and support at the hearing by persons of their choice, whether by a friend, a relation, or a voluntary agent such as a trade union district secretary, or the member of a voluntary organisation committed to the defence of the rights of the poor, such as the Child Poverty Action Group, or a claimant's union.

The importance of this provision could be shown by the fact that where appeals have taken place before tribunals and appellants have been properly represented, the number of successful appeals has risen markedly and the ultimate terms of settlement in the dispute have improved significantly, to the claimant's advantage.

Yet nevertheless all too often claimants have been extremely unwilling to go through with this proposal and have been unnerved by the prospect of the hearing, and only persuaded to accept the services of an articulate friend with considerable trepidation. Such is the importance of ensuring that this crucial aid to the claimant which the Amendment requires does not go by default.

I trust that the Minister will not take my eulogies of the benefits of representation to the claimant as, frankly, a reason for quietly blocking them. It is not enough to make the opportunity for representation available. Its existence must be positively announced and actively encouraged. I believe that it is a test of the Minister's commitment to the rights of the poor that he improve in this way the balance of power between the authorities and the claimant, which at present is far too heavily weighted in the interests of the former.

Mr. Dean

The hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) was successful in an Amendment which he moved on the Committee stage, and on this occasion I can tell him that he is pushing at a door which is already open. The power to which he has referred is already available and, therefore, the Amendment is unnecessary. It is available in Schedule 3 to the Ministry of Social Security Act. In supplementary benefits cases the practice is that when the applicant is notified of the date, time and place of the hearing, he is also told that he may be represented. It is our intention that a similar practice will be followed in respect of FIS appeals.

As the hon. Gentleman has drawn attention to this matter and has mentioned the need for publicity of these arrangements, the fact that this short debate has taken place will perhaps achieve his objective. I hope that I have convinced the hon. Gentleman and the House that what he desires is already available and will be carried out.

Amendment negatived.

Mr. Booth

I beg to move Amendment No. 22, in page 5, line 3, at end insert: (k) for the payment of family income supplement for six weeks to a seasonal worker on the evidence of his first week's earnings in a period of employment, without prejudice to his entitlement to a further twenty weeks' payments at a rate which shall not be affected by any change in circumstances in that period on his showing evidence of five continuous weeks' earnings. The purpose of the Amendment is to make a special provision for family income supplements payments to seasonal workers. Although not stated in the Bill, we understand that the practice to be adopted in making normal F.I.S. payment calculations will be to take an average of five weeks' income to determine the average income of an applicant. We understand the reason for this, because there may be many applicants whose incomes vary from week to week and it would not, therefore, be fair to work on a single week's earnings. However, if this form of determination were applied to seasonal workers, some special difficulties would arise, which the Minister would recognise.

The Minister will correct me if I am wrong in assuming that his understanding of the words "seasonal workers" in the context of the Amendment is the same as the use of the term "seasonal worker" for unemployment benefit purposes. Hon. Members will readily agree that the general understanding of the term "seasonal worker" by constituents is different from that used for National Insurance definitions. Most people think of seasonal workers as those who work at a seaside hotel in the summer. For National Insurance purposes, anybody who establishes a pattern of periods of employment over a three-year period is classed as a seasonal worker and, consequently, will not be entitled to receive unemployment benefit.

There is a complication in that there is a process of appeal whereby, if he can show that he may have obtained employment for 25 per cent. of the time, or does, he can qualify for benefit. However, if a seasonal worker, having been out of work for a period similar to periods in two previous years, then comes back into employment and within the first week seeks to claim family income supplement, one cannot determine on the basis of the four preceding weeks and that week what an average week's earnings are for the purpose of family income supplement, and therefore it is necessary to make provision for this type of worker.

One of the areas to which this would have to extend is that of local education authorities, where some grades of employees are paid only in respect of periods when schools are in session. They are not paid during school holidays. Some of them have experienced difficulty as a result of being classed as seasonal workers after a three-year period, and I am particularly concerned to safeguard their position for family income supplement purposes.

Finally, perhaps I might point out that this was the method suggested by the Minister in Committee. Therefore I hope that it needs no further commendation to the right hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Meacher

I take an opportunity to speak on this Amendment about seasonal workers with a special eye to the further point made in the other Amendment. In the absence of Government Amendments, many hon. Members on this side of the House are disturbed about the degree of leeway in the application of this Bill which will be left to regulations and on which reassurances of intention have been sought from the Government and on many points not yet granted.

When we discussed Clause 6 in Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin (Mrs. Shirley Williams) referred to the disturbingly wide range of discretion which in some part at least will be met by the regulations. But as regards the precise formulation of the regulations, we have received little definite guidance and reassurance in detail on several important points of principle and policy.

We have been given little information on the essential question of how claims to family income supplement are to be dealt with and met. Will applicants be entitled, for example, to a notice of assessment showing how the benefit has been made up, since the basing of the calculation on gross family earnings is more likely to be open to dispute and differences of interpretation than is the case with supplementary benefit claims where the relationship of past earnings to the scale rates is simpler to determine?

Again, taking a matter which relates to the problems of seasonal work, in what form will evidence of past family income have to be produced? I am aware that the question of past earnings is already covered by the Secretary of State's comments on 13th November about a wages slip. I raise this point because I know of a case where an applicant for free welfare foods jotted down on a piece of paper details of past family income and was told that that was completely inadequate and that he would have to provide an audited certificate from his accounttant. One would think that a person who boasted an accountant would be unlikely to be claiming free welfare foods. The point is that we have had little information about how the regulations will work with respect to such issues in general and seasonal workers in particular.

A further matter concerning the application of the Bill to seasonal workers derives from a Written Reply of the Secretary of State on 13th November in which he said: … where the rate is 10s. a week or less the supplement will be paid quarterly in advance by Giro order."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th November, 1970; Vol. 806, c. 283.] 10.15 p.m.

Suppose that a seasonal worker is awarded 10s. a week and then, having received an advance payment of £6 10s., becomes unemployed in the course of the next 13 weeks. Does this lump sum payment either preclude or diminish his supplementary benefit entitlement? If so, in what way, by how much, and for which weeks? I urge the Minister to give us an assurance about the effect on benefit levels of the interplay between supplementary benefits and F.I.S. with particular regard to seasonal workers.

The purpose of the Amendment is to discover exactly how the Government propose to treat applications from seasonal workers where in the five weeks, or two months in the case of salaried persons, immediately preceding the claim seasonal work has tailed off and that person has become temporarily unemployed. All that we have been told by the Secretary of State comes from a further Written Answer on 13th November: Where, for example, the person concerned … was in a job in which the earnings varied with the seasons, or was temporarily working short-time, it would normally"— what a multitude of sins hide behind the word "normally"— be appropriate to have regard to a shorter or a longer period than the five weeks (two months) norm."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th November, 1970; Vol. 806, c. 284–5.] Will the Minister be more explicit? Will he make clear that the regulations will require that reference will be made to the latest period of work when employment was carried on continuously for five weeks, or for two months in the case of salaried persons? On this and related matters associated with seasonal workers, I ask the Minister to fully clarify the rights of seasonal workers under the Bill.

Mr. Dean

The hon. Members for Barrow-in-Furness (Mr. Booth) and for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) have asked us to write into the Bill something which we broadly intend to achieve by the more flexible method of regulations. The intention here is broadly the same for the seasonal worker as for the person who is unemployed or in receipt for a short period of a national insurance benefit, which is primarily the point raised by the hon. Member for Oldham, West. The broad intention is the same in both cases—to determine the claimant's normal earnings for full-time employment which would make him eligible to claim the family income supplement.

For example, in the case of a man who was unemployed for a period, it is our intention that the period should be the average over the last five weeks, ignoring weeks in which less than 30 hours were worked. The broad objective concerning seasonal workers is that the family income supplement payable would correspond to the normal earnings of the claimant for full-time work which makes him eligible.

It may be that in the case of someone just beginning work or taking a new job an initial award would be made for a short period and a further award later when the pattern of his earnings was established. There may be cases—change of work and all the rest—where it would not be possible to establish what the normal pattern of earnings was by looking at the previous five weeks. So common sense would suggest, and we intend to provide regulations, that there should be an initial award until the pattern of normal earnings for full-time work was established. That is the way that we propose to cover those cases.

In the other instances mentioned by the hon. Member for Oldham, West, it is our intention that regulations should provide that normal gross income consisting of earnings will be calculated or estimated from the person's earnings from that occupation over the five complete weeks preceding the claim. However, as I have mentioned, this can be no more than a general rule, and it would be relevant only where the previous five weeks were an accurate assessment of the period and of the earnings concerned.

The Department has fairly considerable National Insurance experience of this matter with seasonal workers and with unemployment, and the general pattern which has been followed will be useful experience in guiding us. The basic objective which we intend to achieve is to take a period which will show as accurately as possible what the normal earnings in full-time work are in the job concerned. In the majority of cases we envisage that the previous five weeks will give an accurate picture of that, but for a person starting a new job, or a seasonal worker, it may not, and we shall therefore provide in the regulations for other periods to be taken, in order to be able to make an accurate assessment of what the normal full-time earnings are for the person concerned in the job concerned.

I hope that with that explanation the two hon. Gentlemen opposite will feel that the broad intention which they have attempted to express in these Amendments, and which is shared by the Government, would be better carried out with the greater flexibility which regulation-making powers will provide.

Amendment negatived.

10.21 p.m.

Sir K. Joseph

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

I am grateful and wish to express my gratitude to the House for improving the Bill with such good temper, and in such rapid time. My hon. Friends have given me the priceless support of co-operative silence, except for the 100 per cent. speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter), who made only one speech and scored a bull's-eye by persuading the Government to accept an Amendment put forward by the Opposition.

I should like to congratulate the Opposition on the quality of their homework. This is not as simple a Bill as it appears at first sight. Hon. Gentlemen opposite have penetrated a lot of its complexities, and have obliged the Government to study some of the details which, at least on the benches within the House, if not on the silent benches outside it, had not been fully appreciated.

The Opposition do not like the Bill, though they share with us the purpose behind it, which is to bring help as rapidly as possible to the poorest wage-earning households with a child or children. The Government's purpose has been to provide this help as quickly as possible, and this has meant that we have had to ask the House to accept a simplicity which has not always been able to absorb the detailed claims of equity which hon. Members have put forward. I have assured the House that as soon as the family incomes supplement has been in payment for about a year we shall be ready to look, if necessary, at some of the refinements that we have had to reject at this stage.

Because the Bill has had to be brought in quickly, I should like to say how much I, personally, appreciate the hard work that my civil servants have put into the drafting and thought of it.

As a result of the objective of speed, the House has been asked to accept an unusually large amount of regulation powers. I apologise for this, but I know that the House will sympathise with the purpose. I hope the House will appreciate that the Government have made every effort to explain what we intend to put into regulations, by filling HANSARD with Written Answers to Parliamentary Questions, as a result of which I think these debates have been the better.

Anyone straying into our Committee stage and today's Report stage would have imagined that we were dealing largely with the plight of the actor who was unemployed and turning his hand, for just over 30 hours a week, to window cleaning, while facing severe problems of either fostering out or fostering in one or two children.

In fact, despite any such impression, the vast majority of cases that we intend to help under the Bill will be simple, straightforward cases of very poor families indeed, working full-time and trying to bring up children to reasonable standards. There will be less simple cases, but we believe that the Bill, with the regulations that will follow, will cope with them and channel the help that we intend to give to them. I again assure the House that we shall be watching the prescribed amounts which set a ceiling to the help that we can give.

This is the second Bill for which I have had the honour to ask the House for a Third Reading in only ten parliamentary weeks since the election. I am grateful to the House for the improvement that the Bill has experienced at its hands and I hope that the House will now speed the Bill on its way.

10.25 p.m.

Mr. McNamara

I do not intend to delay the House for long. The right hon. Gentleman allows that the Opposition do not like the Bill, but the phrases he used gave the impression that we went along with it. I do not go along with it. I regard it as a poor Bill—a dismal Bill—that will do little to help the very poor, and particularly those who are on the margins just outside the limits laid down in the Bill. It will do nothing to help people with very large families, or those who have rent problems. It will do nothing to help the many cases that exist all along the margins of whatever lines we draw—in particular, those on the margin between the full supplementary benefits and the benefits to be provided under this scheme. It is a very poor Bill from that point of view.

I realise that the right hon. Gentleman wanted to get the Bill through as quickly as possible, and to that extent I applaud him. Some disregards have been accepted and others rejected. The arguments for accepting some were equally applicable to the arguments for accepting others, and the arguments for rejecting some could have applied to the arguments for rejecting others. I am grateful for the concessions that the right hon. Gentleman has made, but the Bill is a very poor substitute for what we wanted.

The right hon. Gentleman is creating another means test and another level of poverty, which is something that we had hoped we might avoid in this Measure. The right hon. Gentleman did not deal with the problem of rent, although we all know that rent problems—more than ever now, because we have so many Tory dominated councils—provide a major problem in this area of poverty. That situation is not touched by the provisions in the Bill.

The right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends have said, "A new scheme will be produced by the Secretary of State for the Environment in the autumn" but the autumn is nearly 12 months away, and many people will be badly affected while they are waiting for that new scheme to come into operation. Having seen some of the standards set by Tory councils, it is clear to me that this situation does not bode well for the really poor.

The Parliamentary Secretary and the right hon. Gentleman were for ever saying, "This is a new Bill. This is a new departure. We are going into new and uncharted seas." My fear is that we are going into uncharted seas in a very leaky craft.

10.30 p.m.

Mr. Charles Curran (Uxbridge)

The Bill is a stopgap, ambulance measure. Nobody on either side of the House would wish to overstate the benefits to be derived from it. But although it is a stopgap, ambulance job, it is valuable because it provides real help for strata of our society which are in urgent need. Instead of criticising it we should welcome it, as far as it goes.

However, there are a number of things which need to be pointed out about the Bill. I very much hope that after the Bill has been working for a while we shall have from the Minister a report about the way it is working. I was interested to hear one hon. Member opposite pressing for an annual report. I recognise that there are objections to the demand as it was made. However, the working of the Bill will tell us a good deal that we do not know. It will give us a good deal of exact information which we do not have now about the hard cases in society. The more information that we can get the better for us.

To a large extent we are talking in the dark. We make assumptions about the facts without knowing them. I hope that when the Minister gives us a report upon the workings of the Bill when enacted he will systematically accumulate all the information he can about the families that are helped, what sort of income they have, what their circumstances are, how numerous they are, in what parts of the country they are, and in what occupations they are.

One cannot do more than guess about this, but from my necessarily limited experience of one constituency I am inclined to guess that the principal beneficiaries under the Bill will be single mothers—that is, women who are bringing up families without husbands, some women who have been deserted, women who are widows or women who have illegitimate children. So far as I can see, these single mothers are the most to be pitied people in the community. The job of bringing up a family and at the same time earning a living for it is beyond the capacity of a woman unless she is above average. It is an extraordinarily difficult job. One continually comes across women who find it pretty well impossible to cope with the double business of bringing up children and at the same time earning a living for them single-handed.

The Bill will do something for these women. One would like to know how many such women there are. From my experience of them—I have encountered quite a number of them, as I imagine every hon. Member has—they are people who are the victims of circumstances over which they have had little or no control. They are often women who are not particularly bright, women who have not been particularly well educated, women who have not been trained to do any job for which an employer is prepared to pay much money. They are constantly struggling.

When the Minister gives us the report I hope that he will examine, among many other things, the way in which the Bill when enacted affects the levels of women's wages. I wonder—I am not sure of it; I suppose nobody can be—whether the Bill will not tend to depress the wages of such women, whether we are not now providing a subsidy which will tend to keep down perhaps at a lower level than at present the wages of the women I am talking about—unskilled women who are struggling to bring up a family and at the same time support them.

I said that the Bill is a stopgap ambulance job. I do not criticise it for that reason. I insist that it simply makes an attempt to cope with problems which we always shrink from tackling properly. We keep on legislating about welfare. We are doing it now. We have been doing it ever since the war. We do it on an assumption which we all know not to be true, the assumption that everybody of voting age is competent to cope, to stand on his own feet—or her own feet—and to accept the burden of personal responsibility.

The truth is that there are in our society a sizeable number of men and women who are not equal to doing that, who really find it beyond them. I fancy that there is something to be said—I think that we shall one day have to face this—for accepting the facts, for recognising that there are men and women who do not find it possible to cope, whether because of faults of personality, faults of education, lack of training, or whatever it may be. To thrust upon such people the burden of looking after themselves, pretending that they are equal to the job when, in fact, they are not, is, in my view, a piece of cruelty.

I believe that we shall presently have to face the question whether we should recognise the existence in our society of a sizeable number of people who are simply unable to look after themselves and who need something in the nature of benevolent paternalism. The Welfare State may have to come to that.

We are not doing it in the present Bill. We are passing the Bill on the familiar assumption that people can look after themselves, that everyone can, including the women I am talking about, the ones who are trying single-handed to bring up their families and provide a living for them at the same time.

We cannot indefinitely run our society without challenging that assumption. It may well be—perhaps I am here going outside the scope of the Bill itself—that it would be socially better if we were to treat the single mothers of whom I am speaking in a completely different way, so that, instead of subsidising their wages we paid them outright to stay at home to look after their children.

That is not what the Bill is about. The Bill is based upon the assumption, which is often wrong, that such women, the ones who, I believe, will be the principal beneficiaries, are invariably capable of doing the job when, in fact, very many of them are not.

Sir K. Joseph

My hon. Friend is making an interesting speech, but he is in error in the last point he makes. A single women bringing up a child or children can draw supplementary benefit in order to stay at home. Under the Bill, there is a choice.

Mr. Curran

I agree, and I am, perhaps, taking the generalisation further than I should. But there is a certain group of single mothers who will have their wages supplemented under the Bill. We shall subsidise the wages of some of them. I believe that it would be socially better if, instead of subsidising their wages, we gave them public money outright so that they might look after their children and be relieved of the business of earning a living to support their families. To do that would be to go a good deal further than the Bill. I hope that we shall nevertheless face that question when we make the radical overhaul of the Welfare State which, I hope, the present Government will make before the next election. Meanwhile, I am happy to welcome the Bill, so far as it goes.

10.40 p.m.

Mr. Michael Barnes (Brentford and Chiswick)

During the Second Reading debate the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) compared this Bill with what he called the Speenhamland decision, which the Speenhamland magistrates took in 1795. There would be few hon. Members on this side of the House who would accept that this Bill is a fateful decision in that sense simply because it seeks to supplement the wages of people in full-time employment. There may be many on this side of the House who think that this Bill is equally as fateful a step for another reason.

That reason is that the Bill is the first piece of legislation that this Government have brought forward involving the extension of crude means testing on which the Government will clearly rely so heavily in the social legislation that they are gradually unveiling. I do not complain at the selectivity involved in Clauses 5 and 6 of the Bill, with the claims and determinations that have to be made, what I complain about is the crudity of the selectivity. If this scheme is to be operated by the Supplementary Benefits Commission I remain convinced that the take-up of benefits will continue as low as it is for many other means-tested benefits.

On the other hand, I believe that the Government will find that resentment towards the scheme will be high. It will be high among those who receive benefit and there will be resentment among other sections of society towards those who receive the benefit. This resentment will become greater as the Government adopt other policies which rely more and more on this kind of crude means testing. The 50 per cent. rate of tax on earnings up to the prescribed amount, in Clause 3, makes the scheme in many respects like a form of negative taxation. But the scheme is so crude and the benefits so meagre that this Bill will bring negative income tax into disrepute. It will bring the sort of civilised selectivity that can be possible through negative income tax into disrepute, and I fancy there are quite a few hon. Members on both sides who would regard this as a pity. Those are the reasons why the Bill is a fateful step. I do not think it will be in the long-term interests of poor families any more than was the Speenhamland scheme. I do not think it will take us one step nearer the concept of one nation which is so much spoken of nowadays. I believe that the reverse will be the case and that it will isolate and weaken the poor and increase the amount of resentment felt towards them by other sections of society.

10.43 p.m.

Dame Joan Vickers (Plymouth, Devonport)

My right hon. Friend rather tempted us too much when he said that we on these Benches were being silent. I am in a slightly difficult position because, regretfully, I was not in the House at the time this Bill was brought forward. I want to voice one or two criticisms and perhaps express some fears about the Bill. One of the difficulties is that my right hon. Friend has such a delightful way of putting his points that he rather disarms any criticism.

I hope he will give us some assurance that he is considering this as only a holding Bill, a temporary Bill until he can find something else to put in its place, and that he has to do this because he needs to do something quickly. I am worried about the fact that we shall violate again the privacy of the family. We have so many different ways of doing this now. We shall have to learn more about the individual family. We read in Clause 5 (2): Where a family includes both a man and a woman the claim shall, except where regulations otherwise provide, be made by them jointly and any sums payable by way of the supplement shall be receivable by either of them; in any other case the claim shall be made and the sums shall be receivable by the man or woman included in the family. I think that this is rather dangerous. What happens if a woman wants to see why she is not getting an adequate income? We know that a great many husbands do not tell their wives what they earn. In Holland a woman can go to the court and get a sufficient income from her husband if he does not give it to her.

I hope that one of the innovations my right hon. Friend will put into effect will be that this should not be jointly done, but that either should have the right to claim.

I tabled a Question, as I was overseas, about the number of my constituents who might benefit from the Bill. I was told that it was not possible to provide estimates of an area smaller than Great Britain. This makes me a little doubtful about the estimates we were given on 10th November in that there may be a great many disappointments in the area among people who thought they might be included. I hope that at least it will be possible to help the local officers who are to deal with this matter by giving them some idea of the numbers involved.

One of my hon. Friends said that the Bill is based on speculation. I did not like that word, but perhaps he did not mean it. It seems a rather dangerous idea that the Bill should be based on speculation. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) in what he said on Second Reading—that family allowances have three great merits. He proceeded to state those three merits with his usual great clarity.

I wonder whether we are wise in embarking on this type of Bill at the present time when we are considering going into the Common Market, because it is going in the opposite direction to action being taken by Common Market countries. I hope, therefore, that it is only to be a holding operation until perhaps the economic situation is better and we can afford to go along the lines of the countries of the Common Market, because if we are to join the E.E.C. it will be awkward for us to have one system and the other countries to have another. I would much prefer to see larger allowances given so that the individual can pay for all the necessities his family needs than that we should go on supplementing just the poorer.

In France, for example, the child allowance is £6 12s. for the first child and for three children it is £23, whereas in this country there is nothing for the first child and only £6 18s. 8d. for three. I think that the Government will have to come to some such system as the French in the end, and it will be very much better when they do. We spend less than any of the countries of the Common Market on social security and this is something we have to face. We have to decide what proportion of our gross national product we are going to spend on social security and welfare.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Miss Harvie Anderson)

Order. I appreciate that the hon. Lady has explained to the House that she was not here at an earlier stage, but I hope she will not stretch the rules for Third Reading too widely.

Dame Joan Vickers

I will leave that point, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

The other point I would like to draw to the attention of my right hon. Friend over my dislike or fear of the Bill concerns the areas of low wages. In my part of the country, the wages are considerably lower than the national average. Only recently, in a local newspaper there was the headline, Don't pay so much to West workers". That statement was supposed to have come from the Department of Employment. I therefore checked with the Department and found that it was not what it had said. But it is one of my fears that we shall now see low wages maintained because it is thought that they can be supplemented by the Government. My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Curran) said that the level of women's wages may be kept down because many firms will profit by this scheme.

In his reply to me, my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department of Employment, said that the Department had not instigated any scaling down of wages proposed to be paid by a firm in the South-West and added: The Department thought the firm's own assessment of the likely effects of its original ideas on wages was realistic and agreed to provide the firm with certain information on national and district wages rates. We do not want any scaling down of wage rates from a firm moving into an area where there are already low wages, but that aim is unfortunately not helped by the Bill. I would much sooner that this were regarded as a holding Bill until the whole subject can be reviewed in the light of greater knowledge. Families will have to apply for these benefits, for rate rebate, rent rebate, prescription rebate and so on. This will be an intolerable burden for many families and a great intrusion into their privacy.

My right hon. Friend already knows that I am critical of the Bill, for I wrote to the Chief Whip to explain my position when I was unable to speak during the Second Reading debate. I hope that the time will soon come when he is able to produce a better Bill which is more satisfactory for helping the kind of person with whom we are concerned and which will enable us to do away with these various tests.

10.51 p.m.

Mr. Timothy Raison (Aylesbury)

This is a small but useful Bill and what I have to say will be short. I believe that it will give limited help to a group of people who are clearly in need, particularly the families of single women. During our debates my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has shown considerable willingness to improve the Bill by Amendments and by what he has indicated as the likely content of the regulations.

On the face of it, there are too many regulations and we have to depend upon them too much, but we probably have to accept the need for speed, and we can be sure of the good will of the Secretary of State and I am sure that when he has the chance to err on the side of generosity, he will do so.

If I had to make a comparison in describing the Bill it would be to say that it is similar to the post-war prefabs, which were built to ease the immediate housing shortage. The trouble about the prefabs was that they had a way of lasting far longer than we expected. I hope that the Bill will not be a permanent feature of the Statute Book.

Sir K. Joseph

Prefabs became very popular.

Mr. Raison

Any cash allowance will necessarily be very popular, but that does not persuade me that in the long run it is the best possible form of allowance.

What we have called the Speenhamland objection may be valid in principle, but it will not apply seriously in practice. The system of getting only 50 per cent. of the difference rather than the whole difference between one's income and the prescribed amount will probably mean that the deterrent effect on wages will not work and in reality it will not be a substantial problem.

What I do not feel happy about is that the Bill will add one more to the great tangle of means tests and the great variety of benefits which is a feature of our social security scene already. While the Bill will be useful in the short run, I hope that in the long run our thinking will be directed back towards one single benefit for each of the major contingencies which may arise within the social services. Whether we build on the family allowances is an open question, but the more we can think in terms of a single benefit and a single system of means testing, the better for all concerned, and I hope that when my right hon. Friend and his colleagues discuss the future of social security, they will be able to give some indication that this is the way in which they are thinking.

I know that the problem of the noncopers is real and that if we concentrate on cash benefit to the exclusion of all other kinds of benefits, subsidies for school meals and benefits in kind, we may run into problems, but even these may not necessarily be insuperable problems. If there were a single benefit, it might be possible to have at least part of the benefit in some kind of coupon form, or some other form tied to the need.

I am sure that what we need is much more simplicity in the whole of this subject. While the Bill will give us a useful benefit with useful consequences in the short term, I hope that it will not be regarded as a permanent feature of the scene.

10.55 p.m.

Sir Brandon Rhys Williams (Kensington, South)

I do not want to detain the House very long at this late hour.

I was not able to give the Bill a very warm welcome on Second Reading, and I cannot give it a very warm welcome at this stage. It seems to have very few friends anywhere in the House. But it is obvious from this evening's deliberations that it also has no real enemies. I think that this is in very large measure due to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, because he has convinced all hon. Members of his absolute sincerity and generosity of purpose in introducing it.

One of my favourite observations, which it is perhaps appropriate to repeat now, is that a man who never made a mistake never made anything. I think my right hon. Friend has made a mistake in introducing the Bill, but it is a mistake which will take him in due course in the right direction.

I pay tribute to the way in which the Opposition has handled the Committee and Report stages. In spite of their best efforts, the Bill still contains features which are objectionable. The dependence on regulations to be issued subsequently is, I suppose, the most objectionable now.

But it also has all the disincentive difficulties which we foresaw on Second Reading; and there is also the problem of the six-month rule. Whichever way we look at it, that rule is wrong. The period is either too long or too short. On balance, I am inclined to think that it will be seen in retrospect to be too short. The income tax on marginal earnings rather than the partial withdrawal of benefits should be the instrument for introducing an acceptable degree of selectivity. The benefits which the Bill confers should become permanent. They should not be limited to six months in duration. The variations in income which inevitably affect all families should be dealt with through the income tax rather than through the means test.

I believe that my right hon. Friend will learn from his mistakes. Those of us who are students of this subject will watch him now with a sort of enjoyment, rather as one reads through an old and much-loved story, because we know already the obstacles this pilgrim will come to. We know that my right hon. Friend's heart is in the right place, as is that of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, so we are confident that they will be able to bridge all these difficulties in style. We shall see them, rather like the pilgrims in "The Pilgrim's Progress" in the Slough of Despond as they try to draft regulations which actually express what they mean. We shall see them on the Hill of Difficulty as they try to wrestle with the problem of disincentives; and in the Castle of Despair when they try to deal with the problem of low take-up. I am certain that take-up will not be as high as my right hon. Friend hopes.

But we can have confidence that in due course he will come to the river and that the trumpets will sound for him on the other side. Eventually he will come to the place where other blessed spirits rest, and will convince himself that the right way to have dealt with this problem all along was by a straight increase in family allowances.

10.58 p.m.

Mrs. Shirley Williams

While I share with the hon. Member for Kensington, South (Sir B. Rhys Williams) the certainty that the trumpets will sound at least on the other side for the Secretary of State, with all that that implies in this House, I am not so sure that they will sound on either side for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whom I regard as the inspiration of the Bill.

The Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary have been extremely patient. They have made a number of concessions and have been characteristically open-minded in recognising places where they could strengthen their Bill. Granted that they have almost as many mentors on their side of the House as on this who are singularly unhappy about the Bill, that graciousness also had a quality of diplomacy in it. At one stage it looked as though the right hon. Gentleman was beginning to regret his willingness to make concessions, and made, I thought, a rather unhappy remark about the distressingly seductive initiatives from the Opposition. However, I should like to assure him that some seductions are good for everybody, and this one is such an an example.

I want briefly to refer to some of the worries which we have about the Bill, and then to one or two wider questions which arise from it. We have made clear already that we have three central concerns. The first of those is the dependence of the Bill upon regulations, and which, even now, we cannot exactly determine. The right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friend are both honourable men, and while they are in office we can, no doubt, trust them completely to carry out all that they have said, but all of us in this House know that Ministerial office has a strange way of moving from person to person; all of us know perfectly well that a commitment made by one gentleman may not necessarily be taken to apply to the next one; all of us know that when we make law we should make law for all time and not for the sojourn of one person in particular in one office in particular.

Having said that, while one reiterates once again that we recognise that the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Gentleman have been motivated by the desire for speed, we in the Opposition, and many on the Government side, too, I hope, still maintain a deep scepticism about the way the Bill depends to such an extent on means which cannot be controlled within the House of Commons. I want also to say, without, I hope, rubbing to much salt in the wound, that we all know that the speed was itself the direct consequence of the action of the right hon. Gentleman's colleague in introducing the changes he made last 27th October, and that such speed would not have been necessary had those steps not been taken.

Our second great worry, our second sense of the deep weakness of the Bill, quite apart from this concept, is that despite the efforts to offset it, the Bill still retains the £3 limit, and so in effect what the Bill says is, "You can get half a loaf if you are rather poor, and you will be lucky to get a quarter of a loaf if you are very poor."

The hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Curran) quite correctly pointed to one group of people who are likely to benefit from the Bill, and those were women. It is perhaps worth pointing out to the House that the most recent Family Expenditure Survey which we have, and earnings survey we have, indicated that there were still in this country 2.2 million women over 21 earning less than £12 a week. In other words, the most depressed, the least well organised, the least powerfully organised group of people in the country are women still, and one is aware that it is among them that the £3 limit is likely to hit most hard. So I would say that our concern about the £3 limit continuing in the Bill remains, and we cannot talk about equity in a situation in which the very poorest are to have to bear it, for reasons which, I am bound to say, I thought that, with all his great charm, the Under-Secretary of State did not manage to mobilise, because the necessary troops were not there; and so we still have not an adequate answer to this strange limit upon the very poor.

Our third great concern which we still feel is at the disincentive effect of the Bill, and the fact that we talk loosely in this House about 50 per cent., the disincentive effect that for every £1 a man or woman earns he or she will lose 50 per cent. in respect of lost family income supplement. The position is more serious than that, because to that one must add National Insurance contributions and working expenses, except in the case of a husband, and so the disincentive is, undoubtedly, more logically put at between 60 and 65 per cent. in most cases. This is a fantastic level of taxation, and we have to recognise, if we have any logic, that a level of taxation that high will be as effective in putting those who are poor off work as it is often argued by hon. Gentlemen opposite it is in the case of those who are well off.

In conclusion, as the right hon. Gentleman recognises, we on the Opposition side do not like this Bill. We do not like it because we fear that it may be a portentous Bill, for the reasons which my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Chiswick (Mr. Barnes) put so eloquently and for reasons which the hon. Lady the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers) advanced.

Because we could so easily be facing the crossroads in the way in which we deal with poverty, we might fail to recognise that this is at best a crutch which can keep the poor just walking but no radical solution to the problem of poverty. Such a radical solution would not try to tackle poverty by making a small contribution to the poor; it would try to do it, as the hon. Member for Kensington, South, and we on this side of the House suggested, by tackling direct the problem of oppressively low wages through minimum earnings, through minimum allowances—

Mr. Speaker

Order. On Third Reading we can discuss only what is in the Bill.

Mrs. Williams

I am sorry, Mr. Speaker. I thought that others had touched on that point. I will return to what is in the Bill.

We feel that the Bill as it is drafted is essentially, as the hon. Member for Uxbridge put it, a stop-gap ambulance measure. We on this side have always believed that it is not so much an accident service as a national health service that we want to deal with poverty.

11.6 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Paul Dean)

I thank the hon. Lady the Member for Hitchin (Mrs. Shirley Williams) for her kind remarks about my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and myself and for her help on the Bill. I thank my hon. Friends for the help which we have received from them. As a result of our debates, there is no doubt that the Bill has been improved, and we have had substantial help from the informed comments made on both sides of the House in connection with the regulations which will be made under the Bill and in the eventual working of the Bill.

My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers) hoped that this would be a temporary, holding Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) talked about it being a "prefab" Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Kensington, South (Sir B. Rhys Williams), in his usual charming way, said that it was a bad Bill but that at least we were moving in the right direction. I assure my hon. Friends that we have in this Bill another instrument to add to the instruments already available to us to deal with family poverty. There is the family allowance and the child tax allowance, and there will shortly be the new rent allowance to be introduced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment. By the interaction of these measures we shall, we hope, find an effective solution to the problem of family poverty. The fact that the scheme has been introduced does not necessarily mean that this is the only or the right answer. It is a speedy, effective contribution to the problem which we all want to see solved, but it does not rule out the other channels open to us.

My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Curran), whom we are all delighted to see back in social security debates, said quite rightly that we shall learn much about family poverty from the working of the Bill. It is far more effective to introduce action of this kind to learn about a problem than to set up a committee or a research project. We shall learn in a short time about the problems of family poverty by the operation of the Bill.

Reference has been made to women. We shall watch the effect which the Bill may have on wages and earnings generally. The Speenhamland argument has been used. We do not believe that in modern conditions the Bill is likely to depress wages. What is certain is that it will substantially improve the incomes of some of the poorest families.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) has made some most helpful comments which we have undertaken to consider. The hon. Member for Brentford and Chiswick (Mr.

Barnes) tried to draw a distinction between civilised selectivity, which he sees in a negative income tax arrangement, and what he thought was a blunt instrument in this vehicle, and my hon. Friend for Kensington, South made a similar point. The solution to many of the problems of a negative income tax arrangement, such as the definition of earnings and the like, could well be tried out in this scheme. The scheme does not rule out hon. Members' favourite projects and, as a result of it, we may have a clearer indication as to the possibilities of a negative income tax scheme in the future.

We regard this as a first step in dealing with family poverty. It is highly selective in favour of the poorest families in the land in full-time work. It will bring highly effective help to one-parent families, to one-child families, who cannot be helped at present through family allowances, and to wage-stopped families. It is a first step in an unfolding social programme to which the Government are committed, and as such I commend it to the House.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.