COMMONS REASONS FOR DISAGREEING TO CERTAIN OF THE LORDS AMENDMENTS. (Hansard, 2 November 1915)

HL Deb 02 November 1915 vol 20 cc96-109 96

§ [NOTE.—The references are to Bill (141).]

§ Lords Amendment.

§ Clause 1, page 1, lines 10 to 12, leave out ("Statutory Committee of the Royal Patriotic Fund Corporation (hereinafter referred to as the Corporation')") and insert ("Board to be called 'the War Allowances Board' and hereinafter referred to as 'the Board.'")

§ The Commons disagree to this Amendment for the following reason: Because it is intended that the new body shall be a voluntary body and not a Government authority, and therefore it is expedient that it should be closely associated with the voluntary body established by Parliament to deal with kindred matters.

§ Clause 1, page 1, lines 12 and 14. The Commons propose the following consequential Amendments: Leave out ("twenty-five") and insert ("twenty-seven")

§ Lords Amendment.

§ Clause 1, page 1, line 15, leave out ("twelve") and insert ("eighteen")

§ The Commons disagree to this Amendment for the following reason: Because it is inexpedient to take away representatives from the Local Government Board and other bodies and to give them to the Crown.

§ Lords Amendment.

§ Clause 1, page 2, line 1, leave out: ("one shall be appointed by the National Health Insurance Joint Committee; one shall be appointed by the Local Government Board; one shall be appointed by the Local Government Board for Scotland; one shall be appointed by the Local Government Board for Ireland;")

§ The Commons disagree to this Amendment for the following reason: Because owing to the relations which will exist between the new body and local authorities and approved societies in which disabled men are insured it is expedient that the Local Government Board and the National Health Commissioners should be represented on the body.

§ Lords Amendments.

§ Clause 1, page 2, lines 8, 9, 10 to 15, 19, line 20 (the second Amendment), lines 21, 22, 23, line 24 (the second Amendment), lines 26, 29, 31 and 32, 33 to 40, page 3, line 1 (the first Amendment), lines 5 and 6, 10 and 11, 17.

§ Clause 2, line 2, of new subsection (5) (inserted by the Lords), page 4, lines 6, 18, 27, page 5, lines 6, 9, 12 and 13, 21, 23, 27

§ Clause 3, line 2, of new subsection (3) (inserted by the Lords), omission of new subsection (4) (inserted by the Lords), page 5, lines 31 to 35, 36, 40, and page 6, lines 5, 7, 10, 16, 17, 19, 20 and 21, 27, 31 and 37.

§ The Commons disagree to these Amendments for the following reason: Because they are consequential on the Amendment made by the Lords in page 1, line 10.

§ Lords Amendment.

§ After Clause 4 insert the following new clause: . Notwithstanding anything in this Act contained, if in any area functions similar to those entrusted to a local committee are at the time of the passing of this Act being performed by the Soldiers and Sailors Families Association or other organisation, such association or other organisation may, if the local committee so desire, and so far as the local committee may direct, discharge within such area the functions of the local committee during the continuance of the present war, provided such association or other organisation shall so long continue to perform within such area such functions to the satisfaction of the local committee.

§ The Commons disagree to this Amendment for the following reason: Because they do not think it right that the local committees should have power to delegate to other bodies.

§ Lords Amendment.

§ Leave out Clause 5.

§ The Commons disagree to the omission of Clause 5 for the following reason: Because it is consequential on the Amendment made by the Lords in page 1, line 10.

§ Lords Amendment.

§ Clause 6, page 7, lines 28 and 29, leave out ("Naval and Military") in line 28 and after ("Pensions") in line 29 insert ("Help to Disabled Men")

§ The Commons disagree to this Amendment for the following reason: Because it is more convenient that a Bill dealing mainly with supplementary assistance rather than with primary should be so described.

THE MARQUESS OF CREWE
My Lords, the first Amendment to which the Commons disagree is the one by which your Lordships struck out of Clause 1 the words "Statutory Committee of the Royal Patriotic Fund Corporation (hereinafter referred to as the Corporation')" and inserted "Board to be called 'the War Allowances Board' 98 and hereinafter referred to as 'the Board')." The Commons disagree to this Amendment for the following reason: Because it is intended that the new body shall be a voluntary body and not a Government authority, and therefore it is expedient that it should be closely associated with the voluntary body established by Parliament to deal with kindred matters.
As I pointed out when I moved that the Commons Reasons be considered, this Amendment raises the whole subject of controversy between the two Houses; and I therefore postponed until I could make this Motion—namely, that this House do not insist on their Amendment—any reply to the observations which have been made by various noble Lords. The first three speakers devoted themselves to a uniform and unrelieved criticism of the action of His Majesty's Government in another place, and of our general action as regards this Bill. The noble Viscount who opened the proceedings spoke with his usual force and with the skill which he derives from a long career in both Houses of Parliament. I do not know whether the same criticism of the noble Viscount's general tone will have occurred to other noble Lords, but this particular criticism did occur to my mind. The noble Lord, with great ingenuity as with great fervour, spoke of "we," thereby meaning not only the noble Lords who have opposed the Government here but also the critics of the Bill in another place, and he, I have no doubt, desired that it should be understood that that criticism was uniform in character and founded upon similar arguments. That is by no means the case. In this House alone—it was one of the principal difficulties which my noble friend (Lord Lansdowne) and I encountered in dealing with the Bill here—the criticism was founded on a very large and completely different series of original beliefs on the whole question.
The noble Viscount spoke of the extreme unwieldiness of the body which appeared in the Bill as brought up from another place, and he implied that the whole business ought to have been done by a small, compact, and experienced body with a particular eye to the expenditure of as little public money as possible. That was the noble Viscount's form of criticism. We heard it from nobody else. A form of criticism of our Bill advanced 99 by other noble Lords was that we did not pay nearly enough attention to the voluntary societies. My noble friend behind me (Lord Devonport) founded his criticism again on entirely different lines. His criticism was that the whole business was not to be done by a purely public authority dealing with public money. It may be quite true that our measure is open to criticism from various standpoints, but that fact does not entitle the noble Viscount or anybody else to speak of "our" objections, as though they were entertained by the whole body of those who, for quite different reasons and holding altogether divergent opinions on the subject, have not approved of certain features in our Bill. The noble Viscount was exceedingly proud of the support which his opposition to the Bill had received from certain members of the Labour Party in another place. That is undoubtedly an important and a most interesting fact. But does the noble Viscount or does anybody here suppose that their criticism is of the same character as that which the noble Marquess and I had to listen to here? We all know that the governing idea of the criticism from those Members of Parliament and of those who agree with them on this measure is that so far as possible, even though it may not be possible to carry it out in its entirety, all these various pensions and allowances should be paid on a flat-rate. That, I take it, is altogether different from the view held by most noble Lords in this House. Yet the noble Viscount cheerfully prays in aid that criticism as though it were the same as his own. When people speak of the possibility of losing the Bill and of the dilemma in which this House is placed by the action of His Majesty's Government I am compelled to point out that the possibility of losing the Bill, supposing the loss to be brought about by that great variety of criticism founded on entirely different grounds of which I have spoken, is by no means the same thing as would be the loss of the measure owing to a solid body of criticism aimed at its general principle.
Now as regards this particular Amendment. The noble Viscount alluded to what was said by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in another place. My right hon. friend was made by more than one speaker the subject of a personal attack of no little acerbity, and, I venture to think, of no great fairness. What is the 100 Chancellor of the Exchequer's position in this matter? Noble Lords have said that he, so to speak, holds this House and those who sympathise with the needs of those who would be assisted under the Bill in a cleft stick, because he is able to deprive all these poor people of the benefits by refusing to grant any public money for them. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is the guardian of the public funds, and he has to see that if public money is provided on this large scale it is administered on behalf of the public by responsible persons. This Bill as it left your Lordships' House does not create a real public authority to which the expenditure of great sums of public money could be entrusted. If you look through the Bill you will see that the true responsibility to Parliament for the expenditure of public funds in the Bill as amended in this House cannot be shown to be substantially greater than that in the Bill as it came up from another place. And that being so, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that he would not be a party to the setting up of what he described as intended to be an official Court of appeal from Chelsea and Greenwich, and one which was not strictly responsible in the sense which the kind of pensions body the future creation of which was indicated in more than one speech would undoubtedly be. The control of public money, in his view, is not sufficiently secured by the Bill as it stood when it left this House and went down to the House of Commons. Or as the Chancellor of the Exchequer said in words which I think the noble Viscount opposite quoted— You cannot set up a new Government Department by amending a Bill which was framed on the voluntary basis. And that is a statement to which this afternoon I have certainly heard no answer.
May I once more quote from what the chancellor of the Excheques said? He said the desire was— to establish what is primarily a voluntary organisation assisted by Government Grant, and when we have got experience of its work to look forward at a later date to a new big Bill, when we have more leisure and opportunity, which will absorb all the functions of the pensions bodies. As regards that future Bill, I do not think that my noble friend Lord Devonport was quite accurate in his recollection when he spoke of that measure having been promised 101 by the Government for next spring. In these times it is not wise to make promises in regard to future Government action, the possibility of which must to some extent depend upon the circumstances that then exist. The idea of the larger Bill, explained at some length in another place, as has been pointed out, by Mr. Hayes Fisher, is one which appeals to many people. Its preparation, if as an Act it is to include a code for the administration of pensions of all kinds for a great number of years to come, must involve considerable thought and labour. So far as His Majesty's Ministers are concerned I do not doubt that we could find time, or make time, for the consideration of such a measure. The practical difficulty surely lies in the amount of labour which its preparation would be bound to throw upon a great number of officials already worked day and night to the utmost limit of their power, a burden which we should be unwilling to impose upon them so long as their labours are so overpowering as they are at this moment. That is the reason both for the postponement of the consideration of such a measure and, as my noble friend would well understand, for our unwillingness to make anything in the nature of a promise of its introduction at or before any particular date.
But assuming the Bill now before us to be in one sense a temporary or an experimental measure, it is necessary to state once more that in the opinion of the Government the lines on which our Bill is drawn are more suitable for that purpose than those of the measure as amended by your Lordships. The feeling of the Treasury and of the Government generally—because this view was expressed, I may remind the House, quite as strongly by Mr. Hayes Fisher as it was by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his preliminary observations—is that it is not wise to attempt to set up for this purpose what wears the guise of being a public authority fully qualified to expend public money to any amount, that body being only in an indirect sense responsible to Parliament, only responsible through having to make a report, with no provision in the Bill for the regular conduct of the affairs of the Board by any Minister, and altogether falling short of the necessary qualities which belong to a body entitled to expend public money to a large amount. Altogether apart from the hopes that were founded upon the 102 body contemplated in our Bill, of its being able through its local connections and by local agency to go on collecting a substantial amount from private benevolence, our intention has been rather to found a Committee which in its receipt of the Government grant would be scarcely analogous to but somewhat like the great educational institutions which receive large grants of public money, and which are in a certain sense subject to Parliamentary control because questions can be asked about them and their action called in question upon the Vote for the Board of Education in another place, but which are in no sense managed or conducted by public authorities and are practically independent in their action. That being so, I sincerely hope that your Lordships will not insist upon this particular Amendment.
I was glad to hear what fell from the two noble Lords on the Front Bench opposite—that, in spite of what I have called their unrelieved criticism and of the fact that they are in no way convinced by the arguments addressed to them and their friends either here or in another place, they do not desire to press those views further in the sense of asking the House to continue to insist upon its Amendments. It is clearly our duty as a Government to thank the noble Lords for taking that course, and we are willing to believe that they take it with some reluctance. That reluctance was even more strongly expressed by my noble friend Lord Devonport and also by the noble Lord on the Cross Benches (Lord Sydenham), but I am convinced that further reflection will cause all noble Lords who have shown that reluctance to conclude that they are right in the action which they are taking. I hold strongly the view, which was expressed by more than one of my colleagues, that there is a great deal on this subject of which so little is known by experience that all action upon it is bound to be regarded as somewhat experimental; and I sincerely hope, when the whole business comes to be put on a permanent footing for the great number of years during which the operation of these pensions and allowances will have to last, that use will be made of the experience gained not only by the purely official people who have to administer the Act but also by the great body of voluntary workers to whose assistance, as we have agreed all through, we are all so deeply indebted. Their experience, when accumulated 103 as it will be, can be used both in another place and here for the construction of a permanent and watertight measure. Noble Lords, I think, would be themselves prepared to agree that this measure as it stands could not be the code of law for the administration of pensions for all time; and that being so I hope that for the actual purposes which have to be carried out under the Bill complete harmony will reign not only in Parliament but throughout the country.

§ Moved, That the House do not insist on the said Amendment.—(The Marquess of Crewe.)

THE EARL OF LICHFIELD
Can the noble Marquess tell us whether the new Bill that is contemplated will include the provision for disabled soldiers and sailors? That point has not been alluded to. It has been called a Consolidated Pensions Bill.

THE MARQUESS OF CREWE
My noble friend will understand that I cannot give a pledge a long time beforehand as to any of the actual contents of a measure the uncertainty belonging to which I have already explained. But I think my noble friend may be confident that when a Bill of that character is introduced it will cover all questions relating to the care of disabled soldiers and of their dependants. As the noble Earl knows, there are some who would desire a measure of that kind to go even further and to concern itself with the provision of employment for time-expired soldiers who are not disabled. But, as he will understand, upon that point I can say nothing at this moment.

§ LORD DEVONPORT
I understood the noble Marquess to say that no promise to introduce a Bill next spring had been given.

THE MARQUESS OF CREWE
That is so. Although hopes were held out, no specific promise was actually made for the introduction of a Bill in the spring.

§ LORD DEVONPORT
Perhaps the noble Marquess will excuse me if I quote my authority for suggesting that a promise was given. It is quite possible to say that it was not absolutely definite, but there is a very broad indication not only that the Bill is to be introduced but that it is to be introduced in the immediate future—within 104 six months. I quote from the speech of Mr. Hayes Fisher. He speaks with the responsibility of a Minister and was in charge of the Bill. Referring to the alternatives that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had put before the House when they were considering our Amendments, Mr. Hayes Fisher said— My right hon. friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer said there were three alternatives, the first thing being to drop this Bill and bring in a new Bill. He gave his reasons why we cannot do that. He said the Government were too busy, the Cabinet had not the time to give it proper consideration, the Departments were too busy, and that we must wait for a little time, probably the spring of next year, for that measure. That is not definite, but I will quote a later extract from the remarks of Mr. Hayes Fisher— … Therefore I say we cannot expect a Bill, at all events till the spring of next year. Then he went on to say— In these circumstances is it not advisable that we should take this Bill as an experiment and work it to the best of our ability during the next six months? And he finished his speech by saying this— Then we may look forward next year to a more substantial treatment of this question with a view of dealing with it in a more drastic and proper way. What are plain men to understand by those words? They appear to me to convey a definite promise. Perhaps I fixed it a little too closely when I suggested six months, but does the noble Marquess now contend that there was not a very strong indication of a promise conveyed in the House of Commons that the Government intend to deal with this matter next year? I will withdraw the limitation of six months, but if words mean anything when uttered by a Minister of responsibility I assert without hesitation that the promise was made. If it is going to be withdrawn now, let us have it withdrawn; we shall then know where we are.

§ THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE
My Lords, I can assure the noble Lord that there is no desire on our part to recede from anything that has been said on behalf of His Majesty's Government in either House of Parliament. We all recognise that this Bill cannot be regarded as a final or complete measure calculated to deal with the whole of the great problems which certainly will arise when this war 105 comes to an end. We believe it to be the best solution of the difficulty which is possible at this moment. But when the noble Lord on the Back Bench asks us to say that a larger and more comprehensive measure will certainly be introduced within six months or within twelve months, he must know, from his Parliamentary experience, that those are the kind of pledges which must be given subject to certain limitations and with certain reservations. A Bill of such a kind would be a colossal measure. It would be very controversial and would obviously give rise to a great deal of discussion. At the present time, as my noble friend who leads the House has truly said, it would be impossible to inflict upon the Departments concerned the immense task of framing a measure of that kind in the middle of all the strain and stress of a great war. But we certainly adhere to the pledges that have been given on our behalf, and we mean to fulfil them in good faith and as soon as the circumstances permit.