HL Deb 27 February 1924 vol 56 cc372-85

THE LORD BISHOP OF EXETER rose to ask His Majesty's Government whether they intend to carry out the recommendations contained in the Majority or Minority Reports of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law, 1909, with regard to the homeless and wandering poor, and to call attention to the injustice and inefficiency of the present system of the casual wards. The right rev. Prelate said: My Lords, my object in asking this Question is to urge upon your Lordships the claim of that large body of men who are now wandering about the roads of England uncared for and drifting downwards to the lower depths of poverty and misery. The Report of the Royal Commission suggests that their number has reached 70,000 or 80,000 in times of depression, and that there is probably a permanent body numbering from about 20,000 to 30,000. Not all of those men take refuge in the casual ward. Some rarely occupy it. Some come to the casual ward in bad times; but whenever they have any good fortune they find a lodging in the common lodging houses. Many sleep under hay ricks and in lime kilns, and so on.

This body of men has come under my notice because for many years I had under my care a home, situate about twenty miles from London, in which a great stream of men that came to and fro from London habitually stopped. I was so interested in their condition that I visited various places on the Continent where work of this sort was carried on. Therefore I thought that your Lordships would pardon me if I trespassed a little upon your time in pleading the cause of these men. I need not remind your Lordships that the casual ward is not the workhouse. It is generally adjoining a workhouse, but it is conducted on quite a different system. It is not those who are resident in the parish, but those who are travelling about the country seeking work, who go there, and they are technically, if they have no means, compelled to go into the casual ward, because the law forbids a man who is without money to sleep out, although it is constantly done.

As the Royal Commission points out, these casual wards are carried on, as a rule, under very different systems. I should like to call your Lordships' attention to the fact that there is no uniformity about them. In some, the traveller—for remember always that he is a traveller and not a criminal—is detained for a day, and is given food and work of some kind. In some, he is put to stone breaking or oakum picking. He has to sleep in a hammock and very often he finds the hammock so uncomfortable that he prefers to sleep on the hard floor. These men are often wet through when they go into the casual ward, and they have, I believe, a right—which I do not think is ever (or only very rarely) insisted on, and then only in the best casual wards—to have night clothes so that they can sleep dry. But, as the Report of the Royal Commission points out, it is impossible to describe the casual wards in a few words because each of them differs from its neighbour. Some are more humane than others; some I believe are quite humane, but in regard to many I think I cannot do better than repeat the words of the Minority Report: We have ourselves visited casual wards in which the premises, the sleeping accommodation, the food and the amount of work exacted, taken together, constitute a treatment more penal and more brutalising than that of any gaol in England.

I have visited several casual wards myself. It so happens that in the course of my duties I have been lately visiting one of His Majesty's prisons and the contrast is very remarkable. When one sees these men in a condition which is obviously worse than the men whom one sees in prison one begins to ask oneself whether in England poverty is not a crime.

But I have not stated the worst. The worst is this—that each union is independent of the other unions. If it so happens that there are men in these unions who try to alleviate the conditions of the casual and to show him consideration, that humanity is rewarded almost immediately by the deflection of a stream of casuals to that union. Men will tell you that if there is a labour master who is civil in a union, who makes provision for the comfort of these travellers, immediately a whole stream of them comes to that union. What is the result? The rates rise. The labour master gets into trouble. The people generally denounce his humanity, or they say that he has overdone it. According to the Royal Commission, humane conditions are impossible while there is in existence a system under which each individual union is independent. It makes reform difficult. The extreme hardness of the conditions in various unions makes men who have any pride or self-respect most unwilling to go into the casual ward. A man leaves his home to seek work, with his tools. He sells his tools rather than go into the casual ward. He sells his clothes in trying to keep his self-respect, and then, after all, has to go to the casual ward, and there he is in rags and misery. No one has tried to help that man. It is impossible to do it. The law does not allow him to stop in any union. He can only stay in it for one or two nights, and then he must walk off before they can get to know his character and his qualifications. No one can aid him. He must wander about cold, wet and miserable, trying to find work which everybody knows does not exist.

It will be urged that these men are all criminals, or semi-criminals, or would-be criminals. I will ask your Lordships' attention to a few figures. Some I have taken from the Report, but I have added to them from the best source I could find. They are very moving figures, if you will allow me to read them. The number of casuals cannot be measured by any exact census. All you can do is to take the number on one particular night. That has been the custom, and it has always been adopted in the winter. In 1908 the number of these casuals was 10,476; in 1918 the number was 1,100; and in 1922 we got back to the high figure of 8,300. Where were the casuals in 1918? I have not been able to get the figures for 1917 and 1916, but I have no doubt they were similar to those in 1918. Where were these casuals during those years? No answer is given officially, but we all know that many of them were in the Army. We all know that many of them joined up for the war, and that great numbers were in France. Those who were too old to join the Army obtained work which we needed to have done here, so that there was only a residuum of about a thousand.

Surely those figures clear this body of men of the unjust aspersion that they are work-shirkers. If they had been work-shirkers they would, during the war, have been wandering about and avoiding work. There are, of course, a certain number of work-shirkers, and there are a certain number of criminal types, but the greater number are people who are not criminals or, if they are criminals, become so because they lose heart. They cannot stand wandering about, and therefore they are only too ready to commit some crime in order to be sent to prison and to find shelter there.

What is the remedy? The remedy is pointed out in the Report of the Royal Commission. I would ask your Lordships to remember that the casual ward is an institution peculiar to this country. It does not exist in France, Belgium, Germany or Switzerland. The remedy is to establish one co-ordinating authority—one authority which shall make all the casual wards alike. To begin with, that would discourage the wandering habit which many of these casuals have formed. If there were only one authority there would be no object in turning a man out after spending one night in a ward in order to wander to the next place to spend another night. It would be more economical to keep the man where he was so that he might in time be able to get some employment. Before the war, in Germany, they were very much impressed with the importance of this idea. They said that it was often very hard to get a man work on one day, and that unless he could make a stay somewhere for a time it was next to impossible for him to get work at all. Therefore it was decided that he should be allowed to stop in one place for some time in order to look for work.

I think other results would follow from the adoption of this remedy. I believe people would realise, what I am afraid is not realised by many people, that there is a fundamental difficulty in the whole problem which, in justice, we must face. It was pointed out to me by a great French statesman that men are not all born the same. Men who are not up to the physical standard find it very hard to get work at any price; indeed, almost impossible. The rules of trades unions and the general custom of industry have tended to establish a flat rate of wages—a flat rate of wages which makes it to the master's interests to get rid of anybody who is below standard. In the country you will still find the old system. On a country farm you will very often find some old man, paid very little but earning what he is paid, living a, life, if of poverty, anyhow of poverty with self-respect. But when you get to the great centres of industry you find more and more a system under which the rate of wages is level, and if a man cannot earn the current rate there is no work for him to do. Hence we have the casual wards.

If your Lordships made a point of visiting one of our workhouses you would see some men who are too old to find employment; others who, though they are not seriously ill, yet do not enjoy good health and are unable to keep in regular employment; and, again, there are men who obviously are incapable of the strain of work. If you had one co-ordinating authority it would be manifest that it was absurd and unreasonable for men of this sort to try to find work in the face of the competition that exists. I think one of the results would be that the authority would assist him and encourage the foundation of colonies to be worked by philanthropic institutions—such colonies as the Salvation Army have at the present moment—where these men could go for a time in order to enable them to fit themselves for employment. Sometimes a man can be taught some new trade that he can follow; in any case, you ought not to allow a broken down man to go on walking about the country and spending his time in casual wards.

I have visited several of these colonies abroad. In one of them there was no differentiation, and I hope that system will not be followed in any colonies that may be established in this country. The men were crowded together, and everybody seemed miserable. I talked to one of the men who had drunk himself into poverty. I asked him why it was that he did not seem happy. He turned to me and said, "No one can be happy here." There should be places where men can learn again the habit of work and where they can recover self respect.

A colony with which I was much impressed was at Witzwill in Switzerland. It had this merit, which I am sure will appeal to economists, that it was so well managed that it cost nothing to the rates. In that colony, a small one, only certain classes of criminals were included. The criminals were divided into four groups—those who had committed a crime against good morals, those who were violent, those who had committed frauds, and those who had committed vagrancy crimes. It was the custom to commit people guilty of vagrancy crimes directly to this colony, and those who had committed frauds, after they had served a certain time in prison, were also sent to the colony. Though it was a criminal colony, yet the results were so beneficent that the principal told me that he habitually received letters of thanks for the reformation which had been accomplished. There was a regular system by which men were taught to be better citizens. Trades were taught, the habit of work was acquired, and, above all, a man was taught, self-respect. It was indeed a most inspiring place to visit. For the minority who are wandering on the roads and who do commit, crimes, there should be some such place to which they could be seat like the one in Switzerland, and I cannot understand why this plan, which has been so successful, has not been followed in this country.

I would not for a moment have your Lordships think that these men who are wandering on the roads are bad men. Most of them desire to be good citizens, and I defy anybody who has worked among them to say that there are not; many good men among them. I hope your Lordships will do what you can for these poor men. At the present moment many of them are ex-soldiers, and it seems intensely harsh that such men should be in this condition. I do not think England is ungrateful to those who fought for her, but I think she forgets. These men have no friends amongst organised labour. Organised labour is very proud of being class-conscious but forgets to be class conscious for the classes below them; and as these men have no friends I ask your Lordships to give them what help you can, not only in your private capacity but as members of this House. I also hope the Government will take some steps to give practical effect to the Minority and Majority Reports of the Poor Law Commission on this matter even if they do not see their way to bring in a complete reform of our Poor Law.

THE FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (VISCOUNT CHELMSFORD)

My Lords, I may say at once that the Government welcome the Question which has been put down by the Lord Bishop, and also his desire to ventilate the subject and educate public opinion upon it. No one can regard the present system as in any way satisfactory, and in the few words in which I shall reply I am not going to attempt either to canvass or combat the facts which he has put forward. I am the last person to stigmatise these poor men as even in a small proportion criminals; but the truth is that in this matter we are faced by what seems to be an almost insoluble dilemma.

In his speech the Lord Bishop has quoted from the Minority Report of the Royal Commission. May I describe to him the dilemma I have mentioned, in the words of that Minority Report. He will find it on page 509, and the paragraph is headed "The Dilemma of the Casual Ward." It says: If, in their casual wards, they offer anything like decent accommodation … they will find their casual wards… overcrowded, not merely, or even mainly, by the habitual vagrants, but by the limitless mass of unemployed or underemployed … If, in order to reduce this casual pauperism, the offer of the night's lodging is accompanied by penal conditions, the professional vagrant stays away, and leaves the penal discipline to harden and brutalise the respectable man in search of work. That is the point which the Lord Bishop has brought forward in his remarks.

I may say quite frankly that it is very difficult to see any chance of dealing with this problem under present conditions. It is true that the Ministry inspects through its inspectors, but generally the guardians, in the first place, take very little interest in the casual poor and, in the second place, prefer to spend their money on their main workhouses and infirmaries rather than on the casual ward. The Lord Bishop has alluded, in his Question, to the Majority and Minority Reports of the Royal Commission, but I would remind him that these Reports do not embody all the attempts that have been made to solve this problem. We have to look through all the various attempts in order to get any idea of what has been attempted, even though nothing has been done.

The first attempt that was made in connection with this question of vagrancy was made by my noble friend, Viscount Long of Wraxall, when, in 1904, he set up the Departmental Committee on Vagrancy. That Committee reported in 1906. It criticised—this is the very point which the right rev. Prelate has made—the want of uniformity of administration in connection with this subject, and it pointed out that there was no effort to reform the vagrant, as well as an absence of any attempt to assist the genuine work-seeker on his way. The Royal Commission's comment on that Departmental Report is to the effect that the whole of the Report shows how repellent and useless is the administration of the casual ward to the genuine work-seeker. Their recommendations, which I will put very shortly, were practically threefold. In the first place, the Departmental Committee recommended that there should be a transfer of casual relief to the police. I will not enter into that question, but I may say that the chief opponents of this recommendation were the police themselves, who had no desire to take upon themselves a burden of duties in connection with casual relief. The second recommendation was the institution of labour colonies which should provide curative treatment and training for vagrants. In the third place, they recommended a general system of way tickets which would enable the genuine work-seeker to get from one place to another.

Following upon that Report of the Departmental Committtee came the Royal Commission on the Poor Law, and the right rev. Prelate will remember that both the Reports of that Commission were largely based upon the inquiry of the Departmental Committee. In fact, the Majority Report stated that, in view of that recent inquiry, they had given no special attention to vagrancy, nor did they attempt to revise the conclusions of the Departmental Committee; but they went on to say that the Government should carefully consider the effect of those proposals in the reorganisation of the Poor Law system which they themselves put forward. The Minority Report recommended that there should be a transfer of responsibility for the able-bodied vagrant to a Ministry of Health. I need hardly say that the Ministry of Health did not exist then, but they projected a Ministry in the future which might provide for a detention colony of a reformative type, and they contemplated the abolition of guardians, which connoted the transfer of the primary responsibility for relief to committees of the local authorities. We know that this Report of 1909, with its Majority Report and its even more striking Minority Report, fell to the ground and nothing was done upon it, but a further attempt was made—I forget the exact year—which resulted in the Maclean Committee, which reported in 1918, and I am told that this Committee was in large measure set up with the idea of attempting to bring out the salient features of both the Majority and the Minority Reports, to reconcile them and so to bring forward something uncontroversial and valuable.

The first thing that the Maclean Committee recommended was the abolition of guardians and the transfer of their functions to the county councils. On the subject of able-bodied vagrants, I will quote, with the permission of the House, certain passages from that Report. The right rev. Prelate will remember that the assistance of the able-bodied, including vagrants, was dealt with in the Appendix at the end of the Maclean Committee's Report. They say in paragraph 7:— The able-bodied vagrant should be dealt with on similar lines; that is to say, he should be afforded a reasonable opportunity of obtaining either employment or training, and in case of wilful persistent refusal he should be committed to a detention colony.'' Then they go on to say, in paragraph 9:— It may, perhaps, be hoped that, with a development and extension of the Employment Exchanges and a tightening-up of their machinery, coupled possibly with a more complete system of national registration, there will in future be less excuse for tramping in search of work, and greater facilities for detecting and penalising those who use this excuse merely to cover their disinclination for honest work. In the tenth and final paragraph they say:— But local authorities will be reluctant to take proceedings, magistrates will hesitate to convict, and public opinion will refuse to endorse repressive measures until the vagrant is deprived of all excuse for wandering. In the meantime, therefore, some substitute for the casual ward will have to be provided, where the homeless traveller can obtain temporary lodging. Without expressing a decided opinion on this point, the Committee are disposed to think that, if municipal common lodging houses are established in all large centres of population, the problem might be solved in this way, the case of any vagrant who is unable to pay for his lodging being referred to the Home Assistance Committee. The right rev. Prelate will remember that the Home Assistance Committee was the Committee which was going to take on Poor Law functions in connection with the county councils.

That is the history of the attempts to deal with this problem, but I need hardly say that, though the Poor Law Commission reported in 1909, no legislative action has been taken. I am sure that the right rev. Prelate will have noted that it is close upon fifteen years since the Royal Commission reported, and that this Government has been in office about one month. It is obvious, I think, that this whole question of casuals must be treated in connection with the reform of the Poor Law. I may say that the reform of the Poor Law has been advocated by the Labour Party, and that the present Government adheres to that policy and is certainly not going to forget the matter, as I thought was suggested in some of the later passages of the right rev. Prelate's speech. But it is a big question, and the Government must be given time. Much water has flowed under the bridges since 1909, and I need hardly remind your Lordships that the position to-day is widely different from that in 1909, that the guardians at that time were the chief assisting authority, but that they now administer only a residuum of the powers which they possessed in 1909. Since then we have seen the establishment of the Ministry of Health, the Labour Exchanges, the Ministry of Labour, Unemployment Insurance, Health Insurance and Old Age Pensions. I think I may say, therefore, that the question has been substantially altered since 1909. But notwithstanding that fact, and the fact that Poor Law guardians have only a residuum of their former powers, there are still plenty of points to be inquired into in connection with the administration of those powers.

Before I sit down I should like to say that, while no legislation has taken place, something is being done on the administrative side at the present moment. The Ministry of Health is undertaking, through its inspectors, a general survey of the treatment of the casual poor, and as soon as that survey has been completed and a report has been given, the Ministry will bring to the notice of the guardians any practicable suggestions that arise out of it. In the second place, the regulations with regard to the casual poor are undergoing revision, and similarly, when we have in our hands the results of the survey of the inspectors, other regulations will be issued as a result of that survey. I am afraid I cannot give any more reassuring statement in answer to the question of the right rev. Prelate. But I hope he will see that we are not being idle in this matter, but are attempting to deal with it, and that, so far as we can, we will deal with it with the greatest despatch.

THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

My Lords, I think it is now twelve years, or perhaps thirteen, since I had the honour, in this place, to press upon His Majesty's then Government the obligation which seemed to me to lie upon all central authorities, to give attention to so wide and far-reaching, and elaborate, and I might add costly, a Report as had then for some little time been in the hands of the public. The answer that I received to, I am afraid, my somewhat prolonged handling of the subject, was brief, but it was hopeful. It was an anticipation that something would be done in the direction I had ventured to advocate, of taking simply the points upon which the Majority and Minority Reports were in agreement, and giving effect to the proposals that had been made. Nothing has been done, and it is a curious bit of history, if one looks at history on a large scale, to note how it is possible for years to be spent by exceedingly competent men in dealing with a matter of this kind, for results to be produced at vast cost, in enormous Blue-books, and then for the whole thing to be allowed to slumber.

In my view the difficulty has arisen from two causes. In the first place the Reports which were then produced covered such a very large area that to deal with them as a whole was almost impossible without legislation upon a scale which hardly any one dared to contemplate at that busy time. On the other hand, there is the fact that in normal times, in modern English history, the one matter which was quite sure not to be legislated upon was that upon which both Parties were agreed. There was no Party capital to be got out of it. In ordinary times that has been proved, again and again, to be a deterrent to practical legislation, because the amount of pressure required is lacking. It always requires some Party spice to give a thing the force to make it effective in action. But I still believe that there might have been an attempt made, on a limited scale, to deal with those matters upon which the Majority and Minority reports were in agreement. That attempt would not cover anything like as large a field as was covered by the Report as a whole, and I believe it could have been reduced into a very small compass.

My right rev. brother, to-night, would still further reduce the field. He suggests that action should be taken not on all the points on which the Reports were agreed but on one of them, and that is as regards the casual wards. It is suggested that upon that point legislation might be introduced and made effective, and I suppose it is not untrue to say that in a way we are, to-day, in a happier position, politically, than we have ever held in the past, for producing something which does not require Party stimulus, or, to use a vulgar expression, Party ginger, to make it go in the legislative field. We are talking about things upon which the different Parties are practically agreed. Here is one of them, and although it is true to say, as Lord Chelmsford has said on behalf of the Government, that a great many of the points dealt with in the Reports have been incidentally handled by the appointment of Ministries or agencies which deal with those points, that is the very reason why a point like this is able to be legislated upon now. The existence of these Ministries or agencies makes it much easier to refer to them the practical working out of the matter.

It has, of course, peculiar difficulties at this time, when unemployment is rife to the horrible extent with which we are all familiar, to-day, and no one can separate that subject from the particular point of the casual ward and its influence for ill. The two subjects are closely connected with one another, but I think at this moment the wise thing would be for the attention of the Government to be concentrated upon one particular part of the great Poor Law question, and no part is more likely to be successfully handled than that to which the right rev. Prelate has called attention—the casual ward and its mischiefs, and the possibilities of its being amended in a practical way. I believe it is able to be done now- more easily, in a way, than ever before, and I rejoice to hear what the noble Viscount said on behalf of the Government—namely, that the matter is now under consideration with a view to possible action being taken at no very distant date. It would be preposterous to suppose that after a few weeks in office His Majesty's Government would be able to announce their detailed policy, tout we have now in Office men who are very familiar with these subjects, although looking at them in a somewhat different light, perhaps, from that in which they have been viewed in former days, and I venture to make a good deal of the implied promise given on behalf of the Government that the matter is not going to De lost sight of. If it is not lost sight of I believe that, by this kind of concentration, attention to it may be fruitful of very great good.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

My Lords, I only want to put one question on the subject to the noble Viscount. I thought his reply was very sympathetic, and it was one for which we are very grateful. He did say, however, in the course of his reply, that there was in operation a survey—on behalf of the Ministry of Health, I suppose—of the condition of casual wards throughout the country. I was not aware that that survey had been undertaken, nor do I know whether it has been undertaken by the present Government, or was undertaken by the Government of which I formed part. I am glad to hear that such a survey is in operation, and the question I want to put to the noble Viscount is when he expects that that survey will be completed, and whether, when it is, he will undertake on behalf of the Government to lay the Reports before Parliament.

VISCOUNT CHELMSFORD

I am afraid I cannot say more than this, that I know a survey has been instituted, and I presume, from the very short time that we have been in office, that it must have been instituted under the régime with which the noble Marquess is familiar. As to the date on which that survey will be com- pleted, and whether the results of the survey will be able to be published straight away, I cannot give any information until I have made inquiries. I certainly will make inquiries.