THE BEVERIDGE REPORT.

HL Deb 25 February 1943 vol 126 cc307-55

Debate resumed on the Motion moved by Lord Nathan yesterday—namely, That there be laid before the House Papers relating to the Beveridge Report.

LORD ADDISON

My Lords, the list of speakers in your Lordships' House today is evidence enough of the great interest which this subject provokes. It is also a hint to me not to allow my remarks to go to excessive length, and I shall bear that in mind. Never before in our time, I think, has there been a Report with regard to projects affecting the wellbeing of the community which has received so wide a publication as this. I believe, indeed, that abstracts of the Report were transmitted over the wireless in a considerable number of foreign languages, and have, in fact, been published throughout the world. There is no doubt that the widespread publicity which attached to it inevitably gave the impression that it was not only the recommendation of an eminent individual to the Government but that, at all events by inference, it had the blessing and support of the British Government, and was indeed more or less a British project. It is a proposal whose widespread implications we have had before us. At least some of the proposals represent an immense consolidation of all the insurance services against the vicissitudes of life, which we have had in lesser degree in this country for many years past, as well as an extension of many other Social Services—the health services, child allowances, and others. I think it is fair to say that in its broad outline it was well understood by people that it did mean a substantial contribution each week by every wage-earner. The fact that it was anticipated that a working man would have to pay 4s. 3d. a week out of his earnings towards this consolidated insurance premium was understood. It is remarkable that, with that understood, it still received an immense volume of popular support.

The scheme is a vast one. It does in fact affect many State Departments—that came out in our debates yesterday. It is quite evident that much time would necessarily be required in fashioning the proposals of a scheme of this kind to give effect to its different recommendations, even if they were only adhered to in a modified form. For that reason I think the Motion that was originally put down in another place in the name of Mr. Greenwood was on the right lines. The intention at that time was that on a Resolution in general terms there should be a discussion without prejudice in Parliament of the Report, so as to give an opportunity for views to be freely expressed and for the general sense of Parliament to be ascertained by the Government. That was the original intention, and it was because of that intention, as I know, that the Resolution was framed as it was. There was, as we all know, a change of method. I am not going to spend your Lordships' time in animadverting on that, but there was a change of method and, on the first day of the discussion, the Lord President of the Council announced certain Government findings in regard to the Report. That was quite contrary, as I understood it, to the original intention of the discussions, but it inevitably had the immediate effect of concentrating the debate upon the statements of the Lord President of the Council rather than initiating a wide unprejudiced discussion of the Report itself.

That has led, as we all know, to much political turmoil, and I confess, as an old Parliamentarian, that I cannot recall a Parliamentary issue that was worse bungled. It would have been of great advantage if we could have had an unprejudiced discussion of this matter in both Houses without having our discussions—shall we say jaundiced in advance by partial statements? And I am quite sure the Government would have received the support of all sensible people. They would have said: "Well, we are going to listen to what you have to say, and later on we will come along and say what we think about it"—which, in view of the magnitude of the proposals, would Lave been a perfectly reasonable course. However, I do not propose to do anything now but address myself to the case itself for a few minutes.

It is quite evident that the questions uppermost in the mind of every man and women at the end of the war will be: "Am I going to get a job of work?" and "Am I going to be able to get back my home or have a home that is worth calling a home and be able to live in reasonable security and comfort?" There is, I am quite sure, great anxiety in the minds of all men in the Forces now, wherever they are. If you were to ask them what they would be anxious about when the war ends it would be that kind of thing—going back to a job of work and having a home to go to. And this scheme, we know, deals not with those issues but more with the vicissitudes of life—sickness and unemployment, and that to which we all inevitably come, old age, and other circumstances which cripple our earning capacity.

But in addition to the general consolidation of insurance, there are other proposals and the Lord Chancellor reminded us yesterday that the scheme rests upon three assumptions. One was that there would be child allowances made—which he accepted, I think, in sufficiently definite terms. Another proposal of the scheme, which is described as an assumption, is that there will be general health services; and on that, too, the Lord Chancellor gave a fairly definite pledge. The third assumption was that employment would be sufficiently maintained to enable the scheme to be financed. And on that basis the Lord Chancellor, quoting words used in another place, accepted that assumption: …it has seemed to the Government that the acceptance or rejection of this basic assumption must depend, not on the prior demonstration of its validity, but on whether it is considered, not merely by the Government but by all concerned, to be something to achieve which we all intend to strain every nerve. That is, unemployment. On that basis the Government proceeded. It is generally surmised in the Report that a good average level of employment will still be accompanied by the calamitous total of more than a million people out of work.

The noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, in an exceedingly interesting and useful speech yesterday, asked the very important question whether we could afford it, without giving the question any particular order of priority. I was glad that he came to the conclusion, without any dubiety, that we could. I say that, speaking generally, without tying myself to particular details of the scheme, we cannot afford not to afford it. If we are fighting to give effect to a better world, to give more security to people, we cannot afford to do substantially less than this. It is true, too, as the noble Viscount said, that although this scheme, in total, will cost a considerable number of millions—hundreds of millions—practically the whole of that amount will come back in the purchase of consumer goods. The maintenance of employment is dependent on the spending power of the people, and practically the whole of this amount will be spent in consumer goods which provide the most employment.

How are we to approach the consideration of this vast scheme? We all know that there is a plenitude of skill in the Departments and an immense body of experience has gradually been built up. It is proposed in this scheme that there should be a body of persons, designated a Ministry of Social Security, who should be set up to give effect to, or to begin to frame, the necessary schemes which are in contemplation. I remind myself of my own—not singular—painful experience. For eighteen months I was what was called Minister of Reconstruction. I was in an independent position. There was an Act of Parliament which established me, so to speak, and conferred very wide powers upon me which I did not hesitate to exercise. It took me eighteen months of hard work to get agreement upon the proposals to establish a Ministry of Health. I say without a moment's hesitation that, although we had said in general terms that we wanted a Ministry of Health, unless there had been a body of persons set apart to try and arrange for the establishment of such an organization, if it had simply been left to the officers of the old Local Government Board or of the Home Office, or the other offices concerned, to frame a scheme in the middle of the war, we should never have had it. I say that without any egotism; I am only stating a sober fact. The Cabinet arrangements for dealing with these matters were rather different in those days from what they seem to be now. We had a member of the War Cabinet—in this particular case it was Lord Milner—who had charge of the group of subjects affecting social matters, and he had very great authority. In fact, I cannot remember any of Lord Milner's recommendations being turned down by the War Cabinet. Under him the different Departments considering these matters functioned, and we reported to him. If it had not been for Lord Milner's vigorous support on more than one occasion, I should never have succeeded in getting agreement to the establishment of a Ministry of Health at all.

I try to apply this recollection to one or two of the tasks which this Report contemplates, because it is very material. First, there is the consolidation of insurance contributions and the levelling up of benefits. That concerns, as the Lord Chancellor said yesterday with great clarity and correctness, the very experienced body of men in the Home Office, the Ministry of Labour, and the Ministry of Health. Apart from other Departments, these three are very much involved. We have only to cast our minds back to what we had to go through in 1911 and 1912 to realize something of what will have to be undertaken by whomsoever has this job. I well remember, and so does the Lord Chancellor, that on more than one occasion we foregathered. It was a tough and bitter fight. If I may change the metaphor, the Lord Chancellor, Viscount Samuel, and some others, of whom I was one, were batting men with the intention of making runs. I am afraid that the Lord Chancellor yesterday was batting on a sticky wicket, trying to keep his end up.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT SIMON)

I hope I succeeded.

LORD ADDISON

You always do. I could not help recalling, and I am sure he had in his mind all the time, the struggle we had in 1911 and 1912 to establish the National Insurance Act. It is true that that was established against a measure of hostility which is seldom, I am glad to say, reached in this country. This scheme, however, would start off with a great common measure of agreement. The position would be quite different and happier. But for all that, if anybody looks at the Beveridge Report and sees what has got to be consolidated and brought into harmonious relation with respect to different types of pensions, sickness and disability benefits, different scales for different classes of persons, and so on, he will see that it is a gigantic task. It will never be accomplished—the accomplishment of it will not even be approached—unless we set up a body of persons whose job it is to do it. Everyone who has had any experience of the immense administrative difficulties involved in much smaller problems than this will realize that it is not reasonable to expect the officers of these great Departments to undertake it. Take the Ministry of Labour. How can we expect men with their immense tasks and responsibilities to have the time to get down to this? It cannot be done. The same observation applies to other Departments.

Quite frankly, if you want a reason for the setting up of the special body of persons which is called a Ministry of Social Security you have it in the very nature of the case. I will give one simple illustration. I think Mr. Greenwood was right when he said that in any case this scheme will have to be approached by instalments. I think it cannot be done otherwise. Take the question of child allowances, which the Lord Chancellor accepted, though it is true not accepting the figures of the Beveridge Report. I am not at present, however, concerned with figures. If we get 5s. we think it ought to be 8s., and in any case we shall ask for another shilling or two as we go along. That is how we do things in this country. Well, here we have the Report on family allowances by the Chancellor of the Exchequer made in May of last year, and a very impressive and interesting Report it is. I commend it to your Lordships' attention. It shows the portion of child allowances that are already made in one form or another to different groups of persons. To bring all that into one harmonious scheme so that it can be given effect to on the lines of the Government's acceptance, would be, apart altogether from the Beveridge Report, a very big task. I would like to ask the Government, seeing they have accepted this assumption, whether they will not be prepared to get on with this instalment straight away. It will require a considerable amount of work, but here is a very useful job for a Minister of Social Security to begin on the day after his appointment. This is something that is accepted by the Government, and I mention it only because it is a task accepted and agreed, ready for the Minister to undertake.

There is another group of services. I am not quite sure whether I understood the Lord Chancellor aright yesterday, but so tar as I did understand him he was speaking as though the Report contemplated that the health services would be the function of the Minister of Social Security. As he knows, it is laid down in the Report that it would be the Health Department which would deal with that part of the scheme.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

May I intervene to say this? My noble friend is being entirely fair in what he has said. I only referred to the very big task of organizing the health services. Nobody knows how big a task that is better than my noble friend. I merely mentioned it as an illustration of how important it was to use to the full all the technical and achieved skill and knowledge of the Department concerned. That was the reason I mentioned it.

LORD ADDISON

I most heartily agree with what the learned Lord Chancellor has said. I was only going to refer to it because, as the noble Viscount, Lord Dawson of Penn, said yesterday, it was a subject on which he reported to me when I was Minister of Health twenty-three years ago. It is rather a sad recollection in one respect. I remember that he, with others, was appointed to devise a scheme of clinics, centres for early diagnosis, minor aids in the treatment of ears and eyes, and various other services, and that he and the other medical men reported to me in the words which the noble Viscount repeated yesterday upon an agreed scheme for the establishment of clinics. That was twenty-three years ago. It shows how slowly we move in this country. We have got a little done in that respect thanks to the energy and hard work of the medical profession itself, but if ever there was a subject that was ripe for action, and urgently required action, it is this one. Therefore I hope that, although it will not be the function of the Ministry of Social Security, the Government will instruct the Minister of Health, and his colleague in Scotland, to make progress with this part of the scheme. The ground has been well prepared in this matter, if ever it was for any scheme.

I mention the two cases of the consolidation of insurance services and the formulation of a good scheme of child allowances as two immediate tasks awaiting somebody, both of which have been accepted in principle by the Government. Therefore I am driven to ask, why does the Lord Chancellor object to the creation of this Ministry of Social Security? I read with great care all he had to say yesterday, but may I remind him, using the expression of my noble friend Lord Nathan, that the reasons given were insufficient? The fact that it is a new Ministry is neither here nor there. We always have plenty of new Ministries in war-time, and at the end of the last war they dropped out freely. I hope that will not be the case at the end of this war. I am quite sure that if any Ministry or body of persons with a special task was ever required, it is this one. The Government have set up one or two Ministries during the past year and a half. A good many or us have asked, without getting an answer, what their powers are and what they are going to do. That does not apply to the Ministry I am now advocating. We have been anxious to know about the Minister of Town and Country Planning and what plans are to be given to him. But there is no question here as to what has to be done. Here is a task ready waiting, and it is a big one. I sincerely hope the Government will reconsider this matter.

As we learnt from our debates last week, and as this debate has shown, there is an immense measure of agreement as to how we should make progress and as to the necessity of making progress, whether it is in regard to agriculture or Social Services. I would not say a word to diminish that incentive to agreement. I hope the Government will not fail, owing to the handicap arising out of our rather unfortunate Parliamentary experience, to mobilize all the good will they can and make progress in this urgent matter without delay.

THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

My Lords, I feel that I ought to offer some apology to the House for intervening in the debate when it has been impossible for me to hear the earlier stage of it that took place yesterday owing to other engagements, and the further necessity of leaving the House before I can hear any comments on my own observations owing to another engagement, made long ago, later this afternoon. I should like especially to express my thanks to the noble Marquess, Lord Crewe, who has consented to let me take the place in which he would have spoken to-day in order that I might, as I was most eager to do, offer a few observations on this Report, not in its detail nor with regard to ways and means, but with regard to the grounds for the expectations that have been formed concerning it over so wide an area of our population. There can be no doubt that it has excited a degree of hope with regard to the future such as has not been raised by any set of proposals laid before the country for something like a generation, at any rate.

I am quite certain that those who are in close touch, for example, with the troops in our camps, would say that nothing could be better for the morale of the Army at this time than the clearest possible declaration from the Government with regard to what they take to be possible in the implementation of the Report. Many of them no doubt live from day to day without very much thought about the future, but those who are thinking about the future are thinking, as the noble Lord just said, mainly about the question whether there is going to be after this war such a time of distress as followed the other war. Some of them experienced it as children and some of them heard about it from their parents. It does occasion profound anxiety, and that anxiety does, to some extent, damage their own zeal in the cause they serve, because anxiety is always rather a weakening element in any man's make-up.

What I am concerned with is to show some of the principles in the Report which gives it, I think, a unique character, a character which, as the noble and most reverend Lord, Lord Lang, said in the House yesterday, renders it both epoch-making and epoch-marking. First, there is its universality, the fact that it applies to everybody. It is a greater form of national fellowship and unity than we have ever had before us. If we let our minds go back to the dissection of English society which is given, for example, in Sybil, Disraeli's novel of the two nations, we shall recognize that very much has changed since he wrote that. Though the influence of the division between the two nations has been modified, it remains true in certain respects that there is a most marked division between one section of society and the other, and it is mainly at this point of security. The so-called upper classes in society have a relative security. They do not feel that there is any possibility that the bottom may fall out of their lives. No man, of course, has absolute security, and I suppose it would be very bad for us to get it, but relatively we do count upon the future. There is, however, a large class of society who know that their tenure of the things they value most in life is precarious, and though this has been much modified and helped by what has been done in the way of unemployment benefit and through the Unemployment Assistance Board, for the administration of which we ought to be so grateful, yet it remains true that there is this great division. If we can take a big step forward towards healing that we shall have done more to weld this nation into a single fellowship, united not only as now in time of war but consciously and permanently whether in war or in peace, than we can probably do in any other way.

That has a very important bearing upon two admirable qualities of thrift and enterprise. As regards thrift there is the argument that those whose earnings are comparatively small do not find themselves able to save enough to be worth the sacrifice made to save it. If they are given real basic security it becomes immediately far more worth while to save for the bad time that may be coming, to save for additional comforts and amenities in old age, and you positively increase the tendency to thrift by providing a foundation upon which they can build something. No doubt there would be some people on whom it would act the other way, but I am perfectly certain, and think all social workers would agree with me, that the main result as regards thrift would be in that direction. Here perhaps it is worth While to mention an important fact in our economic life which appears to have become actualized during the last year. I am told by economists that during that year we began to turn the corner from the stage where the incidence of the National Debt is mainly owed to large investors to the point where the bulk of it is owed to the small investors. If that is true, and if that fact enters into the consciousness of the people generally, it will have itself a very great effect upon the whole attitude of mind among the people of small means towards saving and the means of effecting saving. Of course that only remains true so long as Income Tax and Surtax remain at their present level or something like it, but while they do so remain the working of the National Debt, far from taking money from the poor to give to the rich, as it was mainly after the last war, is working out at present, if anything, rather the other way and is equalizing and redistributing income in favour of the poorer classes of society.

If that is true, as I am assured it is, it is a fact of really great importance with regard to the whole attitude to the practice of saving that may be anticipated in the people generally. That makes it a fortunate moment to supply the foundation in life which the Beveridge Report promises upon which savings may take their effect. On the other side, I think all who have been trying to observe the workings of the mind of the people in poorer circumstances will agree that nothing is so deadening to enterprise as the sense of insecurity, especially for the man with a family. If you can secure for a man a real foundation for his life so that he knows that not himself so much but his wife and children are really cared for, and that they will not be reduced to great straits even if he himself suffers some misfortune, you instil into him indeed a new source of energy, and the result will be, on the whole, not a diminution but an increase of initiative and enterprise. There again there will be cases where the reaction is the opposite of that, but that will be the main result. To quote the noble and most reverend Lord, Lord Lang, once more, there is nothing so deadening as absence of hope.

The noble Lord, Lord Addison, has already alluded to the fact that almost the whole of the money expended through these channels will return by being itself spent upon consumer goods, upon the goods which, as he truly said, gives most employment. Therefore, while these steps are being taken to avoid mass unemployment in the future, they will make a very considerable contribution to the avoidance of mass unemployment by what they do to steady the home market. I am told the home market is not sufficient if we are to have full employment and prosperity generally—we must develop our export trade—but it is true that the home market is inevitably for any country the main basis of its commercial prosperity and does make a very great contribution towards the avoidance of unemployment.

It is a fact, of course, that we have passed in comparatively recent stages of history from a time when the State was mainly administered by people who largely contributed to it, in control of a multitude who did not themselves directly receive very much from it, to a time when, as now, the great majority of the population are becoming beneficiaries of the State in one way or another through the great institution of Social Services. If that is to be wholesome, there is need to encourage in a greater measure than we have yet succeeded in getting a sense of responsibility to the State and the welfare of the State in all sections of the population. There is a tendency in some quarters to regard the State as a much cow from whom nourishment may be indefinitely drawn without any contribution being made. And it is quite necessary to counteract that, and to get a sense of responsibility towards the State and for its welfare throughout our country, and a fresh realization that if there is to be a new distribution of wealth among all portions of the community, that wealth must first be produced.

I would like to add one further point to these rather general observations concerning the Report. They are the kind of observations which it seems to me to be most appropriate that I should offer in this connexion rather than indulge in any discussion of the precise ways and means by which it may be carried out. I believe that this epoch-making and epoch-marking Report takes a very definite place in our historical development. Most of us when being instructed in political philosophy were taught that it was a great sign of progress when we passed from a society based on status to a society based on free contract, because a society based on status, the feudal order of the Middle Ages, was so lacking in liberty for the individual, particularly at its foundation. The basis of that society was the serf. He was attached to the soil and he could not move from it. There was no doubt about his position and because he had no doubt regarding what it was himself other people also knew it. He had no liberty but he had security. We have constructed a society which is to a large extent free, in the legal sense entirely free, and employment of the people is regulated, no doubt, by freedom of contract.

Morally that is a very superior situation to one which is fixed by the status given to each member of society at birth. But along with that freedom we have had the full measure of its risks and there has been the possibility that for whole sections of the population the bottom would fall out. The serf had security without freedom. To some extent it is true that the wage-earning classes in our country have had freedom without security, though not entirely without it at any time, and during the last twenty years the foundation has been built piecemeal. What is now proposed is, so to speak, a sort of underpinning of our social structure beneath the life of freedom which we have inherited and in which we glory, the insertion of a foundation of real security compatible with the freedom that is embedded in the superstructure. That I believe is where this scheme fits into our social development. I believe it marks a big advance. It takes all the piecemeal legislation of recent years on this subject and fits it together in a complete, coherent scheme. It is only if this is done that there can be a really secure foundation in this way provided, so that there can be for all sections of society basic security of foundations upon which they may build their own free lives.

That leads me back to the point that the noble and most reverend Lord, Lord Lang, spoke of yesterday—the symbolical as well as the practical value of the institution of a Ministry of Social Security. If that Ministry is established it will be a pledge that we are in earnest in going through with this great unifying scheme, even though it is to be put through by instalments and the stages may come comparatively slowly. If it is left to the labours of the several Departments we shall still be in a stage of piecemeal tinkering and shall not be holding out to the country the great hope which, after all, has been the inspiration that this Report has given—the hope of a universal scheme expressing our national fellowship and unity and supplying the foundation of security to the free structure of our life.

THE MARQUESS OF CREWE

My Lords, I need keep your Lordships for a few minutes only. Indeed, I had hardly thought of taking part in this debate, not having been present yesterday, but I did not want to abstain altogether from the sense which I share, I am sure, with most of your Lordships of its extreme importance. The Beveridge Report, we all agree, is a monument of profound research and also of disciplined imagination. The noble Lord, Lord Addison, described how it came about that, instead of having a general discussion not based on any argumentative propositions, it was decided by the action of His Majesty's Government to examine the propositions of the Report in some detail and to a certain extent in a critical spirit. The effect of that was to produce a strong reaction in the opposite direction, and I do not know that Sir William Beveridge would welcome the somewhat exaggerated statements that were made with reference to the Report. It seemed to be assumed by some writers in the Press and by some speakers that all His Majesty's Government had to do was to wave a magic wand, or in more modern parlance to touch a button, and then all the valuable propositions of the Report could be put into form by a skilled draftsman, and everybody would live happily ever afterwards. That of course is entirely foreign to the substance and meaning of the Report itself.

The Report lays down a series of propositions in the belief that they can be worked out in a practical form, but certainly Sir William never pretended to lay down beforehand the necessary action of the different Ministers—the Home Secretary, the Minister of Labour, the Minister of Agriculture—whose Departments might be concerned, and certainly not to propose beforehand the Budgets which future Chancellors of the Exchequer will have to draw up in order to implement these proposals. Therefore I think that the Government cannot be blamed for stating that they must proceed with caution. Unfortunately, however, they did not merely give that impression; they undoubtedly gave to some people the impression that they were proceeding with distrust; and that, I think, is the explanation of what the noble Lord, Lord Addison, described as the really unfortunate political results of the Parliamentary debate which has taken place elsewhere. I trust that the debate in this House yesterday will have done something to reduce that inflammatory condition so far as it still exists in the country.

I shall make no attempt to deal with all the various proposals contained in the Report, for, as my noble friend Lord Samuel observed yesterday, this is not a discussion of details but an examination of the Report in the most general form. I listened with great interest, however, as I am sure all your Lordships did, to what has just fallen from the most reverend Primate on the subject of family life, and the perpetual anxiety which has weighed on a very large portion of the population with regard to the future of their families. I feel that the proposal for family allowances is one of the most useful and valuable proposals in the Report, and I only wish that His Majesty's Government had been able to announce a more wholehearted acceptance of the suggestions made by Sir William Beveridge in that regard; although it is only fair to admit that the principle has, I understand, the full approbation of His Majesy's Government.

The only other point on which I wish to say a word is that of the appointment of a special Ministry to deal with these subjects. I do not feel that the title "Ministry of Social Security" is altogether a happy one It seems to me to describe the aspirations of the country regarding the achievements of the Ministry rather than the work which the Ministry will have to do. It is as though Mr. Eden were to be described as Secretary of State for Peace rather than as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. That, however, is a small matter, and perhaps some of your Lordships might be prepared to do what I confess that I myself am not prepared to do—namely, to suggest an alternative title, rather on the lines of some of those competitions for a special definition which we sometimes see in the newspapers.

So far as the creation of the Ministry is concerned, however, it seems to me that the noble Lord, Lord Addison, made a very full and complete answer to the case set out by my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack yesterday. Naturally the noble and learned Viscount put his points with the greatest possible acumen and force, but I do feel that the argument that it would be dangerous to take away picked men from existing Ministries in order to form a new Ministry—and that, I understand, was one of the arguments used by my noble and learned friend—does not really carry very great weight. There will surely be, as Lord Addison pointed out in some detail, very definite work for such men to do; and, although I have no doubt that their chiefs would greatly resent their being taken away and formed into a new corporation, yet I think it is a process which should be faced, and I hope that it will be done.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

My Lords, I do not want the debate to proceed on any false assumption, and I know that that would not be the wish of the noble Marquess. I was meeting the suggestion that there should be a new organization now, and I said that there is a vast amount of work which has to be done in different sections in connexion with this vast scheme which, as it seems to the Government, can best be done in the Departments which are specially concerned—medical matters in the Ministry of Health, labour matters in the Ministry of Labour, and so on. I was careful to add that it might well be that a new organization would be needed later on. I do not want to be misunderstood.

THE MARQUESS OF CREWE

My Lords, I am much obliged to my noble and learned friend, but I do not think that I have misunderstood his point of view, because, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Addison, will agree, it seems to some of us that this particular work which these men are doing in their separate Departments, and no doubt doing extremely well, would be more efficiently and also more promptly done if they were combined into a single organization. I have nothing further with which to trouble your Lordships, and I merely express the belief that although the carrying out of these proposals cannot, strictly speaking, be described as democratic—because I fancy that some of them might be carried out quite as easily, and perhaps more speedily, by some of the dictatorial or oligarchic Governments which we see in Europe—yet they can be interwoven into our democratic fabric, and I trust the Government will use every effort to do so.

LORD RUSHCLIFFE

My Lords, this debate arises on a Motion put clown by the noble Lord, Lord Nathan, in which we are invited to discuss the Beveridge Report. Might I remind your Lordships what the terms of reference of the Beveridge Committee were. They were these: To undertake, with special reference to the inter-relation of the schemes, a survey of the existing national schemes of social insurance and allied services, including workmen's compensation, and to make recommendations. That was an immense reference, and it is not surprising that it produced an immense Report, a Report not in one volume but two volumes. I yield to no one in my admiration both of the Report and of Sir William Beveridge himself. He is the greatest living authority on the questions with which he had to deal. I myself have been under personal obligations to him on more than one occasion for the help that he has given me in the work which at that time I had to do; while his writings on this subject are, of course, classics in English literature. But it is clearly impossible—in fact nobody has yet tried it—in the course of a single speech, or indeed almost in a series of speeches, to deal adequately and fully with this Report and, if I may say so, the noble Lord who initiated this debate got over that difficulty by the simple process of not referring to the Report at all. What he did was to make a series of charges, which have already been referred to by the Lord Chancellor, which seemed to me wholly unsubstantial, completely ill-founded and without the smallest justification.

What he did was in effect to charge the Government with cowardice in refusing to face up to the position. He charged them with evasion—I do not think I am doing him an injustice in saying that he charged the Government with evasion—he charged them really with deception and with trying to throw dust in the eyes of the public. I believe all these charges are completely unfounded and without the smallest justification. He made in one passage of his speech a reference to the effect abroad. Is this country to be pilloried in the eyes of the countries of the world for what it has done in the matter of Social Services? This country is decades ahead of any other country in the world in what it has done in the matter of Social Services. It is a thing which we can regard with pride and with the knowledge that it should not be the subject of reproach.

There is one passage in the noble Lord's speech to which I want to refer. It is a passage in which he says—and this has been repeated a good deal outside— But the people want a sign, and the Government have it in their power to give a Sign and an assurance—acceptance of the plan now, beginning with the programme now, which means a Ministry of Social Security now and the start of legislation this Session. I have no hesitation at all in saying that if this Report were put as it is into the hands of a Government draftsman, and he was told to draft a Bill carrying it into effect, it would be utterly outside his power to do so. Those who, like Lord Nathan—he assures us he has read the Report—make these assertions, seem to have no conception of the complexities which are involved and of which Sir William Beveridge himself is very conscious—complexities which bristle, not in every paragraph, but in a great many paragraphs and in a great many of the recommendations. Therefore I say that to charge the Government with laches because they are not prepared now to present a Bill to your Lordships' House to carry out the recommendations of this Report, is fantastic. The noble Marquess, Lord Crewe, made an observation in which I was much interested, as I am indeed in all his speeches. He said he thought it was a pity that this Report had been received with such universal pæans of acclamation within a few hours of its appearance, because they must, to some extent, have proceeded from people who had neither read the Report nor at that time had the opportunity of reading it and understanding what it meant and what it involved. And I think it really was a great disservice to this Report that it should have been so received by people who had not had the time to read it and to understand it. I think that was Lord Crewe's view, too.

I do not at all want to cover the ground which was so admirably covered by the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack yesterday. He pointed out, as other speakers have pointed out, all the different claims which will be made after this war by various interests for help in one form or another—agriculture, education and so on. I do not at all know whether it is the view of some of those who take the line they do with regard to this Report—Lord Nathan, for instance—that the help that we can give should be entirely confined to this country. We shall, after this war, see a ravaged and a starving Europe, which will certainly be appealing for help from somebody. We have accustomed ourselves to the phrase "freedom from want," but to many countries in Europe it will not be merely a question of freedom from want, it will be a question of freedom from starvation. Whether or not we are to take a hand in that I do not for the moment say, but I think that in considering this scheme and the demands and requests that will be made upon us after the war, that is a point which should not altogether be lost sight of.

May I go back to the point to which I referred a moment ago—namely, that one of the charges which have been made against the Government is that it is not prepared here and now to produce a scheme and a Bill and to proceed on the lines of this Report? Again I say that that shows a complete disregard of the difficulties, and appears to me to show an ignorance of the immense amount of preparatory work which must be done before any legislation can be produced and before you can really proceed further in the matter. I think it would be true to say that that is the view of Sir William Beveridge himself. As I will show in a moment, over and ever again he gives—and does not pretend it is anything more—the outline of the scheme, which is merely a frame into which the picture has to be fitted; again and again he says in the Report that questions are raised, and he notes them as proper for further consideration, on which only a tentative and qualified answer is given.

And if I might here interpose something, I think the analogy which Lord Addison drew, and which has been drawn before, about the position now and the position as it was, for instance, before the Ministry of Health was set up, is an entirely false one. The Ministry of Health was set up, as he told us, after two years' preparation and consideration, but what was in view then was the setting up of an important permanent Department. In the present case the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack explained that what is intended and desired is to clear up certain very difficult questions of administration entirely without prejudice to the question whether ultimately a separate Department should be set up. Therefore I say that the analogy of the Ministry of Supply, the Ministry of Labour, or the Ministry of Health is a false analogy when we are applying ourselves to the question of what the Government should do now.

LORD ADDISON

I was not saying that they were analogous enterprises. What I was saying was that they required, in order to bring them into being at all, the concentrated attention of a body of persons, and that this great task similarly requires the concentrated attention of a body of persons. I did not say it was the same kind of task.

LORD RUSHCLIFFE

That further point I shall deal with in a moment. What I was pointing out was that it is an entirely different thing making inquiries, going into points of detail, with a view to setting up ultimately a permanent Ministry, from clearing the ground before you can produce legislation to deal with a Report like this. I shall give two or three examples of what I mean. The first is the matter dealt with on page 76 and following pages of the Report. It is the very important question of rent and how far you can take rent into account in deciding what benefits you shall pay. As nobody knows better than the noble Viscount on the Woolsack, the question of rent is extremely important when dealing with payment of money, whether in the form of allowances or benefits. In the case of allowances, we devised a flexible scheme under which we were able to ensure that the person receiving the allowance should not be unduly penalized by high rent. In this Report—and I make no criticism of it at all—Sir William Beveridge points out that there is, what everybody knows, a very wide variation of rents between London and the country. He estimates, and I have no doubt he is right—I have no means of checking it, but I accept it—that if you compare rents in London with rents in the average industrial centre, rents in London are about 6s. a week higher. He further points out that rents in agricultural districts are in their turn about 6s. a week lower than in the industrial centres. Therefore you have a very wide discrepancy and divergence in the matter of rent. Clearly that is a most important factor when you are considering either allowances or benefits.

In the Beveridge Report—I do not criticize it in the least, I just state the fact—the two principles which are laid down as fundamental are that the rate of benefit shall be on a subsistence level and that equal contributions shall ensure equal benefits. It seems to me that these two principles are to some extent in mutual conflict and that it is a little difficult to reconcile them. I am quite certain you cannot blame the Government for not accepting, here and now, principles which certainly, on the face of them, bear the stamp of being to some extent in conflict. Sir William Beveridge himself goes into the matter most clearly and fully, and on page 84 reaches this practical conclusion: For the purpose of determining standard rates of unemployment and disability benefit, household rent at pre-war levels is taken as 10s. a week for a household and 6s. 6d. a week for a solitary individual. Then he goes on to say: The practicability and desirability of differentiation of both benefits and contributions, regionally or occupationally, in the way suggested in the last paragraph should be examined further in consultation with the persons and bodies affected. If some such body as the Social Insurance Statutory Committee proposed in Change 22 of Part II is established, this question might conveniently be referred statutorily to that Committee.… Then in the next paragraph he adds: The proposal to adjust benefit according to the rent actually paid by individuals should, provisionally, be rejected. What does that mean? It means that he makes these recommendations, which I do not criticize for a moment, and that he is at least very doubtful whether the conclusion he has arrived at—namely, that there should be a flat rate of benefit irrespective of rent—is on the right lines. Then he goes on to say that the matter should be further examined, and actually suggests the form in which that examination should be carried out. Are the Government to be blamed because, in the face of such recommendations, they do not produce at once legislation dealing with this most complex of all questions?

May I raise another matter? This appears on page 101 of the Report, in Section 3, under the rather forbidding title, "The Problem of Alternative Remedies." This really is not quite so formidable as it appears. What Sir William Beveridge is dealing with here is the question of workmen's compensation and how it will be fitted into the scheme. He says: Some of the needs for which maintenance of income under a plan for social security is required, may arise through causes which give to the person in need a legal claim against another person. These cases are of three main types: (i) Industrial accidents, in respect of which an injured employee, apart from the Workmen's Compensation Acts, may have a claim against the employer at common law.… If I may for a moment give my personal experience, I was very much attracted some years ago by the proposal for a scheme of all-in insurance. Some of my colleagues who were then with me in another place—Lord Addison was one, and the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack another—will remember that there was a good deal of literature published at the time. A pretty good case was, I thought, made out for a system of all-in insurance. I remember very well pamphlets which were published on the subject by Mr. Broad and Mr. Lessor. With the help of my advisers, I went into the matter as fully as I could. I was brought up against, and baffled by, exactly the same question as Sir William Beveridge has been brought up against and baffled by—namely, the question how you can bring into a system of all-in insurance this matter of workmen's compensation, involving all these questions of alternative remedies and legal claims against other people.

Sir William Beveridge says with regard to this matter in paragraph 264: It is not possible in this Report to do more than to raise these questions. Considered answers can be given only after inquiry by some committee with technical and practical qualifications and with time to examine all the detailed issues involved. This question of workmen's compensation was, as I reminded your Lordships a moment ago, part of the terms of reference to the Beveridge Committee. Therefore the question of workmen's compensation, how you shall bring workmen's compensation into an all-embracing scheme of insurance, is a very important one indeed. To proceed, as Lord Nathan would wish us to do, with legislation now, this Session, before this question has been considered for a moment, seems to me would be doing the greatest possible disservice to the efficiency and efficacy of the scheme as a whole.

I will mention just one other matter. This is on page 148 of the Report. It is a technical question, but it is a very important one, and it arises in paragraph 395, entitled "Appeals on Contributions," which reads: Determination by or on behalf of the Minister, as to liability to contribution, including the class in which contribution shall be made, will similarly be subject to appeals to local tribunals consisting of Chairmen of the Courts of Referees with further appeal to the Umpire. The problem of the relation between decisions of the Umpire and the ordinary Courts of Law is a matter for further examination. That is a question which, before you start to legislate on this most important matter, Sir William Beveridge himself says should be further examined, and to proceed now, as is asked, without a further examination of these things is flying in the face of Sir William Beveridge's own recommendation. He recommends you to examine these things further before you do anything about them. Therefore again I say this claim that you should legislate now, either this Session or before these things are cleared up, is quite absurd.

There is one other matter to which I would refer, and I will refer to it in a few sentences. It is this immense question of health. Health, I think, comes under Assumption B of the Report, Assumption A being children's allowances and Assumption C the maintenance of employment. Whatever else may be said about various other aspects of the Report one thing is perfectly certain: a universal health service is indissolubly bound up with the kind of health service referred to by Sir William Beveridge, and health insurance is really the heart and core of the whole scheme. Therefore, until you have ascertained exactly what you are going to do with regard to health, and until you know how the health service can be fitted into the insurance proposals, you really cannot proceed any further. I do not for a moment intend to follow, or indeed to comment on, what Lord Addison has said. He and Lord Dawson of Penn are, I suppose, two of the greatest authorities on this matter. All I would say as a pure layman in this connexion is that before you can begin to legislate, before indeed you can begin to frame your proposals, tremendously important, difficult and far-reaching questions between nurses, doctors, hospitals and so on must be settled. That must be done before you can begin to consider how to frame your legislation.

One further thing I want to say in conclusion is on the question which has been raised so often in this debate—namely, whether von should set up this new Ministry of Social Security now. I confess that I gave such thought as I could to this matter, and I endeavoured to come to a quite impartial conclusion. The way it strikes me is this. It has been said by the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack that these questions which have to be considered and on which conclusions must be reached—some of them I have mentioned to-day—must be the subject of the most careful consideration and examination by experts whose business it is and has been to know about these things. Therefore if you are to set up this Ministry now the first question I ask myself, having been a Minister, is, with whom are you going to start the Ministry? It has been said this afternoon that you should take away officials of the highest rank from other Ministries and put them in this Ministry of Social Security to do this work. My Lords, there is a war on, and civil servants are asked, just as other people are asked, to work to their utmost capacity. What would be the condition of the separate Ministries if you deprived them of all those whose business it is to know, and indeed do know and can help in forming conclusions on these very difficult and technical questions? I think the result upon the Ministries would be disastrous.

What is the alternative? What is the dilemma? The alternative is not to take them away but to appoint other people; not to take these important officials away from existing Ministries but to appoint someone else. The dilemma then is that you either take these officials away from their different Departments, in which case the Departments suffer, or you appoint innocent and ignorant people who know nothing about these matters, and whose help therefore in any case would not be of anything like the same value or indeed of any value at all to those Ministers who ultimately would have to decide on these important matters. I cannot see that at this time it would be anything but harmful to set up at this great cost—I mean the cost of personnel—a separate Ministry to deal with these matters. I hope I have not taken up too much of your Lordships' time, but I have endeavoured at any rate to put some of the points which have occurred to me. There are many others that might have been mentioned had I had time to go into them. I have cited some of the things that have occurred to me as reasons why I think the attacks and criticisms that have been made on the Government at the present time for their actions are ill-founded and unsubstantiated, and should not, I think, be accepted in your Lordships' House.

VISCOUNT BLEDISLOE

My Lords, we have listened to an extremely interesting and informative speech, and I doubt whether there is any member of either Horse of Parliament who is better qualified to guide us in regard to the right attitude on this Beveridge Report than the noble Lord, Lord Rushcliffe, who has just sat down. For my part I find myself in agreement with almost everything he has said, but I cannot agree with what he said about a special ad hoc Ministry. I do feel very strongly that we want something of the sort to supply the driving power and provide at any rate an indication of an obvious determination to carry out the greater part, if not the whole, of the plan so ably devised by Sir William Beveridge. The other point upon which I join issue with my noble friend, and he will forgive me for doing it, is his statement that the Social Services of this country are ahead of those of every other country in the world. I agree if he will make one exception, and that is the Dominion of New Zealand which, in a relatively short national existence, has managed to set an example to the Old Land in many matters connected with social reform. Indeed, we have been somewhat belated in copying the example of that loyal and patriotic territory of the British Empire which we could have done with great advantages eventually to our social structure.

I feel bound to endorse the well-deserved tribute which my noble friend Lord Rushcliffe paid to the author of this scheme. I have worked with Sir William Beveridge in several fields of public service and I can testify to his outstanding ability, his impeccable integrity, the thoroughness with which he carries out every task committed to him and, as my noble friend has said, his unparalleled knowledge of social problems in this country. What are we being asked to do? If I understand it aright we are being asked, not to legislate upon any of the matters which are dealt with in the Beveridge Report, but to approve the plan of social reconstruction which is adumbrated in that Report. If that is what we are asked to do, I want to say that I for my part whole-heartedly support the scheme of social insurance and social security embodied in the Report.

I feel quite confident that that great English statesman Disraeli, to whom reference was made just now by the most reverend Primate and whose humble disciple I am, would do that if he were alive to-day. Indeed, as I listened to the eloquent and convincing speech of my noble friend Viscount Samuel, with all of whose arguments I should like to identify myself, I said to myself and was tempted to proclaim aloud: "The spirit of Disraeli, in fresh corporeal embodiment, is present with us to-day in one of the same race as himself." I want to make it perfectly clear, in case there should be any question of Party differences upon this great problem, that there are thousands of Conservatives up and down the country to-day who, with full sincerity and a deep conviction, will re-echo all that the noble Viscount has said. I could have wished that he had not, towards the end of his speech, struck to a small extent a Party note, when he referred to the debate on the National Health Insurance Bill in another place in 1912. The veteran statesman who piloted that Bill through the House of Commons frankly admitted, as I think the noble Viscount will find if he refers to the Official Report of the Third Reading debate on that Bill, the constructive help which many of my colleagues and I myself endeavoured to give him in putting the Bill into more workable shape, especially as it affected the great friendly societies of this country and the rural workers.

May I venture to state what, for a long time past, have appeared to me to be the outstanding social blots upon our national escutcheon? I put first the pre-war distressed areas which have been designated the Special Areas. Secondly, there are the slums of our cities with their baneful effect upon the character and the health of our people. Thirdly, there are the beggars in our streets, a prevalent eyesore which is forbidden in New Zealand and certain other civilized countries. This, although not the most serious, is the most obvious blot and a source of surprise and criticism on the part of our visitors from overseas. Fourthly, there is the restriction of food production when no small part of the population are underfed while, by a strange irony that has already been indicated to-day in the speech of the noble Lord opposite, others remain unemployed who might well be employed in supplying their needs. I make reference to this because I was delighted to see in to-day's newspapers that President Roosevelt made yesterday a welcome disclosure of a forthcoming exploratory conference for co-ordinating post-war food plans with a view to balancing supply and demand in the matter of food throughout the world. I most earnestly hope that our Government will lend all the support they can to that enterprise to which that great American statesman has put his hand.

May I add just one other blot—a wartime blot which has been very evident to those of us who live in the rural areas that are also reception areas for evacuees? That is, the condition and the outlook on He of a large number of those who have poured into those areas from professedly well-administered cities, not merely London, but Birmingham, Plymouth and other places that I could mention. The conscience of our country folk has been deeply shocked by what they have seen and heard of the condition and conduct of some of those unfortunate outpourings of the urban slums. Should such a state of things exist in what is relatively one of the richest countries in the world and in a country which is always boasting of its social legislation and the efficiency of its local government administration? I shall be interested to hear what the noble Lord who is to reply to this debate will have to say in reference to some of these conditions with which he must be personally familiar. For three years, 1935–1938, it became my duty, as I believe it became his duty as my successor as President of the National Council of Social Service, to visit periodically the abnormally distressed areas—the Special Areas—in counties like Durham, Cumberland, Staffordshire, South Wales and elsewhere. I cannot believe that anyone who during that period was conversant with the conditions obtaining in those areas could possibly do otherwise than welcome the Beveridge Report and deprecate any tendency to whittle down its scope or unduly to defer the inauguration of the compact and comprehensive scheme of security which it discloses.

I support the plan, the whole plan of the Beveridge Report, as a method of organization of social wellbeing and stability. I would earnestly appeal to the Government not to destroy the compact comprehensiveness of such a scheme or the inter-relation of its several parts, and I believe that nothing is more likely to retain that compactness and throw in the necessary drive than the early establishment of a Social Security Department in this country. The present methods of social insurance are unsystematic, incoherent and very wasteful in their administration. Surely nothing could secure more cohesion or effective and smooth working, and above all the avoidance of inter-departmental friction and, disagreement, than the establishment of an ad hoc Social Security Department. The noble Lord, Lord Nathan, very appropriately said this is what we want as the keystone of the arch. Without it the whole fabric would display considerable inherent weakness.

Then it has been asked what is the good of a separate Department if a good many of the experts have to be drawn from other existing Departments of State? I see no necessity for drawing those experts from other Departments. What, surely, we want is someone who will represent a co-ordination of these various services that are now discharged efficiently under various existing Departments of State; some Minister at the head, if you like, of a skeleton Department which will act as a liaison in regard to all these different functions, which may be summarized under the head of Social Service. And surely no more efficient Minister could possibly be recommended to the Crown for this headship than Sir William Beveridge himself. The noble Lord who has just spoken has indicated by his tribute that there is no one better equipped for such a task, and I may remind your Lordships that Sir William Beveridge has already acted as Permanent Secretary to a Department of State. That was in the time of the existence, during the last war, of the first Ministry of Food. There was no more efficient head of any Department at that time than Sir William Beveridge.

The noble Viscount opposite, very wisely I thought, asked the question: In the matter of social benefits is this Beveridge Scheme just as between man and man and between class and class? And he very wisely, in my judgment, answered "You must in these matters treat the community as a whole." If there were any doubt about that I would like to quote these relevant words from the best of all books: "We are all members one of the other: If one member suffers all the members suffer with it." I should like to see that motto written over the portals of the new Ministry of Social Security. When the noble Marquess opposite just now pressed his point in regard to the noble and learned Viscount's criticism—which was rather drastic—of the suggestion of a Ministry of Social Security, I was delighted to hear that the noble and learned Viscount said—I think I am right in so interpreting what he said—that he did not turn down definitely the proposal for establishing a Ministry of Social Security but he did not consider that it was necessary to put it in hand at once. I noticed that in his speech yesterday, which unfortunately I was not here to listen to, he emphasized very much the intrusion, as it were, of such a Department into the spheres of activity of various other existing Departments. But does not a similar measure of intrusion obtain to-day in regard to some of these Departments?

For instance, the Board of Education has to call in officials of the Ministry of Health in regard to medical service as applied to our schools. Agricultural education, as a matter of fact, is mainly in the hands of the Ministry of Agriculture, but always in consultation again with the Board of Education which, after all supplies the basic foundation upon which the superstructure of agricultural technique is supposed to be based. Take the police administration of this country. It is in the hands of the local authorities; administered in loco by what are called the Standing Joint Committees of the Counties, a body operating under the ægis of the Local Government Board, or as we now call it the Ministry of Health, but exercising functions mainly the concern of the Home Office. Surely there are plenty of illustrations to show that it is only a matter of co-ordination that is needed—I think the noble and most reverend Lord, Lord Lang, referred to that term with some contumely yesterday, but I know of no better term—of co-ordination between various Departments with separate liaisons and a driving force as represented by the new Department of Social Security.

The noble Viscount very properly pointed out how varying were the benefits which employees of various industrial companies derive from their companies' welfare schemes. It is common knowledge all over the country that these benefits vary with the affluence and prosperity of the companies that provide them. Of all the great industries the one which is the least able to provide such benefits is that of agriculture, and, as several noble Lords have pointed out with great truth, to enhance the purchasing capacity of the poor is to promote more employment for those whose goods they buy. I notice, and I think the noble and learned Viscount who sits on the Woolsack quoted it yesterday, that Sir William Beveridge emphasized the importance of attacking five great evils—want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness.

He went on, in speaking of idleness, to describe it as a condition which destroyed wealth and which corrupted men, whether well-paid or not, and I would add whether Peer or peasant, rich or poor. All will have to work after this war, energetically, patriotically and contentedly. Public opinion should hold idleness in contempt; but neither public opinion nor Government administration can confidently check idleness if the bedrock causes of idleness are not tackled and eradicated. The science of ætiology—if I may use a term which the noble Lord opposite will understand—is needed as well as that of therapeutics. In New Zealand a social security scheme was inaugurated seven years ago. I would ask noble Lords to observe this, because they sometimes regard New Zealand with some suspicion.

LORD ADDISON

No.

VISCOUNT BLEDISLOE

I know that the noble Lord would not, but there are noble Lords who regard anything that is initiated in New Zealand with some suspicion, because they imagine that the people there are trying experiments the value of which has not been fully demonstrated. That may be so, but, in regard to idleness, it is worth noting that, from the moment that they instituted their scheme of social security, they made it perfectly clear that they were not going to tolerate idleness on the part of anyone, to whatever class of the community he might belong; and they put a stop, with greater courage than any former New Zealand Government had shown, to an immense amount of the malingering, "ca'canny," and idleness which existed prior to the social security scheme coming into operation.

When I was President of the National Council of Social Service, it was my interesting but rather melancholy experience to visit the Special Areas, and particularly the occupational centres which, if the Beveridge Report is carried out, I hope will be recognized as a valuable pattern for the training of those who are temporarily unemployed. The saddest experience which I had when doing this was when visiting a certain very depressed area—I shall not mention the name—in one of the North of England counties, and when, on entering the so-called occupational centre, I did not find, as I had found in other places, a large number of men and women doing very valuable constructive work of varied descriptions, but, instead, no fewer than thirty young men, between the ages of 16 and 22, in a crowded, stuffy atmosphere, full of stale smoke and with every sort of filth on the floor, playing at darts or with very dirty playing cards. I inquired why these young men were not taking up occupational activities such as I had found going on in other centres, and they frankly told me that none of these people had had any work since leaving school, that the Government were providing for their bare subsistence, and that that was all that they wanted. They were not in the least interested in learning any occupation with a view to a future avocation. Can you imagine anything more pathetic or anything more depressing in a country such as this, where we boast of our thrift, of our manual dexterity and, above all, of the individual enterprise which has made both this country and the Empire what they are? Those are conditions which I want to see rendered absolutely impossible in days to come.

I welcome very particularly the Government's acceptance of the principle of family allowances, and especially for this reason. Not only is the birth-rate decreasing—a serious fact in a great Empire which is crying out for people of British extraction to enter its sparsely-populated oversea territories, which are the envy of our enemies and a source of criticism because we do not make better use of them—but it is the thrifty, the prudent and the mentally-best-equipped who, out of regard for their progeny, are limiting the number of their children, to the disadvantage and possible ultimate decay of our own race. On the other hand, you will find people without those qualities who have very little conscience about increasing their families, with no prospect of being able to support them.

I want to say a word about the Citizens' Advice Bureaux which are mentioned in the Beveridge Report, and which have been of incalculable value during this war period. I happen to be at the present time the Chairman of the Regional Advisory Committee of the National Council of Social Service, covering the five South-Western counties. We have in the country to-day several hundreds of these citizens' advice bureaux, to which people evacuated from their homes and people who have lost their homes owing to enemy action come in large numbers to obtain advice upon every imaginable subject. The existence of these bureaux has disclosed an extraordinary lack of knowledge on the part of the ordinary, impoverished, less-educated citizen about every manner of problem—problems with which your Lordships are perfectly familiar, and with which two-thirds of the educated people of the country must be familiar also. What has struck us so forcibly is the immense amount of discomfort, financial loss, and in some cases actual distress, which must have been caused owing to the lack of these advice bureaux in normal conditions in this country in many of our crowded towns. Sir William Beveridge makes it perfectly clear in Part V of his Report, paragraph 397, that there is great scope for the perpetuation of these advice bureaux, in order to meet the requirements of many of these unfortunate people after the war.

I wish to say only one further word with regard to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Nathan. Personally, I find it impossible to agree with him in placing social security, as adumbrated in the Beveridge Report, on the same footing as regards financial priority as national defence. The attainment of a complete measure of social security is impracticable without an adequate measure of national and Imperial security—the defence of our shores against enemy aggression. By too much concentration on our internal problems, we have twice within the last quarter of a century been lulled into a sense of false security, with resultant unspeakable loss of life and treasure. Let social security rank, if you like, next in order, but let the needs of our Navy, Army and Air Force come first.

May I with all deference say one word to those who, as the result of their enterprise and energy, are blessed in full measure with the good things of this life? This plan is a stability insurance not merely for the workers but for themselves. If adopted it will add to the efficiency of their employees, many of whom are under-nourished to-day and with no confidence in their future, and to a greater keenness on their part about the welfare of the industry that employs them. Moreover, by ironing out, or rather smoothing out, the irregularities in economic fortunes, and removing all pretext for the carking dread of penury, it will foster the spirit of contentment and inter-class harmony which is so essential not only to the avoidance of social upheaval but to that national solidarity without which this great high-souled nation can never effectively lead the world along the path of constructive progress.

LORD HEMINGFORD

My Lords, if on the occasion of my first speech here I ask your Lordships' indulgence, I do so with rather more reason than some of my colleagues who have recently come to this place from the other House. They have come here fresh from constantly taking part in debates, whereas, while in my first years in the other House I spoke not infrequently, the House then—whether post hoc or propter hoc it is not for me to say—put me in a position where I was debarred thenceforth from taking any part in the debates of that House. I want to make one observation, if I may, about Lord Nathan's speech yesterday, in which he referred to the harm which the Government had done by their reception of this Beveridge Report. I refer to this because I come straight from watching closely the latest by-election in the country in the division which I formerly represented, and I certainly can say that the debates in the House of Commons did an immense amount of harm from the purely political point of view of influencing the constituencies. But my own view—I listened to Sir John Anderson's speech in another place—is that the Government put forward a well-considered, critical examination of the Report, and an examination which obviously was sympathetic, and in those circumstances, although I think that their treatment of the Report may have been unfortunate in the way I have just stated, their mistake, if any, was that they were too honest and too frank to have the effect which might have been sought for in the constituencies.

It has been made quite clear, at any rate here in this debate, that—indeed on Sir William Beveridge's own showing—the picture which he draws or the plan which he sets forward is by no means one ready for immediate legislation, and that there is an immense amount of work to be done by the Government before they can even get to the stage at which they are in a position to give instructions to the draftsmen. If that is the case, could any of your Lordships have had confidence or reasonable trust in a Government which would have done what apparently Lord Nathan would have had them do, by saying: "We accept this Report as a whole; we will now start to put it straight into law." I think the Government have been unfortunate in this matter, but I sincerely hope that the speeches which we heard yesterday and to-day may do much to remedy it.

There is one weakness perhaps in this Report, and in saying that I am not criticizing Sir William Beveridge, because I do not think he could have done otherwise, or he might have said that he was going outside his terms of reference. It is that he has based his plan, perhaps was bound to base his plan, on calculations of money; that is to say, on calculations of pounds, or millions of pounds. It is easy, of course, to recognize at once that that does not get to the root of the matter. Money is merely a yardstick, a convenient measurement of wealth, and incidentally a means of exchange, but what we want for the purpose of this plan is not money—that would be no use—it is the means, the material, on which to base and implement the Report. If the plan could be and were put into law by immediate legislation, giving the beneficiaries in certain instances £4 a week, or whatever it might be, what would be the use of that if we had not got the materials behind it? Lord Bennett showed conclusively, I think, yesterday that at the present time and at the conclusion of the war it was perfectly certain that on a mere calculation of pounds, or millions of pounds, the country would not be able to afford the finance of this scheme. But if you ask me whether we can afford this scheme or not, I say unhesitatingly, "Of course we can, subject to one condition." That one condition is that we provide—here is a difficulty in getting the right word—that we provide the wealth, the materials, or the means which are necessary to carry it out. I say there is a difficulty in getting the exact word because, as I have said, the word "money" does not really apply. If we were to put this plan into law, into a form of legislation, immediately and had not got behind it these materials upon which to base it, what would be the result? The result would be disastrous to all those who are intended to be beneficiaries under the scheme. It would mean such an amount of inflation that the £4 a week would not be worth 4s. a week. And it is there that we have got to be so careful. It is therefore to this particular point of the means to enable us to implement this great plan that I want to call your Lordships' attention.

I say unhesitatingly that we can afford it on one condition—a condition which I think we can fulfil—namely, that as soon as possible after the war, we do produce the necessary wealth for the purpose. If we had been asked six months before the outbreak of war if we could afford the expenditure which we have incurred in the war, there is nobody but would have answered the question in the negative. But the effect of war has been to increase our production of wealth of a particular kind far beyond what we ever dreamed of beforehand. I shall not go into how much is being paid out of taxation and how much out of borrowing. The fact is that, in actual production, we have produced an immense amount more than we ever produced in our history in peace-time or indeed in the last war. If we have been able to do that by the good will and unity of the people under the stress of war—and I may add the guidance of a determined and united Government—surely we can make the same effort to do what people talk about so glibly as equally important as winning the war—namely, win the peace.

We have got to turn, as soon as hostilities come to an end, as quickly as we can, not to a period of comparative rest, but to a period of equal effort and hard work in order, first of all, to produce what we need for our bare subsistence in the state in which we shall then be, and, more than that, produce what is necessary for a better and higher standard of life and greater social security. I believe we can do it, but to do it we must exert the same effort, and we must show equal determination to that which we have shown during the war. If I may venture a criticism of the Government's attitude on this matter, it is that they do not appear to me, at any rate, to have considered, or got other people to consider, how this switch-over from production for war purposes to production for peace purposes is to be carried out. Difficult as has been Sir William Beveridge's task, that is a task which will be even more difficult. I urge that the Government should seriously consider setting up some form of Committee, which will have to be very carefully chosen, of able and special persons, to try and work out a definite scheme for this change-over from war production to peace production.

Let me suggest one or two of the details which would have to be carried out. Take the question of aircraft and civil aviation after the war. Transport by air will be one of the most important things in our industry and trade after the war. We shall have in existence an immense number of very capable and excellent aircraft factories, but these will not be suitable for producing the new kind of aircraft without a certain amount of reconstruction and alteration. That is one thing that will have to be done, and the amount of factory accommodation necessary for that purpose will be a mere negligible part of that which we have needed for purposes of war. Therefore the other aircraft factories will be redundant unless, and until, they have turned over to other useful work. Then take the motor trade. We have got to remember, in connexion with this particularly, that not only have we to produce for our own consumption, but to produce in order to obtain from other countries those things needed by us which we cannot produce ourselves. For all practical purposes, from a peace-time point of view, this war has put an end to the motor car industry, but that industry will be, and should be, one of our most hopeful industries in the future. As one example of the considerations which the Committee I have suggested would have to go into, I would point out that before the war we made mainly small cars of a kind useful in our own country, but after the war the value of our motor car manufactures should be very largely for export purposes. The Government will have to consider whether they cannot do something, by altering the method of taxation or otherwise, to make the manufacture of cars for export easier.

On that question of export, may I refer for a moment to the Export Credits Council, a body which even during this war has done an immense amount of very valuable work? It will have more to do, under more difficult and different circumstances, when the war is over. In considering this question of the turn-over from war to peace, I hope the Government will consult with the Export Credits Council and do their best to give that body such freedom as it may need. The Treasury has always treated the Council with sympathy, but I hope it will give it the revised powers which it will probably need after the war, and thus put it in a position to deal with the new situation. I would just refer to one part of the world in which it may be useful—Egypt. Egypt, like many other parts of the world, like British Dependencies, will want help from us. Help given to Egypt should result in our doing great things for ourselves as well. There are needed in Egypt many things that we can make. There is probably in Egypt at the present time something which we want very much. I believe the matter is really in its infancy, and not fully investigated, but I understand there is a very large potential supply of iron ore which may be obtained from there. That will not be obtained unless the necessary arrangements are made for financing the exchange of that raw material from Egypt for, perhaps, coal from this country and things of that kind. Here is a matter in which the Export Credits Council will be of the greatest use. That leads me to the consideration of transport and shipping. There again we shall have, no doubt, an immense amount of shipping available at the end of the war, but it will be shipping which has been used for war purposes and which will require adaptation to peace purposes. That is a matter which will need very careful consideration.

I shall not detain your Lordships longer, but I do want with all the earnestness of which I am capable to impress upon the Government the necessity—I have no doubt the matter has not been overlooked—of getting people to do what members of the Government themselves cannot do; getting some Committee, as they got Sir William Beveridge to make this great Report, to investigate and to advise upon this question of the turn-over from war to peace; to advise as to what is necessary in order to preserve and turn over to the new situation the great possibilities which our production for war purposes has shown to exist in this country. Much of the Government control—may I call it unpleasant control?—which we have accepted willingly for the purposes of the war, will have to remain after the war. Just as we have spent years in labour and endeavour and the restriction of luxuries in order to save the life of the country, so we must go on and submit to a certain amount of the same control, to a considerable amount of rationing and restriction of luxuries, until we have not only replaced the great wastage of our wealth and reserves that has occurred during this war, but have also provided what is necessary both to put us back into the position in which we were and to enable us to realize that improved standard of living for all classes in this country which is envisaged in the magnificent Report that Sir William Beveridge has produced.

THE EARL OF PERTH

My Lords, I feel that your Lordships would wish me first of all to congratulate very warmly the noble Lord who has just sat down on the admirable first speech he has made in your Lordships' House. I hope we may often have the opportunity of listening to his advice, advice which must be all the more valuable on account of the great experience the noble Lord has gained in another place. I intend to be very brief in view of the lateness of the hour, and I shall not enter into the controversy, to my mind the very unhappy controversy, which has arisen about the Beveridge Report. That controversy has arisen between men who, I believe, are all inspired by social good will, and it seems to me to turn very largely upon the discussion of financial potentialities. I wish we could have had a little more light thrown on this aspect of the matter.

I assume that we are all in favour of a large measure of social betterment. We want to see provision made against unemployment, against sickness, and for old age. We desire equal opportunities for all, so far as that may be practicable. We wish certainly to see the abolition of extremes of poverty and of wealth, referred to by the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, in his speech yesterday, and we desire that all parents shall be able to provide proper and adequate maintenance, housing and education for their children either by a system of sufficient family allowances or otherwise. I do not know whether many of your Lordships are aware that various Papal pronouncements have emphasized that these social conditions should prevail in a well-ordered Christian State. It seems to me that many of these ends can best be obtained by the methods outlined in the Beveridge Report; therefore I very gladly and willingly accept the principles of that Report. I feel, however, that any questions relating to priorities, to priorities for parts of the plan, and to the speed with which they can be given effect to, must really be left to the decision of the Government. I cannot believe that a National Government comprising the leaders of all the Parties will not wish to do their utmost to bring to fulfilment as quickly as possible the high hopes which have been raised in so many hearts by the Beveridge Report. I intended to bring another point to your Lordships' notice but in view of the fact that the speaker for the Government is anxious to address You now, I shall refrain from doing so.

LORD SNELL

My Lords, the main charges which have been made against His Majesty's Government in the debate have been met on the whole by the speech of the Lord Chancellor from the Woolsack yesterday. My task, therefore, is not to go over the same but and repeat the same arguments but to try and remove any feelings of disappointment that may still exist and to assure my noble and gallant friend Lord Nathan that things are not always as black as they seem. The debate has served one overwhelmingly important purpose. The Report after a searching debate emerges with the general approval of Parliament, the approval of the Government, and the approval of the nation as a whole. That general approval is a recognition of its special excellence and of the importance of the problems with which it deals. The criticisms made have been a demand for approval of everything that it contains and for undelayed action, and some resentment has been expressed because there has been no promise of immediate legislation. There has been another kind of criticism, too, which has asked: "Where is the money to come from? If we could give effect to the provisions of the Report without much inconvenience, how happy we should all be to agree to that being done.

It is said by some that the right policy would be to wait and see how we get on and to do nothing until the war is over. The attitude of His Majesty's Government on that aspect of the matter is that to do nothing would in reality be to do a good deal: it would leave post-war problems to be settled by uncontrolled economic forces with consequences that you cannot at present foresee and which we might not be able to control. Something must be done and the attitude of the Government is that they cannot agree to take refuge in mere postponement. On the other hand, the financial aspect of the case is overwhelmingly important, and was stressed by the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack in his speech yesterday. It would be folly on the part of any Government to ignore the financial outlook and consequences attached to action. The Government are the guardians of the national treasure, and it is their duty to watch with the utmost care not only present expenditure but expenditure that would be incurred through policies of their own. At the same time, the Government are determined that the financial aspect shall not be the sole determining factor. To neglect on purely financial grounds to provide for future social security might be a mistaken policy in itself and would betray the aspirations of the most order-loving and worthy people in the world. The right way of approach to the consideration of financial difficulties would be to prepare in faith and hope and be ready for action whenever the moment for action comes.

The case for the utmost caution and delay was put with a good deal of force in the speech of my noble friend Viscount Bennett yesterday. He reviewed the future with anxiety. He wished, first of all, to win the war and then exploit the opportunities which peace will provide. But there is no need, in my judgment, to take a hopelessly pessimistic attitude in regard to post-war conditions. The figures of debt and all that is demanded of us are indeed startling, and yet I comfort myself with such odds and ends of my previous economic studies that I remember, with the feeling that, after all, a nation lives on its current production and expenditure. If we can so organize our economic life that we can secure full productivity for our people, then I think the balance between expenditure and income need not altogether frighten us. In any case we must face this matter with a sense of reality but not in a temper of despair. To paraphrase an old text, there is an expenditure which is profitable and there is a parsimony which is impoverishing.

There have been pessimists in other times than our own, men who were filled with anxiety about the economic and financial future of our country. Throughout the nineteenth century that note was constantly sounded. William Pitt, for instance, declared: "There is scarcely anything around us but ruin and despair." Wilberforce went so far as to say: "I dare not marry, the future is so dark and unsettled." Lord Grey said he "believed everything was tending to a convulsion," and the Duke of Wellington, in 1851, "thanked God that he would be spared from seeing the consummation of ruin that is gathering around." Disraeli, who has been referred to in this debate, said: "In industry, commerce and agriculture there is no hope"; and Lord Shaftesbury said: "Nothing can save the British Empire from shipwreck." We have not heard anything worse than that even in this debate. All these eminent gentlemen were wrong. There were similar voices in America and the facts of history tell us that after these lamentations both countries entered upon a period of unexampled progress and prosperity.

LORD WINSTER

May I ask whether the noble Lord has any quotations from 1931 at the time of the formation of the National Government?

LORD SNELL

I could have quoted what might have been the position after the Reform Bill, but that would be rather controversial and I will side-track that if you will allow me to do so. My noble friend Viscount Samuel, in his most able speech, advised us that it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.

VISCOUNT SAMUEL

I did not say that. I treated that maxim with scorn and derision.

LORD SNELL

It was at least approved of by Robert Louis Stevenson whom the noble Viscount quoted. In any case, it seems to me the right attitude is to travel with your eves on the future, to see, if you can, where you are going. There are too many people who just move without knowing where they are going, like travellers in a railway train who prefer to sit with their backs to the engine on the ground that while they do not mind which way they are going they do like to see where they have been.

The demands of the debate have, on the whole, as I say, been met by the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor. I think it is a perfect summary of the attitude of the Government that the Report has their approval in principle and it has behind it their good will. To carry out all the proposals will not be a simple matter. The Government will decide what they can do and when they can do it and what shall have priority if priority is to be given. That is not a rebuff to the Beveridge Report but it is Beveridge unsweetened. It is Beveridge reduced, as it were, to reality, and Sir William Beveridge himself has always foreseen that. He said that it would be a mistake to assume that … we shall at once be able to afford almost anything …. There will be heavy burdens which can only be met by the central Government in the immediate aftermath of war. The Lord President of the Council said in another place a few days ago: The scheme will be worked out as rapidly as possible to the stage of draft legislation. … The Government and Parliament will have to take their decision in the light of the fullest information as to the financial situation that can be made available. It might, as a matter of comfort to my noble friend Lord Nathan, be helpful to say that between 80 and 90 per cent. the Beveridge Report has been approved by his Majesty's Government. There were six main principles in the Report: flat rate of subsistence benefit, flat rate of contributions, unification of administration, adequacy of benefit, comprehensiveness or universality, and the classification of beneficiaries. All these, except one—the principle of subsistence basis—have been accepted. There the Government have stated that they aim to fix an unemployment benefit which will mean practically the same thing. The Report suggested twenty-three separate changes. One of these changes has been rejected, that of insurance, as a public utility which is only an optional thing to begin with. Six have been left open for further consideration, and sixteen have been accepted.

Your Lordships would almost suppose horn some comments that have been made that the Report had been rejected or that it had been treated with an indolent complacency, but I do not think that that will be proved, on examination, to be correct. My noble friend Lord Nathan treated the Government, in his speech yesterday, as though they had actually murdered the Beveridge Report, and now appeared before Parliament with blood on their hands. He looked at me so sternly that I was almost afraid he was going to say: "Thou art the man." According to Lord Nathan's criticism, our situation is little better than that of Lady Macbeth. She too had blood on her hands after murdering Duncan, but the difference is that she called in vain for the perfumes of Arabia, whereas Lord Nathan, in his effort, as he said, to be quite fair, admitted that there was at any rate a "smell of progress" on the part of His Majesty's Government.

Well, there is only the charge of delay that I need to argue to-day. The world is full of people who, for a great part, of their lives, are opposed to, or are indifferent to, changes that are proposed, and suddenly they see the light and come back with all the zeal of St. Paul after he had had the vision on the way to Damascus. Everything must be done at once, they say. Now let us see what has been done. This Report was published on the 2nd December—thirteen weeks ago. In principle, the Report has been already accepted. Specific proposals in it have been approved, future procedure is receiving considerable attention, and now Parliament is giving the Report its exhaustive consideration. My Lords, with some record of personal impatience about these matters, I venture to suggest to you that that is not bad going as things are. If what has been done had been done by a private competitive firm, what a proof of the speed and efficiency of individual enterprise that would have been called. I could carry the argument a little further by saying that work is going forward on this matter day by day To-day a White Paper, Command Paper Number 6248, has been issued dealing with training in the building industry. It shows the work which will have to be done before we can see our way through all the problems in this matter. I think the argument in favour of the appointment of a Minister of Social Security now has, on the whole, been understood. It is an immensely difficult thing to set up a new Ministry and to make it at once efficient. My noble friend Lord Addison, to-day, if I understood him aright, acknowledged that it took him eighteen months to get agreement as to the establishment of a Ministry of Health. Well, thirteen weeks is not eighteen months, and it must be remembered that Ministers of the Crown have certain preoccupations which are vital to the interests of the country.

I think that people expected a certain delay in the implementing of these matters. Mr. Arthur Greenwood, for example, on 1st December last, asked for no more than that early in the new year there should be a fairly reasonable opportunity, before the Government had made up their minds, for the House to express its considered opinion. The House has had that opportunity and has expressed its opinion. I think that while desiring action as quickly as possible, it is not unmindful of the work that has already been done. The question of children's allowances has been mentioned, and I regard that as an almost revolutionary change in our outlook, which the Government have accepted in thirteen weeks. I remember that it took the T.U.C. far longer than that to make up its mind on that great problem. The proposal is that it shall be 5s., and the idea of Sir William Beveridge was that it should be 8s. But the desire of the Government is, by the development of child welfare, to bring up the total benefit to something like the level which he proposed. I regret that we cannot promise a Bill on any given date. Matters of great complexity are involved, and Parliament can, if it so desires, have the whole subject before it again at a later date if it thinks that there is undue delay.

This debate is now ending. I have tried to compress my own contribution to it into a very short time. If I may be allowed to say so, it has not only been a very useful debate but it has been conducted on a high level. My noble friend Lord Nathan was good enough to say yesterday that he wanted to give the Government a second chance. The Government do not like to be outdone in generosity, and therefore on their part they are willing to give the critics another chance, to consider quietly and with sincerity whether they, if they had the preoccupation of a war on their shoulders, would have done much better. The nation, at any rate, is not unaware that Ministers are concerned with matters vital to its very life, and it will not condemn them because in thirteen weeks their examination of the vast problems opened up by the Beveridge Report has not been completed. The decisions arrived at are not final, and Parliament can at any time it pleases call upon the Government to report progress in the carrying out of the Report.

LORD NATHAN

My Lords, however much we may differ in other respects—and I know that some noble Lords do differ from the opinions which I have put forward—it will be common ground, I believe, that this debate has been useful and not unimportant. I do not propose to attempt to traverse the whole ground of this debate, or to occupy your Lordships for more than a few moments. I recognize, and have done from the first, what my noble friend said just now as to the views of the Government with regard to the assumptions made and the various changes proposed by Sir William Beveridge, but I have noted also that Sir John Anderson in the House of Commons prefaced his statement by saying that the Government took no commitment in regard to those assumptions and ended it by saying that the Government had taken no commitment in respect of them. That was underlined and emphasized by Sir Kingsley Wood and not varied by Mr. Herbert Morrison.

The question which I have put to myself in listening to the noble and learned Lord Chancellor yesterday, and to my noble friend Lord Snell, is this: Is there any certainty that the Government will put into effect any of these proposals before the end of the war? I am confronted in particular with this formidable question. Large hopes and expectations have been aroused by the way in which this Report was publicized. It has become, as has been said on more than one occasion, a symbol and a test. I put this to the Lord Chancellor, and I put it to Lord Snell: Can I go with hand upon heart to the soldiers, sailors and airmen in the Forces, and to the men and women who are working in our factories, and say to them: "You can rely, when you come home again, on finding that the state of the nation is such that these three assumptions"—or perhaps only two of them, for perhaps only two can be given effect by legislation—" and these sixteen or seventeen changes are part of the law of the land and in operation, so that when you are demobilized you will find that you have these substantial advantages which are adumbrated in the Beveridge Report"? That is the crucial question. If the answer is "Yes, you can rely upon that when you come home," there is no more to be said; we are all at one; but is that the answer which any honest man can now give to those in the Forces and to those in industry? There is nothing in what has been said by the Lord Chancellor or by Lord Snell which I feel would justify me in making any such statement, unless now—and I give them the opportunity—they tell me that I am wrong in that. There is no answer; I must assume that the view which I have formed is correct.

The noble Lord, Lord Rushcliffe, taunted me with making the suggestion that all these measures should be passed into law at once. Of course I did no such thing. I asked that the plan—though not every detail of it—should be accepted now, and I asked that legislation by continuous stages should be begun now. I am anxious, as I have indicated, that this scheme in its broad essentials shall be effective by the end of the war. I would refer the noble Lord to what Sir William Beveridge said on page 168 of the Report, paragraph 451. I shall quote only one sentence: If a plan for freedom from want, so far as social security can give it, is to be ready when the war ends, it must be prepared during the war. That is what I am asking for, and, when he says "prepared" he means that all the steps must be taken to bring it into effect when the war ends. That, as I have said, is the crucial question.

The noble and learned Lord Chancellor made a speech of very great dexterity yesterday in defence of the Government, a speech which I much admired, although I did not find myself fully convinced by it. He was inclined to castigate me, I think, for criticizing the Government. Ever since this Government was formed, I have by both word and action, so far as lay in my power, been a warm supporter of the Government. I have supported them loyally; and if yesterday I felt it my duty, as I did, to speak warmly, it was because I feel warmly upon this subject. But I seek not points of difference but points of agreement.

There is a matter to which it is essential that Parliament should give its attention, and to which the noble Lord, Lord Snell, did incidentally refer. There is growing up now a wide cleavage of opinion, not along Party lines but which cuts across Parties. It is on this question: Is reconstruction for after the war to be proceeded with now, with all possible force and speed, concurrently with the full prosecution of the war to a victorious conclusion, which, of course, must be our first aim, or are we to follow the line of thought which was the burden of the speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Bennett, yesterday, as I understood it, and are we to wait until the war is over and then start, in the chaotic situation with which we shall then be confronted, to put together plans for reconstruction? On that question a really formidable cleavage of opinion is growing up, a cleavage which, as I say, is not along Party lines. The differences with regard to the Government's attitude on the Beveridge scheme have been an indication and a symptom of that cleavage of opinion.

Are the Government, with all their qualifications and conditions, really playing for delay in order to appease the one school of thought, or are they, on the other hand, binding themselves with the utmost energy to bring in the necessary legislation as soon as it is reasonably possible with a view to its becoming the law of the land, ready to be carried into effect when demobilization occurs? That is the crucial question. It is only another way of putting that which I put earlier. I must confess I do not feel that either the Lord Chancellor or my noble friend opposite has given any satisfying reply to that question. They leave, at least in my mind, a feeling of disturbance as to what really is in the mind of the Government in this matter. Because we really must know now what we are going to tell those in the Forces and those in the factories as to the situation which they may expect to find when they come home. Is it to be Beveridge or is it to be No Beveridge? That is what they want to know.

My noble friend Lord Addison this afternoon spoke about the mobilization of unity, and I know that the Lord Chancellor and the other members of His Majesty's Government must be anxious to mobilize for the common purpose people of every school of thought. All of us have shown ourselves anxious hitherto, and I earnestly believe we are all of us anxious—I know I am—to pursue that same line now and until the war is brought to a conclusion. But it does involve the Government's taking into account all points of view. To-day we have come to the end of two days' debate following upon three days' debate in another place on this Report. Very strong views in certain directions have been expressed. It will have been observed that in the course of the debate in your Lordships' House scarcely a speaker—two perhaps—did not support the idea of the immediate creation of a Ministry of Social Security. I said yesterday that the Government had a second chance, and I expressed the hope that they would take advantage of it. They have had the opportunity, they have it still. They can still make this concession to the almost unanimous feeling of the House of Lords and the wide feeling that there is outside.

I really was not speaking vaguely, or without knowledge, or without a sense of responsibility, when I said yesterday that the question of the creation or not of a Ministry of Social Security now has become the test of sincerity. It may be very foolish that it should have become so, but it has. Now, if the Government would make that concession to feeling, I believe that an entirely new atmosphere would be created, in regard not merely to this whole matter of the Beveridge proposals but also in regard to reconstruction as a whole. For the attitude that the Government adopt with regard to the Beveridge Report will indicate in the minds of the people the attitude which the Government will adopt with regard to reconstruction. I have no desire to detain your Lordships further, and I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.