NATIONAL ASSISTANCE BILL

HL Deb 07 July 1959 vol 217 cc789-805

4.16 p.m.

Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, your Lordships have agreed that we should discuss the draft National Assistance Regulations, which your Lordships approved of some little time ago, together with this Bill. These Regulations which we have now passed provide for certain increases in the scales of benefit which are paid by the National Assistance Board; they further provide for a change in the rent rule, and also for an extension in the amount of earnings which are disregarded by the National Assistance Board. None of these things requires legislation. But this Bill, to which we now come, makes similar changes in the amount of income other than earnings, and in the amount of savings and capital assets, which are disregarded by the National Assistance Board. The reason why these changes do need legislation is that they alter the amounts which are laid down in the Schedule to the 1948 Act. As it has been agreed that we should discuss these two measures, which of course hang together, at the same time, I shall try as briefly as I can, first, to explain the increases in benefit, next to explain the change in the rent rule and, finally, to explain the changes which are being made in what is called the "disregards".

As your Lordships probably know, the scale rates of the National Assistance Board since 1948 have been increased no fewer than six times; they have been increased not quite every year, but every other year, and more often than any other kind of social service payment. In 1948 they began at 40s. for a husband and wife and 24s. for a single man; in 1950 they went up to 43s. 6d. and 26s.; in 1951 to 50s and 30s., in 1952 to 59s. and 35s., in 1955 to 63s. and 37s. 6d., in 1956 to 67s. and 40s., and finally, in January of last year, they went up to the present rates of 76s. and 45s. The new regulations propose that they should be raised by a further 9s. for a married couple—that is, from 76s. to 85s.—and by a further 5s. for a single householder—that is, from 45s. to 50s.

There are increases also in the allowances made for children: for those aged 16 to 17 the allowance began at 15s. in 1948, it is now 26s., and is now to be increased to 30s.; for those aged 11 to 15, which was 10s. 6d. in 1948, which is now 20s., and is now to be increased to 23s.; for those aged 5 to 10, which was 9s. in 1948 and is 17s. at the present time, it is proposed to increase to 19s.; and under the age of 5 it will be increased from the present 14s. 6d. to 16s. If you take an example of a married couple who have three children aged 12, 8 and 3, and are paying a rent of 15s., assuming that the rent has remained constant all the time the weekly allowance in 1948 would have been £4 2s. 0d., at the present time it would be £7 2s. 6d., and under the new scales it would be £7 18s. 0d.

I think your Lordships are aware that there are special allowances substantially higher for blind and tuberculous persons, and increases for these special allowances which are proposed in the Regulations are correspondingly greater than the standard increases. I do not think I need go through the figures which your Lordships will find at the end of paragraph 3 of the White Paper. There is perhaps one difference worth noting between all these numerous increases which have taken place over the last eleven years and that which is proposed now. The object of increasing the benefits so often was that inflation was fairly continuously taking place, though in fact the increases in benefits upon the whole were rather greater than the increase in the cost of living—from 40s. to 76s. was slightly greater than the 55 per cent., or whatever it is, rise in the cost of living which has taken place in the same period. But since the last increase establishing the present rates which took effect at the beginning of 1958, there has not been any further increase in the cost of living. Last month I think there was a very slight fraction of 1 per cent. decline.

Therefore, the purpose of this increase which is now being proposed is not to continue the chase after rising prices, but to effect a real advance in the standards of subsistence which are applied by the National Assistance Bard. Whatever kind of adjective you may use, like "minimum" standard or "reasonable" standard. I think they are all apt sometimes to be misleading. Whatever adjective you want to use to describe the Board's standard of living, the object of these Regulations is to enable it to make a real and substantial advance in its former standards which is not simply demanded by rising prices, inflation and increasing costs, but because our ideas of standards of subsistence are, and ought to be, rising.

I think some of your Lordships were in another place at the time when the Unemployment Assistance Board was started, and you may no doubt remember the Unemployment Assistance Regulations which were brought in by Mr. Ernest Brown in 1936. He always said that he would bring them in in the Spring, and there were always complaints from all sides of the House because Spring came and he never did. Ultimately, they were brought in in June, and I think that was when the rent rule was first introduced. It was changed a little in 1941, but since then the principle of it has been the same—that is to say, that the Board ascertain in every locality what is a reasonable average rent for the size of the family or for the class of house with which they are dealing. The original idea of this rent rule was that the occupiers who were in receipt of National Assistance, or Unemployment Assistance, whatever its name was—it has changed several times—should receive the ascertained average under the local rent rule.

The Board have always had discretion to give a larger allowance than the local rent rule in respect of rent. In practice, when the applicant, whether single or married, has not a fully-employed earning member of the family living with him, the Board always pay, not the notional rent according to the rent rule, but the whole of the actual rent. If, however, the applicant has, say, a son earning a full wage living with him, then the Board pay only his rent as ascertained under the local rent rule, which may not be his actual rent and, at the same time, the earning member of the family is deemed by the Board to make a contribution of 7s. a week towards the general household expenses, and that is deducted from the ascertainment of the applicant.

May I give your Lordships an example? Suppose the rent under the local rent rule is 15s., and suppose the actual rent being paid is 30s. If there were no earning member of the family the whole 30s. would be paid by the Board. If there were a working member of the family, only 15s. would be paid by the Board, and at the same time that working member of the family would be deemed to be contributing 7s. towards the assets of the applicant which would come off his ascertainment, so that the total extra amount over and above the scales which he would receive would amount to 8s.

What the regulations propose to do is to abolish this local rent rule altogether, to allow the Board in every case, whether there is a working member in the family or not, to pay the whole of the rent, to abolish the deemed contribution of 7s. which a working member of the family is held to make towards general household expenses, but to assume that this working member of the family will pay his numerical proportion of the rent—that is to say, where there are three people living in the house he will he deemed to be paying one-third of the rent. If I may give this example again, the deemed rent of 15s. will be abolished and the actual rent of 30s. is the only thing that will be considered. The working member of the family would be assumed to be contributing one-third if there were three people in the house, father and mother and son, of this 30s. rent; that is, 10s., so that the applicant would receive 20s. from the Board in respect of rent, instead of only 8s. as he would he doing at present. That would be paid in addition to the new scale rate of 85s. for man and wife, so that in this imaginary case under these regulations they would be receiving 105s. instead of 76s. plus 8s., which is 84s., at the present time.

Finally, there are what are called "disregards", dealt with partly under the Regulations and partly under this Bill. The Regulations deal only with the disregard of earnings. In the case of a person who is not registered as seeking employment—that is to say, someone who owing to age or ill-health is not on the register—at present the first 20s. of earnings are disregarded. Under the new proposals which we are now discussing it would be the first 30s., plus 50 per cent. of any excess over 30s. up to a limit of 20s. That is to say, a person earning 30s. would have the whole 30s. disregarded. If he was earning 50s. he would have the first 30s. plus half of the remaining 20s., which is another 10s., disregarded, making 40s. out of 50s. disregarded, as compared with 20s. at the present time. If he is registered as seeking work—that is to say, if he is not precluded from ordinary work by ill health or age, but is unemployed—he is at present allowed 10s. of any occasional casual earnings he may get to be disregarded. That is increased by these proposals to 15s. Similar increases are made in other kinds of income which count as disregards: for instance, benefits from friendly societies or charitable institutions, increased from half a guinea to 15s. and so on; and in respect of the earnings of children under 16, instead of one-third of their earnings there is now substituted the flat rate of 15s.

Before I left the rent rule I ought to have mentioned one point, which perhaps I need not really mention because it is in the Regulations. A working member of the household is not deemed to make any contribution unless he is earning 60s. a week or more, as your Lordships will see in these Regulations in the Second Schedule in paragraph 3. If any of your Lordships are mathematically inquisitive, it may have occurred to you that it might be unfair that a man earning 59s. should be deemed to pay nothing and a man earning 61s. deemed to pay quite a lot. The answer is that the Board have discretion in this matter, which they have always been accustomed to use very widely, and in a marginal case of that kind they would of course use it to see that a man was not worse off as a result of earning more than 60s. a week. The Board have also given an assurance that if, as a result of this new rent rule, anybody is worse off, they will use their discretion to correct that. It is mathematically very difficult to work out a hypothetical case in which an applicant could be worse off, but I believe it can be done, and therefore the Board have given that assurance.

Now, may I come back to the disregards which I interrupted to finish off what I had forgotten to say about the rent rule? The amount of savings which are disregarded is dealt with by the Bill and not by the Regulations. There are two forms of property totally exempted which are not changed at all by this Bill. There is the first £375 of War savings. That is a very special matter, because that privilege was given in the war as a special inducement to people to put their money into war savings; it is justifiable solely on that ground and it has never been claimed to to be justified on any other. The other exemption which is unchanged is that the applicant's house and personal belongings shall not be taken into account. That, of course, is unchanged, because they were always wholly exempt. I have made some inquiries this morning from the Board to find out exactly what things may be covered by "personal belongings", and those of your Lordships who live in the country may be encouraged to know that it includes cows.

With regard Ito the total amount of savings, at present the first £50 of capital assets are totally exempt and from £50 to £400 are partially exempt, 6d. a week being deducted for every complete £25 between £50 and £400. Sixpence a week on £25 is just about 5 per cent. interest, and the principle is that the applicant is deemed to be receiving 5 per cent. interest on his capital assets. These figures of capital assets are all increased by the Bill by 50 per cent., or, rather, the maximum is increased by 50 per cent., but the basic total exemption is doubled from £50 to £100. Since the Board deal only in blocks of £25, that means in effect that up to £124 would be totally exempt, and the upper limit which does not disqualify a man from applying for benefit is raised from £400 to £600. The same provision is made in the intervening stages between £100 and £600; that is to say, 6d. a week for every complete £25 is deducted.

I think everybody hopes that all people in the country who are entitled to National Assistance, whether it be for a large amount or a small amount, will not he deterred from applying for it by arty feeling that it is derogatory to their self respect. That has often been said, but I think we are all doing what we can to remove the lingering idea that there is some similarity between this and the old Poor Law. I am not going to read it, but if your Lordships have the Annual Report of the National Assistance Board you will find on pages 34 and 35 a description of the procedure under which the applicant can apply for benefit, and I think everybody who knows anything about the Board will agree that their work is carried out in an extremely humane and understanding way. The Board's offices are always ready to receive any applicant who wants to visit them for some urgent reason, but as a general rule very few of the Board's clients have to visit the Board's offices; the visiting is done by the Board's officers to the homes of the applicants and the conversation is really more concerned with needs than with any kind of inquisition into means.

But there is really little difference in principle between applying for National Assistance and applying for family allowance, neither of which is acquired as of right by contribution; they are both entirely gratuitous payments from the State. Probably many of your Lordships have often gone to the Post Office with a family allowance book, because, although it is payable to the mother and not to the father, the father is often deputed to carry out tasks of this kind. We greatly hope that no one will be deterred by any feelings that it is hurting one's self-respect from making every application that it may be right and appropriate that he should make to the National Assistance Board.

In the debate in another place on this Bill and on these Regulations, the discussion seemed to be centred largely on the relationship between National Assistance and the statutory insurance benefits. If your Lordships want to have a debate of this kind, I should be delighted to join in the fun; but in case your Lordships should prefer to keep to the actual subject matter of the measure which we are discussing, I have thought it better to confine myself to an explanation of what it is intended to do by these Regulations and by this Bill. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.

Moved, That the Bill be now read 2^a.—(The Earl of Dundee.)

4.42 p.m.

LORD PETHICK-LAWRENCE

My Lords, we have listened with interest, and I may say pleasure, to the account given by the noble Earl of his view with regard to this Bill which he has the privilege of presenting to this House. I may say for myself, and I am sure for those on these Benches, that we have felt that he has given a clear, accurate and perfectly concise description of the proposals in this Bill. If I may add one further word, we always admire the way in which the noble Earl comes to this House, apparently with no notes at all, and reels off a whole mass of figures none of which is ever in question, entirely without reference to the papers, if he has written down any points in order to refresh his memory.

The noble Earl will not be surprised if I say that we on these Benches as well as noble Lords on those Benches, are all of one mind in thinking that this Bill is in every way an improvement on what has gone before. I will deal with some of the points a little later on. The only misgiving which some of us on this side of the House have—and my colleagues in another place took the same view—is a fear lest there shall be some attempt, some inclination, to switch back from the principle of an earned superannuation as of right to monetary support from the Assistance Board. That does not mean that we do not believe in National Assistance. The principle of National Assistance was founded by my Party in 1948, and has been improved from time to time and supported by both Parties, the Government as they happened to be at the time. We have welcomed those improvements, one by one, as they have taken place. Further than that, we have witnessed with gratification, and supported, the idea that National Assistance shall cease to be regarded by its recipients or would-be recipients, as in any way something shameful, something to be kept clear of; that those who really are in need, whether because they are in old age or for some other reason, and who have not the means to support themselves in reasonable comfort, have a perfect right to go to the National Assistance Fund and to obtain what is necessary to bring them above the dire poverty level. We take note of what is happening; we approve of it, and we approve of the progress that has been made.

Of course, in the main, in terms of money, that progress has been due to an attempt to counterbalance the fall in the value of money and to make the present benefits at least as good as the benefits given when the scheme was first introduced. I will go further than that and say that I understand that the present level of benefits in fact represents a greater increase on the original figures than would be required merely to counterbalance the rise in the cost of living. I think it is true that the rate which is contemplated in this Bill and in the Regulations which we have approved does not merely restore the position of the recipient to the former level, but puts him on a slightly higher level than he was before. We all recognise that, in these days of comparative prosperity in the country, that is a good thing.

Nevertheless, I feel, together with a good many of my Party, that the figures provided by the national superannuation schemes put forward by the Government are still inadequate, and should be much higher. But I dealt with that point when we had the debate on the Second Reading of the National Insurance Bill, and I have no wish, any more than the noble Earl had, to go over that ground again. I have quoted that only because I want to explain why my Party, though we support this Bill, and though we support the principle of National Insurance, are far from being wholly satisfied. We think that a larger amount should be obtained through National Insurance, and that if that were done fewer people would have to ask for National Assistance. However, now that National Assistance is becoming recognised more as a reasonable, kindly gift than as a grudging charity, more people at the other end, those who have been hitherto unwilling to do so, are coming forward. And we welcome the addition in the numbers.

I think it is probably true that in days gone by the 85s. a week allowance for a married couple, plus rent allowance, would have been regarded as an adequate amount for people who were lacking sufficient means to keep themselves; and even though, of course, the value of money has enormously changed it is a great thing that we in this country have National Assistance of such a kind as this. Our objections, which I have stated already, do not apply to this particular Bill, but rather to the frame of mind of certain people, who want to fob off old people, who have in their day been workers, with National Assistance, if they really need it, in preference to giving what we think necessary; that is a fair proportion of their weekly earnings while at work after they have retired—something like the position recognised both by the Government in relation to civil servants, and by private employers. We deprecate the idea that there have to be two or three separate means of obtaining sufficient money to live on. I need not further adumbrate that point to-day.

Apart from that general issue, the desirability of raising the earned superannuation as a right, so that fewer people would need National Assistance, there are one or two particular points about which the Opposition in this House and in another place are not entirely happy; indeed, I am not sure that Her Majesty's Government themselves are fully happy about them. One of the principal points is in regard to the "disregard". This is a very complicated question, but perhaps I can cover the main principles in very few words.

During the war there was a great desire to attract people who had sufficient to satisfy their needs, and a bit to spare, to save money. The Government of that time, therefore, made a special disregard for people who were prepared to put their money into certain forms of saving. Not wishing to throw the net too wide, the Government did not accept for this purpose all forms of saving, but specifically cited those forms which would be subject to disregard: Government Stocks in the Post Office Register, National Savings Certificates and money in the Post Office Savings Bank and Trustee Savings Banks; and they provided that a certain amount should be a special and unique disregard. I believe that to-day the amount is up to about £375. I am not sure whether that was the limit throughout, but it was roughly that figure.

That provision was not extended to other forms of saving which would appear to us to-day to be of equal merit. There are several other means of genuine saving which I need not recite. One, in particular, which will be familiar to some in this House, and which was cited in particular in another place, is savings with the Co-operative Society. I am not making a plea for one form of saving alone but for all other forms that can be called, in a sense, national savings. As I understand it, Her Majesty's Government take the view that they are unable to extend this privilege further, and that they must keep up this distinction between savings in the specific forms I have detailed and those in the Co-operative Society and other forms of general saving. I do not know the precise merits of the claim made by Her Majesty's Government that the former are the subject of promises made in the past—that those particular forms of saving would be put into a special category by themselves. I do not know how far it is possible to extend the category to other forms of saving. But in another place, at any rate, Her Majesty's Government took the view that it would be quite improper to do so; and it may be that that is still the view of Her Majesty's Government to-day.

There is, however, one particular point which I should like to ask the noble Earl. I believe the question was asked in another place though I am not quite certain; nor do I know whether any precise answer was given. I can understand the position of a person who, on the good faith of the Government, during the war years devoted his hard-earned savings to one or other of these specific Government disregards. We could not break faith with that man or fail to keep up that disregard. But supposing that during the war years, or during some other period of his life, a man saved money in other forms, and only within the last few years has gone to some person who holds one of these particular Government savings and said: "I am wanting National Assistance and I will do a 'swap' with you. You give me your National Savings and I will give you my savings in something else." I should like to know how this matter stands with regard to those people. It may be necessary to keen faith with the former class of people and therefore to avoid dealing with them inadequately or improperly; but is it really quite the same thing with regard to people who do a "swap" later on in order to come within the four corners of this proposal? Perhaps the noble Earl who is to reply on this Bill will give me an answer to that question.

In saying all this I am not denying for one moment that Her Majesty's Government, as the noble Earl has said, are making a specific advance. They are increasing the other disregard from £50 to £100 and increasing the overall amount which can be held without the possibility of failing to obtain money order National Assistance. That is all to the good. As I have said, the Bill is good so far as it goes. This may be as far as Her Majesty's Government are prepared to go, but we are a little disquieted on one or two points. We are also very anxious that no inroads shall be made on the principle that a man who has worked all his life, who has earned good money and put aside a very considerable contribution every year, should get this payment in old age as a right; and that those who are to get National Assistance should not be the general run of people but only those who, for some special reason, have fallen by the way and therefore are outside that provision.

With those few observations I will conclude as I began, by saying that this Bill will have no difficulty in its passage through this House. We shall not divide against it. We shall not oppose it in any way. We are glad that the Bill has been brought in. But it is necessary, for the future, to realise such defects as there are, defects which this Bill, among others, brings to light in the method which we in this country have adopted for taking care of our old people.

4.48 p.m.

LORD SALTOUN

My Lords, all I want to say from this side of the House is that I am very glad to see these new scales and new Regulations, and I welcome them very much. In particular, I welcome the special consideration given to the blind. The noble Lord, Lord Pethick-Lawrence, has told the House of one or two things in the National Assistance Bill which cause him some uneasiness. I will mention only one. I am not now familiar with the organisation of the National Assistance Board, but I feel that there ought to be some fairly high authority to whom people can go and from whom they can obtain an answer to some particular special question, so that the matter can be dealt with without delay.

The kind of case I have in mind is the case of that poor woman who had to abandon her children in Victoria station in order to get proper treatment. I believe it was known for quite a long time before that woman arrived that she was going to arrive. The National Assistance Board knew about it, but somehow or other they failed to contact the case. It may be that there is such an organisation as I should like to see and it failed on that occasion, and that is just bad luck; but it seems to me that when it is known that someone is coming from overseas and is going to land at a particular port on a particular day and will need special treatment by National Assistance, then one ought to be able to go to somebody in authority and say, "This is a special case. Can we leave it to you and will you deal with At?" If there is such a thing then one cannot complain about one bad-luck accident; but if there is not, I suggest that that case ought to lead us to inquire to see whether similar cases in the future could not be dealt with regularly.

5.1 p.m.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLS-BOROUGH

My Lords, may I say how indebted I am to my noble friend Lord Pethick-Lawrence for dealing with this Bill from our point of view, and for specifically calling the noble Earl's attention to matters with regard to savings which come within, or do not come within, the calculations. I feel that the movement to which I have given most of my life, the Co-operative Movement, is being very shabbily treated by the Government in this matter. I am not attacking any other form of benefit that has been given at all, but I do say this: that for something like eighty to ninety years, since the co-operative societies first got upon their feet, they have manufactured an engine of thrift in this country and provided a means for saving by the working class in this country which never existed before. They get certain sums of money coming hack to them in respect of mutual services and associations and industrial and provident societies. I am quite sure that the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, will know of Scottish burghs where they used to rely upon savings in a number of ways; some were drawn and were of the greatest possible benefit to local authorities because they were used to pay the half-yearly rates on large sections of working-class property. The other surpluses would accumulate in the societies' funds and were reinvested through the co-operative societies by the million, and there was a very great aid to building up savings in Government stocks.

You have done one thing after the other. You have raised the amount of annual interest in the Post Office Savings Bank to £15 a year before tax has to be paid; you have done that also with regard to Trustee security savings banks in cities like Sheffield and Manchester, Glasgow and the like. You have done it for a number of other working-class organisations. But you have handicapped the industrial and provident societies, who still have to make their proper returns for tax on the interest due to the individual depositor in a co-operative society and who are not getting at all the same benefit that is being accorded to these funds. It is the same in the case of these National Assistance provisions. I think that that is really a very grave error on the part of the Government.

I know that a large number of the individual members of the co-operative societies feel that Conservative Governments from the time of the 1933 Finance Act onwards have gradually taken a line against this very great engine of thrift, once referred to by the late Lord Home, when Sir Robert Home and Chancellor of the Exchequer, as being one of the most steadying and stabilising influences in the life of the nation. You appear to be doing it deliberately, stage by stage, giving preference to other forms of savings; and we shall not be able to forget it when the time comes, unless the Government can see reason in their administration in this matter.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Pethick-Lawrence, asked me to reassure him on the question of statutory retirement pensions. There is certainly no intention on the part of the Government that the future of contributory retirement pensions shall in any way be prejudiced or affected by increasing National Assistance allowances. My right honourable friend the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance dealt with this point in another place on the Second Reading of this Bill. Perhaps your Lordships will allow me to quote what he said, which was: I should be ruled out of order if I were to attempt to say more than that the assurances given by my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and myself in relation to National Insurance benefits are not affected in any way by the fact that we are now bringing forward these proposals. Those undertakings remain with the full force behind them of a Government who have a good record in these matters. These undertakings to which my right honourable friend was referring included, of course, the undertaking that the national retirement pension scheme will be kept continually under review, as is explained in paragraph 34 of the White Paper, and that has been often repeated by those who have had to speak on behalf of the Government.

LORD PETHICK-LAWRENCE

My Lords, I quite understand that. My criticism—and I do not want to labour it—is that the scheme has started off on the wrong foot.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, I do not know whether the noble Lord is referring to this scheme or to the pension scheme.

LORD PETHICK-LAWRENCE

The pension scheme.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

The pension scheme. That is not what we are discussing now. I quite understand the noble Lord's anxiety that statutory contributory pensions should not in any way be prejudiced by anything we do about this question. Whether by improving contributory pensions we should necessarily keep people off National Assistance is, of course, another matter. The fact is that our ideas about subsistence levels are continually rising. What seems to me very often to happen is this. When people sit down to work out a contributory pension scheme which will be large enough to make it unnecessary for any of the recipients to go to National Assistance, by the time they have finished working out their scheme and brought it into operation they are about five years out of date in their ideas of the standard of subsistence. Meanwhile, National Assistance rates have risen, too. So, although you give much higher contributory pensions, you do not keep people off National Assistance, because everybody's idea of subsistence standards has gone up.

I was interested to see in the Daily Mirror last week an article by Mr. Crossman in which he gave tables showing the various consequences to rates of contribution and rates of benefit of the contributory pension scheme which he advocates. But he begins by saying that this increase will apply not only to unemployment and sickness benefit, which of course goes without saying, but also to National Assistance scales. So Mr. Crossman is proposing to increase National Assistance scales by a similar amount at the same time as he raises these benefits. And, of course, that might be a very good thing to do: it might give everybody more money, and all might be happier. But it would not keep people off National Assistance if, at the same time as raising the insurance benefits, he raised National Assistance scales as well.

It seems to me that our real problem is this: that if we are to have such a large scale of contributory pensions as will make it reasonably certain that all, or nearly all, of the recipients will not be under any need to apply to the National Assistance Board, we should need such an enormous rate of contributions that no Party would feel inclined to propose those contributions. In my own opinion—I may be quite wrong—the present scheme suggested by Mr. Crossman would not be at all sufficient to keep more than a very few extra people off National Assistance at the present time, and I think probably even fewer in future. But, my Lords, I know that neither the noble Lord, Lord Pethick-Lawrence, nor I want to have a general debate on the relationship between National Assistance and National Insurance contributions; but I did want to re-assure him about the first question that he asked.

The noble Lord also asked a particular question about War Savings, and the noble Viscount. Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, referred to the same matter. It is not a question, I think, of putting other kinds of saving at a disadvantage. The reason why War Savings were given this privileged position was not to discourage any other kind of savings but to give a special war-time inducement to people to put their money into these particular investments. Those savings were there- fore given this extra privilege, which has nothing to do with the ordinary considerations governing the practice of the National Assistance Board about "disregards". It was a special privilege given to a special class of investment for war reasons: and, of course, the co-operative societies' investments are not at any disadvantage compared with all the vast range of other investments, apart from War Savings, in which people might have their money, and which have now been increased from £400 to £600 as the upper limit and from £50 to £100 as the amount which is totally disregarded. But I hope your Lordships appreciate—perhaps I should have made it plain—that the War Savings are in addition to that; they are not competing with it. So that if a man has £375 worth of War Savings, he may have a ceiling of £975 and still apply for National Assistance benefit—£600 worth of other investments, which may include shares in a co-operative society, and £375 worth of War Savings. Or, if you take the total exemption figure, he may have investments of a little under £100 plus £375, which will be completely disregarded.

With regard to the question of "swapping", which was a "new one on me", I have fortunately been able to get the answer, which is that it has to be "new" money. A man has to show that he has bought the War Savings out of his own money which he has saved, and not exchanged them for some other investment.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLS-BOROUGH

How can that be done in practice, in view of the detailed administration?

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

By inquiry. He has to state that he has not "swapped" it.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLS-BOROUGH

I know, but it will not be done.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

Perhaps that is a matter of opinion. Anyhow, "swapping" is not supposed to be done. I am grateful to your Lordships for the general support which has been given to the Bill. I will look into the point which my noble friend Lord Saltoun has raised. I am also grateful to your Lordships for meeting, not my convenience but the convenience of the House in general, in taking this discussion a little later than we had at first expected.

On Question, Bill read 2^a; Committee negatived.