EMPLOYMENT FOR DISABLED WORKERS

HL Deb 24 June 1959 vol 217 cc184-203

2.50 p.m.

LORD STONHAM rose to call attention to the increasing difficulty experienced by Workshops for the Blind, Reemploy, and other disabled workers' organisations, in finding employment for disabled workers, and to urge Her Majesty's Government to modify present arrangements so that the priority suppliers receive a larger proportion of Government contracts; and to move for Papers. The noble Lords said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper, and first I should like to say how grateful I am to those noble Lords who have indicated their intention of speaking in this debate, because the subject is one of very great concern to thousands of people who really need and deserve our help. I had hoped this afternoon to be immediately followed by my noble friend Lord Fraser of Lonsdale, who has, of course, experience in this subject which is unequalled. Unfortunately, he has to be many miles away, but he has kindly written to me to say: There would have been nothing I would like better to do than support you in the debate on June 24.

My object in moving this Motion is solely to secure your Lordships' support and, I hope, the Government's approval for a policy of providing work and, indeed, full employment for blind and other badly disabled people, and to increase the amount of work available to the inmates of Her Majesty's prisons. My interest in the subject springs from a thirty years' association with blind workers. There are some 106,000 blind persons of all ages in this country, of whom 6,000 are in open employment; they need nothing from us except sympathetic understanding and a continuance and perhaps development of our blind welfare services, which are the best in the world. But there are 4,000 blind workers in sheltered employment and their need is work—work for their hands to do.

My father's brother was blinded at the age of 30. He was a great, strong chap and a craftsman. He neither asked for nor received help, public or private. Always he ignored his handicap; it was "I saw so-and-so yesterday". When anything was mislaid he knew exactly where to find it. He saw through his great, strong hands and with them supported himself and his family. I am a member of the Joint Industrial Council for the Basketmaking Industry. On the employers' side sit mainly managers of blind workshops; on the employees' side mainly members of the National League of the Blind. One of them was Chairman quite recently and for some weeks I was a member with him of a committee which was appointed to revise wages. He sat there making holes in a Braille block recording the complicated calculations and "keeping tabs" on the rest of us. And often "blind Fred" would pull us up; his fingers had detected errors that our eyes had overlooked. I mention these things to emphasise what I think is true of all blind and badly disabled people: they want neither charity nor pity; all they ask is the right to work and the chance to earn their living and live their lives the same as everyone else. We have come a long way from the day when it seemed a natural thing to call a blind workshop an asylum for the blind, a place to hide.

It is the same with severely disabled people who are registered in Section II of the Disabled Persons Register. Many thousands are in open employment; of the remaining 10,000 6,000 are working in Remploy, one of the noble enterprises which grew out of the last war. But more than 4,000 are not working at all, chiefly because Remploy has no work for them. I am not overlooking the 1,500-odd disabled people employed by such fine voluntary organisations as Lord Roberts' Memorial Workshops and the Princess Louise and many others, but they are covered by the term "priority suppliers" which I have used in my Motion, and both their position and their interests are identical with those of larger organisations. Without exception, they are all having the greatest difficulty in getting enough work to keep their people employed.

I know of blind workshops working two or three days a week or one week in and one week out; another workshop where they bought a lot of timber for the people to cut for firewood in order to give them something to do. In the badly disabled field all over the country one can quote examples. In Scotland, for example, there are 423 Section II disabled, according to the last count, of whom 300 live sufficiently near to Remploy factories to be employed if there were work for them. At the Coventry Remploy they cannot take on local disabled even to replace wastage. They have a total capacity of eighty-five and only fifty-nine are employed, and that in an area of intense employment. They have not enough work for those badly disabled people. In the country as a whole out of that 4,000 it is estimated that 3,000 at least 'live sufficiently near to Remploy factories to be employed if there were work for them.

Of course, it is not for the want of trying. In the last complete year Remploy increased their sales and warehouse staff by some 10 per cent. By this means, and of course at considerable cost, they achieved record sales of £3¾ million. But this was despite the fact that orders from Government Departments have dropped in this one single year by 16 per cent. to less than £1 million. May I quote briefly from the report of the chairman of Remploy, Sir Alec Zealley on this particular point. He says: Our sales would have been even more satisfactory if the orders we expected from Government Departments had materialised. I cannot stress too strongly the desirability of receiving the maximum possible quantity of Government contracts. Despite the increase in sales our net deficit"— and this is important to all of us— shows an increase of £105,714 over last year. It is a sobering thought that but for this special sales effort to sell in ordinary competitive conditions two-thirds of Remploy's badly disabled would have been on what is called "standing time"; that means, paid but unemployed.

I agree with the right honourable gentleman the Minister of Labour that it would be a mistake to create what he called "work created" orders all the time for Remploy alone. I do not ask for that. But I do want them to get a fairer share of the orders that are there. I also agree with the Minister that the most satisfactory thing is for Remploy to obtain commercial orders and Government orders. They trouble is that while they are getting more commercial orders they are getting fewer Government ones, and thus they have no chance at all at present of employing the many seriously disabled people out of work.

Then, again, the sixty-nine blind workshops in the country also maintain each their independent and expensive selling organisation. But, despite this and the sympathetic efforts of many friendly firms and people, they still cannot get enough work for their people to do. It may be argued that this is all part of the general trade recession, but I do not accept that. Unemployment and short-time working among badly disabled is as high in some places as 25 per cent. compared with the national average of 2.2 per cent. Do not let us pretend for one moment that this is all part of a general thing. I want to emphasise that it is infinitely worse, in every possible way, for a badly disabled person to be out of work and have the hopeless feeling of never being in work again than for the able person. Many of these people once thought that they would never work again. They sat at home, lonely, thinking, their minds unhappily busy and their hands unhappily still. Then Remploy came and worked a miracle. Can they be blamed if they fear that temporary idleness may again become permanent? It need not and it must not be allowed to happen.

In my view, it can be easily prevented if the Government will say the word. If we look at the problem in a realistic way it is a relatively small one. If you add the 4,000 blind to the 6,000 in Remploy, and add on the 4,000 severely disabled who are unemployed and another 1,000 for the smaller organisations, you get a total of 15,000 blind and severely disabled workers for whom sheltered employment is necessary. My experience leads me to suggest—I know that many others with experience in this field will agree—that the output of three of these workers is equal to that of one able-bodied worker in the same occupa- tion. In effect, therefore, we have only to provide work for the equivalent of 5,000 able-bodied workers in certain trades as compared with a total of 20 million employed persons.

Again, to make another comparison, these blind and disabled organisations are turning out some £6 million worth of goods, compared with the £18,000 million worth of our national product—one three-thousandth part, a drop in the ocean. But how important a drop it is to these people I would mention also that we, as taxpayers, pay every week an average of £3 to each blind worker in augmentation of his earnings. We also pay every year £2½ million to Remploy to cover the deficiency of £8 per week per man. No money could be better spent: none of us would grudge a single penny of it. But we do want to see all the workers, including the unemployed, fully employed; and I say that they could be brought into the same overall £3 million cost if Government policy did not impose on them, as in my view it does, the need to maintain expensive selling organisations and also involve them in unnecessary and costly warfare with each other and with private industry.

I have not made any allowance in my figures for the work required in Her Majesty's prisons, because it is useless to do so until Her Majesty's Government decide whether they have any serious intention—I say that deliberately —to provide work for the prisons. Last year more than 10,000 prisoners were engaged in manufacturing industries, yet the value of their production was less than £800,000—about 30s. worth per week per man. This compares with the 6,000 badly disabled in Remploy, who, as I have said, can turn out one-third of the output of an ordinary man. The 6,000 in Remploy produced goods worth £3¾ million, approximately £12 per man per week, eight times as much as the prison output per man. Government Departments took 90 per cent. of prison output, and nearly half of this total was the deplorable job of making mailbags for the Post Office. Compared with the need and what could be given the total of Government orders to prisons is derisory.

New prison workshops are building, as the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor told us in the course of a debate a few weeks ago. Possibly he is the only one in the House to-day who is congratulating himself that I am speaking in this heat, and that he has at last some mental relief from the important labours that he has been enduring of late. But these prison workshops, though of course we want them, are going to stay empty unless the Government search the indent lists for simple light engineering products, and similar goods for which there is a steady need, and equip the prison workshops with the necessary plant required for their production. If the Government do this, and if, so far as possible, they avoid those trades which are most suitable for disabled workers, the prison workshops will be able to supply an increasing flow of orders, and we may eventually reach the position where most of our prisoners will be able to work for real wages, pay for their keep and help to support their dependants.

I speak with some knowledge on these things. Since 1932 I have been President of the employers' federation of the basket industry. Its membership comprises ordinary commercial firms and all the blind workshops in the country. They were desperate days in 1932, when I was appointed—days of grave unemployment; and in the scramble for scarce orders the competition of blind workshops was a serious factor. Despite these difficulties, complete trust and under-standing has been built up, and the special conditions of blind workers have been recognised to the extent that in Government contracts they have had the field more or less to themselves. Unfortunately, the Government, which should father them and sponsor them in this respect, are not prepared to accord the same preferential treatment as private firms, who might be thought to be their bitterest rivals.

The situation is somewhat similar with Remploy, which is operating the sponsorship scheme with considerable success. Under this scheme, Remploy provide the factory space and the workers, and the private sponsors provide the materials, the know-how, the orders and the machinery. The country gains in increased production; badly disabled persons get guaranteed employment and a good wage packet, and there is a saving to the taxpayer, because there are no expensive selling costs and not much capital outlay. Private firms are willing to sponsor Remploy, but the Government are not, at any rate in the same way. I am quite sure that the fault is not one of intention but of method, and I certainly exclude the right honourable gentleman the Minister of Labour from any criticism.

The trouble lies in the lack of co-operation by other Government Departments and, of course, in obstruction by the Treasury. As a result, they have failed to implement the decision of the Tomlinson Committee, which was that employment for disabled persons: should be provided, as far as possible, through the production of articles which are in regular demand for Government and other public purposes and which lend themselves to small-scale manufacturing processes These words were made to fit the needs of the blind and Remploy. The blind make brushes, baskets, mats and matting, knitwear and mattresses. Remploy make all these things, and furniture, boxes, metal goods and many other things. They could both extend into other lines if they were assured of orders.

The Service Departments alone each have inventories amounting to the staggering figure of 700,000 items, on most of which they are ordering each year or ordering frequently. Their annual buying is enormous. They could place orders sufficient for 5,000 workers without either the Departments or private industry noticing it. Yet Government orders placed last year with all priority suppliers, including the prisons, totalled less than £3 million—less than the amount that we taxpayers provided to keep the disabled organisations going. Could anything be more absurd than that? I urge the Government to solve this work problem by adopting the principle that available Government orders, in the lines they can make, shall be given first to the priority suppliers up to the limit of their capacity to supply, and only when that point is reached shall small private firms be asked to tender for the supply of additional requirements. There is nothing novel in this idea. It is the system in other countries, including South Africa, which some of us regard as reactionary in some respects.

It is also the system which might already be employed here, according to one interpretation of the Treasury circular on this subject. In October, 1950, the Treasury sought to ensure that a due proportion of Government contracts should be placed with disabled workers' organisations and the prisons. They set up a list of so-called priority suppliers to whom, in certain conditions, preference should be given in the placing of Government orders. This circular achieved much for the disabled, and I should like to thank the Government purchasing officers for the understanding way that they have administered it. Unfortunately, it contains contradictions and ambiguities which have led to differences of policy between the Departments, and to unnecessary and damaging competition between different organisations of disabled workers. Paragraph 4 of the circular, for instance, after saying that priority suppliers will be given a contract for the full quantity that they are able to supply, and that they will not be required to compete in price with other tenderers, adds on occasion they may be asked to submit prices and if their price does not secure the order competitively, the contract will be offered on the lowest tender or on the basis of a fair price. I ask your Lordships to note the contradiction between these two methods—first, that they will not have to tender, and then that they will, and also the mention of a "fair price", but with no definition of what a "fair price" means.

In practice only the second alternative is used and almost all contracts are put out to tender, both to priority suppliers and private firms. Later, the blind or disabled persons' organisation gets a telephone call from the contracts department and are told, "You have put in a price of £5 each for this article. We can get it for £4 and you can have the contract, or part of it, at the lower price." The blind workshop may know that their cost for the article is £5, but they have to take the contract at the lower price in order to keep their people going. It seems to me that some Departments appear to regard the lowest tender as inevitably the fair price, but under this system, in fact, the price frequently has no relation to the cost. There are many occasions when the priority suppliers are quoting against each other, and the organisation which is prepared to take the greatest loss gets the contract. That was never intended, of course. The taxpayers will have to make good the losses occasioned through these uneconomic prices in any case, so that there is no saving of public money.

If a formula for a fair price is settled, all these troubles will disappear. There will be no need for priority suppliers to tender because the contracts will be apportioned among them at a fair price, which will obviate the unseemly scramble between Remploy and the blind and remove the objections to the present ridiculous price system employed by the Prison Commissioners, whereby they altogether disregard wages in their costs and just add a percentage to the material cost—sometimes only 10 per cent. That is why we shall never overcome trade union objection to prison-made goods—because always and inevitably by this system the fair wages clause is violated. But a fair price will remove these objections because it will include provision for fair wages, whether or not they are paid to prisoners.

I would submit formally that their fair price should be the wages paid in open industry, disregarding subventions, plus the cost of materials, with an appropriate addition for overheads. The overhead allowance need not present any difficulty because it can be a notional allowance which will apply to Remploy and the blind, or to Her Majesty's prisons where there are no such overheads. In most cases it will mean that the price will be below the level at which open industry can tender, and at the same time the fair wages clause is safeguarded because open industry wages are allowed for and the priority suppliers will avoid an actual factory loss. Government policy would then be in line with the recommendations of the Piercy Committee "to extend the practice of costing contracts" and to restrict open competitive tendering.

To sum up—and these are the points on which I hope the noble Earl will reply, because I believe that if they are accepted this problem will be solved—these are the four things which I would submit have to be done and should be done if disabled workers' organisations and Her Majesty's prisons are to get a sufficiency of work to keep them fully or properly employed. First of all, widen the field of Government work available. This can be done by active discussions in the Joint Priority Suppliers and Government Departments Committee which was set up last October; and it is to be hoped that they will work thoroughly through the inventories with good will and good intention on both sides. Secondly, give priority suppliers all the work where they are capable of supplying all the requirements in a certain field. Where they cannot supply the full demands, they should be awarded contracts up to their capacity.

Thirdly, agreed machinery should be created for fixing a fair price for priority suppliers, so that tendering and competition between them can be abandoned. Fourthly, apportion contracts between the blind, Remploy and other priority suppliers according to their capacity and current need. The same Priority Suppliers' Joint Committee could assist the Departments both in fixing fair prices in accordance with the formula and in the apportionment of contracts. If this system is applied it will confer the added advantage that in slack times they will be able to make up a certain amount of stock of standard goods and thus give continuity of employment and better delivery when the time comes. This cannot be done at present because there is no certainty that specialised goods will eventually be taken.

Some time ago the Ministry of Labour and priority suppliers worked on a scheme for "shelf production", the idea being that goods could be put on the shelf in anticipation of requirements. The Government, however, refused to fix a price in advance of ordering the goods, and thus the scheme was unworkable, because suppliers dared not make goods up without knowing whether or not they could be sold. The formula for fixing fair prices would get over this difficulty. Your Lordships may be thinking that there is something wrong or immoral about not tendering, even with the safeguard of a fair price. If anyone is to complain of that suggestion I would be the first to do so, as a former member of the Public Accounts Committee in another place, and as the head of an industry which will suffer most by this suggestion—because if this suggestion is applied we shall not get any Government contracts in that industry. I would say with certainty that we shall get no complaints from trade unions or employers, because able-bodied men do not fight double amputees, spastics or men who cannot see; and in most cases in my experience, the fair prices produced by the formula will be less than those which could be quoted by private industry.

Let us face, it, however: there will be some cases where, for a variety of reasons, open industry is cheaper. Cannot we face this difference in price as a subsidy, concealed if you like, but known about, which will be more than compensated by the great savings that the disabled organisations can make on their selling costs, reducing the cost to Government Departments on other Votes? I am confident that if Remploy could be assured of a really good flow of Government orders, the cost per man would fall from £8 per week to less than £6. If there is one thing on which I would congratulate Her Majesty's Government it is their generous treatment of the disabled; and no one has worked harder in that cause than the right honourable gentleman the Minister of Labour and his Parliamentary Secretary. I believe they must agree with the views I have put forward, and their natural ally is the Home Secretary, Mr. Butler. He is anxious to increase the volume of work available in Her Majesty's prisons. I hope we are all with him in this; but unless the overall field of work is enlarged and steps taken to agree on fair prices the position of the disabled organisations is likely to become very serious indeed.

Where they are asked to compete with the prisons their position is usually hopeless. If the overall field remains static or shrinks and the prisons maintain or enlarge their share our high hopes for the blind and disabled will be wrecked, and in the resultant outcry the hoped-for reforms in Her Majesty's prisons will be wrecked, also. This would indeed be a tragedy and must not be allowed to happen. I ask the noble Earl, in the name of thousands of brave handicapped workers, to say, when he comes to reply, in the name of Her Majesty's Government, that the work is there for the asking and that the disabled are going to get it; and that the Government will make the necessary changes and thus ensure that every badly-disabled worker will have the chance of full, useful employment and of a full, busy life—the same fundamental right to work which is enjoyed by all the able-bodied people in this country. I beg to move for Papers.

3.18 p.m.

LORD AMULREE

My Lords, I believe we should all be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, for putting down this Motion for debate this afternoon; and before I say a few words I should like to associate myself with him in regretting that the noble Lord, Lord Fraser of Lonsdale, cannot be in his place to-day, because he has enormous experience of this subject and we should have liked to hear what he had to say.

One point which the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, put forward very well was that it is most important, from all points of view, that a person who is disabled, no matter from what cause, and who can work in some kind of way should be able to work—even though his working day may need to be rather shorter than normal. I am quite sure, from what one has seen going on, that it saves a great deal of money, trouble and misery in the long run if a person can work; because if people cannot work they tend to decay, mentally and physically, which means that they have finally to be cared for in some institution or hospital—which is very much more expensive than finding some means of employing them where they can contribute something to the country's production.

When one considers the matter in that way, there can be no question of doing it from a charitable point of view. That does not come into the picture at all, because most of these disabled persons—I was going to say all of them—given work within their capacity, can turn out as good work as can their younger or more fit contemporaries. That, I think, is a very important point.

I have a certain knowledge of Remploy—very little indeed of the blind organizations—and I think the work that Remploy and various other bodies do in re-employing and re-training people who become disabled is very good indeed. I was rather disturbed at what the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, said, that there was not enough work available for some of the people who could be trained by Remploy; so I trust the Government will do everything they possibly can to encourage these bodies by means of placing contracts and finding any money necessary to enable these factories to work at full capacity, because the work is very good and the benefit to mental and physical health is enormous.

I remember seeing one place shortly after the war, run by somebody for people so disabled that they were not fit to be on the disabled persons' register for employment. He found out that one simple repetitive job they could do was to make teddy-bear dolls. Apparently there is an enormous demand for teddy-bear dolls. Production does not have to be regular; so long as a certain number of teddy-bear dolls are turned out it does not matter whether in one week fifty are made and in another five, because the demand is there. He found that by training these people they were able to get employment and do something, and were able to fill a market which was wanted. I think that that is where some of the voluntary schemes for employment of disabled persons have gone wrong: they have not found out what can be sold. There was one scheme I came across shortly after the war (I think it was in Wales, but I am not quite sure) and it was for miners who were totally disabled. They were trained to make carpets. They made extremely good hand-made carpets, but the price at which those carpets had to be sold was such that it was not possible to continue. It was sad, but that scheme went wrong because no one had gone into it carefully enough.

One of my concerns, as some of your Lordships may know, is the care of the elderly of all types and descriptions, and these people, I think, when they retire might well be classed in the category of disabled persons. They are not disabled in the true sense of the word but they cannot do as much as they could; their working capacity is not as it was when they were young or middle-aged. Their plight is just as serious as that of the younger people to whom the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, referred. They get in a great state of depression when they come to retire. The shock of retirement and of leaving a job where they are well paid, when they are the head of the family—they retire on a retirement pension and find they are no longer head of the family—can have a very profound effect on them. This has now been realised by quite a number of firms and, indeed, I have a list here which shows about ten or twelve big firms in the country who are definitely arranging for work for their retired employees. It is not just the simple work of ordinary labouring or light work, but skilful work which is made just a little easier. They do not start work until half an hour after the normal time and they therefore miss some rush-hour travelling; they leave half an hour early; but they are paid the normal standard wage and they turn out as good material as if they were fully employed. That is something that should be encouraged, because it will save a lot of money, since these people will not become sick or mentally distressed, and they will be making money and will not need to be kept in a public institution.

I should like to assure your Lordships that there is some truth in what I say. I cannot give many proofs, but I can say that a certain amount of this work has been done for old people, not by industrial employers but by local authorities. One place comes to mind which, I believe, the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, knows very well. One of the London boroughs has a very good scheme of employment for retired persons. They began with a few, 30 or 40, and the number is now something like 150 or 160. These were people who were all on pension. They were thought to be going downhill physically or mentally. The local authority was interested in their trouble. The borough where they live had a lot of tiny industries, and it was found that there were certain trades that these people could do perfectly well. Some work in the morning and some in the afternoon and they are paid a token wage of, I think, 10s. a week. The result has been that these people, who would have become a liability in some kind of way, are now working and contributing, though not very much, towards the country's production; they are paid a certain amount of money and they have become extremely contented and happy. One or two have gone back to full employment as a result of the training they have received there. Although this matter is not quite on the lines of the noble Lord's Motion, I hope your Lordships will not mind my bringing up that point, because I think it walks very much along with it.

The noble Lord mentioned the question of prisons, and I think he got on to a very good point indeed. I am sure it would be a great advantage to prisoners and to the country if proper work could be done by them. I have seen it done only once, when I went to China in 1947 as a Member of your Lordships' House in a Parliamentary delegation to the fallen Government of General Chiang Kai-shek. Most of what we saw was very peculiar and deplorable, but we went to a modern prison in Shanghai and found it was quite a nice new building and the prisoners there, so far as one could so (I was speaking through an interpreter) were making clothes and tailoring. They were paid the full rate, whatever the Shanghai rate for tailoring was at the time. They were paid that full rate and the garments were put into the market. The money was kept for them and when they came out of prison they received a sum of money to start them again in life outside. If that can be done in China, in the days of Chiang Kai-shek, I think it can be done in Britain in the days not of Chiang Kai-shek. With those few works, I should like to support the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, in his Motion.

3.28 p.m.

LORD TEVIOT

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, for having raised this question. I have been a member of the Council of St. Dunstan's for a considerable time, and so naturally I am very interested in the blind. I understand that the Minister who is to reply is going to refer to the speech which has been handed to him by the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, and that he will go into a detailed description of the situation, which I am unable to do because the noble Lord covered a great deal of ground which, so far as St. Dunstan's is concerned, does not affect us. What I am particularly interested in is the fact that, so far as the members of St. Dunstan's are concerned, we have no difficulty whatever in placing them in satisfactory jobs. They are all men who are trained in whatever seems to suit them, and they have abilities in almost any direction. As a result, we do not find any difficulty in enabling these men to carry on in various walks of life.

We are in close touch with the National Institute for the Blind, and I was rather surprised to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, that there is all this (as I suppose I could quite properly describe it) unemployment among the members of the National Institute for the Blind. I am sure it must exist, or the noble Lord would not have said so. All I can say is that from my experience around where I live, and when I go to the meetings of St. Dunstan's, I have no evidence of the sort of situation to which Lord Stonham has referred. The great thing about the blind is to provide training. They must have every facility for being trained by the most competent teachers; and it is amazing how quickly they pick it up. I am wondering whether they have the necessary facilities and opportunities. I do not think the noble Lord touched on that point. There is no question about charity or pity—though, of course one is bound to have pity. With regard to charity, if you are going to include training in the word "charity", then I would agree. I am sure, from what the noble Lord says, that if there is any fault anywhere, it is due to the fact that the training is not so good as it might be.

From my connection with the Government's work for the blind (which now runs into many, many years) I feel absolutely certain that they will do, are doing, and have been doing everything possible to assist these unfortunate people. Government interest in the subject is intense. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, very much for his most informative speech, which I would have been able to deal with much better if I had seen it beforehand, because it roamed over a very wide area. But as my noble friend who is to reply has seen it, no doubt he will be able to supply the answers to some of the questions which the noble Lord raised.

With regard to the share of work, I do not know that I can give your Lordships any definite instances; but in my business connections I find quite definitely that there are many blind men, who are not St. Dunstaners, who are employed in industry generally: and I hope that perhaps in the enthusiasm of putting his case, the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, has a little bit exaggerated the situation. Anyway, I am quite certain in my own mind, from my own experience in regard to trying to help the blind, that the present Government, and also the last Government or two, have done and will always do everything they can to help these unfortunate people. I support the noble Lord's Motion because I am quite certain that he is absolutely genuine in his ideas and is only trying to help a great many people who he thinks (no doubt rightly, although I think perhaps he stressed it a little more than is necessary) need it, and to bring about better conditions for them.

3.35 p.m.

LORD PAKENHAM

My Lords, I must begin by apologising to the House, and particularly to the noble Earl who is to reply and wind up the debate, for having to leave soon after I finish my speech. I have to perform what is called, I suppose by a euphemism, "a social duty" in an ancient university city—a duty with which the noble Earl the Leader of the House will be in complete sympathy, and the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, in partial sympathy. But I am glad to be allowed to intervene on behalf of this side of the House—I have no doubt I am speaking for many others; but, on this side of the House, from our noble and revered Leader downwards—if only to pay tribute to the moving and comprehensive speech from the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, who has expressed, in masterly fashion, the fruits of many years' work and sacrifice on behalf of these unfortunate people.

I should like in a few minutes (I know that a statement will be forthcoming shortly) to touch on one aspect only of the problem, and that is the prison aspect; and I shall not detain the House very long on that. As we are all aware—indeed, I referred to it when we had our crime debate not very long ago—the position as regards work in our prisons is very bad. We are told in the White Paper published this year that in the local prisons (and the House will remember that the vast majority of our prisoners are in local prisons) the situation has long been bad and is deteriorating. There are not enough workshops; the working hours are too short; there is not enough work to fill even those hours sufficiently; and too much of the work is of low industrial quality. That is the official assessment, with which I certainly do not quarrel, contained in the Government's White Paper this year.

According to the latest news, twenty-four new workshops are being constructed during the present financial year; and it is hoped by the Prison Commissioners that this will enable the prisons to obtain and fulfil a considerably larger number of orders than hitherto. We applaud anything of that kind, because in this way one of the great impediments to this work will be removed. Another great impediment, the shortage of prison staff, we have discussed several times in this House, and I will not try to deal with that this afternoon. But there remains the question of orders available to prisons; the sphere of permitted competition; the conditions of permitted competition; the method of awarding contracts; and the other matters touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Stonham.

I strongly endorse, as I am sure do many other noble Lords, the general principle laid down by the noble Lord, Lord Stonham: that available Government orders—and these were his words; I took them down—in the lines they can make, should be given first to the priority suppliers up to the limit of their capacity to supply. Now that principle, if it is reasonably interpreted, and unless it is actually qualified out of existence, can increase considerably the total work and orders available for the priority suppliers. That, I take it, is the object of the noble Lord; and it is one which I certainly strongly support. I am bound to say that, unless it did achieve a considerable increase in the orders going to priority suppliers, and if the total remained, using the noble Lord's word, "static", his formula for a fair price, with which I am not quarrelling, might actually diminish the amount of work going to prisons. That is the view, certainly, of some people associated with prisons: because, if the total work going to priority suppliers remained fixed, it might be that a smaller amount than at present would go to prisons and a larger amount to other priority suppliers. That is a point which I know the noble Lord, with his very deep concern for prisoners, will be bearing very much in mind. But, as I say, the whole assumption of the noble Lord's argument, which I accept, is that a much larger total of orders will be available to priority suppliers; and so, whether prisons get a larger or a smaller proportion, they will in fact get a lot more work—and that, as I say, I accept.

I intervene only to give strong general support to the ideas which my noble friend is putting forward, whilst issuing that one caveat: that, with prison work as it is, we cannot afford to run any risk of its being reduced any further. We must remember that the prisons depend on Government orders for 90 per cent. of their work. Some of the priority suppliers depend on Government orders for only something like 30 per cent. of their work, but this is absolutely vital to our prisons. I hope that on another occasion we shall be able to address ourselves to many other aspects of work in prisons.

I hope and believe that my noble friend Lord Stonham will agree that we shall never make a major impression on these problems until the prisons are allowed to compete much more strongly in, and with, the outside world, as to-day they are more or less prohibited from doing, or at any rate greatly restricted in doing. As I have ventured to suggest more than once in your Lordships' House, the problem is to persuade the employers and trade unions to co-operate and share responsibility for this. In our last debate on prisons, I made the suggestion of an advisory body representing employers and trade unions, and I venture to repeat that suggestion to-day. I do not believe that we shall ever get very far until we draw the employers and trade unions in with us to try to find work, instead of trying to wheedle them along from outside.

There is also, in a very important sense, the question of efficiency. It is easy to talk about running prisons like factories, and some of us may indulge in this in a rather facile way. Of course, in practice there are enormous difficulties in doing any such thing. The figures given by my noble friend, according to which Reemploy workers produce eight times as much per man as prisoners, are very striking. It may be that the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, in the way well-equipped Ministers sometimes can, may somewhat modify that comparison; but as it stands I am afraid that it throws a very murky light on the efficiency of the organisation of work in prisons. I am sure that the day will come, and may it come soon! when proper wages will be paid for prison work and when in every prison we shall find work being done under qualified factory managers. Prison governors, with all their merits, are not trained with that particular end in view. But these are issues which we must discuss some other time. Without their settlement, there is little hope of any serious advance in prison reform. To-day, I have risen, with the support of my colleagues, to pay tribute to the earnestness, devotion and skill with which my noble friend Lord Stonham has presented his case and to say that I hope it will receive a very favourable answer from the noble Earl, Lord Dundee.