NATIONAL ASSISTANCE (DETERMINATION OF NEED) AMENDMENT REGULATIONS, 1962 (Hansard, 26 July 1962)

§ BARONESS SUMMERSKILL

My Lords, on the face of it we are being asked this afternoon to approve a very simple provision—namely, an increase in the rates of National Assistance. I want to address myself to the increase in the rates for a single person and for a married couple—namely, 4s. a week for a single person, and 5s. 6d. for a married couple. I am quite sure that this afternoon there will be no division on either side of the House on this matter; but what we must ask ourselves, I feel, is: are we fulfilling our obligations to those in the greatest need? Surely this is the criterion by which a society is judged. Bearing that in mind, do these sums—and I will repeat them, so that your Lordships can remember precisely what we are asking these people to live on; namely, £2 17s. 6d. for a single person and £4 15s. 6d. for a married couple—meet this test in an affluent society? Again, I would remind your Lordships that of the 2½ million people whom the noble Lord has mentioned as being affected, 1 million—that is one-fifth of all retirement pensioners—seek National Assistance; 73 per cent. of the men are over 70, and 70 per cent. of the women on National Assistance are widows. There are also the deserted wives and their children. The doubts I have entertained, about what I consider is the niggardly treatment of these people, are confirmed when I read the Minister's definition of need.

When this matter was debated in another place quite recently the Minister was asked what was the basis of need, and he said [OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, Vol. 662 (No. 144), col. 1683]: … need is an interesting philosophical question …", and he took the view … that need is not an absolute concept but that in a society of rising standards the concept of need is a rising one. Relativities as well as absolutes come into this". My Lords, that is a piece of sophistry which has surely been unequalled by a Government speaker in a debate concerned with the simple human needs of the aged, the chronic sick, the widows 1134 and the deserted wives with children. I was certainly not surprised when the Member for Sowerby rose up, lost his patience and cried, "To the devil with statistics! Let us have a picture of how these people live".

I agree; the Minister was baffled. Is there any Minister in the new Cabinet who knows how these people live? Other honourable Members asked that the House should be given a picture—not statistics: they asked for a picture. I should like to suggest to the Minister, who I hope will read this (and it is a new Minister), that he visits a poor area and finds a seat supplied for the aged by the local authority in a London borough. That is a poignant sight. On every day that I come to this House I pass one of these seats. There they sit, gazing apathetically at the traffic. I think that if the Minister went there just once, or even sat on that seat, he could form an opinion of what these people have available for clothing (they are uniformly shabby), for transport and, let us say, for modest entertainment. The Minister could learn that poverty to-day has certainly a relative and an absolute concept.

Now it may be said—and the noble Earl could say it to me—that on the top of this there are discretionary allowances for those who are capable of applying for them. Each noble Lord here may know some person who is in the position of having to apply for extra help. Many of these people do it, but it calls for a certain amount of courage, and it calk for the ability, the energy, to visit the office, or the ability to write a letter to the office to describe their need or to ask somebody to call. Despite these difficulties, 51 per cent. of these people receive discretionary allowances; and for those noble Lords who are not aware of this I would tell them that a discretionary allowance may be an extra 3s. for laundry, perhaps 4s. a week for domestic help and 2s. 6d. for a special diet. Before these sums are granted (and quite rightly) a National Assistance Board officer—and I cannot speak too highly of these men and women; they are a very fine body of people—must call and assure himself that the applicant cannot do the washing or cannot do the cleaning.

1135 The pattern of this scheme was introduced by the Labour Government in 1948, and I had the honour to administer it for about a year and a half in 1950. But like many Acts concerned with social services, it must be adjusted to changing circumstances, and it is quite futile for Ministers in another place to say, "Ah!; eleven years ago you established a pattern ". We accept that, of course. But it seems clear that the revision of National Assistance scales to-day is quite inadequate to meet changing circumstances. I would say that the whole National Insurance Scheme needs reexamination in order to provide adequate pensions, because we did not envisage that the National Assistance Board would be mainly concerned with supplementing the National Insurance Scheme. I may be told by the noble Earl that the graduated scheme in the distant future may help; but, of course, that will operate long after the people we are concerned with to-day have passed beyond material assistance. I am pleading to-day for those who can be helped to-day, and I would ask the Government: why cannot they agree to raising the National Assistance rates to £3 8s. for a single person, with rent, which they get already, and £5 7s. for a married couple? Is that asking them to be too generous?

The Parliamentary Secretary in another place said that this would be a very large figure indeed. It would be, my Lords—£50 million. But I would remind your Lordships that in the last Budget those in this country who pay surtax were relieved of £83 million. Surely, some of that could have been directed to the poorest in the country, the 2½ million who are inarticulate, powerless, without any kind of pressure group in this House or the other place. I would say that the Parliamentary Secretary spoke with more humanity and understanding of the needs of the poorest than the Minister. She agreed that the deserted wives and their children are treated in an uncivilised way. She did not attempt to equate the immediate needs of the poorest to some philosophical concept. I must say, my Lords, that I am sorry that the Prime Minister has not grown out of his misogynist phase and promoted the most brilliant of his younger Ministers—who is, of course, the Parliamentary Secretary to this Ministry 1136 in another place. However, this is too much to hope in the penultimate stage of the Prime Minister's development.

Now I just ask the Minister this. Later on, he is going to consider giving a grant from the Treasury to businessmen who worked in Egypt. The Treasury, I know, is faced with pressure from different Departments. I ask him whether, before he gives unqualified approval to this demand later on this afternoon, he will consider at this stage increasing the rate of assistance, so that these people, who have not many years—and let us hope that those people in a similar position in years to come will benefit from a graduated scheme—may benefit. Will he at this stage grant this increase? The Government have failed, I believe, after eleven years in office, to devise a scheme which will ensure adequate benefit as a right, and not subject these people to two tests of means: the first for National Assistance and the second for discretionary allowances. May I remind your Lordships that even men who have been injured in their work or who perhaps have contracted some industrial disease are also subject to the two means tests of National Assistance and discretionary allowances. May I ask the noble Earl, therefore, whether he will have second thoughts; whether he will go to the Minister and plead for these people, in order that we can improve the lot of the poorest and the most helpless in this country?