The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. WEDNESDAY, JULY 7, 1926. RELIEF AND EXTRAVAGANCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 159, 7 July 1926, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 7, 1926. RELIEF AND EXTRAVAGANCE.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance. For the future in the distance. And the good that we can do.

So acute has become the position in West Ham as a result of the policy pursued by the Board of Guardians in the matter of Poor Law relief that the Ministry of Health lias been compelled to t-ake the extreme step of asking Parliament to intervene to put an end to an intolerable position. For some time past there has been something in the nature of :i competition among the Boards of Guardians in some of the London areas, notably West Ham, Poplar, Westminster, and Chelsea, as to which would offer the best terms to those who applied for assistance. .The Labour candidates in these districts have swept the polls, and they have taken full advantage of the opportunity thus afforded of using the rates and loans of the Health Department for steadily increasing the amount of relief offered to the workless in their districts. Particularly in Poplar, and West Ham they have increased the relief scale to an extent which has brought down upon them the condemnation of the whole nation, not excluding the leaders of the Labour party, for their policy has tended towards the pauperisa-tion of the whole district, breaking down the moral fibre of those who are willing to work, and encouraging the idler and the waster. Trouble between the Guardians and the Ministry of Health became acute last year, when Mr. Neville Chamberlain refused to lend money to the Board unless the scales were reduced. The Guardians had been allowing 9/0 each for man and wife, 5/ for each child, 15/ a week rent, 2/3 a week for coal, with a maximum of £2 19/ a week for each family, a maximum which was not maintained because of an elaborate system of evasions connived at by the Board.

Thue through the greater part of last year relief was being given to seventy thousand persona at a cost of nearly a quarter of a million a month. By September the Guardians were indebted to the Department to the extent of £1,540,000, and in addition had exhausted an overdraft of £300,000. A further loan was refused unless the guardians reduced the maximum to Tm/, which they declined to do until an empty treasury, there being even no money to provide salaries for the officers, compelled them to accept the Minister's terms for loans of £350,000, and later £300,000. These terms included a review of caecs in which relief had continued for a long period, a reduction to adults of sixpence a week, and a reduction in the family total to 55/ per week.

These payments were still so high because of the large number of adults in the district who preferred the relief payments to working, that the Board continued to fall headlong into debt iv epite of steadily increasing rates, which have I now risen to 24/ in the pound, and a rfurther loan of £450,000 has been asked for. The position has grown intolerable, and the Minister now seeks to supersede the guardians by men who will administer relief with some sense of responsibility. The immense rate collected hae mads property ill the district almost valueless. The tenant pays the rate directly, and as Mt is assessed on the rental value he can only rent premises at less than half the amount he is prepared to pay. The endowment of idleness by big contributions from the Exchequer as a permanent measure is impossible; raising rates to the level now charged in West Ham must inevitably lead to the breakdown of the rating system, and the Government had no option but to seek direct intervention. The London boroughs have been the chief sufferers from the system, but in many of the provincial boroughs the strain has been very acute.

When this temporary expedient hae been passed the Government will embark upon an entirely new system of relief. Under this system the Boards of Guardians will be abolished, and their functions will be transferred to county ■and borough councils. It is contemplated that health and public assistance services shall be in the hands of a single authority in each area, and ac a corollary that a single authority in each area shall be responsible for local finance. This will result in co-ordination of the provision for the prevention and treatment of ill-health and of all forms of

public assistance, and especially an improved correlation between poor law relief and unemployment benefit. It is believed that the administration will be much more economically effected, and that the wider powers of the financial authorities will be exercised with a sense of responsibility which will put an end to such appalling extravagances as some of the London guardians have perpetrated.