NEW MIGRATION SCHEME.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19622, 18 May 1929, Page 4

NEW MIGRATION SCHEME.

bill in commons. unemployment pay for SETTLERS. , rzo u otra ov.:; coerbsfokdzst.) LONDON, April 5. A new plan to encourage migration is incorporated in a Bill which was read a first time in the House of Commons. In asking leave to introduce the measure, Commander 0. Locker-Lamp-

son, Unionist M.P. for Handsworth, said that historians were agreed that a forerunner of dissolution among empires of the past was the presence of an immense excess of population which had to be maintained in charitable idleness by the State. To-day there were 1,250,000 unemployed, many of whom had not worked since the war. The pittance which these people drew in the dole was of no real avail. It did not keep the persons who got it, and it blinded people to the bankruptcy of conditions here, and to the illimitable solvency of conditions overseas. In eight years this country had spent over £800,000,000 on unemployment, and we had the incredible anomaly of the Government giving, on the one hand, to enable people to migrate, and on the other hand, paying them to stop in this country. Instead of merely

paying the unemployment benefit to those who were unemployed here, he proposed that when the people migrated within the British Empire they should receive up to two years' unemployment pay. He further proposed that there should be a scheme of training in this country under which farmers and other employers should be invited to take selected migrants and given the amount that the trainee was drawing in unemployment pay towards the payment of the full local wage. In another six or eight years unemplojment pay would cost the country another £.400,000,000 or £.500,000,000, and we should save £2OO per man if they emigrated. The Bill was brought in and read a first time. The "Daily Telegraph," while approving of the scheme, points out that "the Dominions have declared with no

uncertain voice that men strength and energies have been ***** 4 i ened by long periods of are not welcome. There might ,1* <-3 much difficulty in persuading ihea * 0 accept large numbers of migrant! drawing the 'dole.' Agreement wi*» the Dominions for emigration oa considerable seale is obviously ■*o®"' sary. But if the working of nueds further consideration there doubt whatever that in tbe dinnßH®* ing of unemployment cn iml is pen sabre factor is the development of migratio' within the Empire."'