TRAINING URGED FOR UNEMPLOYED

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31941, 19 March 1969, Page 14

TRAINING URGED FOR UNEMPLOYED

Although there would probably always be a small hard core of unemployed persons incapable of a full day’s work, every effort should be made to find a niche for the majority of them, Mr A. H. Nordmeyer, M.P., said in an address yesterday to the University of Canterbury Fabian Society.

“These people can become, if properly trained, useful citizens,” he said. In his addness, entitled “The Development and Erosion of the Welfare State,” Mr Nordmeyer said it would be wrong to give the impression that all social reform began with the Labour Government in 1935. “We were working in an environment where there was already a measure of social reform, but our scheme for a time, though unfortunately not today, was the best welfare scheme in any part of the world.”

be subject to a means test. “We were of the opinion that there should be no salary bar for medical services. There should be no means test in the whole of the medical scheme.

“We believe the person who is sick is entitled to the best medical care obtainable.” Mr Nordmeyer said that one of the most important things to ensure was full employment, and there was a time when this had reached insignificant figures and was lower than any country in the world. Full employment was a cardinal point in Labour policy. He said the number of unemployed last year was four times greater than in 1958-59 when the country experienced a recession just as great as that in the last two years. Steps should be taken to ensure that every person willing to work should be given a job, he said.'

Mr Nordmeyer said there was no clear conception in the minds of Parliamentarians during the formative years of the welfare state what shape it should ultimately become. When the Labour Party faced the electors in 1935 a superannuation scheme and a health scheme were its two main planks. “There was, however, no notion of integration into what later became the Social Security scheme. “A committee, of which I was chairman, set up between 1935 and 1938, envisaged a scheme to embrace superannuation and monetary benefits on one side, and health benefits on the other. It was never contemplated that the shilling in the pound should pay for everything.”

The shilling in the pound provided a dole for those of the 76,000 persons registered as unemployed who were doing nothing, provided work through the Public Works scheme and was used for the employment subsidy scheme. He said the Labour Party firmly believed from the beginning that universal superannuation and the family benefit scheme should be available as of right and not