PAST EXPERIMENTAL STAGE

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 290, 7 September 1928, Page 10

PAST EXPERIMENTAL STAGE

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE BRITISH MINISTER’S OPINION Dominion Special Service. Auckland, September 6. Recent discussions on the merits of unemployment insurance lend polut to the remarks of the British Minister of Labour (Sir Arthur Steel-Maitland) in a letter replying to au inquiry made on behalf of Mr. A. J. Hutchinson, of Auckland. “The scheme of unemployment insurance,” writes Sir Arthur. "Ims been subject to a good deal of criticism iu the past, particularly in the years following its great extension in 1920. I think that was due partly to the novelty of the experiment and partly to the general unrest and dissatisfaction which followed the war. It is extraorduiary how that criticism Ims died down latterly. Unemployment insurance lias now passed beyond the experimental stage, and it Ims, I hope, ceased to be a matter of party dispute. I do not claim the present scheme is perfect; its details are capable of improvement and will constantly be improved, and it may be that even its broader principles will change in time, but I feel certain that unemployment insurance in some form or other has become a permanent feature of the social legislation of this country. Personally, I cannot contemplate what would have happened iu the post-war years, and what would be happening uow, without it. Modern industrial conditions in Great: Britain are such that some kind of public provision against unemployment is inevitable, and in order that it may be effective and free from demoralising tendencies, it must l>e made upon a permanent basis, and I do not, of course, go so far as to say that under conditions elsewhere some other and possibly better' means of reaching the same end may not he found. I write only of this country.”