POOR FAMILIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 148, 25 June 1938, Page 9

POOR FAMILIES

SUSTENANCE PROBLEM

PROVISION FOR CHILDREN

COMMONS DEBATE {British Official Wireless.) (Received June 25, 11.40 a.m.) RUGBY, June 24. When the House of Commons was discussing the votes for the Ministry of Labour and the Unemployment Assistance Board, Mr. L.' S. Amery (Conservative) drew attention to a statement in the last report of the board that the needs—assessed according to the board's minimum scales—of larger families among workers in the lower wage grades often exceeded by as much as 10s a week the amount brought in by the wage earner when in employment. Mr. Amery said that the board's duties were to provide adequately for the minimum needs of a family and to see that its administration did not create an incentive to leave work and take relief. Those duties were frequently .irreconcilable. • Were they, as a nation which had regard for the interests of the growing generation, to

decide that the wage system should

take some account of the minimum needs of a family, or were they to be governed entirely by the notion that labour was simply a commodity whose price was settled by haggling in the open market? SUGGESTED SOLUTION. He suggested that the only solution was to make some provision for the Children of the nation irrespective of the wage earned by the parents, la, large families children were the creators of and sufferers from poverty. A very large proportion of the children of the country were under-fed and started life with all the odds weighted against them. Population trends reinforced the arguments for a system of family allowance which would solve a most urgent problem from the viewpoint not only of unemployment assistance, but of building up the fitness of the nation and doing

justice to a large number of people who, through no fault of their own, were destined to grow up under-fed, stunted, and unable to play a worthy part in the life of the nation.

• Mr. Amery's plea was supported from the Liberal benches, and Captain Harold Macmillan (Conservative) and Dr. L. Haden Guest (Labour) spoke of other aspects of the issue. POSSIBLE MEANS OF HELP. The Minister of Labour, Mr. Ernest Brown,; replying, said that the family allowances could be provided first by direct State grants, secondly by adapting the • insurance system? to provide extra allowances for families of a cer- j tain size, with -an assurance that a' family would be paid those allowances whether there was work or not, and thirdly by means of an industrial arrangement, with the assistance, if necessary* of the Ministry of Labour's industrial relations department.

The Minister also referred to the progress of the movement for holidays with pay, which he described as remarkable. Since the appointment of a committee on the subject two years ago a collective agreement covering 1,750,000 workers had been ' ratified which provided holidays with pay.

Speaking of tha contraction of the cotton industry, Mr. Brown said that the causes were mainly international.