Evening Post WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1938. IS SECURITY SECURE?

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 77, 28 September 1938, Page 12

Evening Post WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1938. IS SECURITY SECURE?

If Mr. Savage wishes to make social security the principal issue of the 1938 General Election, it becomes rather important to consider the meaning of the word security. The list of benefits in the Social Security Act does not constitute security, because the Act provides only part of the finance required to maintain the promised payments. The attitude of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Nash) to the financial responsibilities involved has fallen far short of what the country has aJ right to expect from a Minister of j Finance, and we think that the security value of the proposals (without which their value is nil) has been left by the Minister in the air. In order to reduce (on paper) the financial hurdle that the Labour Party caucus set him, Mr. Nash "arbitrarily" reduced the British actuary's estimate of initial year charges by £1,610,000, raised the actuary's national income figure in order to boost the revenue (shilling in £) by £500,000, and assumed that the resultant shortage would be only £1,365,000, and that it would be met "without any increase in taxation in the ordinary way." When Mr. Nash made this last statement in his second reading speech, we pointed out that it was another of his arbitrary assumptions; and before the Bill was out of Committee he had discounted his own assurance, and his own reputation as a Minister of Finance, by what Mr. Hamilton has called "the thunderbolt" —the new tax on companies.

Mr. Nash's arbitrary assumptions and his wobbling on the tax issue do not .peak much for the security value ot social security. It is the duty of a Minister of Finance to avoid commitments that cannot be met in the future, and to take all possible means of assuring himself —and the public—that promised payments in perpetuity are within the country's power to pay. A mere technical compliance, within the narrow compass of a yearly Budget, may be expected of a politician, but is not worthy of a statesman. The trick of postponing the operation of social security till April 1, 1939, and of holding an October election on a 1938-39 Budget that can avoid or evade the prospective huge liability, is not a statesmanlike performance; and the suspicion attaching to such slimness is intensified when an actuary's figures are revised downward and upward—whichever way suits the politician—and when a complete somersault over taxation occurs in the progress of the Bill through Parliament. Is it by such hit or miss finance that social security is built up? The security of which Labour boasts is absent when a scheme claiming to be based on permanence is launched on vague hopes; and the sincerity of which Mr. Savage has boasted is not conspicuous when a Government baits a General Election with promises of money in perpetuity, but does not tell the public how the perpetuity is guaranteed, and apparently does not know itself. Delivery of votes is to be immediate, but delivery of social security is deferred. A scatter-cash father can be very liberal to members of his family, but as a rule for a limited time only. Mr. Nash's paternalism is no more convincing than that of the scattercash father—and is, indeed, less convincing, because Mr. Nash is not spending his own money. What kind of Minister of* Finance is he who, when estimating in his Budget that taxation revenue is falling, yet promises to cash a huge blank cheque on the revenue of the future, and to do it in the name of security? When we speak of a promise, or implied promise, to base social security on the revenue of the future, we assume that it is not the Government's intention to finance social security payments to beneficiaries by any more experimental means. But any such assumption concerning the real intentions of the Ministry of Finance is unsafe, not only because of the inconsistencies of the Minister' (Mr. Nash), but because he has a Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Mr. Lee) who in his individual capacity writes books, who says things that Mr. Nash would not say even in his sleep, and who charts with mathematical precision the real future course of the Labour Party. If the Labour gospel according to Mr. Nash is barely understandable, how can the two voices emanating from the Ministry of Finance be combined to make sense? It is becoming a question whether the real drive behind the Government is Mr. Nash or Mr. Lee; but, however diverting that question may be, we regret" that we cannot discover in the Jekyll and Hyde character of the Ministry of Finance any reinforcement of that security without which social security is a delusion and a snare. That Mr. Nash should say nothing that he can avoid, while Mr. Lee should avoid nothing that he can say, is a pleasant paradox, but it pays no bills and carries the counigy bq further _ y