UNEMPLOYED INSURANCE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 31 May 1930, Page 5

UNEMPLOYED INSURANCE

VIGOROUS CRITICISM

Having no option, the House of Commons agreed to the Labour Minister s . proposal that the Treasury should advance up to £50,000,000 to the unemployment insurance fund. The Minister, Miss BondficUl- said that if the number on the register of unemployed remained at 1.600,000, the additional loan of £10,000,000 would be exhausted by November. A vigorous criticism of the Government's administration of the system was delivered by Mr Winston Churchill. ,' He said 1,600,000 unemployed was a terrible figure, .which should cause a double .measure of self-reproach to those who less than a year ago confidently asserted that .they had in ; their possession knowledge which would., enable them to cure, or-at any.rate mitigate, the evil of unemployment. The burden which Ministers had to bear was .'redoubled by their own action; promises and assertions., Ho did not, charge the Government with responsibility-for the . great wave of depression which; had swept across the world. The. charge, he made was that by a'wholesale .and scandalous relaxation in the-conditions of unemployment benefit the Govern- : merit had demoralised the whole system of unemployment insurance and hadvitiated to a frightful and' almost irreparable extent the finance, and, what was still more important, the character of the insurance system. On the one hand they had raised benefits at a most inopportune moment and on the other they had swept away many of the most important checks and tests which'safeguarded the fund, from abuse.*. 1 As a re-' suit, iu the never-to-be-forgotten .words of the Attorney-General, a .man could sit . and smoke his pipe until an offer of employment wa3 actually brought to him. Although the' offer might ;be brought to him and directions given to him by the official of the employment;, exchange to y go to a place where he would find, a job, the man'could not be invited to.'prove , that he had obeyed those directions and the officials we're strictly forbidden either to strike him off or to call on him !to prove that.he had even endeaypured ; to carry out their directions.,.The,.Government had let loose a monstrous embarrassment whicli would "follow them in every step, however long their pilgrimage might be. They had stripped the insurance system of every vestige of dignity and converted it into a vast dole- ; ; , spreading agency. This disaster to the ■ social institutions of the people far out-' j weighed even the financial misfortunes Iwhic'' it entailed.