700,000 MORE AT WORK

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18632, 16 February 1935, Page 5

700,000 MORE AT WORK

POSITION IN BRITAIN

REPLY TO CRITICISM

AN UNRIVALLED RECORD

(British Official Wireless.) Roc. 10 a.m. RUGBY, Feb. 15. The House of Commons last night passed the third reading of a temporary bill to restore the deductions in relief benefit made under the administration of the Unemployment Assistance Board.

A vote of censure on the Government on the subject of unemployment was submitted to the House of Commons, by the Labor Party to-day, and the Prime Minister and several other leading members of the House participated.

Mr. Lansbury criticised, in particular, the operation’ of the Unemployment Board, stating that a central bureaucracy had been set up in such haste that neither those who framed nor those who controlled it, really understood it.

Replying to the debate, Mr. Neville Chamberlain, Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that despite January s seasonal drop in employment, there were still 700,000 more people employed than three years ago. No alternative policy put forward in this country or in any other country had produced a comparable result.

The. Daily Telegraph’s political correspondent understands that legislation placing the administration of State assistance to the unemployed under direct Ministerial control, instead of in the hands of a board not responsible to Parliament, is under consideration.