UNEMPLOYEDS’ PAY

Southland Times, Issue 20939, 23 November 1929, Page 7

UNEMPLOYEDS’ PAY

COMMONS DEBATE INCREASED ALLOWANCE PROPOSED LLOYD GEORGE’S CRITICISM (United Press Assn.— By Telegraph—Copyright.) Rugby, November 21. Miss Bondfield, Minister of Labour, moved in the House of Commons the second reading of the Unemployment Insurance Bill. She said the object of the measure was to remedy the outstanding defects of the present system. The most important change in the Bill was the abolition of the condition placing on a claimant for unemployment pay the onus that he was minutely seeking work and on the submission of a new claim placing on the labour exchange the onus of showing not only that employment of a suitable kind for the claimant was available, but that he could reasonably have been expected to know of it. Miss Bondfield bontended that the old condition involved a psychological test which it was administratively impossible to maintain with the least degree of equity, particularly in depressed areas. Another important proposal of the Bill was contained in the clause lowering the minimum age of insurance. The Government had announced its intention of raising the schoolleaving age to 15. That step would be taken not later than 1931. The Bill proposed that when it was taken the minimum age for insurance should be reduced from the present age of 16 to the school-leaving age. Mr Lloyd George, the Liberal leader, strongly criticized the Bill. It was, he said, difficult to say no to a proposal giving 2/extra to the wives’ of unemployed, but his principal misgivings were as to the tremendous expenditure which was being run up as a result of the Bill as a whole, an expenditure which this country could not pay. We had already since the general election added a burden of £19,000,000 to next year’s Budget. With regard to the extension of unemployment pay to boys of 15, Mr Lloyd George said they might be putting the whole of their efforts into seeing that young men of 17, 18 and 19 and even beyond that age had got something to do. He appealed to the Government to make an effort to find work for the younger ones instead of bringing in doles to increase their demoralization..

Major Elliott (Conservative) moved a Conservative amendment rejecting the Bill on the grounds that an unfair burden was cast on juvenile insured persons, the vague, unsatisfactory nature of the tests, and the grave additional burden cast on the Exchequer. He said the whole Bill was based on the expectation that there would be 1,250,000 unemployed for three years, despite Mr Thomas’s efforts. The Government had grafted a non-contributory on to a contributory scheme without facing the inevitable consequences of making a grant of £8,000,000 per year from the Exchequer irrespective of the state of the insurance fund.

Mr J. Maxton (Labour) caused several breezes during his speech, particularly from Mr Lloyd George, whom Mr Maxton taunted with suggesting during the,election that £200,000,000 should be taken out of industry and put into roads. Mr Maxton said that when Mr Snowden offered oi per cent, people came and slapped hundreds of millions on the Treasury counter. His supporters would rather invest £200,000,000 in human beings than in roads or the City of London financiers. The work was only a justification of citizenship, but as nobody was able to provide work the unemployed should not be asked to shoulder the burden of our economic: mistakes. The debate was adjourned.