ASSISTANCE FOR DISTRESSED

Stratford Evening Post, Volume II, Issue 221, 15 April 1933, Page 2

ASSISTANCE FOR DISTRESSED

Statement in House of Commons British Official Wireless. Rugby, April 12 —The Minister of Health, Sir E Hilton Young, announced in the House of Commons that before the end of the session the Government would introduce a Bill dealing on a national basis with the problem of assistance for those who are in need of it, including those who had been insured against unemployment but who are now no longer so insured.

The primary purpose of the Bill would be, he said, to make a closer connection between work giving help and work promoting them in occupation and recreation. The Bill would establish a measure of national control. It would redistribute the duties of local authorities and the central Government in relation to the assistance given from funds of local authorities or the Exchequer. One of the bases of this re-distribution would be that the central Government would accept the -esponsibility, both administrative and financial, for the assisting of all able-bodied unemployed who needed assistance.

The Government adopted an amendment to a censure motion accepting responsibility for the assistance of all ablebodied unemployed under 65 years of age, with such re-adjustments in the financial relations between the Exchequer and local authorities as was reasonable, having regard to the necessities of the distressed areas.