RELIEF BY DOLE

Taranaki Daily News, 9 November 1932, Page 7

RELIEF BY DOLE

UNEMPLOYED INSURANCE

REPORT FROM COMMISSION

REDUCTIONS SUGGESTED A

METHODS OF MEANS TEST

NEW SCHEME FOR BRITAIN

By Telegraph—Press Assn.— Copyright. Rugby, Nov. 7.

The final report of the Unemployment Insurance Commission, which, is expected to form the basis of legislation in the Parliamentary session which begins on November 22, was issued .tonight. The Chairman, Judge Holman Gregory, and four members of the commission, sign the main report, and there ■is ft minority report signed by two other members, but the recommendation's of the commission on many points are unanimous.

The main proposals provide for a ( dual system of insurance. The relief insured worker who has paid the minimum number of contributions will be entitled to a fixed payment for a limited time without inquiry into his needs. Workers who are not insured, including those over the income limit of £250 per annum, and insured workers who have exhausted their insurance rights will ‘be relieved according to their needs under the relief service administered by local authorities and supervised by the Minister of Labour.

The retention is recommended of the unemployment insurance scheme substantially on the lines that are at present in force m the 'first line of defence for the grejt majority of the unemployed,” and it is made dear that such a. scheme, together with the unemployment assistance scheme, should be linked up with the arrangements for the training and occupation of unemployed.

CONTROL BY MINISTRY.

The Ministry of Labour should be generally. responsible for the control and development of the new service for .maintaining through the employment exchanges contact between persons, affected by the service and opportunities of employment, and for ensuring that the test of needs is administered in accordance with uniform principles throughout the country. Some variations between areas may be desirable by reason of the differences in th© cost of living, the cost of transport to work and other local circumstances, but they should be limited. The main cost of the new service should be borne by the Exchequer, but local authorities should contribute their share, as they must have a financial interest in their divisions. . ' The principles for the guidance "of local authorities in grants under the proposed scheme of unemployment separate from the poor law are that assistance should be subject to proof of need. The need of an applicant should be judged after an assessment of the resources of the household of which he is a member. The ataount of payment must be less than wages. The standards to be established should be those which experience shows to be required to relieve need.

The commission expresses the view that the insurance scheme must possess flexibility in order to permit adjustment to changing industrial conditions, and it recommends the establishment of an independent statutory commission as an advisory body to the Minister of Labour and to keep the scheme constantly under review. This body would report annually on the finances of the scheme and taake suggestions for keeping the insurance fund solvent and selfsustaining. The commission warmly commends the existing schemes, official and voluntary, for providing the tyoung unemployed with vocational training, and urges that they be developed. . The majority’s proposals aim at saving over £14,000,000, including a reduction in the dole of between 3d and Is a week, chiefly for recipients under 21, but increasing the period wherein the dole is obtainable. The scheme is at present in debt £115,000,000, and is costing £5,‘600,000 a year in interest.

SEARCH FOR SOLUTION

HJOUSE OF COMMONS DEBATE.

FEWER MEN ON THE REGISTER

British Wireless. Rugby, Nov. 7. A substantial diminution in the number of unemployed is shown in the monthly return issued by the Ministry of Labour. The return shows that on October 24 there were approximately 9,397,000 insured persons aged 16 to 64 in ehiployment in Britain. This is 246,000 more than the figure a month before, but 51,000 less than a year before.

Of the increase since September 26 in 'the numbers of insured, persons in employment approximately half are due ti> the resumption of work upon the termination in the dispute in the manufacturing sections of the cotton industry. The unemployed on the register on October 24 numbered 111,065 less than a month previously. In the House of Commons the Prime Minister made a contribution to the three days’ debate on unemployment. Mr. MacDonald urged that they must concentrate upon the stimulation of trade in order to create a national demand for labour. The real trouble in Britain was that it was a part of a world struck by an economic blizzard. Therefore there was little hope of real/ healthy, natural trade until accommodations were reached for the exchange of goods.

He was convinced that the land must play a greater part than it had hitherto done, in the schemes for assisting unemployment. The Government was now devising ways to assist agriculture, but that industry must prove it was using the tariffs to advance its efficiency in mcCrketing and other directions.

(Mr. Lloyd George strongly advocated the development of 6'mall holdings, which employed a large amount of labour and provided training for later agricultural employment. Workers should be placed on the soil or in occupations. Mr. Lloyd George stated that since the war some countries had recovered 100 to 150 per cent, of their share of

international trade, while Britain had never got higher than 86 per cent. That was partly due to the fact that British brains, capital and equipment were organised for competing with industries in many parts of the world. Britain had only 1,200,000 unemployed compared with Germany’s 7,500,000. Britain was the only country in the world where the labourer was landless. It would pay to give farmers the unemployment dole for every individual man that they employed, as that would strengthen the country’s food production.

Mr. C. R. Attlee (Labour) urged the Government to take a national view of a national crisis. The Government could insist that British ships should 'be manned by British people, could take war time powers to occupy land and buildings and could put 300,000 unemployed on allotments. It could use the present cheapness of money to convert municipal loans so as to save £9,000,000 or £10,000,000 a year, and to prevent people from the countryside flooding into the cities and creating the drifting bodies of unemployed with which the United States was - familiar. The difficult thing was to decide how much Britain could afford to produce and to consume. It could not cut imports without considering how such action would affect the coal and other industries. The Government must balance one thing against the other. The present problem of the Ministry of Agriculture, said Mr. W. E. Elliot, was not to put more people on the land, but to keep those on already there.