STATE AID IN ENGLAND.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXI, 12 August 1921, Page 2

STATE AID IN ENGLAND.

SYSTEM HONEYCOMBED WITH FRAUD.

Twenty-eight million people of a population of 48,000,000 apparently ato now' receiving direct pecuniary aid in England. This startling statement was made in a letter to the ( Daily Telegraph” by Geoffrey Drage. widely known social Worker, who demands a complete overhauling of the elaborate system of doles under which persons of all sorts are drawing every kind of public relief Mr Dragp charged that there is great and widespread fraud in this connection, many persons drawing several kinds of relief from various authorities.

He says that in 1890 only £25,600,000 was expended on relief, while the total from taxes and rates

for the year ended March 31 amounted to £332,000,000. With tho Press hammering the Government for economy in its bureaucracy any adequate machinery to work the great system of doles is impossible, and the “ Daily Telegraph” cites many instances of palpable fraud that have come up in police courts recently.

One man was collecting fourteen shil lings and six pence a week, as unemployment par while also getting £S a week in wages. The magistrate in the Thames Police Court, where this man was convicted, remarked that “ such doles lend themselves almost to induce fraud.” •

Such cases are constantly recurring, the newspaper say?, and adds that they are by no means an index of the total extent to which these frauds run. Mr Drage asserts that he knows instances in which families and even single men are collecting relief from several funds, are earning good wage, and are asking grants of clothing at the same time.

Even more serious than the financial aspect of the case, however, is the assertion of Mr Drage that the situ ation reveals a terrible lowering in British character. “ Where is an ever

increasing readiness to receive public assistance,*’ ho says. " Independence and self-respect are the only barriers against pauperism, and these barriers have been steadily undermined in recent years by various insidious and demoralising doles which the -politicians have administered.”

His opinion is supported by E. H. Haywood, an equally well known social worker, who tells of the poor among who he lived in past years. “We were all poor,” he writes, “ yet everyone would have regarded it as the last possible crime if he would have permitted himself to receive public assist since.”

Under the present laws there is an old age pension, an unemployment benefit and a straight poor relief, as well as valfous doles for clothing, food and fuel paid for by the public but given out by various bodies from the Ministry of Pensions to local poor law guardians. Of course, there is also a huge total of war pensions.

Mr Drage demands that a Royal Commission investigate the whole subject. He asserts that Parliament under popular terror cannot vote pgainst any of these doles, while the various departments have shown themselves to be equally easy. Alongside of this he demands an immediate coordination of the lists of names of al! persons receiving assistance from any authority whatever.