rose —

"Agreed."

The Question is, "That the Bill be now read a second time."

Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade will give some explanation of the nature of the Bill?

I will if you like. It was out of no discourtesy to the House that I was anxious to get the Second Reading of this Bill without debate; but I thought the view was indicated—and it was what I felt in my own mind—that this measure has so little opposition directed against it that it might be as well to take the Second Reading, and to deal with it when it reaches Committee upstairs. My hon. Friend opposite has asked me, however, to explain the nature of the Bill, and I cheerfully comply with his request. In moving the Second Reading of this Bill I intend to deal only in very brief outline with its proposals, because on the Motion of my hon. Friend the Member for Barnard Castle (Mr. Arthur Henderson), on 3rd March, I dealt at considerable length with the objects and proposals of this amending Bill. This Bill makes no material change in the structure of Part II. of the National Insurance Act; nor does it make any substantial change of policy, and, practically, it imposes no additional charge on the public funds. The main purpose of the measure is to remove administrative difficulties and thus diminish working cost and clerical labour. They are difficulties that were absolutely inseparable from the administration of a. new Act like this, in the first year or two-of its existence. Beyond this, we believe, as to some of the difficulties that have arisen in connection with the administration of Part II. of the Act, that no one could have foreseen that they were inseparable and inevitable in a novel proposal of this kind. So far as the Bill itself is concerned, it is as between the Board of Trade and the interests affected, to all intents and purposes practically an agreed measure. Some people would like it to go much further than it does; there are others who would leave things as they are, believing that a measure which has only been in existence some eighteen months ought to have a longer period in which to-test the efficiency of its working and the soundness of its construction; while the Board of Trade think that this Bill represents the medium of a practical advance. It takes and embodies the main features of the agreements that have been reached at the conferences between the Board of Trade, the employers, and the workmen's representatives. In Committee, modifications of this Bill may be made, but in principle it is a Bill which ought to be regarded in this Session as practically an agreed Bill.

In its main features it is a developing and amending Bill in connection with the wise and bold experiment which Parliament made two years ago for one of the best social objects that legislation can assist, and Parliament in its wisdom by any legislation can achieve. Perhaps it would be not inappropriate if I were just briefly to outline the financial and administrative features of the Act to which this amending Bill is directed. The unemployed funds connected with the original Act, which this Bill seeks to amend, on the 22nd May of this year stood thus: There was a balance in hand transferred to the National Debt Commissioners of £2,980,000. There was to the credit of the Paymaster-General £28,523, and a balance in the sub-accountant's hand of £15,000. In all, there was a balance of £3,023,000 to the credit of the funds. The average weekly amount now being transferred to the National Debt Commissioners is £30,000 per week, and I am very glad to say that this weekly contribution of £30,000 a week to the National Debt Commissioners' balance will, I think, continue for at least a year. On the 15th May, 1914, there were over 2,286,000 workmen insured, and 1,481,000 claims have been made in sixteen months. The sum of £700,000 has been paid out in benefits—£510,000 to individual workmen and £190,000 to associations as unemployed benefit for their members. These are facts which speak well for the finance of the Act, and, with a balance of over £3,000,000, it would appear that we can look forward with satisfaction—if there be reasonably good trade during next year—to a considerable increase in the balance.

What is the number of unemployed?

I cannot be expected to deal with finance and at the same time the percentage of unemployed. I was dealing first with finance, and having disposed of that, I now come to the facts in relation to unemployment. They are briefly these: Over 9,000,000 of the industrial population the average period of unemployment is twelve days per annum. Of that twelve days, the average over 9,000,000 of industrial population, less than one day per week, or 7 of a day, is due to strikes or lock-outs. Therefore economic unemployment as distinct from the 6 per cent. due to lock-outs or strikes up to 15 weeks is insurable or can be insured, and is provided against to the extent of 94 per cent. of the 2,500,000 at present within this scheme. That means that if all the men in all the trades over 9,000,003 of industrial population were within this form of State joint insurance, 94 per cent. of unemployment is due to economic circumstances and 6 per cent. to strikes or lock-outs. Under the terms and fundamental principles of this Bill, unemployment due to strikes or lock-outs cannot receive State aid or help from, the employers' contributions, it having been decided by general agreement in this House that they cannot be the subject of insurance. This must be met in other ways. The cases which have been brought before me are only a very small and most microscopic, portion of the 6 per cent., and we believe that up to the present must be dealt with in some other form than under the original Act, or as contemplated by this amending Bill.

The other points of the amending Bill are these: Clause 5 deals with Section 94 of the principal Act, under which an employer who has had a workman continuously in his ^service for a specified period of twelve months, during which he has paid not less than forty-five contributions, might recover one-third of his own contributions in the form of a refund. We find that under the original Act this led to considerable inconvenience and some injustice to employers and irritation and unpleasantness generally. We have decided in the amending Bill to-alter this, and to remove the grievance; and, may I add, that the conditions of the Act under which this grievance existed were rather complicated and led to delay. We propose to alter the provision in this-way, that where an employer makes his forty-five weeks' contributions we give him his refund in respect of the same workman, whether the workman's period is broken or not by several days—by one day, or any period of days. That meets the point brought before us by the employers, and on that the workmen do not object. This change will increase the number of workmen, for whom a claim for refund will be advanced by the employers. We propose to meet that change by a refund of a flat rate of 3s. instead of the average rate of 3s. 6d., with no refund, in many cases, of broken service now. This alteration ought to meet the grievance. It removes the injustice, diminishes the irritation, and simplifies the working all round, and is one which I commend to the House. The other chief feature of the Bill is Clause 9, which proposes to amend Section 106, which deals with Grants-in-Aid of voluntary insurance for unemployment, working in conjunction with the Act. Clause 9 of this Bill increases the average Grant made to associations by £33,000 per year. The limit of 12s. is replaced by a limit of 17s., and the limit is imposed in a simpler form, which is helpful to those who complained of the 12s. limit. We believe that we have met the complaint and the grievance in a satisfactory way. The removal of the 12s. limit and the substitution of a 17s. limit is of advantage to associations and beneficial to individuals now disabled by the 12s. limit. The 17s. limit removes their present disability. Under the 12s. limit a large society like the engineers received 10d. per week of unemployment, and it will now receive 1s. 8d. as against that 10d. under the new Regulation. Other trades similarly situated will be proportionately helped.

Paragraph ( c ) of Clause 9 (1) appears complicated, and is difficult to express other than in the words of the Bill. Its real object is to benefit the lower-paid classes of labour. It will reduce considerably their burden of administrative expenses, and we believe will effectively meet the grievances that have been submitted to us. It increases their Grant by £8,000 per year towards administrative expenses. If that £8,000 is spread over twenty-nine, most unskilled labourers' unions with 150,000 members within their associations, it means on an average about £270 per annum additional for each of the associations. The other £25,000, both totalling £33,000, goes to the larger number of bigger unions of more highly paid men who pay more per member than the twenty-nine associations which are composed mainly of labourers and which will get the £8,000. But on the balance the poorer unions, and this is as it should be, which have greater difficulty in organising, will get considerable benefit. Clause 10 of the Bill deals in Sub-section (2) with Section 107 (1) of the Act, and enables the secretary of a society to carry on any subsidiary employment, and that for the small portion he receives for that as distinct from his competitive economic work, he is not to be disabled from receiving his full unemployment benefit. This Bill enables him to receive up to 15s. per week, instead of 7s. as in the original act.

It was brought home to us that we could not expect workmen to offer themselves and to continue their useful organising work in connection with unemployed benefit, to which employers took no objection, and to suffer in proportion, as they gave their time, their ability and experience and service to helping their fellow workmen who were unemployed. Cause 12 (Sub-section (2)) abolishes the allowance of "additional contributions" in the case of a workman who has come into insurance after the passing of this amending Bill. It is of great administrative importance that this should be done, and leads to simplicity of working. It diminishes investigation and supervision, which in some cases almost bordered on espionage. New comers will profit by the larger reserve fund which is now in existence. Clause 2 provides for the smoother working of the Courts of Referees. Clause 3 removes certain limitations on the powers of the Umpire. Clause 6 deals with the provisions for short time in periods of trade depression. Clause 12 (2), as I have stated, abolishes the allowance in respect of workmen who first came under the Act after the passing of this Bill. The rule is one week of benefit for every five contributions actually paid. At the outset of the Act, the Board of Trade credited every workman, for the purpose of this rule, with twenty-five additional contributions, subject to certain qualifications. This was necessary to launch the ship, so to speak, but, the ship having been launched, we think it is not necessary to continue that feature. Clause 8 sweeps away a number of complications which have given needless trouble to associations. This Bill does not diminish the effective guarantee that the Treasury have a right to demand that unemployed benefit to which the State and the employer and the workman jointly contribute, is properly administered in the spirit and intention of the Act.

The net effect of the changes made by this Bill is not to increase the total charge on the Treasury, although it gives relief to employers and to workmen. The improvements and the simplification in the methods of procedure, enable us to effect savings which we can direct to the better working, the cheaper and prompter administration of the Act, and for the relief of certain administrative expenses and burdens, and for the removal of a number of other grievances. It is estimated that the effect of the Bill may be to throw upon the unemployment fund itself an increased annual charge of something like £50,000; but we are advised by the actuaries that the fund can well sustain any increase that this amending Bill may throw upon it. We are hopeful—I am, at least—that if we can bring within this Bill as rapidly as possible more trades and callings, and if, as experience suggests, we improve the working of it—for it is capable of improvement in many ways—we may be able, by any savings that can be effected and by any large balance that may be secured in addition to what we already have, either to enlarge the amount of benefit per week or to reduce the contributions. These, in brief outline, are the chief points of this amending Bill.

In conclusion, may I say, as one who has spent the last three or four months in helping to administer this useful Act, that the thing which surprises me about it is the comparatively small number of complaints that are made against its working, and the small number of grievances that are alleged or proved. What I am struck by is the extraordinary way in which workmen's associations, trade unions, and employers' associations are impressed by the social value and the industrial advantage of this particular measure. We have received really no serious complaints worth considering; and we only bring this amending Bill forward to correct what was inevitable with a new measure of this kind, to deal with points which it was impossible to forecast, and to secure its plain and easy working. We were sure to be confronted with some difficulties which only experience would teach us how to remove. I am very glad to say that the Board of Trade, and myself of course, have given almost endless time during the last five or six months to meeting employers and representatives of working men's organisations, large and small, and by mutual co-operation devising means by which this useful piece of social legislation can be rapidly extended, its working cheapened and simplified, and any difficulties connected with it removed as soon as possible. It is very hopeful and encouraging to be able to say this after the first eighteen months' administration of the Act. There is another thing which this Act has done, apart from insuring workmen against the evils of economic employment. Instead of diminishing organisation amongst workingmen, as people predicted it would do, it has stimulated it both amongst working men and amongst employers. The fact of having to insure against unemployment has induced a number of employers to diminish the reason for insuring at all by increasing the stability of their employment and regularising the processes of their industrial work and the administration of their own affairs.

Broadly and generally, I have yet to find a defect in this Act. There are two or three points, looking at it roughly, that might at first sight be criticised. One is that seven shillings is not a large amount for a man to receive when unemployed. But that same man can invariably get five shillings, seven shillings, or ten shillings from his trade union, or from some other source by other forms of insurance, and seven shillings on the top of ten shillings is certainly better for the unemployed workman than the ten shillings without the seven. The Act has taught unskilled labourers to organise themselves into associations for provision against unemployment, which before the Act they did not do. It has induced a number of unions which paid unemployment benefit of four shillings, five shillings, or eight shillings, to increase it to eight shillings, ten shillings, and in some cases still more. It has evoked as between employers and employed a kindly feeling and a wider interest on this particular subject than existed before the Act came into operation; and everything the Board of Trade could do to bring employers and employed together in still further perfecting this piece of social machinery it has been both our pleasure and cur duty to undertake. It is because this amending Bill carries this useful measure one stage further, because it brings within its operation a larger number of workmen, because it is without the degradation of charity or the taint of pauperism, and because it enables employers, the State, and workmen jointly to contribute towards the maintenance of men during their periods of economic unemployment, I ask the House, without a Division, to accept this amending measure.

4.0 P.M.

In reference to the terms of praise in the closing passages of his speech I think the right hon. Gentleman will find, when the measure goes into Committee, that there are many points of what might be termed important detail on which there will be keen division of opinion. There is a remarkable and significant difference between the discussion of insurance questions in this House and the discussion of insurance questions in the country. In the country we talk of the "hated Act" which imposes very oppressive burdens upon industry, upon the employer, and upon trade; but, of course, we know different in this House, and talk of that kind is not agreeably tolerated. This Part II of the Insurance Act has not yet been tested, and cannot be so long as this period of good trade, despite the existence of a Radical Government, continues. It is only when we reach a period of trade depression such as was reached some years ago, when the percentage of unemployment leapt up to 11 per cent. or 12 per cent., that the State provision for unemployment can be really put to a real test. It is on that account that we are inclined to ask the House to go much further in the way of preparing for those times than this Bill proposes to go. The figures given to the House this afternoon prove that this part of the Insurance Act is financially sound. In addition to the £3,000,000 or so now in reserve for future times of distress, there is, I believe, under the control of the Road Board and the Development Commissioners, about £2,000,000 more, which may be said to be in reserve for the purpose of coping with any period of acute trade depression. All that is to the good. But when we remember what occurred in this country some years ago, when we had somewhere about 1,500,000 workers unemployed, taking wage-earning men and women, it will be seen that a sum of money like that would not go far. The fact is that in the best times there are, from ordinary economic causes, somewhere about 200,000 able-bodied men out of work. When that number reaches, as it has reached, about a million able-bodied men—leaving altogether women out of account—a very serious situation is created. Therefore, in a time of good trade we are entitled to ask the House to make a good job of this task, and to make every provision for the very worst periods of unemployment. We are inclined now to do that, because we are convinced that you will never again in this country see the masses of the poor suffering as patiently and as silently as they have done in years gone by. They have, I believe, learned something recently from then-superiors. They have learned that if you feel deeply and seriously any sense of wrong you are entitled to take any measure, legal or otherwise, to secure what you think is your due. That is the doctrine which is now preached and practised by those who are not of the poorer classes and may be practised in later years, when the poor in a state of starvation and distress, have their backs to the wall. If this House, therefore, in the common interests of the community, wishes to preserve society for the future in something like a state of orderliness and security, then this House must protect society against the attacks that hungry masses of men would naturally be inclined to make if the House of Commons has neglected its duty towards the poor. In other words, future observance of the law and future respect for the law in respect of the wage-earners of this country will depend, I believe, as to whether the law is just and generous to the poor. As it has not been so we ask the House, during these moments of opportunity, when they are going to do the work, to do it as amply as it can be done in order completely to meet the situation when distress, unemployment, and suffering arise.

I do not wish at this stage of the discussion, and on the Second Reading of the measure, to deal with points of detail that belong properly to Committee, but-there are a few things that one might bring to the notice of the House as things that are not reasonably provided for, or not at all included in this Bill. Only about 30 per cent. of those who can receive benefit under this Act are at present receiving that benefit through their trade unions. That is significant. It proves that some of those unions—quite a number of them, in fact—have been disinclined to submit themselves to the State stringencies and Government regulations which would have obliged them to completely change their natural methods of administration and to follow the methods of a Government office. It is in the big trades, like the building, shipbuilding, and the engineering trades—in the particular trades covered by this Bill—that you have trade unionism at its best in this country. If this Act had adequately commended itself to the trade unions, and fitted in with their simpler methods of administration and management, you would surely have more than 30 per cent. of insured workmen having their benefits through their trade unions! We appeal, then, for simplicity of administration. It would improve the Act. It is a working man's Act, and the more you simplify it, the more you do to assimilate its conditions to the workmen's methods, the more you make it serve the purpose for which it was originally intended.

The trade unions that are administering the Act are not administering it distinctively as a trade union benefit. It is what might really be termed a State benefit. They are performing a State service. In response to this House they are discharging what the State now regards as a State obligation. I feel certain that the trade unions would have preferred a different plan altogether from the plan laid down by this Act. They would have preferred a substantial State subsidy whereby they could have supplemented their previous trade union benefits with some of the State money now derived by means of this insurance plan, and paid to certain of the trade unions by the Board of Trade. As we have not had that State subsidy—others, by the way, long had State subsidies before the working men were asking for them—we, so far as we are able, fell in with the regulations and conditions of this Act. But I want to repeat that we have not asked for State assistance or for unemployment benefit in the particular form laid down by this measure. There was one part of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman in which I think his memory was at fault. I have recently read the Debate that we had in this House about three months ago on the Motion of my right hon. Friend the Member for Barnard Castle (Mr. A. Henderson). As I was privileged to take part in that Debate, I may recall the fact that I put then to the right hon. Gentleman the fact that many trade unions, particularly such unions as the one with which I am associated—a labourers' union—having a very large membership, were heavily overburdened with administrative expenses, and the general cost of paying over these benefits to the members. I mentioned that it cost us money in office expenses, clerical services, stationery, postage, and many other branches of outlay. The right hon. Gentleman intervened, and assured us that expenses of that kind would be met in a Bill which he then promised to introduce, or, as he said, in some other way. I do not for a moment desire to imply that he has not sought to meet the claim, but I think I can show that it is not met at all in the way suggested in this Bill. He drew our attention to Clause 9.

It is true that Clause 9 will supply some financial relief to many of the unions that have felt the burden very heavily, but that relief, I submit, will not be larger in the poor unions. I suggest that it will be lowest in the case of the poor unions—that is to say, the labourers' unions—and that the less the unions pay out in benefit the less the amount of State assistance they will receive, either by Clause 9 or by the Act as it is at present. It costs as much to administer 1s. of benefit as it does to administer 10s. or 15s. The union to which I have referred did not provide any unemployment benefit prior to this Act coming into existence. We decided to work the Act and pay the State benefit to our members through our union. That was 7s. per member. As the President of the Board of Trade recognises, 7s. is not a very adequate sum; it is not a minimum means of subsistence, even on the plainest possible scale, so we decided to supplement that sum. We represent men with very low wages, with irregular employment—men who have to measure their coppers, and make them go as far as they can. We said to our members, "If you will pay us an extra 1d. per week in your contributions, we will undertake to make that 7s. a week into 10s." We thus gave 3s. a week extra for a 1d. per week extra. I can assure the House that it costs our organisation quite as much in the way of service, expenses, and watchfulness of all kinds to administer that 3s. to our members as it would cost any union to administer five times that amount. It is because the cost of paying, quite regardless of the amount handed over, is what it is, that we say that the unions that cannot amply provide from other resources—that is to say, the poorer unions, representing the poorer men—should receive more generous financial treatment than this Bill now offers.

There is one matter which is scarcely a matter of detail, but which to us on these benches is a matter of outstanding principle, and which was alluded to by the right hon. Gentleman. He said that we are all agreed that in connection with strikes, lock-outs, and trade disputes, benefit should not be paid. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that, given certain conditions, we entirely dissent from that view, and we pressed our view with great persistence some two or three years ago when this Act was in the framing, and in other ways we have since continued our complaint. The fact is that there are men who can never hope to get benefit from this Act, or from the amending Act, unless they get it during the time they are thrown out of work through the quarrel of somebody else. There are men who are regularly employed, and scarcely ever know a day's idleness other than holiday periods or purely seasonal stoppages. These men are compelled to pay their contribution. They become involved in a strike. They are indirectly drawn into it. They have nothing at stake in the sense of making a demand or in the sense of receiving anything from someone else's attack. They have no hope of gaining anything from the result. They are the innocent victims of the quarrel of someone else. We claim that men who, in a time of war are non-combatants, should not be penalised and made to suffer. Having to pay their contribution during the ordinary time of work, they ought not when, through no fault of their own, and having no immediate or prospective gain from the quarrel, to suffer as I have suggested. We say that they are entitled to unemployment benefit, as they are stopped from ordinary economic causes. We gather that there is a good deal of agreement on the part of the Government that that is a reasonable plea, but that the difficulty is one of safeguarding conditions by the necessary language. The President of the Board of Trade is the last man in this House to be charged with any lack of language, and I think we might put it to him that the point has now been reached where words must be found to cover this condition. If, as we understand, our case is admitted, and the justice of this claim can no longer be delayed, then his Department and himself should make themselves responsible to provide the necessary language to guarantee this benefit.

In one other important respect the Bill does not meet a reasonable claim, either in the case of employers or in the case of the workmen. In the case of the workmen the general principle is now accepted, especially I believe by the Government now in office, that taxation should be imposed according to the principle by one's ability to pay. This Act makes all pay alike. It is true that all receive alike, conditioned, of course, by regulations of time and other points that are included in this Act. It is commonly admitted that those least able to bear the burden should have some form of State assistance more than those who are more fortunately placed. The labourer with the slender earnings of 18s. or 20s. a week would be less able to bear the burden of 2½d. than a skilled tradesman with 35s. or £2 a week, with only exactly the same amount of insurance contribution to pay. It would not, in our view, be pauperising or unfairly subsidising the poorer section of workmen if this Bill proposed to amend the existing law in a manner and a degree which would give to the poorer section the assistance for which we are pleading. One penny, in view of the prosperity of this part of the insurance scheme is, in our judgment, a reasonable sum to ask from men with less than 25s. a week. When you ascend above 25s. you approach the workman who is, commonly speaking, a class above the ordinary labourer, and we plead for men below the level of at least 25s. a week for some graduated scale of contribution that would give them the assistance they are entitled to expect.

Again, take the case of the employer. My hon. Friend the Member for Gorton has in his Division a considerable number of workmen who just now are suffering severely from the state of trade depression at present existing, arising from the changes in fashion or from some other economic or industrial cause. In the hat trade there are hundreds of workmen unemployed, and in the case of many of the labourers their suffering has been so acute that there has been talk of organising charitable relief. There you have employers who have escaped this State contribution. The State itself has accepted no share of the responsibility in the shape of this class of workers. What we ask is, why should employers in the engineering trade and in the shipbuilding, and in the building trades, have to bear these burdens, while other employers in hundreds of trades entirely escape any obligation in regard to contributions for the purposes of unemployment. My own view is that many employers are at present paying too high a rate of contribution in comparison with the large class which entirely escape any sort of responsibility.

There are two other points to which I should like to call the attention of the House. The case of the branch secretary has been referred to. The case is not limited to work as branch secretary. No matter what his occupation, so long as it means some form of subsidiary employment, that man was previously excluded from getting the rate of 7s. State benefit even if he earned a few shillings by acting as collector or secretary to his branch or in some other way. Clearly the Government recognise that that is a very unjust condition, and they propose to wipe it out. I do not know whether they intend to look into other special cases of hardship. They are not numerous, but very important. Men have already had to suffer to the extent of several pounds in loss of benefit which they would have enjoyed if this evil feature of the measure had not been in from the beginning. Now would it not be possible for the Board of Trade if the Act is amended, to review past cases, and to say whether there are cases of hardship or not? The 15s. limit will not get over that difficulty. If a man is employed as a labourer, earning only £1 a week, and as secretary of a considerable branch of his fellow workmen gets by that means a quarterly income from his organisation which works out at 16s. a week, his total income is only 36s. for working night and day—and we know the arduous work that has to be done in earning anything like 15s. a week from a trades organisation—it means that a man who gets 16s. from that service will get no unemployment benefit, while a man who gets only 15s. gets the full amount.

Our argument is that no subsidiary occupation should deprive a man of the right of benefit for which he has to pay; the fact is he cannot earn very much from subsidiary occupation. There are men who are employed as musicians at night, but that is a very small class, and usually they are men who are not earning very much in any other occupation. For instance, there are men who cannot work overtime, and whose working period in the engineering or in the building trades is necessarily shortened by the fact that they are engaged for these other purposes. We should hope when this point is reached in Committee that the view will be taken that no matter what a man earns from any supplementary form of service, that should in no way disqualify him for the benefit for which he is compelled to pay in connection with his occupation proper. On the whole, we extend a welcome to this measure, but we say that whilst heartily supporting the principle of it on Second Heading stage, we shall reserve to ourselves the right to press for any forms of improvement when it reaches its Committee stage. The evidence that has been given in connection with periods of unemployment is the only source to which we need go in pressing the Government now to deal with the problem that is bound to become acute, and which is bound to be a leading national issue at no very distant date. We have heard recently from these benches, that in future occasions when periods of distress and unemployment return there will not be the same submissiveness. Whether we like it or not, that is a fact we have to face; nor do we desire that there should be the same submissiveness in cases of proved injustice and wrong in this country as in the days gone by, and it is in these moments of trade prosperity which we hope may long continue, that the House should bend its energies to further extending and perfecting the law to meet conditions of distress that no doubt will come upon us later.

I think the House must have listened with interest and with a good deal of agreement to the speech delivered by the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down. Personally, I certainly agree with one of his suggestions, if not with two. I certain agree with the suggestion he made that a person who is thrown out of work through a strike through no fault of his own, and who does not happen to strike himself, should not be penalised in respect to the amount he receives. I agree with the hon. Member that during the Committee stage there are many points which will arise showing the defects of the Bill which certainly exist, and which I do not think, if I may say so, with all respect to the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade, he seems quite to realise. At the beginning of his speech, as I gathered, he said the Bill had been introduced to remove all practical difficulties that had been shown in the administration of the original Act; but I think the chief feature of this Bill is that it practically takes no notice at all of most of the defects shown in the administration of the original Act. I really do not think that the Government has dealt with the defects at all comprehensively, and I do very much hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House, when the Bill goes into Committee upstairs, will do their best to repair the omissions of the Government in this respect. If I may give the House just one instance, as I do not want to detain the House very long, of the way in which this Bill takes no account of the difficulties of the original Act, it would be this: It perpetuates the injustice to men temporarily engaged in the building trade. If a man is thrown out of work at his usual trade—a non-insured trade—the building trade is the trade at which he can generally get a job. In country towns the building trade is the trade that generally absorbs most of the surplus labour. The employers ask no character from the men; they take them on at a moment's notice and they dismiss them at a moment's notice. Many a man goes into the building trade for a few weeks at a time, and then goes elsewhere—perhaps to his old trade or to another non-insured trade—but what I would like to remind the House of is that such a man if he goes into the building trade for a few weeks or months at a time cannot possibly get the benefit either under the amending Bill or the original Act, although he and his employer—that is, the building employer—pay a weekly contribution.

The original Act says that a man must have been employed for twenty-six weeks in the last five years before he can get unemployment benefit, and the Bill says that he must have paid twenty weeks' contribution before he can get unemployment benefit. Therefore, if a man does not stay in the building trade for twenty weeks—and that may very easily happen, and does happen—he has absolutely no chance of getting a single pennyworth of benefit under the Bill, although 2½d. has been deducted from his wages every week. Now that is quite wrong, and I think hon. Members below the Gangway opposite, who are especially interested as representatives of the Labour party in this question, will agree with me that that is not fair to the men. The man in such a case ought to get benefit very much earlier than a payment of twenty weeks' contribution, and I may point out it would mean no danger to the unemployment fund. The Act gives ample safeguards in such case. A man cannot possibly get more than one week's benefit for every five weeks' contribution, but quite irrespective of whether it is going to be dangerous to the fund or not, I do not feel the State has any right to take these contributions from the working man's pocket week by week without giving him even a sporting chance of getting any benefit for his contribution. That is only one of the many hardships that exist under the original Act and this amending Bill. There are a great many others which will be dealt with upstairs, and I will not weary the House with them now, but, if I may, I should like to deal with some of the cases in which the position of the unemployed workman would be actually worse under the amending Bill than under the original Act. In the first place, the workman in future has to prove in order to get unemployment benefit that not less than twenty weeks' contribution have been paid by him. That means that his position is a good deal worse than it was under the original Act. The principal Act says that he can get no benefit for the first six weeks after the commencement of the Act, but after that, if a workman has only paid one contribution, if he is twenty-one, and has been habitually employed during the last five years at an insured trade, he can immediately claim benefit for the five following weeks, because he has twenty-five contributions to his credit under the original Act—that is to say, under the amending Bill there are to be 110 benefits for twenty weeks, and then there are to be four weeks' benefit if the man requires it. Under the original Act he can obtain benefit immediately for five weeks if required. I know what the right hon. Gentleman's reply will probably be. He will probably say that under the original Act a workman had a waiting period of twenty-six weeks after the Act was passed, and under the new Bill there are only twenty weeks to wait. This does not equalise matters at all. The original Act does not make an unemployed workman pay any particular number of contributions before he can get unemployment benefit, but the new Bill does make him pay a particular number of contributions.

Perhaps I may be allowed to give an instance showing exactly how the matter stands. If a workman fell sick a week after the commencement of the original Act, and remained sick for twenty-five weeks, and then began to work, he could get up to five weeks' benefit if a slack time immediately arose, and he had been habitually employed for the five years previously in a trade which had become insured. In similar circumstances he would get absolutely no benefit under this amending Bill, especially in view of the fact that he is not to be entitled in the future to any additional contributions actually paid if he does not happen to have paid any contributions before this amending Bill is passed. I do not see why this new amending Bill should alter the provisions of the Act in this respect. If it is passed in its present shape, it will rob the unemployed workman of what he has been able to get under the original Act. Nearly all the difficulties in regard to the statutory conditions for obtaining unemployment benefit will right themselves in three years' time, except with regard to these trades which the right hon. Gentleman is going to make insured trades in the future, for after July, 1917—that is five years after the original Act came into force—the workman's insurance book will show at a glance whether or not he has been employed for twenty-six weeks in the preceding five years. In any case, the existing statutory conditions have given rise to very few difficulties, and the insurance book in most cases now proves, without any difficulties arising, whether a man has been employed for twenty-six weeks or not.

There is another point which I should like to bring to the right hon. Gentleman's notice in regard to the added contributions, a point which I thought the right hon. Gentleman skated over very lightly indeed, and I am not surprised. The original Act of 1913 gives a workman over twenty-one, who has been habitually employed at an insured trade for the last five years before the commencement of the Act, twenty-five weeks' credit as a gift, which is equivalent to five weeks' benefit. Sir H. Llewellyn Smith, in his explanatory memorandum to the original Act, says:—

"Special provision is made by means of 'added weeks' to prevent the rule from operating harshly."

This amending Bill removes this special provision in the case of any workman who does not happen to have paid any contributions before the passing of this Bill. I cannot see any reason for the right hon. Gentleman doing this. If a new trade is brought within the unempoyment legislation, why should not the workman receive the same gift as his comrades have received who entered under the original Act? It is no answer for the right hon. Gentleman to say that the waiting period is less. I am aware that this Bill makes the waiting period twenty weeks, and that there was twenty-six weeks to wait under the original Act, but this slight concession of six weeks is absolutely no compensation for the denial of that free gift of twenty-five weeks' contributions which are equivalent to the five weeks' added benefit. Here, again, is an instance in which workmen in the future will be a great deal worse off under the amending Bill than under the original Act. The position of the employer is also going to be worse under the amending Bill than under the original Act, and this is another point which the right hon. Gentleman skated over very lightly. The principal Act allows the employer a refund of one-third of his contributions if he has kept his workmen continuously employed. One-third of fifty-two weeks' contributions comes to 3s. 7 1–3d., and the actuary points out in his report that the average payment has actually been about 3s. 6d. per head. This Bill is only going to allow 3s., and against this the actuary anticipates in his report that by the new Clause the claims for refunds will be increased by 15 per cent., so that on the whole the 3s. will be fair. It is quite possible that the actuary is right, and taking the whole aggregate it will come out practically in money value for the whole lot at about what it did before, but it is certainly not at all fair to the employer who employs his men continuously for the whole range of the year. Such an employer would get 3s. 7d. under the original Act, and he is only going to get 3s. under the present Bill.

May I give an instance to make this perfectly plain. Take an employer employing 120 men. Under the principal Act if 100 of those men had been working all the year round, and twenty of them had only been working for only forty-five weeks, he would get 3s. 7d. for the 100, and nothing for the other twenty, or £18 1s. 1d. in all. Under the Bill he would get 3s. for the whole of the 120, or about £18, which is practically the same. If he had had the whole 120 employed continuously, under the original Act he would have got £21 13s. 4d., but under the amending Bill he would only get £18. That is a direct discouragement to employers to keep their men working the whole year continuously, and it is not at all fair to good employers. There is a graver criticism which I should like to make in regard to the finance of this scheme. The right hon. Gentleman laid very great stress on the finance of this scheme, and perhaps he will allow me for a few moments to deal with that point. Although the finance of this Bill is wrapped up in rather complicated language, the real meaning of the finance of this Bill becomes quite plain if a little study is given to it, and the real result is that the proposals of the Bill are going to rob the unemployment fund of a large annual sum of money. This fund is contributed to by the employer, the workmen, and the State, and what this Bill really does is to relieve the Treasury of part of its contribution. In other words, the fund which is set up for the benefit of the unemployed workmen is to have less Government assistance. There would be a good deal less to complain of if that result was stated in black and white in the Bill; but the measure is framed in such terms as to make one believe that the Government have something to be proud of, and that appeared to me to be the tone adopted by the right hon. Gentleman. The explanatory memorandum to the Bill contains these words:— He calls it a loss, or a charge on the unemployment fund, but in reality it is the Treasury, arid the Treasury alone, which is saving this sum of money at the expense of the unemployment fund. The other £20,000, making up the £50,000 to which I have referred, is taken by the Treasury in a similar way. Under the original Act, if an employer keeps on workmen during short time, he gets a refund of his contributions, but under the original Act the Treasury have to pay one-third of that refund into the unemployment fund. Under this Bill the Treasury escapes that one-third and no longer pays it, and, according to the actuary's own estimate, paragraph 6, the Treasury save no less than £20,000 a year. I say that is sheer robbery by the Treasury of the unemployment fund which has been set up to pay benefits to the unemployed workmen, and, as the hon. Member for Manchester pointed out, we have had absolutely no experience yet of the working of this Act over long periods of unemployment, and we do not in the least know how heavy the drain is going to be on the unemployment fund in years to come. Yet the Treasury already are striving to reduce their contribution. Surely the Treasury ought to go on paying the obligations imposed upon it by the original Act, and not try to wriggle out of them! Surely it is a much better plan to accumulate money during the fat years in order to make some provision for the lean years which are certain to come in the future! Anyhow, I am quite sure it cannot be the intention of the House, and it certainly cannot be the intention of hon. Members below the Gangway opposite, to rob the unemployment fund to relieve the Treasury of paying £50,000 a year into the unemployment fund.

After all, if there is all this money to spare, if the Government have got £50,000, there are plenty of hardships which they can remove At the present time the workman gets no unemployment benefit until lie has been out of work a fortnight, and in some cases over a fortnight. He gets no benefit at all for the first week, and none for the second week until the end of it, and he sometimes has to wait eighteen days before he gets unemployment benefit. Seven shillings per week is a very small sum, as the hon. Member for Manchester pointed out, at the best when you have got a wife and possibly a family to feed at home, and if it is deferred for fourteen days it seems less still. If the right hon. Gentleman has got £50,000 to spare, if he is taking back £50,000 of the unemployment fund every year, I should have thought, instead of taking it out, it would have been a good deal better to have spent it on some of the hardships which have been shown to exist. There are thousands of cases where a workman is out of work for a few days, then in work for a few days, and then out again, and so on. In the aggregate that man possibly may be unemployed for twenty-eight days during the winter and yet get absolutely no unemployment benefit. Surely if there is this money to spare, it would have been a good thing to pay that man a certain amount of benefit! The right hon. Gentleman's reply would probably be, and it is perfectly true, that the trade unions are going to get an extra sum of money, amounting, according to the actuary's report, to about £33,000 a year. The limit of 12s. unemployment pay beyond which no refund can be given is going to be extended to 17s., and the amount to be deducted before the sixth refund can be paid is going to be diminished in certain cases. This Grant, however, does not apply to the general body of workmen. It only applies to the trade unions. It is a Grant made to trade unions. I have no doubt that they are entitled to a Grant of that sort.

The money is spent in administration; we do not get it.

I should be very glad for the trade unions to get an extra Grant, but the Government ought to make this Grant independently of and separately from the existing unemployment fund. They have no right in order to make it to pay themselves a very much larger sum that £33,000 out of the unemployment fund of other workmen. For these reasons I think the financial provisions of the Bill are very unsatisfactory, and, unless the Government do something in the Committee stage to remedy those defects, which I believe exist in it, I shall certainly feel myself obliged to vote against the Third Reading.

I wish to say a few words in support of the Second Heading of this Bill. I believe, if there is one part more than another of the National Insurance Act which is popular with the ordinary thrifty workman of this country, it is Part II. I am not saying that Part I. is not popular. I believe it is, especially in the North of England; but Part II. is particularly popular, and for this reason: Under the old system, before the National Insurance Act came into force, the thrifty man was, by means of the friendly societies, enabled to insure himself against sickness, and to some extent against invalidity also, but he had no means ready at his hand to insure himself against the very grave risk of unemployment caused either by trade depression or by the employer shutting down the works. Therefore, this unemployment insurance appeals to the very thrifty man who was always careful to see that his sick-club money was paid up to date. I have one or two criticisms to offer on the working of two Clauses of the Act. I fully recognise that hon. Members below the Gangway representing large bodies of organised labour are more entitled to speak for organised labour than I am, and therefore I leave those points to them, and will deal only with two Sections of the original Act. The Sections to which I refer are 94 and 99. It will be within the recollection of the House that Section 94 enables an employer, having paid forty-five weekly contributions of 2½d. each, to claim a refund of one-third of the contribution which he has paid for a man in his employment. The man also has paid a similar amount. The employer and the man pay 1d. per 1d. contribution. That Section was hampered by a provision that there should be continuity of employment, and that condition operated very harshly in a good many cases.

I am glad to see that Clause. 5 of this amending Bill abolishes the condition of continuity of employment altogether and simplifies the conditions under which an employer may claim a refund under the Act. Section 94, however, governs Section 99, so far as the refund is concerned, and Section 99 enables an employer to make an agreement with the Board of Trade to conduct the insurance business of the firm through the Labour Exchange. The Board of Trade takes charge of the unemployment insurance for that firm. It was held that it was an advantage to bring the employer into contact with the Labour Exchange, and certain inducements were offered to the employer to get him to agree to conduct his unemployment insurance through the Labour Exchange. While the man pays the same amount if the employer is working under Section 99 by agreement with the Labour Exchange as he does if the employer is working independently under Section 94, the employer's contribution may be substantially less, because under that Section an employer is allowed to aggregate every shift worked in his works, and the total is then divided by six. The days are thus cast into weeks, and, in accordance with the number of total weeks found, so many 2½d.'s are due. Where much broken time is worked it may operate in favour of the employer very considerably—I wish to admit that freely—but where little or no broken time is worked it may operate adversely and very seriously adversely to the employer. I think I can show that by one very simple illustration. When a big shipbuilding firm in my own district, one of the first to enter into an agreement with the Board of Trade, came to make up their claim for this refund of their contribution, they were confronted with this paragraph in Form U1210:—

In order to satisfy this condition it is necessary that the total amount of not less than forty-five payments at 2½d., that is to say 9s. 4½d., should have been paid by the employer on his own behalf. From this it will be readily seen that the employer working under Section 99 is debarred from making any claim in respect of any man who has not worked 270 days, namely forty-five weeks, and it is possible for every man employed to have paid not less than 9s. 4½d., and yet for not one to have worked 270 days in a year, in which event no case could be made out by the employer for a refund. I have here a very simple illustration of A firm—it is a hypothetical case—employing a thousand men. Each of those thousand men work 269 days in the year. That is one day short of the necessary time to qualify for a refund. The employer working independently will pay 9s. 4½d. for those thousand men, a total of £468 15s.; but, in the case of an employer working under an agreement with the Board of Trade, the time is aggregated. A thousand men working 269 days each totals 269,000 days, and that divided by six gives a total of 44,833½ weeks, which, at 2½. a week, amounts to £467 Os. 2d. He thus saves in insurance premiums £l 14s. 10d. over the man who is working independently. But when he comes to claim his refund, the man who is working independently of the Government, having paid £l 14s. l0d. more than the man working under agreement with the Board of Trade, finds that he is entitled to a rebate in respect of every one of these men—a rebate amounting in the aggregate to £156 5s.—while the man who is working under agreement with the Board of Trade and who paid £l 14s. l0d. too little is debarred altogether from making a claim for any one of these men, and finds himself out of pocket by his agreement with the Board of Trade to the extent of £154 10s. 2d. That is a position which I do not think was ever contemplated when the Act passed this House. It was intended, I believe, that the employer who adopted the agreement with the Board of Trade should have some advantage granted to him, and, at any rate, he should not be in a worse position than the man who said to the Board of Trade, "I will have nothing to do with you: I will conduct my business in my own way, within the four corners of the Act."

If the President of the Board of Trade will consider this point between now and the Committee stage of this Bill, I am sure he will be doing a great service especially to my own district, because, unless those two sections are put relatively right, it will be found that the employers will throw over their agreement with the Board of Trade and will act independently, and then it will be found that one of two things will happen—either they will throw over the agreement with the Board of Trade or it will be necessary to make it compulsory for all employers to come under the Board of Trade. I think the adoption of either of these courses will militate greatly against the efficiency of the Insurance Act. If you compel employers to adopt the agreement with the Board of Trade, you will have endless friction between them. I ask my right hon. Friend if he will give this matter his sympathetic consideration. I shall be glad to lay before him all the information which I have. I may say that it comes from one of the ablest cashiers in one of the largest shipyards on Tees-side If necessary, I will give him all the technical information at my disposal. I ask him to believe that this complaint comes from a district which has been most amicable towards the working of the Insurance Act— a district where working men and working-men's associations, where employers' and employers' associations and municipal authorities have all striven with good will to ensure the success of this insurance scheme and to extract from it the greatest benefit it is possible to obtain for the working men within their district.

The hon. Gentleman who has just spoken has given us a very interesting piece of information with regard to the working of the unemployment part of the National Insurance Act, 1911. He has told us of the very hard case of the employer who, having made an agreement with the Board of Trade, finds he is £156 worse off than he would have been if lie had made no such agreement.

He might be.

The hon. Member went on to supply the answer to the question which he put when he said that the man who had observed to the Board of Trade, "I will carry on my own business in my own way and act independently, and administer the Clauses of the Act myself," will be £156 better off. My rejoinder to that is that the man who acts independently is a man who deserves to be better off than the man who chooses to make an agreement with a Department of the State, because he acts as Englishmen used to act and carries on his own business independently and in a proper way. Personally I hope, therefore, the President of the Board of Trade will not lend a sympathetic ear to the grievance mentioned by the hon. Member opposite, and that the man who has lost by entering in the agreement will console himself in future by acting independently, as an Englishman ought to do. I am sorry my hon. Member the Member for Salisbury (Mr. G. Locker-Lampson) is not in his place, because I was going to say what I believe to be perfectly correct, namely, that the only explanation of this Bill which has been given by any of the speakers—the only real explanation, putting aside the grievance which has just been ventilated by the hon. Member opposite — has come from the hon. Member for Salisbury.

I know nothing about the Bill. I have tried to read it, and I have read the Report of the actuary. I have found it very confusing and most difficult for a simple-minded person like myself to understand. I listened to the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade while he was speaking, and I understood the Bill still less when he had concluded than when he began. He commenced by stating that it was an agreed Bill. We have already had four speeches on it, including one from this side of the House, and every single one of the speakers has found fault with the Bill and has said that when it gets into Committee it will be necessary to effect radical alterations in it. Therefore the right hon. Gentleman was wrong, unless his idea of an agreed Bill is very different from mine. Then the right hon. Gentleman went on to advance very strong reasons why there should be no Bill of this sort at all, for he said that, " Of all the great useful social measures which have ever been passed, this is the best." He was referring, of course, to the Act of 1911, which he is now going to amend. He stated that since he had been at the Board of Trade he had had practically no complaint of the Act or of its administration, and that he had found, on going into the working of it, that everything was perfect in the best of all possible branches of the State Department. Then why should he bring in an amending Bill at all? Strange to say he said nothing about the amending Bill in his speech, the whole of which was devoted to praising the Government for their wonderful foresight in bringing such a popular measure as this. One of the Members for Manchester City (Mr. Clynes) said that hon. Members on this side often, on public platforms, denounced the Insurance Act, but that they would not do so in this House. I shall certainly have much pleasure in doing so.

You are an exception.

You are not on a public platform.

But I can go on public platforms, and I do so sometimes, although my Constituents are sensible enough to look at political questions for themselves, and form their own opinions, without being told how they are to vote. Having dealt with that interruption I should like to point out the real necessity for this amending Bill. It is because the Act is a bad Act; it is a very unpopular Act, and works very badly. The hon. Member for North-East Manchester, to whom I have referred, is himself not satisfied with the Bill. He introduced certain threats, rather veiled, perhaps, of what was going to happen if more money was not given to the unemployed. I do not propose to deal with those threats, except to say that I hope the Government will not be intimidated as they often are by threats of hon. Members below the Gangway, as to what they will do under certain circumstances. I, for one, am not in the least intimidated by these threats. I do not believe they will do anything, and I hope that the powers that be will do their duty. [Interruption.] I have not the privilege of sitting on the Treasury Bench, but if the cheers I have just heard mean that right hon. Gentlemen on that bench have not done their duty, then I agree.

The hon. Member for North-East Manchester is not satisfied with this Bill. He made a most extraordinary statement. He began by saying, and I thoroughly agree with him, that it is quite impossible, within the short period of something like two years during which the Act had been in. operation, a period noted for the extremely good trade which has been done —it was quite impossible to form an opinion as to what the actual finance of the Act would be until we had had a period of bad trade. That is sound common sense. It is an absolutely true statement. Yet the hon. Member went on to say that the financial position of the scheme was sound. How could that be, if it is impossible to obtain the true facts because there has not been a period of bad trade? The statements contradict one another, and the real truth is you cannot tell whether the finance of the scheme is sound until you have had four or five years of bad trade; then you will know what your liabilities are going to be. The hon. Gentleman went on to state that there should be subsidies to certain trade unions. I do not know what he meant by that. I do not know why he particularised, or whether he intended to particularise trade unions, but he used the word "certain," and, perhaps, he was not unwise. At any rate he said he would like to see subsidies given to certain trade unions. I hope the Government will give nothing of the kind, because if the Act is to be administered properly the benefit is to go lo all working men, whether trade unionists or not.

I am glad to see my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury has returned to his place. If he had been there a few minutes ago he would have heard me endeavour to pay him a well-deserved compliment on his speech. I stated that it was not until I had heard his speech that I grasped the meaning of the Bill: he was the only person who had explained it. But there was one point in his speech from which I differed. He expressed a hope that in the case of lock-oats or strikes workmen who were innocent sufferers would be allowed to come under the provisions of the Act. That is all very well, but how are you going to tell that they are innocent sufferers? Of course, everyone will be an innocent sufferer if he thinks he is going to get something by saying that he is. But you cannot prove it. Certainly the contributions of employers and of the State ought not to go to the benefit of either one side or the other in any industrial dispute which. may unfortunately arise. As far as I can make out from the report of the actuary, and from the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury, the Treasury is, in some way, going to benefit by this amending Bill. My hon. Friend says it will benefit by about £50,000. He may be right, but I do not quite follow him, because Clause 11 of the White Paper, which was presented to the House on the 20th April this year, estimates that— and put them down, but he has protected himself by saying that the foundations upon which he has had to go are of a very shadowy description. I think he is right. Therefore, before the right hon. Gentleman says that the result is going to be what is stated in this White Paper, he must remember that the actuary has safeguarded himself by saying that the calculations he has made are founded upon a very shadowy basis. In paragraph 6 he states: — know whether that is possible, but I think it is. I do not know whether the actuary has considered that. It may have a very serious effect upon the finance of the scheme.

In conclusion, I should like to point out that before we pass the Second Reading of this Bill, we ought to have some clearer explanation as to what we are being committed. I may possibly offend, although I do not desire to do so, some hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway opposite in what I am going to say, but I think we have spent quite enough money on wildcat schemes for things which ought to be done by people themselves, and before we continue this sort of thing I should like to know to what the Government will be committed. I am very much afraid that all these amending schemes, however much they may be disguised, mean more money out of the pockets of the taxpayers and more money in the pockets of hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway. To that I strongly object; therefore, I hope we shall have from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade some really clear explanation of the effect of the Bill.

May I at once say that the hon. Baronet need have no fears, because the sort of statement with which he concluded is the kind of statement that we expected from him, and if he had not made it we should have been disappointed. It was refreshing to hear him as an expert explaining the hollowness of the claims of experts. My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Manchester (Mr. Clynes) did not say anything in the nature of a threat either against the Government or any other person. He simply stated the fact that lion. Members of the Opposition, because they did not like certain things, are threatening to act in an unconstitutional way, and he said that if people in high positions used language and threats of that character, it was quite natural to expect that those who had not their social standing or education should follow their evil example. With respect to the amending Bill before the House, we on these benches are very much disappointed with it, because it is so meager and fails to cover the defects of the original Act. It was to be expected, in cases where the workmen had had contributions compulsorily deducted from their wages and were afterwards found or declared to be outside the scope of the Act, that some provision would have been made for the return to those men of the moneys so deducted. I myself have bombarded the Board of Trade for almost a year for the purpose of seeing that justice was done to these men, because it is inequitable that the Government should hold up the moneys of workmen who, even under the amending Bill, had not been brought under the Act. As a matter of fact, they were supposed and declared to be under the original Act, but, as the consequence of an appeal, they were ofterwards declared to be outside its scope. It seems a mean kind of thing that the Government cannot do something by way of repaying to those men the moneys which were so deducted.

The right hon. Gentleman declared that there had been very few complaints of the Act. I happen to be the secretary of a society with 35,000 members, and I should like him to occupy my place for a week, for then he would know of the many complaints which are made with respect to the administration of the Act. What is the good of appealing to the Board of Trade? If you have bombarded them for almost a year in the hope of getting equity for the workmen to whom I have referred, how can you hope to have a decent hearing of the complaint of an individual man? So far as the Board of Trade themselves are concerned, I believe that they are anxious to simplify the working of the Act as much as possible, but our trouble is with the subordinates of the right hon. Gentleman. In many cases men who are idle go to the Labour Exchanges regularly and get their books stamped, but they find, after they have done so for fourteen or even twenty-one days, that they are not entitled to benefit. Another of the anomalies with which we were hoping the amending Bill would have dealt is that with regard to workmen who are something like the suffragettes who have been imprisoned, who are out and in as a result of the "Cat-and-Mouse Act." A great many workmen hardly ever know when they are working under the provisions of the Act, or when they are working outside its provisions. In the same way, when they come to claim benefits they are in doubt as to what is meant.

Another point I would seek to impress upon the House, because when we get away from the official mind we have a better chance of success, is with reference to the point mentioned by various other speakers, and lastly by the hon. Baronet (Sir F. Banbury), that is the point with respect to strikes and lock-outs. Permit me to give the case of a strike in a foundry. The ironfounders come out on strike, or, it may be, are locked out. The labourer who works with the ironfounders, if it be a strike, is not consulted by the ironfounders. He is the creature of circumstances and cannot help himself. As-the Act is now administered, the poor labourer is ruled out from getting the benefit for which he has been paying. He is a non-combatant, and if in Committee some Clause could be framed providing that non-combatants should receive the unemployment benefit to which they are entitled, that would solve the difficulty so far as we are concerned. I cannot call to mind that any Member of the Labour party ever claimed that those who were actively engaged in a strike should be paid unemployed benefit. At any rate, we will seek upstairs to press upon the Committee the necessity of the matter being treated from the point of view that I have stated —the non-combatant point of view. Another point in connection with the administration of the Act is that surely it would be possible for the great union officials to be saved the annoyance of two classes of inspectors always coming nosing about the place. One day you have an. inspector under Part II. of the original Act, and in the afternoon you have probably an inspector under Part I. That is not the only thing. The Government auditor comes along and audits your books, and then you find the manager from the Labour Exchange the following week coming to do the job over again. It is not only annoying, but it means that some of your staff have to be taken away from the work they are doing to act the part of helper so far as the inspectors are concerned, and it appears to me that the inspectorate under the two parts of the Act might be to some extent, if not altogether, co-ordinated.

Then in addition to that, there is the question of administration expenses. We are forced to comply with the demands of the Government Department as to the methods of book-keeping and so on which will satisfy them. What we hold is that surely the methods which have been in existence for probably thirty, forty, or fifty years, and the system which has sprung up, and the receipt that the union has been in the habit of getting for all that period of years, should be sufficient for any Government Department. Surely, the receipt that satisfies the union ought to satisfy a Government Department? But that is not so. We have been compelled to adopt their methods; but those who are not tinder Part II compulsorily, but take advantage of the Subsidy Clause, receive nothing by way of the extra expense that they are put to in administration. And of course the case of those who are compulsorily insured is of a like character. They undertake a State duty, but the extra expense that they are put to, so far, at any rate, they have had no return for, and I am sure we would join hands with the hon. Member (Mr. G. Locker-Lampson) in seeking to keep administration separate from anything else. With all the great union experience that the right hon. Gentleman has had, we are greatly disappointed at the narrow scope of the amending Bill. That the difficulty and the trouble put in the way of the great unions in the payment of benefit have not been exaggerated in anything that I have said is demonstrated by the fact that 14 per cent, of the claims are rejected by the Board of Trade, thus causing extra expense to the unions involved. I do not" think that is a satisfactory state of affairs. So far as the principle of the Act is concerned we are at one with it, because in our opinion it is not only beneficial so far as the workers are concerned, but, to my mind, it is equally beneficial to the community at large. I do not think either this House or the country has yet properly appreciated the amount of good that has been done by the hundreds and thousands of pounds which have been distributed in the shape of unemployed benefits by the trade unions of this country, nor have the taxpayers appreciated what it has saved them. So that when all things come to be considered, I hope, when we get the Bill upstairs, we shall find the right hon. Gentleman in a more generous mood than he has so far shown himself to be, and that we may also be able to carry the Committee with us in seeking to make this Bill very much better than it is now.

I think on all sides of the House it is agreed that an amending Bill of some sort is necessary. Many points have been brought forward on which hon. Members think that amendment is necessary, and there is one point which I should like to emphasise, because it affects a certain class in my own Constituency, and it is one on which they feel very acutely indeed. There is a certain number of men who are forced into this unemployment insurance who cannot expect to derive any benefit from it at all. They are forced into it against their will,, and they feel that, in the nature of their employment, they are not like other men employed in ordinary jobs who-may be thrown out of work through slackness of trade or other causes. They feel that unemployment insurance, though it may be very useful for others, is of no real use to them, and they resent being forced to pay 2½d. per week. The class-of men I am speaking of are bricklayers, builders, carpenters, and the like, who are-employed by local authorities in my Constituency and those who are employed by the Asylums Boards in our great asylums, because they are practically in regular employment. An Act was passed in 1909 which dealt with asylums officers, and it divided them into two classes, one which was supposed to be regularly employed and one which was not. Those employed in the first class have to pay 3 per cent, of their wages to a superannuation fund, and they are described under that Act as established officers and servants. The Act regards those in the first class as permanently employed, and they feel that it is very unjust that they should be forced to contribute towards unemployment insurance. Not one of those men has benefited a single farthing from unemployment insurance since the Act came-into force, and they feel very strongly that they never will benefit, and, therefore, the payment which they are forced to make is a pure confiscation of their 'wages. Under the superannuation, towards, which they contribute, they are compulsorily retired at fifty-five, and then they will get a pension. Under this Act they have to go on working until they are sixty before they can get any refund of the contributions which they have paid, and, therefore, they will either have the alternative of losing all the contributions which they have paid under the Act or going on at work five years longer than they have to under the pension scheme. This class of employe has been exempted from sickness insurance, and I shall certainly, when the Bill reaches the Committee stage, propose Amendments giving them the right to contract out of the Act if they desire to do so.

The right hon. Gentleman told us that it was intended to extend the unemployment part of the Insurance Act to other trades. I am glad to hear it, but when it is so extended the Government must take note of these cases of hardship. They may be small cases in the eyes of this House; they may be matters of minor importance to the Government, but to the individuals concerned they are very important indeed. I have approached the Government, on this subject before, and the reply they have always given me has been of a singularly red-tape description. They have refused to exempt these persons who are employed by Asylums Boards, because they say they are liable to be dismissed for less serious causes than the established persons in the Government service. The answer of the men themselves is that it does not so work out in practice, and that the nature of their employment does not vary with the seasons; it is perfectly contiguous, and it is universally regarded among them that once a man gets employment in such a position, unless he commits some grave fault or breach of discipline, he is there for life, and that being the practice and that being the feeling of the men themselves, it is a mere piece of red tape for the Government to hide themselves under a technical reason for not allowing these men to contract out of the Act.

Hitherto it has been possible for the Government to block the way of these men by administration, but I hope when the Bill reaches the Committee stage the House will put in provisions that when men employed by public authorities are reasonably secure in their employment, they need not contribute towards unemployment insurance unless they want to. If a man is forced to contribute towards a fund from which he can never have any reasonable expectancy of benefiting, his property is being taken in order that better benefits may be paid to another. In order to keep your fund solvent, you are really robbing Peter to pay Paul. Unemployment insurance is a most excellent thing for those threatened with unemployment—for those who have that sword of Damocles hanging over their 'head—but men who are satisfied that they have secure and permanent employment, whom two Acts of Parliament have classed as permanently employed, naturally very much resent being forced to contribute towards unemployment insurance. I know that there is no man less narrowed by red tape than the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade, and I sincerely hope that when I put these Amendments on the Paper the Government will give them their most sympathetic consideration. This Bill is going upstairs, and as private Members cannot have any guarantee that they will be on The committee I wish to say that, although I will not oppose a Second Beading of the Bill, unless some provision of this sort to secure justice to my Constituents is inserted, I shall feel that the Bill falls far short of making the unemployment part of the Insurance Act as good as it should be.

I wish to follow on the lines put forward by the hon. Member for the Gorton Division (Mr. Hodge). He says that he represents an organisation numbering 56,000. I happen to belong to an organisation that has something like 46,000 men who come under Part II. of the Act, and so far as they are concerned my complaint is not altogether against the officials of the Board of Trade. My complaint is against the managers of a number of Labour Exchanges in different parts of the country. I feel absolutely certain that if the chiefs of the Department of the Board of Trade will only "strain out" some of the men who manage Labour Exchanges, we will be able to get on very much better in the future than we have done in the past. I was very much struck with the speech of the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Godfrey Locker-Lampson), and I can only say that I will examine the statements which he made along with the statements which have been put forward by the actuarial calculators and if It should turn out that the State is going to gain something like £50,000, after it pays its dues and the demands upon it, I am going to object to the robbing of the fund to the extent of £50,000. I can understand the attitude which has been taken up by the hon., Baronet (Sir F. Banbury). He objects on all matters where contributions are asked from the State towards assisting working men. But he never objects to the subsidising of steamship companies.

indicated dissent.

I have never heard him raise a single objection against the sidising of steamship companies to the extent of £250,000 per annum.

May I point out to the lion. Gentleman that when our Government some years ago proposed to give a subsidy to the Cunard Line, I opposed it. If the hon. Gentleman means payment for the carrying of mails, that is a different thing.

I never heard the hon. Baronet vote against any of the subsidies to shipping companies. He may say that he is in favour of payment for the mails being carried, but there is something over and above the charge for the conveyance of mails, because I understand that the reason why the Government give subsidies to steamship companies is because in time of threatened invasion they will be in a position to call on some of the ships to defend the country. The hon. Baronet belongs to an economic school of thought which does not believe in State aid at all. In the school of economic thought to which I belong, we believe that the State should give assistance not only to poorly-paid workmen, but to others, because in the state of economic conditions in days gone by this House of Commons has been used for the purpose of assisting employers in more directions than one, and we think that as the employers have had a good innings in regard to Parliamentary methods, it is time that the workmen stepped in and had a better share than they have at the present time. As to the amount of money paid to the different unions, I want to point out that, so far as organised labour is concerned, we have never benefited by a single farthing. Up to the present time, as a matter of fact, all the organisations have been losing money. The proportion of money allowed to us for the unemployment benefit we pay out certainly does not cover the cost of administration. When we take into consideration the extra clerical assistance, postage, stationery, and things of that kind, it does not nearly pay the amount of money we are called upon to pay from time to time. I recognise that under the amending Bill the contribution will be increased from 6d. to, I think, 9¼d. Well, of course, we are thankful for small mercies, but, as a matter of fact, that will not cover the cost of administration. I think the hon. Member knows that the Shipbuilding and Engineering Workmen's Society has made serious complaint from time to time as to the inadequacy of the sum allowed for administration, and I would press the Government to give a great deal more than they have done in days gone by.

So far as the ordinary general labourer is concerned, the claims have not been met to the same extent as in the highly-paid organisations. I dare say that my complaint is on all fours with the complaints of other trade organisations. We pay out certain sums every week. I think we pay "between £500 and £600 a week. That money is paid out for four weeks, and in four weeks we get a return of 90 per cent. of the money. We ought to receive more. I think 10 per cent, is really too much money to keep back, more especially, as when we find ourselves in a cycle of bad trade, it will be a serious handicap on the organisation I represent and similar organisations. It appears that there is only one remedy for this, and that is the position I have taken up all along the line in regard to Part I. and Part II. of the Act. I believe in compulsory State insurance, but not in the contributory system. I know that the hon. Baronet opposite will not agree with a position of that kind. I am fully convinced that the Government will be compelled, sooner or later, to take up what we call non-contributory State insurance. The hon. Gentleman knows that two years ago at the annual meeting of the Labour party a resolution was carried by a very large majority in favour of a non-contributory scheme in regard to Part I. and Part II. I can quite understand that some hon. Members will think that is a very big order, and that it will take a very large amount of money. It would take, I think, between £21,000,000 and £22,000,000. Well, ways and means can be found for raising money when it is required for other purposes. The Government can find money for any other purpose when they like. If we had a non-contributory scheme for Part II., it would not cost more than £1,000,000. If we take the ten years prior to the passing of the Insurance Act, taking good times and bad times, you will find that the unions paying unemployment benefit paid on the average something like £400,000 per annum. I recognise that there are a great many unions that are not in the habit of paying unemployment benefit, and also that there are thousands of men who are not members of any organisation at all. But if you take the difference between £400,000 and £1,000,000, the amount which would have to be added would be £600,000, and I feel that that would be ample to cover the amount required for unemployment, taking good times and bad times.

The hon. Member for Salisbury raised another point, namely, that men who receive benefit have to remain out two weeks before they get it. They do not get benefit at the end of one week. That is a question we have been hammering away at for a great length of time, and I hope that the Government will meet us on this very im- portent point. No doubt it is a great hardship that workmen in different parts of the country can only get paid for unemployment benefit in this way. There are thousands of men in our organisations who do not receive more than 18s. or 19s. a week. The average rate for certain workers is certainly not more than 21s. a week, and when these men are called upon to pay 4d. under Part I. and 2d. under Part II., together with other charges in respect of their wives and children, the cost to them is probably about Is. a week, and that amount taken out of wages of that kind involves financial strain which it is impossible to bear. We hope that some means will be found for reducing the contributions of the lower-paid men. These are points which can be raised in Committee, and I hope that the Government will offer no opposition to the many points which have been referred to in this Debate.

I am not able to follow the hon. Member (Mr. Thorne) in his contention that the whole of the Insurance Act should be placed on a non-contributory basis. I do not say that something of that sort will not be worthy of consideration at some future time, but I think it is not a practical proposal at the present moment. I was glad to hear him say that he could not altogether agree with the hon. Member for the Gorton Division with respect to the action of the Board of Trade. The hon. Member said that he had no complaint against the President of the Board of Trade, but that he had a complaint to make against certain subordinates. My hon. Friends of the Labour party will, I think, acknowledge that they really do receive a most sympathetic hearing on every occasion when they approach the officials of the Board of Trade with complaints. My hon. Friend (Mr. Thorne) thinks that there is some better supervision required as to the management of Labour Exchanges. I do not wish to exclude the possibility of improvement, but there again I think he will agree that the administration of the Labour Exchanges in general is on the whole really admirable.