May I ask the Prime Minister what the business will be next week?

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we shall take the Second Reading of the Finance Bill, and I hope that we may conclude it.

I beg to move, "That Item A (Salaries, Wages and Allowances) be reduced by £100."

I have no personal desire to deprive the right hon. Gentleman of any part of his salary. If I had any such desire I would far sooner he were deprived of the whole amount by a change of Government. I make the Motion in the ordinary fashion in order that I may call the attention of the Committee to certain questions in connection with the administration of the Housing Acts, and I have no doubt that other hon. Members will have other points to which they wish to direct the attention of the Committee. So far from desiring in any way to make a personal attack upon the right hon. Gentleman, I candidly confess that I rather sympathise with him in the difficult position in which he finds himself placed. He has to administer a code of Acts which are quite inadequate for the present situation, and he has succeeded a very masterful and self-willed Minister who refused to undertake a certain course of administration that was often indicated by members of the Committee to him; and the right hon. Gentleman finds himself undoubtedly in a very difficult position. With reference to what has passed before, we must remember that this is the first year of the right hon. Gentleman in this office, and may I remind the Committee of this fact, that two years ago his predecessor stated that no other Act of Parliament was necessary. They had, he said, sufficient powers to carry out such a housing reform within the next two or three years as would remove the disgrace which was in some cases cast upon the ratepayers, and in some cases on the local authorities. Has that disgrace been removed? I think the statement of the predecessor of the right hon. Gentleman that no fresh legislation was necessary was obviously quite untrue, or else the administration has been so ineffective that we have got the present state of affairs, which is universally admitted to be absolutely lamentable. We have the admission of the right hon. Gentleman himself, speaking a few months ago on the Second Reading of the Housing Bill, which my Friends and I had the honour of bringing into the House and which has since been thrown out by the Government, he said:— damnosa hæreditas. We are anxious to know what he is going to do to put things right. The policy of his predecessor, we remember, whenever we pressed him for administrative reforms, was, "Leave it to me." What is the policy of the right hon. Gentleman? Is he going to say, "Leave it to me?" If so, we hope that some better results will accrue than we have had from the administration of his predecessor during the past two or three years.

I fully admit, from another point of view, the difficulty the right hon. Gentle- man is in. The present Government have deliberately made the housing question infinitely worse than it was before, and the present Housing Acts were never intended for such a condition of affairs as exist at the present day. The present Government have simply created the housing difficulty. I should not be in order in going into details, but I think my right hon. Friend the Member for the Sleaford Division of Lincolnshire (Mr. Royds) has made it perfectly clear that the "People's Budget," by causing a scare in the building trade, created a house famine, which never existed in this country before. Even the Report of the Secret Land Inquiry of the Chancellor of the Exchequer admits this. It says, "The Finance Act, 1909–10, undoubtedly had an effect upon house building," and figures can be quoted absolutely proving that the past legislation of the Government has created this housing famine, which the present Acts, however well administered, are quite unequal to cope with. In another way they have created the housing difficulty. I need only allude to the utter carelessness they have displayed in such places as Rosyth and Farnborough. By this inaction and the refusal of the Post Office to house the postal employés, the Government have created a housing difficulty unlike any that we have had before. Take the case mentioned in this House the other day—the case of Coulsdon. I asked the Postmaster-General whether there was a shortage of houses, and whether it was a fact that the Post Office had just issued an order that only unmarried postmen were to be employed there, and the answer was that it was a fact. How on earth can the Government expect to deal with the question satisfactorily when they themselves take no steps to house their own employés! It is perfectly obvious that the right hon. Gentleman's colleagues are piling up the agony and making the case, unfortunately, worse for the right hon. Gentleman and his Department. In every part of the country you see the same thing. Whilst the Members of the Government talk to any extent of what they are going to do in the future for the housing of the people, they have themselves set to work deliberately to do all they could do; they could not have done anything more to create a housing difficulty than they have done by their legislation and administration during the past few years.

It is not only the action of the right hon. Gentleman's colleagues and their legislation. If I pursued this subject I might be out of order, but I will say that the attitude of the Local Government Board and its administration have largely increased and accentuated the difficulties. What has been their policy? The right hon. Gentleman's predecessor passed the Housing and Town Planning Act of 1909, and by that Act he obtained greatly increased facilities for the closing and demolition, of insanitary property. He set to work with commendable zeal to stir up the local authorities to the use of their powers. What has been the result? All over the country, in town and country districts, there have been the closing and the demolition of houses, but at the same time they have been taking no steps whatever to provide other accommodation for the people. The destructive side of the policy has been manifest everywhere. It is right to close and demolish insanitary property, but a constructive policy should go with that, and the constructive side has been absent in most of these cases. I take the Report of the Local Government Board for 1912–13. I know it is rather out of date, having been published in last September, and I think we have some cause for complaint that we have not got a later Report on which we could more fully discuss from a more up-to-date point of view the policy of the Department. In this Report I find that in country districts, deducting all those cases where closing orders were determined because the houses were put into proper order—that is a fair deduction—there were closed 2,292 houses in consequence of representations made under the Housing and Town Planning Act of 1909, but loans were sanctioned for building only 313 houses, and of course these houses will not be ready for some years to come. Even if they were ready to-day, what does that mean? That you created a deficit by your administration of the Housing Acts in rural districts alone in that twelve months of 1,979 houses.

The same policy has been applied, not only in the country districts, but also in the towns. Taking the towns for the same period, and taking the figures given in the same Report, and making the same deduction for cases in which closing orders were determined because houses were put into proper repair, I find that 7,296 houses were closed and that loans were granted for building 1,549. Therefore, in urban districts you created a net deficit of 5,747 houses, making a total deficit in town and country of 7,726. Is it not perfectly clear that when a Government takes upon itself to close insanitary property and takes no steps whatever to provide that there should be no fresh accommodation to which the people turned out can go, that they are, by their administration, greatly accentuating the housing difficulty? Even this part of their administration has not been carried out with very great success. The right hon. Gentleman boasted a great deal when he was discussing this matter before of the number of local authorities who have used their powers under the Housing Acts for the closing of insanitary property. There are 1,800 local authorities, and I find that 1,005 of them never use the powers at all. I ask the right hon. Gentleman if any steps have been taken to compel these 1,005 local authorities to utilise their powers. Again, over 1,000 never use their powers under Section 15 of the Act; probably they are the same 1,000. Has any step been taken to make them use their powers under that Section? What did the right hon. Gentleman say when I raised this question before and pointed out that they had been closing houses and not building others, and had thereby been creating a housing difficulty and a house famine? The right hon. Gentleman said I was wrong, because they had attended to the constructive side. He said:—

It is often done.

Repairing the engines would simply enable the company to run existing engines. They might simply repair old tin-pot engines, but that would not make up for the engines that had been scrapped. My point must be clear to everybody except the hon. Member.

That is better!

You do not make up the deficiency caused by scrapping houses simply by repairing other houses that happen to require repairing at the time. The point I am making, and from which the right hon. Gentleman cannot escape, is that by their administration the Government have largely accentuated the house famine in the country. There is another important point on which I wish to know the policy of the Government. There is a rather curious defect in the Housing Acts which I have sought to mitigate for three years running, but the Government have rejected my Bill. It is a rather curious point that if you proceed under Part I. of the Housing Acts by a large slum clearing scheme, there is a legal obligation to rehouse the people displaced, but if you proceed under Part II., which simply means patching up houses here or pulling down houses there, there is no legal obligation to replace them. When Parliament passed the original Acts they did not anticipate that Part II. would be used to the large extent it is at the present time. The matter has become very serious, because local authorities are pulling down houses, or closing houses, all over the country, but are making no provision whatever for rehousing the people. I will take an example from a large city in the North of England—Bradford. I am quoting now from the "Leeds Mercury" an account of a meeting of the Bradford City Council last March, when they discussed the Housing question. A Mr. E. Siddle raised the question and asked:—

"What was to be done with the 400 persons who would be dishoused by a proposal of the committee (that was the Housing Committee) to make closing orders with regard to a number of houses?

"Alderman E. Cash said that month by month they saw people being dishoused, but they did not see month by month that they were being rehoused. He wanted to ask, not in anger but in sorrow, what was to become of these people. It was a very grave question indeed. These people had to live somewhere, and he did not believe in the policy of 'push.' It had been said that they wanted to push them out of the city, but they were not getting rid of this grave question by doing that."

The answer which was given was characteristic of the Government, although I do not know to what particular party on the council the gentleman who made it belonged. The answer was given by Mr. H. Thornton Pullan, the deputy-chairman. He said:—

"The question of rehousing, with special reference to these houses, had not been considered, but the whole subject of rehousing was constantly before the committee month by month."

That is exactly my criticism of the Government. The particular question is never considered, but the whole housing question is constantly before the Government month by month and year by year, yet nothing whatever is done to deal with the difficulty. So much for the way in which the Government by their action under Part II., by their action on the Budget, and in other ways have increased the housing difficulty. I desire to ask a few questions as to their action under Part I. of the Housing Acts. In a Committee upstairs the other day the right hon. Gentleman pooh-poohed altogether what are called slum clearance schemes under Part I.

Not at all.

I do not wish to misrepresent the right hon. Gentleman, but he scored a party point by saying that local authorities had proceeded much more under Part II. by putting houses in repair rather than by big slum clearances. Does not the right hon. Gentleman realise that, although there is a great deal to be said for action under Part II., and I have always been an advocate of its importance, in some cases Part I. schemes are absolutely necessary.

Hear, hear!

Where the original buildings are so bad, where there are many houses to the acre, where there are back-to-back houses, where there are acres of houses and big buildings, it is absolutely impossible to proceed under Part II. Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that there are hundreds of these slums which ought to be cleared under Part 1.? Yet what is going on? There is practically nothing doing. If we take the Report of the Local Government Board for last year, I find that only three new Part I. schemes have been started. One is from Liverpool. Liverpool has always been to the fore in the matter of housing schemes. It is rather remarkable that for the last few years there has been a Conservative majority on the Liverpool Town Council. You will find that all the progress in housing has been made by the Conservatives.

Yes, in Liverpool.

And elsewhere.

No.

At any rate, Liverpool has been the pioneer in this matter. [An HON. MEMBER: "What about Dudley?"] The three new schemes come from Liverpool—which we all agree has been most progressive—from Nottingham, and from Barnes, close to London. Does the right hon. Gentleman tell the the House that adequate work is being done in the way of clearing away slums when only three new schemes are started in the whole year? Besides these three new schemes there are scarcely any other schemes proceeding. There is, of course, the big Tabard Street scheme in south London, there is a scheme in Exeter, and, I think, though I am not sure, there is a scheme at Leeds. Practically speaking, Part I. is not being used; year by year these slums are allowed to go festering on, and the Government take no steps whatever to clear them away. It is quite true that they talk plenty about them on the platform, but practically nothing is being done, and the matter is allowed to go on and get from bad to worse year after year. I know it has been said that the cost is too heavy, and I agree that the cost is great. I have had considerable experience of that on the London County Council. At all events, my conscience is clear in the matter, because I proposed three years running a new system of arbitration which would largely reduce the cost of buying up slums under Part I. schemes. It is the Government and not Members on this side of the House who are responsible for the fact that the new scheme is not the law of the land at present. But, in addition to the three schemes which have been started, I find that in two other places, namely, Poole and Dewsbury, representations were made to the local authorities—I am dealing entirely with the Report of 1912–13, as I have no later information—that there were insanitary areas, but the local councils refused to act. I want to know what has happened since. The Government said they would inquire. What has been the result of their inquiry? Have they made these local authorities act? Have these local authorities agreed to act? The Government have the power of mandamus. Have they made use of that power? I quite agree that they would find it very awkward if they did.

Have they the power under Part I.?

Yes, of course they have. Does not the hon. Member know that? They have it under Part I. just as they have under Part II. or III. I admit that the mandamus is not a very useful weapon. I agree with the Chancellor of the Exchequer who, speaking on the excessive sickness Clause of the Insurance Act, said that local authorities could not act because they were armed with what he called the clumsiest, rustiest weapon in the whole armoury of British law, and the mandamus was a perfectly worthless weapon. Have the Government taken any steps to use their worthless weapon or to get rid of it? We proposed in our Bill that the Local Government Board should have the right to act in default, and at the expense of a local authority which is culpably neglecting its duties. If that proposal had been carried the Government would have been armed with a powerful weapon instead of what the Chancellor of the Exchequer has rightly called the clumsiest, rustiest weapon in the whole armoury of British law. It is not only in the matter of Part I. that I want to know whether the Government are taking active steps to carry out their order. I want to know in other respects what is being done. In regard to Part III. the Local Government Board a little while ago addressed certain urgent instructions—I believe they did not proceed as far as mandamus—to local authorities to build houses. I find that a question was asked of the Secertary of the Local Government Board on 23rd April last as to how many urban authorities there were which, as the result of formal complaints under Section 10, or of inspection by the Board's officers had before 1st January been urged by the Board to build houses under Part III., and the right hon. Gentleman gave a list of names. An hon. Member mentioned Dudley just now. Dudley is not in the list, but Pwllheli is—one of the Carnarvon boroughs, one of the constituencies represented by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. These towns have been ordered to build houses, but as far as I know, they have not obeyed the order.

There is no order.

What are the words, "whether they have been urged on the Local Government Board." I do not suppose the Local Government Board urges Pwllheli or any other place unless they think there is good need for it. The right hon. Gentleman gave the following names: Northam, Pwllheli, Bridgnorth, Margam, Stowmarket, East Cowes, Barnoldswick, and Tenby. There are eight places where the house famine is so acute that the Local Government Board have thought it necessary to urge them at once to put the Housing Act into operation. What have they done? Has any one of them obeyed the order? Has Pwllheli done it? I do not believe any single one has taken any step whatever. Yes; I am wrong. I think one did. Margam has taken certain steps, but the Local Government Board regarded them as entirely adequate. How long are you going to be defied by local authorities? If you have not got sufficient powers, why do you not get them?

Why did not your Government?

The question had not arisen in those days. We had not got the terrible house famine that we have now, thanks to what has taken place in the interval. I want to know what are the Government doing, and if they have urged these places to provide houses under Part III., why on earth do they not make them do so, or, if they have not got the powers, why do they not bring in a Housing Bill and get the powers, instead of rejecting Bills which are brought in from this side of the House. That is the position in the towns. It is the same in the country districts. There are lots of country districts where the Government have issued peremptory orders, or, at all events, have strongly urged local authorities to take steps. Take, for example, Kingswood, in the Reigate rural district. I understand that the Reigate rural district was urged a little while ago to provide houses under Part III. in respect of Kings-wood, where there was a terrible housing famine, but I am not aware that anything has happened. I notice an account of a meeting of the Reigate Rural District Council the other day in which they put off the whole thing. I want to know there again what are the Government doing, and what do they propose to do.

4.0 P.M.

Then there is another question I want to deal with, the question of by-laws. After all, nothing has conduced more to stopping building and making it more expensive, and thereby raising rents, than by-laws, and really the behaviour of the Local Government Board in this matter has been most extraordinary. I would remind the House of the origin of by-laws, and what has taken place. I am not for a moment saying that by-laws are not necessary. We owe our present slums largely to the fact that up to a certain period there were no by-laws, and the fact that all these houses were crowded down to the acre which have since had to be cleared or ought to be cleared, has been due to the laissez faire policy of the middle and end of the last century, which allowed houses to spring up in that way. Granted that by-laws are necessary, what follows? Bylaws which were entirely unsuitable were adopted in every part of the country, and by-laws suited to towns were adopted in country districts with the result that the choice of materials was limited, the width of the road was unnecessarily increased, and the thickness of walls in many cases was quite unnecessary in country districts. The result of the by-laws has been in many cases, not everywhere, largely to increase the cost of building and to increase rents. For a long time the Local Government Board refused to recognise the importance of the question, although we brought it forward on this side of the House. I remember the debates in the Committee Room two years ago. We had very long arguments then, the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor seemed to think the matter was a mere mare's nest, and that there was really very little difficulty connected with it. Then there came a change. Very soon after that the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor issued a circular urging local authorities to modify their by-laws. That is a very difficult thing to do under existing legislation, and the matter would have been simplified if a Clause in my Bill had been adopted. It was a verbatim copy of the Clause as drafted by the Local Government Board two years ago. Now we find that the President of the Local Government Board has awoke to the importance of the question, and he has appointed a Committee of Inquiry of which he did me the honour of asking me to be a member. I regret that I could not accept his invitation. I hope the Committee will report soon, because building is being hindered everywhere by the bylaws being too restrictive. The result is that the whole thing is hung up. Let me give a rather interesting example of this. It is not a case of house famine due to any wicked landowner who refuses to part with land, which is the ordinary accusation put forward by hon. Gentlemen opposite, and quite wrongly put forward. It is the case of a landowner who wants to build houses for his own employés, and who is being blocked by the by-laws. Here is the account of the case which I read in a newspaper:— to meet the rehousing difficulty which has arisen through the Act of 1909? How are they going to get more done under Part I. of the Act, and how are they going to deal with local authorities when urged by the Local Government Board to carry out the provisions of Part III.?

My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Sir A. Griffith-Boscawen) dealt so fully with housing that I think I need detain the Committee for only a short time on that subject. In the few remarks I shall offer I shall not attempt to make party capital on the subject, because I have always thought that both sides of the House might be able to co-operate with respect to this question, though I am afraid there is not much hope of the realisation of that at present. I must say that it is rather amusing to find that the right hon. Gentleman has been forced to defend the inactivity of his Government, and to adopt the same line as his predecessor, namely, to make the Act of 1909 remain practically a dead-letter. The other day the right hon. Gentleman gave a glowing account of what was being done. I cannot help thinking that when we come to compare what is being done according to the latest official information which we have with what is necessary to be done, we shall see that there is still considerable inactivity on the part of local councils. In 1913 the National League on the housing question circularised the rural district councils, and asked them whether there was a deficiency of houses in their districts. Replies were received from 259 rural district councils, and 148 of these acknowledged that there was an admitted deficiency of houses in their districts. But according to the latest official figures in November, 1913, only eighteen of these rural district councils out of 148 had made applications for loans. I would ask the right hon. Gentleman to tell us whether there is this very great inactivity at the present moment. I should like to point out to the Committee that there are several rural district councils who are absolutely defying his authority altogether. About a month ago I put a question to the right hon. Gentleman on this subject, and according to the answer there were no less than sixteen rural district councils who had been urged by the Local Government Board to do something and yet had refused to do anything at all, and there were thirteen who said that they were negotiating for or endeavouring to obtain sites or proceeding with the preparation of schemes. Among these rural district councils are Dulverton and Hartley Wintney. It would seem that housing was not in a very promising state at Hartley Wintnsy in November, 1913, when at a meeting of the rural district council it was resolved:—

I wish chiefly to draw the attention of the right hon. Gentleman to questions in connection with the Poor Law. I think we who have criticised the administration of the Poor Law for several years, during the time the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor was at the Local Government Board, may congratulate ourselves that considerable improvement has, at all events, been brought about. Children are to be removed from the workhouses, but I think it is rather remarkable, in relation to the progressiveness of hon. Gentlemen opposite that it should have taken eight years to remove this standing disgrace in connection with the administration of the Poor Law. I should like to congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on having made a firm stand against the proposal by several boards of guardians that children's homes should be erected within the precincts of the workhouses. The right hon. Gentleman's predecessor never could see the undesirability of this, but it is satisfactory to know that his policy is a thing of the past. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will make an equally firm stand against any proposal that may be made for the large grouping of children in institutions. I think everybody is agreed upon the extreme undesirability of institutional treatment for children. It is quite obvious that children can be much better educated and brought up in smaller places with the companionship of ten or twelve, rather than in an institution where there are sixty or seventy under the guardianship of a matron and her assistants.

There is another point I have been asked to bring to the notice of the Committee, namely, the inspection of children who are placed out to nurse under Part I. of the Children's Act. I believe the right hon. Gentleman in charge of that Bill, when it was before the House, was urged very strongly to make it obligatory on the boards of guardians to appoint female inspectors—to appoint ladies to inspect the children placed out to nurse, but he did not see his way to do this. The larger boards of guardians have got women to do this work, but the smaller areas and the agricultural areas have not done so. As the Local Government Board has now insisted that female inspectors should be appointed to inspect children boarded out, it is obvious that it is much more necessary that they should be appointed to inspect children put out to nurse by their relatives. I believe that the great majority of these children are illegitimate children, who especially need the care and attention of female inspectors. Another point to which I desire to draw attention is the position of women and children on out-relief. This is a question which I have brought up more than once. I may remind the Committee of what the Majority Report in 1910 said on this subject:— persons. There was the investigation in Norwich, and there has lately appeared the result of a most interesting investigation by the Women's Industrial Council of Liverpool, which stated that though a considerable increase has taken place in the relief granted, yet out of the seventy-two cases investigated by the council, up and down Liverpool, there were no fewer than fifty-two in which the family, mother and children, were living in conditions which did not conduce to their physical efficiency. It is not necessary to take up the time of the Committee drawing attention to the stupidity of this policy. If you save money on the children on out-relief, you only have to spend a great deal more of them later on when they come into your hands as unemployables or paupers. I know that this is a very difficult question. The right hon. Gentleman's predecessor was always very insistent on the danger of indiscriminate relief. No doubt he was perfectly right. An indiscriminate policy of giving money would add to the drunkenness of the drunkard and the laziness of the lazy. I would like to know what progress has been made with regard to the better administration of out-relief. What does progress in this respect mean? Progress in the administration of out-relief depends upon a better classification.

If we can get better classification of the recipients of out-relief we are on our way to get to a more intelligent and better system of dealing with it. If we can separate the really deserving mothers from the really undeserving, and the really undeserving from the slatternly and the lazy ones, whom an increase in the relief only makes more slatternly and more lazy still, we are on the road to a better solution of this problem. I cannot help thinking that a proper solution of this problem is that we should have more female inspectors and visitors. If we can get information from them as to the status of the women who receive out-relief, we can get on and do better work. But, as far as I can see, very little has been done. I can see very little sign of it in the Annual Report, which is somewhat out of date. The new one is just due. In Birmingham and other places they are adopting an intelligent policy, but judging by the Report very few of the Local Government Board inspectors make any mention at all of the appointment of female visitors or the co-operation of the guardians with voluntary associations. For instance, one of the few references in the Report was by Mr. Williams, inspector for North and South Wales. He made an. investigation of twenty unions, and in only four did he find that anything was being done to bring in the co-operation of either voluntary or official women. I know that the Local Government Board has issued circulars on this subject, but circulars very often are of little value except they are backed up by something better.

I pass on to the question of the aged. I dare say that the Committee will remember that the Report of the Commission said that our treatment of the aged was characterised by indiscriminate insufficiency and unconditional doles, coupled with the mixed workhouse for all who cannot subsist on them. I would like some information as to whether any great progress has been made in making this treatment of the aged somewhat more amenable and more reasonable than it is at the present moment. With regard to our treatment of the aged, I always think that we ought to remember that the mixed workhouse as a receptacle for the aged pauper is comparatively modern, and that in the time of Strafford, Laud, and Charles the First, the aged poor were all received in hospitals and almshouses. It would be interesting to hear what has been done to return to a more humane policy. Several towns, I have no doubt, are doing good work in this respect. Dewsbury, Birmingham, Sheffield, and Nottingham, are doing a great deal to brighten the life of the aged by separating them from the others. In Kingston-upon-Hull they have established cottage homes costing £30 per head, and in Woolwich cottage homes for forty-two aged women have been established costing £51 per head, and costing in salaries only £1 9s. 6d. per inmate per annum, as compared with £2 14s. 8d. for the workhouse. I think that they are doing very good work, and I hope that other boards of guardians will adopt, as soon as possible, an improved policy with regard to the treatment of the aged. On the question of vagrancy, I congratulate the Local Government Board upon the diminution of vagrancy in this country. Whether that is due to the steps taken by the late President in London or to great activity of trade or some other circumstance, I am not quite sure. I should like to be enlightened on that subject by the President himself.

I have endeavoured to discover whether he thinks that any real improvement in the question of vagrancy and unemployables in this country has really taken place, or whether we have only driven them under, because, as the Committee well knows, there is a very great difference between the reduction of the official figures and the real reduction of destitution; but I cannot congratulate the Government on having made any really serious effort to solve the problem of the unemployables in this country. No doubt it is a very difficult problem, and it is almost impossible to put one's finger on any one single cause of the number of people who are unemployable. No doubt housing, education, and insufficient nourishment and want of a living wage are all contributory causes. I cannot congratulate the Government on having taken any vigorous action on any of those matters. I do not profess to be an authority on this subject, but I have had the benefit of conversations with those who are really taking an active and vigorous part in the reclamation of those who are down. They tell me that the chief cause of unemployability in this country are physical inefficiency and ignorance of trade. If that is true, the problem of reclaiming the unemployable in this country ought to be a comparatively simple one, because you have only got to restore them to good health and strength, and to teach them on the land how to plough, sow, and attend horses and animals, to give them a very considerable value in the labour market, and enable them to find employment on the land, either in this country or in the Colonies. I would like the Government to co-operate heartily and vigorously with voluntary associations which are doing good work in this respect.

There is an excellent association run by the National Union of Christian Social Service at Wallington. They have, I think, 120 paupers from the different boards of guardians, and I am told that they make a very good job of those who are sent to them, and that 70 per cent. of these people who are sent as almost hopeless by the boards of guardians are enabled to find employment on the land either in this country or in the Colonies. I know that the late President had a very great dislike of farm colonies, and he often criticised them in this House on this very subject, but I would like the present President to take a little more open and unprejudiced view of these farm colonies, and to adumbrate some policy whereby the Government would be able to co-operate with them. I am sure that by doing so he would give great pleasure to those who think that it is a rather disgraceful thing that we have done so little to improve the condition of the unemployables in this country. There is just one more point I wish to raise, and it is in reference to the question of nursing in workhouses. I was one of the deputation to the Under-Secretary the other day to ask him to alter the last Order, which directed that trained nurses were only necessary in the larger workhouses. That does seem to me rather unjust. There is absolutely no difference between the person who is ill in a small workhouse and in the prison who is similarly ill in a larger workhouse. The one wants as careful nursing as the other. I know this is a difficult problem because nurses trained in Poor Law institutions, directly they have become efficient, leave for other services, and for private nursing. That seems to me to point to defects of organisation. Nurses will not stay under the Poor Law authorities, because they may be sent to some small workhouse with absolutely no chance of promotion. I cannot help thinking that if the service were organised better, and if nurses in small workhouses were given an opportunity of rising to better places, we should not have this great difficulty. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will be kind enough to give attention to the points which I have brought before him.

I should like to follow the Noble Lord in drawing attention to other details in connection with the administration of the Poor Law. Those who are interested in State children are greatly gratified that the right hon. Gentleman, whose legislation with regard to children is generally acknowledged as a bright spot in legislation, in a period of a very controversial character, should have come into the position he now holds. I think we should all be rather concerned at the increase in the number of children on out-relief. The right hon. Gentleman has under his care by out-relief in one form or another no fewer than 178,000. Of these, excluding those boarded out, there is a total of 167,000 this year, as against 154,000 last year—an increase of 13,000. Of these, the major proportion are the children of widows or deserted wives; that is, 110,000 such children in England and Wales are dependent upon the Poor Law and such relief as the guardians can give them. I think that far less advance has been made in the treatment of out-relief children than in the treatment of children who are entirely under the care of the Poor Law. I should like to know how far the attention of the right hon. Gentleman is being directed towards the requirements of the better administration of out-relief. It is deficient at the present moment. I think that the provision made should be adequate in amount, and that it should be expended under proper supervision, which, in my opinion, should include some supervision by women. Speaking upon this subject recently, the Archbishop of Canterbury said:—

Of course every social worker knows that in some cases a widow or mother, left with children, is not fit to take care of them. It is very regrettable that one has to acknowledge that in some cases the only hope of saving the children is to take them away from the mother. But these cases should only be decided by considerations affecting character—feeble-mindedness or the bad moral character of the mother. The economic error that I have referred to, and which I believe to be at the base of the difficulties of guardians in many cases, is that of forcing the mother out into the labour market and ignoring the effect on the household by the mother having to neglect, or imperfectly perform, the duties which she ought to discharge-there. Suppose a man is earning 25s. a week and his wife is at home, she is doing at least 15s. worth of work, and the income from work in that household is not 25s. but 40s. There may be some objection to my putting the woman's work at as low as 15s., but I want to understate the case rather than overstate it. What happens when the man dies? The 25s. is lost. Then the widow is forced into the labour market, and the family loses a great part of the 15s.—the value of the mother's work—and the home then either loses that work or else the work is very greatly deteriorated. It is demanded from the widow that she shall do the man's work and also her own mother's work in the household. It is not an eight-hour day, it is a sixteen or seventeen-hour day, on every day of the week, for her. A man does not and could not possibly do it. What is the result? The result is that the woman herself becomes a physical wreck, and the children are not brought up to be strong men and women, as they ought to be.

I have a case which a Surrey board of guardians had before it, that of a widow with five children. The board gave her a small sum and a few loaves, quite inadequate for the family. Of course she had to go out to work. She had to learn to work, and she eventually obtained 19s. a week. She was then summoned before the board, and told that as she was earning a man's wage the out-relief must be discontinued. She replied to that, "Yes, but a man has the woman at home doing housework." She was out at work for hours during the day; she had to work hard, and then she had to slave half the night in order to mother her little family. Of course she broke down. What is a woman to do? She has to nurse her children when they are sick, she has to do the making, mending, washing, cleaning, and cooking; she has to do all those things whilst performing the father's part as well. The burden is too great for almost any woman, and the result is that the children are not properly cared for. Another case of a widow with five little children came under my own notice. She could earn from 13s. to 14s. by going to a mill, but she had to pay 9s. to a woman to look after her children and home while she was away. The guardians make her go to work, with the result that she has to leave her family every morning to the care of another woman, and at the end of the week, as the result of her outside work, she has about 5s. more than if she had stopped at home.

Is it not worth 5s. that the mother of five children should not have to leave her children? Would it not be of advantage to the public that the mother should be enabled to stop at home to look after them? I think that enlightened economy would not deprive a family of the mother's care because they are orphaned of a father. I understand, though I am not acquainted with Scottish law, that the Scottish Poor Law declines to place in the category of able-bodied, women who have children to support. They are no longer considered as being able-bodied in the sense of being necessarily in a position to earn a livelihood. Another phrase of the economic problem was brought forward by the Archbishop of Canterbury recently. He mentioned the Strasburg system, which suggests that the relief given to a widow with dependent children should be such as to enable her to withdraw from the labour market, that it is undesirable that she should be going to work, and that in the public interest the money given to her should be such as to enable her to take the domestic rather than outside duties as her primary care. The Archbishop considered it a fact:— paupers. They are not debts of the nation, they are assets of the nation; but, unless their growth is promoted, those assets are wasted, and they become a charge, unhealthy and feeble, upon the State. These out-relief children should be considered as essentially State children as are those who are brought up in Poor Law institutions at a cost not of half-a-crown or three shillings, but thirteen or fifteen shillings a head. There is one point to which I hope the new President of the Local Government Board will be able to give his attention, through his inspectors, namely, the homes of the out-relief children. When adequate relief is given and the mother is permitted to stay at home, it seems not unreasonable that boards of guardians should encourage their being housed in suburban rather than in crowded centres. They should make it a condition of adequate relief that the mother and family should be removed from the position in which they may have been near to the husband's work, to somewhere more on the outskirts, and nearer to a school. The right hon. Gentleman's predecessor in the office of President of the Local Government Board will be remembered by the long-looked for declaration that "the workhouse is no fit place for children." It is only eight years that this Government has been in power, and there were many years when both parties were responsible in regard to this question. I hardly think that it was necessary for a previous speaker to call attention to the eight years and forget the twenty years, when the other party was in power. We are glad it has come—it has come none too soon—and I am quite sure the new President is not going back.

The late President of the Board informed us that he had given instructions, serious instructions, to his inspectors to look into the matter of the treatment of out-relief to widows and children, and to see that any deserving widows with children, and indeed that any widows with deserving children, shall receive in out-relief an amount by which their physical well-being, and reasonable comfort, can be secured. I would like to know if there have been any reports received in connection with those instructions, and if any progress has been made in that connection. The President has a devoted and enlightened staff to interpret the new spirit which is dominant as to the treatment of children. But besides inspectors he has auditors, and I should rather like to know if they have received any instruction as to the spirit in which they audit the accounts of boards of guardians when they go round to see them. I personally am sometimes threatened with the Local Government Board inspector if I am advocating a little more generous treatment in some cases. I am told the inspector will pull us up. Personally I am not inclined to be afraid of any such spectre. I suppose it is the law that there must be "destitution," but really in the case of children and of these little families, is it necessary to be quite sure that they are destitute, and that they have sunk quite overhead before rescue measures are taken? I should like to ask the President to consider the question of the inspection of boarded-out children. He has now seven inspectors to nearly 12,000 people, under 700 committees. We must all, of course, acknowledge the value of the unpaid work which is done by the women who form the boarding-out committees, but even they are the better for a little of the salutary advice of a well-instructed inspector.

Hear, hear!

I quite appreciate the cheer of my hon. Friend, because while I think boarding-out well carried on is a very good system, and has many points of superiority to the great institution, yet the child, the individual child, suffers very badly indeed if it does get into bad surroundings. The friendly inspection of visitors and of women relieving officers would do much to raise the standard of the homes of out-relief children who are poor. I wonder whether the Local Government Board has the power to require every board of guardians to appoint at least one woman relieving officer, who should be skilled in health visiting and understand the management and care of children. It is suggested that 4 and 5 Will. IV., c. 76, s. 46, gives that power, in that it authorises the Local Government Board to define the qualifications which they think necessary for the office. It appears to me that in inspecting children and the homes of children, one of the best qualifications is to be a woman, because she has a different eye and a different method of inspection from that of the man. I do not object to the suggestion of my hon. Friend (Mr. Booth) that in such a case it should be a married woman.