I wish to raise a point of Order on the Record of the Votes and Proceedings of to-day. At the bottom of page 412 there is a record of a Report from the Committee of Selection which indicates viâ the Chairman, that that Committee have added 15 members of the Committee which is now dealing with the Railways Bill to Standing Committee A, which is to deal with Part III of that Bill. We are all well aware that it is quite customary for hon. Members to be serving on two separate Committees with regard to two separate Bills. I assume that this is the first time on which there has appeared on the record of the Proceedings of this House an indication that it is intended that the same Member should sit on two Committees, sitting together at the same time on the same Bill. That is a point which, of course, I cannot elaborate, much as I would wish to do so. The first point, however,. I desire to put to you, Sir, is this: Whether it is within the competence of the Order of the House?

You will recollect, since you were in the Chair while the matter was being discussed, the assumption was quite natural that the Ministers would, of course, be Members of both Committees, to do all they could to help, but it was never suggested in the course of the Debate, either by the Minister in charge of the Bill, or by any Member who took part in it, that members of the Committee—that is to say, ordinary members of the Committee—would have the privilege exercised by members of the Parliamentary Bar of rushing from one Committee to another to discharge their functions. A special point in connection with this is the gross inequality which is created between members of one Committee and another, and I wish to know whether that is within the competence of the Order which was passed by this House. My next point is: Whether, in your opinion, it adds either to the dignity or to the efficiency of Parliament.

May I raise an additional point? If your ruling be in the affirmative, that it is within the competence of the Committee of Selection to appoint the same Member to serve on two Committees, would it also be within the competence of the authorities, if they found that the two Committees were not sufficient, to take a Member to serve on three Committees, and so on ad infinitum ?

There are some Members already serving on three Committees.

I do not think any point of Order arises here. The right hon. Gentleman is rather referring to the merits of a proposal discussed by this House. The House decided that the Bill was to be divided, and that a certain part should go to another Standing Committee. It lies entirely within the competence of the Committee of Selection to decide what Members shall serve on that Committee, and what special Members shall be added to it. If the right hon. Gentleman will look at the ruling given on 27th June, 1906, he will see that a similar question was put to the Speaker of that day, and that he said it was entirely within the competence of the Committee of Selection. With regard to the other point, that is covered by what I have already said. The Committee of Selection in its discretion can appoint a Member to serve on half-a-dozen Committees.

Is the position not somewhat unprecedented toy reason of the fact that we have created two Committees to deal with the same Bill, and under such circumstances, would the Committee of Selection be entitled to say that Members who had been sitting on the Committee dealing with the Bill up to this moment should not be transferable to the other Committee? I think you will remember that the Committee of Selection does not allow the transfer of Members from a Committee dealing with a single Bill. I would like your ruling on that point, which seems to me to be one of considerable substance. Some of these hon. Members have heard the discussions on the first part of the Bill, and they might be among the best men to put on the new Committee; but I understand that that will not be permitted, unless we have a ruling to the effect that they may be transferred.

The rule to which the right hon. Gentleman referred is a rule of the Committee of Selection, and as such does not come within my jurisdiction.

With regard to the precedent of 1906, which you have quoted, that I submit, with great respect, dealt with a Committee which was not sitting at the same time as the Committee of the whole House, dealing with the parts of the Bill that were kept downstairs.

That is quite true. This particular case has never arisen before, and the House was well aware of that when it came to its decision.

Is it not the case that there are more than sufficient Members to go on every Committee, without the Committee of Selection having to put one Member on more than one Committee? Should not the Committee of Selection, in view of the fact that there are an enormous number of Members who are not serving on any Committee, and who could give time to the work, take cognisance of that fact before calling on a Member to serve on two Committees?

That is a matter for the Committee of Selection to decide. The House appointed on that Committee some of its best Members, and this is a point which rests entirely with the Committee to decide.

I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

This is a complementary Bill for securing administrative economy, but not at the expense of any pensioner, for that is a policy to which I would never be a party. It is to secure economy in administration. The pension machine has grown with the growth of the Pension List, and there are happily signs that the Ministry has now topped its "third wave," and that we may in the early future hope to get into smoother waters. The number at present an the pension list is, as nearly as I can make out, 3,500,000 beneficiaries of all kinds. I have no doubt that is the maximum and that in future there will be a gradual decline. That is an enormous number. It is equivalent to the population, man, woman and child, of Liverpool, Manhester, Birmingham and Glasgow, and the House will easily realise therefore that the machine must be a great and complex one which is going to control the destinies of that very large number of beneficiaries. As Minister of Pensions I have a two-fold duty. I have to see that the machine is working efficiently, and secondly, that the cost of the working of that machine is kept at a minimum consistent with efficiency.

Seven or eight months ago, however, in the belief that this large and intricate machine required a thorough overhauling, I appointed a Departmental Committee in December last, and it is the unanimous proposals put forward by that Committee that I am now putting in the shape of a Bill before the House. The Committee was fully representative if any committee ever was. It represented all bodies and interests concerned, not only in the administration of pensions but in the receipt of pensions. There were seven Members of Parliament, apart from my hon. and gallant Friend and colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary, who acted as Chairman, there were two representatives of local war pensions committees, one representative of the Local War Pensions Association, three ex-service men, each nominated by one of the three chief associations of ex-service men—the Comrades, the Federations, and the International Associations— and an ex-officer, Major Baird, whose sympathies and activities on behalf of ex-service men and ex-officers are very well known. Notwithstanding the fact that this was a Departmental Committee,, there were only four of my officials of the Ministry upon it, so that I think the House will realise that in any case I never sought to hide any part of the administration of the Ministry. The Committee spent seven months in the closest and most minute investigation of each section of the machine, of the Ministry and of its product, and the Report is completely unanimous. I, as Minister of Pensions, and the Government as a whole are under the deepest debt of obligation to that Committee, and I feel sure they would like me to express our appreciation of the great patience, tact, and remarkable ability which were shown by my friend and colleague the Chairman.

The Departmental Committee's recommendations divide themselves conveniently into two parts, first, the Ministry's own immediate part of it at the headquarters and regional offices, and, secondly, that part of it which, except for a somewhat indirect and indeterminate control, is independent of the Ministry. I refer to local committees and their offices and officers. The recommendations with regard to the former will be put right as soon as ever I can by means of administrative instructions. It is with regard to the latter provisions of the Report that I am now going to deal, because to give effect to that part of the Report it is necessary that I should come to the House and ask for legislative sanction. I see in some quarters the objection raised that I am rather hurried in introducing these proposals, but if I substantiate my case, I think the House will agree with me that I should be failing in my duty if, after that complete and unanimous Report, I did not come forward at once and ask my colleagues in the House of Commons to give me legislative sanction for proposals which, I believe, will be in the best interests, not only of the taxpayer, but of the pensioner and the State.

Let me now come to Clauses 1 and 2. The present position with regard to local war pensions committees is that their expenses, to the extent of over £20,000,000 a year, are being met entirely out of public funds, while the committees themselves are virtually independent bodies over which I, as Minister of Pensions responsible to this House, have no control.

Will the right hon. Gentleman clear up one point: What does the £20,000,000 expenses mean? It leaves the impression that it is the expenses of administration.

They are now given over £20,000,000 a year.

To administer.

Expenditure, I ought to have said. If the right hon. Gentleman will leave me to develop my case, I shall shrink from no burden. Naturally as Minister of Pensions, the moment I saw that was so, I regarded the position as quite intolerable, and I came to the conclusion that it is intolerable to ask a Minister of the Crown to be responsible for expenditure, in whatever form it takes place, by local committees without having any control whatsoever over that expenditure. The Departmental Committee felt that, I gather, just as strongly as I do. They found, using their own words, that the present position "is anomalous and unsatisfactory, and is fair neither to the local committees, nor to their officers, nor to the Ministry." The fact is that local committees, as we know them to-day, have drifted into an entirely false position. Let me point out what the local committees were meant to do. I believe my right hon. Friend (Mr. Henderson) was one of the first to recognise the necessity of having local committees. They were constituted first of all by the War Pensions Act of 1915. They were then independent bodies composed of voluntary workers, and I yield to no one in my appreciation of the wonderful work the voluntary patriotic workers of this country did for soldiers and sailors and their families and dependents before the Ministry of Pensions was created. The function of the local committees at that time was to assist exceptional cases of hardship occurring among the families of soldiers and sailors who were serving and, secondly, by way of supplementary pensions in the shape of allowances on behalf of the War Office and the Admiralty. For this purpose they were by statute asked to collect private funds. They were also made the agents of the Central Statutory Committee, and ultimately worked as special grants committees. Local committees were therefore intended to be not the agents of the service departments, who were then the pension authorities, but independent bodies supplementing the grants given from public funds by compassionate and discretionary allowances. Their expenditure was expected to be comparatively small, and the normal expenditure was very slight indeed. Consequently at that time and for two or three years more they were left practically without any Governmental control.

What have these local committees become? A change naturally took place when the Pensions Ministry was formed at the beginning of 1917. The War Office and the Admiralty, who had been previously administering pensions, had acted through a large number of local officers, and my right hon. Friend who was then Minister of Pensions found himself without any such officers for the purposes of the grant which was then handed over to him for the first time by the House of Commons. Consequently, he asked the local authorities in the constituencies practically to become the local committees, and to act in the same capa-6ity for him as the local officers had for the Service Departments in the various commands throughout the country. The expenditure of public funds given for the first time by a large grant to the local committees was then only £1,500,000. To-day it is over £20,000,000. In 1917, the paid staff of the local committees only numbered 200; to-day they number nearly 7,000 and the voluntary workers are comparatively few.

That was the position of things when I entered the Ministry. During the time my right hon. Friend the Member for Gorton (Mr. Hodge) and I think my right hon. Friend the Member for Gorbals (Mr. G. Barnes) were, respectively, Ministers of Pensions, they attempted in some way to get control over the expenditure thus granted by Parliament to the local committees. They felt themselves bound, however, to preserve what is called the independent position of the local committees. They tried to get what I regard as most ineffective control, and I have found it to be so in experience, over these Commit- tees, by holding, if there was any discrepancy on the part of a local committee, what is called a local inquiry. The House will realise that thousands of pounds of public money may be spent while the inquiry is proceeding or before the inquiry starts, and the cost of the inquiry is itself heavy. The next idea they had was to ask, for power to surcharge officers or members of a local committee for any lax or illegal expenditure. I do not know what the experience of hon. Members is, but I find that that provision is not only ineffective, but futile.

I made up my mind that whenever I could get legislative sanction I would ask for more effective control over this vast sum of money. Not only were these two provisions which were put in the Act of 1918 ineffective, but we have had to provide a travelling audit which has to look after the expenditure of the committees after they have spent the money, not before; long after the defalcation appears. I find on inquiry that the cost of that audit staff which looks at only one quarter of the money which is granted by Parliament for the Ministry of Pensions amounts to exactly the same as the audit of the whole of the accounts of the headquarters of the Ministry itself. What has been more difficult for the Minister to understand is that over these staffs of the local committees he has absolutely no control. To-day I cannot appoint a secretary or an undersecretary or any official of any of the local committees. If I am going to be reponsible for this large amount of money, I do ask the House of Commons to give me complete control over the appointment and dismissal of officers who are in the main responsible to me and the House of Commons for this large expenditure.

For some time past I notice that the attempt on the part of the local committees to carry out the routine work of the Ministry has become irksome to them, and indeed the whole machinery has broken down. There is no analogy between a local committee and a local authority. The local authority collects rates and spends them and is directly responsible to the ratepayers of the district which they represent. On the other hand a local committee gets money from the Government, but is responsible not directly to the Minister but indirectly to the Minister and through the Minister to Parliament, which in my judgment is worse than useless. In the circumstances I am not surprised that they refuse to accept responsibility for the money, They regard themselves still as voluntary workers, and they expect somebody else not only to undertake the routine work of the Department throughout the country but to be responsible for the expenditure. I should like to give the House the conclusions of the Departmental Committee in regard to this question. They find that the local committees are actually responsible for the expenditure of £20,000,000 of public money, but their responsibility nine times out of ten is not more than formal, and the work they leave to the discretion of their officers. Moreover, they have actually protested by resolution to the Ministry against being called upon to assume any responsibility for the payment made to their officers. The officers of the local committee are the committee's officers and not the officers of the Ministry, and it is only by indirect means that the Minister can check irregularities on their part. At the same time these officers have control from time to time of vast sums in cash, and fraud is not uncommon amongst them.

During the last seven months we have discovered amongst the secretaries and other officers of local committees no fewer than 126 cases of fraud. I have only to point that out to show to the House that in view of the large amount of expenditure involved it is urgently necessary that I should be directly responsible for the appointment and removal of these men. I have no doubt that in the vast majority of cases the members of the local committees have been actuated by a really honest desire to help; but they are up against difficulties. Many of them find that the work which was most valuable during the War has gradually become less interesting, more routine, more irksome, and more difficult, and it was not to be expected of them that they should keep up the same enthusiasm. In the vast majority of cases they have not kept up the same enthusiasm.

Who appoints or removes the officers of the local committee?

The local committee, and I want the power to appoint them and to remove them.

Before there is any appointment of an officer by a local committee is it not a fact that the officer cannot be appointed without the right hon. Gentleman's sanction?

I am asked to give my approval to one set of officers, and that is all. Occasionally, I have insisted upon the appointment of ex-service men, but beyond that I have no control. There is another difficulty which the local committees are up against. In view of the fact that the administrative work has become more routine we have had to issue a great many more regulations. Everybody in this House hates regulations, and I am not surprised that the local committees hate them, especially when on the face of them the regulations curb their powers. Then the vast majority of the committees differ in their interpretation of the Regulations. We find that one committee in granting allowances will expend three or four times as much money as another in proportion to the population of its area. I propose to reduce the number of committees and the number of areas for which committees may be appointed, to re-model the composition of local committees and reduce their membership. I shall take over the local officers and the staff of the local committees so far as is required in order that the routine work of the Ministry may be done under my direct control, and I want to define much more satisfactorily what the real functions of the local committees are.

The first thing to do is to reduce the number of local areas of administration and the number of local offices and officers. At present there is a committee for each county, and that committee very often has got several subcommittees under it in various parts of the county. There is also a local committee for every county borough, and for a large number of towns and urban districts which have more than a population of 20,000. At present there are about 1,200 local committees. The Local War Pensions Association, which is a body that my right hon. Friend (Mr. Henderson) knows something about, when giving evidence suggested that the number should be very greatly reduced, and the Departmental Committee accepted that recommendation coming from this body as well as from almost every other witness. I am proposing at present to reduce this number to not more than 450; in other words, I get rid of about 800 committees. I find a most extraordinary overlapping. A county-town may be, and usually is, a county borough. A county borough in the same town has got its local committee, and the county town in the same town has also got its local committee and sub-committee, and I have no power as things are at present to abolish the redundant committees. By this measure of reorganised areas and having one committee for each reorganised area, I hope to effect a very large economy, and I hope to get rid of one-third of the staff of the local committees.

In Clause 1, Sub-section (1), I am taking power to reorganise the whole of the areas. I have already told the House that I think that my reorganisation will mean not more than, and I hope much fewer than, 450 committees. I would naturally take into consideration the feelings of the various localities and such advice as I can get from any of the local authorities. At the centre of each of the large reorganised areas there will be a local office and a war pensions sub-committee attached to it. In some parts it will be necessary to have, not sub-committees, but sub-officers without any sub-committee attached—I refer particularly to the sparsely populated districts in my native Highlands and various other large districts. There, I think, in justice to the pensioner who would have to travel enormous distances, there should be a local man who knows local opinion, and he should be on the spot to give his advice; but he will not have a committee working along with him. I propose to have a local man in each sub-committee district.

Where are these centres to be? Is there to be one in each county?

Obviously I could not tell now, because I have had enough to do to get all these legislative proposals considered from the Report, but I am taking powers under this Bill to prepare a scheme, and I shall be very glad to have the advice and assistance of prominent men and women in the locality who know the feelings of the various districts. These new committees will be directly under us, the officers will be directly under us. I shall appoint and remove them. I shall take full responsibility for finance and the administrative work done in the offices. In connection with these offices I propose to appoint a voluntary Local Committee which will in effect be a soldier's friend. I have found that it has been of enormous use at headquarters to have an officer's friend. These men have got an immense number of complaints which may have to be attended to. I often find among, perhaps 10,000 cases, say, in Hull, that there is nothing said about those which are all right, but if there is one bad case, there is nothing too bad to say.

Why pick out Hull?

I could not resist the temptation! I am confident that if we give the localities the benefit of a soldier's friend attached to the local office there will be the feeling that something is being done to help the man who thinks that he has a good case. Now as to Sub-section (2). I have admitted that local committees are essential to the working of local offices, and in any case a local committee is a valuable critic of the Ministry and of the Government. This Sub-section provides for representation by all kinds of men and women who know the pensioners. The composition of the local committee will be substantially the same as the composition of the present local committee, but I am giving somewhat different proportions to the interests represented. Where, for example, to-day we allow one-fifth representation to ex-service men I am giving one-fourth. Instead of continuing half representation to the local authority, I am giving it only one-quarter representation, for the reason that the local authority in the old days very often supplied local funds for pensions purposes, but nowadays there is no such money supplied by any local authority—it is State money and no other. I include ex-service men because of the representations I have had, not only from ex-service men, but from bodies of opinion all over the country. The local authority had too large a representation in the old days. It had the right to put on half the members of the local committee. Now I propose to give it exactly the same representation as it has under the National Health Insurance Act. Of course, there must be a change in the appointments of these committees. Now that we are altering the areas and local authorities become mixed up, one local authority may find that its area is enveloped by quite a different area. Consequently there is no local body which could appoint.

I am taking to myself the power of appointing these bodies. I shall be able to do it satisfactorily, I think. I shall, of course, have local advice, the advice of the local association of ex-service men and so on, but I shall also take care to consult the records of attendance of members of local committees during the past year, and I shall see that those who worked regularly and patriotically have the first chance. A great advantage will be that for the first time Government grants will be uniformly distributed all over the country. Hitherto, it has been possible for one committee to give three times as much as another. There has been such a lack of uniformity that sometimes it has been almost impossible to carry on the work. I shall see that the grants are correctly given, and that other benefits allowed by my Department are uniformly given, and given quickly. The staffs of the local committees presented to the Departmental Committee a petition. I believe they appeared before the Departmental Committee. I can quite see their point of view. They did not know who were their masters. They did not know whether they were the servants of the local committee, or whether in the long run they were the servants of the Government. I propose to make that perfectly clear to them, in this way: In future, provided I get legislative sanction, they will be State servants under me. I propose also to agree to what they suggested, namely, that where a man happens to show himself efficient in one area, he will be entitled, if he is offered promotion, to accept promotion in any area.

The object of Clause 2 is, while putting Committees back into the position in which Parliament intended them to be, to define more clearly their powers and duties. They will be relieved of all executive responsibility for the making of medical and other administrative arrangements, or for any expenditure) under the Warrants or Regulations of the Ministry. That is largely their duty now. They will thus be free in future of work which is not suited to them, and of responsibility which they are not willing to accept. They will be able to give their whole time —I feel sure they will—to work for which they are suitable, that is, voluntary work and voluntary administration of pensions in their own locality. They will retain all the powers which they had under the 1915 Act, except to provide medical treatment and training and employment for which the Ministry of Labour and myself are responsible now. Moreover, it is my intention to associate them with the working of the local offices. The officers of the local offices will be instructed by me through Regulations to report to the local committees as to the progress of the work in the offices, and to inform the committee as to the facts regarding any case or cause of complaint, to investigate any cases that the committee may volunteer to send to them and to give the fullest possible assistance that they may require to carry out the functions I am giving them.

Clauses 3 and 4. embody the most important part of the policy of the Bill. I refer to the question of permanent pensions. The Ministry of Pensions is the last of the great War Departments. The work of the Department has hitherto been, of necessity, very intricate and costly. I have come to the conclusion that it is directly in the interests of both the disabled man and the State that the machinery should be reduced as soon as possible to its minimum, so that within a measurable time all that will be left will be the simple procedure of regular payment of pensions at the Post Office.

The present system, with its periodical examination of men, involves an elaborate structure of medical boards, referees, and so forth. The medical machinery of the Ministry hitherto has involved the employment by the Department for whole time or part time of one man in every four or one man in every five of the medical population of the country. The periodical examination of disabled men and officers means annually the equivalent in working time of a strike of 20,000 men. The travelling expenses of the examiners and the examinees, and their loss of time, have meant an enormous amount of money. Even more important than that is the effect that finality will have on the mind of the man who hitherto has been harassed by medical boards and the relief it will be to him to get away from the atmosphere of the War and its disabilities, and from the endless uncertainty of medical examination. In these proposals I have been supported, I am glad to say, by every single body of public opinion that I have consulted, by the Members of this House, and by the Press. The Departmental Committee gave a vote unanimously in its favour. I have been supported also by the Standing Committee, of officers and men, which the Minister of Labour and myself have instituted, and which we see every second month.

1.0 P.M.

The report of the Labour Party Advisory Committee unanimously recommended that the pensions should be made permanent, not in four years, but in two years. I propose to make it four years for reasons which I shall give. There is at present an insuperable difficulty in the way of granting any great number of permanent pensions. I have granted a great many, where the cases were clear, such as cases of amputation where "there was no likelihood at all of any future improvement. Permanent pensions granted now, however, are on a rather one-sided basis. Any pensioner if he gets worse, can come back to the State and demand more, and he will get it if his case is worse, but the obverse of that does not apply. If he gets better, and becomes completely cured, he goes on drawing his permanent pension and I have no right of appeal on behalf of the State. I think there should be fairness as between the pensioner and the State, and I propose to abolish that one-sided process with qualifications which I shall enumerate as shortly and succinctly as I can. I have had the advantage of the assistance of the Government Actuary with regard to this proposal, and he has shown me that the proper time to examine a man for his permanent pension is four years after his discharge or after his war service. During the first two or three years after a man's discharge, there is very marked improvement in his condition, but in time the rate of improvement slows down. I find that in the first year or two the rate of improvement ranges from 20 per cent, to 60 per cent, of the disablement, but after two years it is a very gradual process, and at the end of four years to all intents and purposes the man's condition becomes stationary. Therefore I propose to make' the fourth year after discharge the year in which I propose to examine a man finally for his permanent pension. I should add one important fact in that connection. Many cases are extremely difficult. Newly discovered diseases have arisen in the course of the War. We have actually had to add to the medical profession in order to deal with these additional diseases and we have had to create new hospitals. Under my proposal, a man at the end of four years, however doubtful his case may be, will have had, by that time, examination by no fewer than 30 doctors. Before I came to the Ministry of Pensions men were very often dragged up for examination three and four times in the year. The men were harassed in this way, and accordingly, pending the policy of making the pension permanent, I made an assessment in 80 or 90 per cent, of the cases covering one year or more. We may take it, however, that each man four years after his discharge from the Army will have been examined by a great many different doctors. That, I hope, is sufficient to safeguard both the interests of the pensioner and the interests of the State. No doubt cases of unfairness may arise. I propose two things. If the medical board, when examining for a permanent pension, is satisfied that the man may get worse, I propose to instruct them not to make the award permanent, which is to say that the man will get the benefit of the doubt. In the second place I propose to ask the House to give me power to appoint an independent appeal tribunal. I, for one, should hesitate long, before taking upon myself, unless there was a court of final appeal independent of me, the responsibility of 3aying that a man was not entitled to any pension at all. I am therefore asking for powers to have this independent appeal tribunal, composed, not as at present of a lawyer, an ex-service man, and a doctor, but composed of two doctors, one of whom will be the President of the Court, and an ex-service man or an officer. Every discharged man will have the right to go to this independent court of appeal.

Will there be more than one appeal court?

Just as there are many appeal courts now, the Lord Chancellor might, upon my making representations to him, create several of these appeal courts.

Will this provision apply to the case of a man who has already been before an appeal board, and has had his claim dismissed?

Certainly. I am coming to the Clause dealing with that in a moment. Meanwhile I make the general statement, that any discharged man can now have the right to be examined at the end of four years after his discharge, for a permanent pension, and he has the right afterwards, to go to an independent tribunal. This court of independent judgment was advocated first of all by the Select Committee which sat upon the question of pension in this House. By means of making the pension permanent—I am giving a conservative estimate—we shall save £2,000,000 annually in administration alone. Let me make one other point clear. If a man becomes seriously worse after his permanent pension has been given to him, I still retain the rights which I have under Article 6 of the Royal Warrant and even if a man's claim has been finally settled, he may still, under those rights, be entitled to hospital treatment and to certain allowances and those privileges he will retain for the rest of his life.

Will those rights to hospital treatment, apply to all conditions, or only to those conditions arising out of the man's injury?

My hon. and gallant Friend is a specialist in that subject, and I would rather not answer his question straight away. I retain in existence for dealing with these exceptional cases, the rights I have got under the Royal Warrant, and I think that will go a long way to meet any difficulties which may arise, and deal with any hardships which may be imposed upon men. I have been asked a question by the hon. Member for North Lanark (Mr. R. McLaren) in regard to the right of appeal. It is a satisfaction to point out that the right of appeal on a final assessment, which I have provided for here, is the finishing touch to the whole scheme of pensions awards. There is not any case, wherein if the Ministry refuses a pension on the merits, the man cannot appeal to an independent tribunal. There are however some difficulties. Let me come to Clause 4 which is really the complement of Clause 3 Some people seem to think that the Ministry has a great desire to cut down the amount of pensions. Since I went to the Ministry of Pensions, and I am sure it was the policy of my predecessors, the one thing we always wish to do, was to give the man in every case the benefit of the doubt. To show that we had no desire to be unfair, we established under the Royal Warrant what is called Article 9. A great many men on demobilisation after the War were too glad to get out of the Army. They never waited to be medically examined, but rushed off and tried to get back to their old jobs, being only too thankful that the War was over. We all know cases of that kind. The Ministry could have taken up the position of saying to these men "You have no right; you did not take the opportunity of being medically examined and seeing whether at that given moment you were injured by some disability aggravated by service in the Army," but we did not do that. Under Article 9 we have given a right to every man who served in the British Army, even though he was never examined on discharge, to come before a medical board and have all the rights of a man who was examined at the time of his discharge.

The House will realise that that is a privilege which cannot be open to all men always, and while in France and America they have set four years in the one case and two years in the other, and even the Labour party in a very interesting memorandum to the Ministry suggested that the time limit should be 6 months, the same as under the Workmen's Compensation Act, we have gone forward, and I hope it will be taken in this spirit, as the; spirit which I hope is in the Ministry of Pensions at the present time. We have extended that period to 7 years. If you do not have a final appeal of that kind, what happens? You would have to keep up permanently the medical boards, the appeal tribunals, and all the paraphernalia with which the Ministry is associated.

Is the 7 years' right of appeal in addition to the 4 years after service?

No, it is seven years after service. The independent appeal tribunal which is in existence at the present time has the right now to hear all cases of discharged men, but with regard to that, I am asking the House to place a time limit upon the right of a man to appeal. In all our civil courts at the present time under the Workmen's Compensation Act, and in the Appeal Court of the High Court, there is always a time limit for appeals, and I am asking the House to say that in every case where there is an appeal there should be a time limit of six months. I will tell hon. Members why. It is because, if you do not have a time limit of that kind, you will have the pensioner becoming forgetful, you will have papers being lost, you will find the conditions of a man's disease, if he has a disease, being changed, and you will find all these sort of conditions superinduced. Consequently, I think it is expedient to ask that a limit should be placed upon the time in which a man can appeal, namely, the ordinary limit which is prevalent in this country in all civil cases, a limit of six months. In Sub-section (2) of Clause 5 I am making it quite clear what procedure is necessary in order to effect a right judgment in any appeal case. There was some doubt and difficulty in regard to that, doubt and difficulty which related to the double effect of the Pensions Act and the Royal Warrant, and under this Clause I am making it clear what exactly the position is.

Let me come to Clause 6, in regard to which there is a lot of misconception in the country. I am proposing under this Clause to take the same power of commuting the disability pensions of seamen and marines, and officers and men of the mercantile marine, as I have already in the case of soldiers and airmen. There is an impression in the country that this is a Bill for a general commutation of pensions, but it is nothing of the kind, and I should be no party to the introduction of a Bill of that kind. Of all the things which, in my judgment, are bad, it is in the vast majority of cases the commutation of pensions. I have had case after case under my notice where I am satisfied that commutation has worked disadvantageously. What do we find? Give a man a lump sum of money, and what is he going to do with it? In the vast majority of cases he spends it irregularly, and then he comes back destitute to the Ministry of Pensions or to some other Government Department, and maybe the people in the country are made to believe that we did not deal justly by that man. Consequently, my policy, which I shall stick to as long as I am at the Ministry of Pensions, is to see that commutation takes place as rarely as possible. The Admiralty, however, felt that in regard to seamen and marines there might be cases where it would be expedient to give the opportunity to commute a pension, in the same way as it is done for the soldiers and airmen, and therefore I take power under this Clause—and it is all the power I take with regard to commutation—to put seamen and mercantile marine men and officers on the same level as the airman or the soldier.

In regard to Clause 7, there are some boards of guardians which object to the Minister of Pensions being the guardian of an orphan of a soldier or sailor. My policy has been to get rid of institutional treatment as far as possible in favour of the policy of boarding out. In some cases that cannot be done, and, of course, I cannot get back from boards of guardians cases of epilepsy and imbeciles which can only be treated in institutions, but I am here taking powers to get under the Ministry of Pensions those children whom the boards of guardians will permit it to take charge of, on the application of the Minister. Clause 8 is one providing for submission to Parliament of all the Regulations made under this Bill.

These, the House will realise, are the main principles of the Bill. I need hardly say, I shall listen to any reasonable Amendment upstairs; but, naturally, I shall stand by the principles which I have endeavoured to set forth. I know there will be opposition by vested interests, but I know this House will really be able to face the facts as they really are. It will see to it that the interests of the ex-service men and their dependants are safeguarded, but while preserving those in their entirety, it will support, in these hard days, sweeping changes which will guarantee both economy and efficiency in the State.

Can the right hon. Gentleman give us any information as to what economies will be effected in administrative expenses by doing away with these 800 committees?

I do not like to say off-hand, but, on a conservative esti- mate for the whole Bill, I put it at anything from £6,000,000 to £12,000,000.

I do not think that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Pensions need apologise to the House for the amount of time he has taken in explaining this Bill, because it is a truism to say that there is no subject which breaks down the barriers of party politics more in the House of Commons than this subject. I hope, at any rate, though one is tempted to deal with the subject at very considerable length, I shall not intervene to any extent at this moment, because there is so much of this Bill which must be discussed more intimately in Committee, and on a Second Reading Debate it is probably a waste of time to adumbrate Committee points. We are experiencing now the reversal of the process which we all encouraged when pensions became necessary. We gave to pensioners in the furthermost corners of the country, through various committees, the opportunity of getting as quickly as possible to the source from which they could be assisted, and this Bill is the first attempt to reduce that large machine. It is advanced on the basis of administrative economy, and I think there is a case to be made for that. I have been one of those who think, for instance, that it is an extraordinary waste of public money that the Ministry of Pensions should give £500,000 for the new pension buildings in the current Estimates of this year.

For all Government Departments.

For the concentration of the staff at Acton, the exact sum is £374,000, and that in view of the fact that the Minister himself to-day comes down with a Measure to reduce considerably the cost of the administration of pensions. There is one complaint I want to make first of all, which, I think, is a reasonable complaint to make. This Bill is based on the Report of the Departmental Committee. This Report has not been circulated to the Members of the House. I tried to get a copy of it for the purposes of this Debate, and one of my hon. Friends behind went to see if it could be got in the Vote Office. It could not be got in the Vote Office. The copy I hold in my hand and the copy my hon. Friend has also got have had to be purchased outside this House.

The instructions were that every Member of the House should get one. I got mine.

I think, if the right hon. Gentleman inquires, he will find that the average Member of the House has not had this Report sent to him for the purposes of this Debate. I know it was my right hon. Friend's intention that Members should get it. The reason I am putting this point is this. While my right hon. Friend was speaking, I hurriedly-glanced through this Report, and I discovered that there were no fewer than 141 separate recommendations in the Report. I do not know whether that is the complete number or not, but it does make it very difficult to deal with the Bill, in view of the recommendations of the Committee, for we all take a considerable interest in this matter, and wish to give weight to the recommendations. I am not going to suggest anything so drastic as the Reporting of Progress, but I am going to ask my right hon. Friend to see that the Bill does not go too quickly upstairs in Committee, and that he gives us a reasonable time to read this Report. I shall be perfectly satisfied if the Bill does not go to Committee next week.

I can give my hon. Friend that guarantee.

I am very much obliged. That being out of the way, I want to say one or two general things only. I think everyone will agree with mo when I say that we want to do nothing, in any fresh legislation we pass with regard to pensions, to give any impression to the discharged and disabled men that we are affecting their position. What we have to try to find is a method of securing economy to the State, but not economy so far as provision for discharged men is concerned. To me, the big point, and the most useful point, in the whole proposals, is the proposal of permanency in the pension of the disabled man. My right hon. Friend said he would accept suggestions in Committee. I hope he will not make the seven years too binding, for this reason. It is the medical cases that offer the greatest difficulty. While surgical cases can be easily determined so far as permanency is concerned, the men who are suffering, say, from neurasthenia, or any cognate disease, offer more difficulty, and I do not want in those cases to see too fixed a period of time.

I notice in the report that there are at present 2,477,800 disabled officers and men of the Army and 60,550 of the Navy. With regard to that number, which is practically 2,500,000, permanency in the matter of pension would take them out of the range of the Ministry altogether, because once those men have had their four years' awards, and come on the permanent list so far as they are concerned, as my right hon. Friend suggested, they could draw their pensions from the Post Office, or in some other simple way, but they would practically pass out of the ken of the Ministry of Pensions. The only other big figure is the figure of 917,850 widows and orphan children. There, again, we are in this position, that the bulk of these must be children, and all these orphan children obviously step right outside the Ministry of Pensions when they are 16 years of age. Four years have gone, more or less, since the first award was made, so that in a matter of ten years, roughly speaking, the bulk of this figure, 917,000 widows and orphans, will also have disappeared out of the ken of the Ministry. That is why I say I think there is a strong case for economy in administration, the discovery of some other method of making the payments, and reducing the cost to the State. That is broadly the argument for administrative economy.

I want to say one other thing—for I promised that I should not intervene at great length—and that is in regard to the local war pensions committees. I notice it has been said, in the House I think, but I saw it in the Press, that complaint is made in regard to the fact that the local war pensions committees have not had sufficient time to put their point of view. I am informed by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for South West Hull (Major Entwistle), who sat on this Committee, that the local war pensions committees had ample opportunity, while the Report was being considered, to put their view, therefore that would appear to dispose of that argument. The emphasis, I think, wants to be laid on the fact that in the curtailing of the activities of the local war pensions committees you must not curtail the human touch that we have tried to establish between the administration of pensions and the pensioner himself. The local war pensions committees, as my right hon. Friend quite rightly says, have performed a very excellent work. They have done very valuable public service, and particularly in regard to the medical members, who have found their share of what we may call war work in devoting themselves locally to the Pensions Committee. But there is always the danger, once you remove that channel of communication between the man who is receiving a pension and those who can advise the Minister and put him right up against what I may bluntly call the machine—if I may say so without being misunderstood—that you do lose the human touch. My criticism of that part would be this: that whatever my right hon. Friend does—and we can thrash that out in Committee—he must as far as possible preserve to those who remain under the control of the Ministry of Pensions this human touch. These are the two criticisms which I think one can make on the Second Reading of the Bill. I hope—as a matter of fact we all hope— that this will be about the last of the Measures brought forward by the Ministry of Pensions. Those of us who started on this matter in the days when there were two White Papers brought in, one by the present Governor-General of Australia and the other by the present Minister of Labour, right down to the period in which we have had the various awards and legislation, have been in danger of having too much administration for these discharged men. That is another reason why we should make a real effort in this Bill to put the thing in such a way that on the expiry of the four years—and, in my view, the greater bulk of the pensioners will then step right outside the Ministry—we will be able, having done justice to the pensioners, to effect a very great economy in this matter.

The right hon. Gentleman when he introduced the Second Reading of this Bill said that he expected a certain amount of opposition from vested interests. I do not quite know what is meant by "vested interests" in this matter, but I venture to suggest that there is a certain amount of opposition that will be put forward on behalf of ex-soldiers to certain Clauses in this Bill. If the ex-soldier is a vested interest it is certainly an interest which ought to be considered, and attention paid to the dis- agreement of these men to the Bill. If I am in order I would like to explain who it is exactly I feel I am representing; that is the British Legion, of which I have the honour to foe treasurer. I think it will be of interest to the Committee to know, if they do not know already, that this consists of an amalgamation of ex-soldiers societies, such as the National Federation of Soldiers and Sailors, the Comrades of the Great War, the National Association of Discharged and Disabled Soldiers, and the Officers' Association. These have been trying for some two years to get unity; Last Whitsuntide at a big conference attended by 700 delegates, they achieved this unity and formed themselves into the British Legion. That Legion is out to help the Government, and not only this Government, but any future Government, with no conditions whatever. They are out entirely for constitutional government. They do, however, feel that with this Bill being brought on as it is to-day they have been rushed, and have had no opportunity of putting forward any Amendments, and no opportunity of circularising Members of Parliament to give their views. Remember that these are the views possibly of some 4,000,000 men, because these four associations already had a very large membership, and there is not the slightest doubt there were many men who stayed outside the smaller associations who will now come into the larger ones. I was very glad to hear the assurance given to the hon. Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Hogge) that the Committee stage would not foe taken this coming week. That does give us some little time to consider the matter, and to be able to overcome certain difficulties.

The main thing that is objected to in the Bill is the Clause which vests in the Minister the power of making schemes for establishing committees without reference in any way to the local committees. That, I know, is one of the main parts of the Bill. We feel that the local war committees in the past have done an enormous amount of good work. Only the pensioner himself knows and appreciates to the full what has already been done. It is now proposed to take that power away from these local war pensions committees and to vest it in the Government. It is true that somewhere in the Bill it says that as many of the existing committeemen will be kept on as is possible or advisable, but we all know what that means, that eventually they will be stripped of all authority, and will exist merely in an advisory capacity. The civil servants who will be in charge are entirely out of touch with local conditions, and we know from long experience how the advice of the local authorities, when they have no power, is ignored. This is the exact opposite to the decentralisation on which the predecessor of the right hon. Gentleman was so keen, and it is going back to centralisation. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned in his speech that there had been some 120 cases of fraud. I think it has yet to be proved that because a man works voluntarily, and not under Government, that he is necessarily more dishonest.

These were paid officials.

Then I withdraw that. But the local war pensions committees, as they exist at present, are composed entirely of local men in sympathy and in touch with local conditions. We fear it is impossible to get the same result if this power is transferred to that soulless bureaucracy about which we are always hearing so much. The only other point I wish to raise is that although the Bill lays down that discharged soldiers shall be represented, it does not say in what proportion.

I made special reference to that point. They have a quarter of the representation.

I am glad to hear that explanation and I am sorry I did not hear the announcement in the right hon. Gentleman's speech. That is all I have to say.

I beg to move to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words " upon this day three months."

I do not move this Amendment in any hostile spirit, and I want my remarks to be worthy of the spirit in which this question has been approached by the right hon. Gentleman. I endorse what the hon. Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Hogge) and the hon. and gallant Gentleman who has just sat down have said concerning the time at which this matter has been brought before the House. I think Friday is scarcely the day on which to deal with a matter of this importance. It has been brought up too soon after the issue of the Report, and as far as I am concerned, I should have liked to have an opportunity, not only of reading the Report but of looking up some of the evidence upon which the Report is based. I, and those associated with me in this Amendment, feel that while we would like to endorse perhaps seven-tenths of what is contained in this Bill, which does credit to the right hon. Gentleman and his outlook on the question of pensions, at the same time we feel that this Bill marks such a definite departure from the system of pensions administration which has been on the whole singularly successful under very great difficulties, that in the fact of that departure we think we ought to move this Amendment in order to ensure the serious consideration of Amendments when this Bill comes before the Committee.

It is not that we desire to definitely reject the Bill, because there is so much in it that we endorse, and we would not lightly lose the opportunity of confirming those Clauses, but it is rather that we want to deal with the question of the functions and the powers of the new committees, which have been foreshadowed by the Minister of Pensions in his speech, as set forth in the Bill. I agree with the hon. and gallant Gentleman who has just spoken, that it is a very serious matter indeed that the Minister should think of abolishing these committees, because the House ought to understand that the Bill provides that these committees shall cease to exist from a certain date. I gather from the right hon. Gentleman that the new committees will cover a wider area.

That is so.

I also understand that the number will be reduced from 1,200 to 450, and that their functions instead of being executive will be merely advisory. I think the hon. and gallant Gentleman (Major Cohen) put his finger on the spot, when he questioned whether these new committees would be in touch with the people who are finally to be benefited as much as the old ones have been with all their defects. On page 19 the Report says:

Those of us who have been on those committees have experienced the difficulties as they exist at the present time of keeping in touch with these people. Therefore I look forward with some amount of fear to the extension of the areas of the local committees, even though it is done in the name of economy of administration. I know the right hon. Gentleman by no means wishes to economise at the expense of the applicants or their dependants, but in the long run I fear that the extension of the areas to economise administration will have the effect of officialising, if I may use the term, the machinery in that area, and removing them even further from contact with the ex-soldiers and their dependants than they are at the present time. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman's intention is to make them like the regions.

They will be.

In spite of their attempt at efficiency and acting in a generous spirit with regard to the men, my experience with regard to regions is that they have been barriers between the local committee and the Minister him- self rather than the means of helping the pensioner to get that justice which I know that this House wants him to receive. Indeed, they have led to some amount of confusion, and I should say that they themselves have been largely responsible for the overlapping which the hon. Gentleman mentioned. The right hon. Gentleman said that his intention was to endorse the whole of the recommendations of the Departmental Committee concerning the functions of the local war pensions committee. There are about 14 recommendations in the Departmental Committee's Report, and an attempt has been made in the Bill to bundle them into six functions. The intention of the Departmental Committee was that the local war pensions committees should retain as much power as possible consonant with efficient working. I hope it will not be unkind to say that the right hon. Gentleman's chief object in the Bill is to gather to himself the powers of the local war pensions committees as they exist at present and to give those committees as little power as possible.

I have pointed out that the functions of the committees, according to the Departmental Committee's Report, would be 14, but, according to the Bill, they would be six. The first suggested by the Departmental Committee is that they should consider and make recommendations to the Ministry of Pensions as to War pensions in their respective areas. According to the Bill, they have to hear and consider complaints made by persons in receipt of or claiming pensions and to make representations thereon to the Minister. It seems to me that the Minister of Pensions is not going to have the recommendations of the local war pensions committees but their representations, which, of course, is quite a different thing. The Departmental Committee suggest that they should have power to call for reports and so forth. There is no provision in the Bill for calling for reports and generally surveying the work of the area. My objection is that the local war pensions committees are going to be reduced to the same position and to the same degree of importance as the present old age pension committees. They are to be advisory. I have been chairman of an old age pensions committee, and I know what it has been to deal with the local officer of the Ministry of Health and what it has been when we have come up against the Ministry of Health. You have so neutralised the functions of the old age pensions committee that you might as well abolish them and let the officials have charge altogether. That is what is going to be the position of the local war pensions committees in the future.

There may have been need for revision and for drastic powers on the part of the Minister in dealing with certain committees, though I am glad to say that I come from a business-like county and I think the Minister will bear testimony to the fact that our people attend very well and give their time ungrudgingly and carry out their work very efficiently, but, whatever defects there have been on the part of the committees in carrying out their functions and in laxity in finance, it seems to me that the Minister should so modify this Clause of the Bill as to take power to deal with those committees that have not such a sense of their civic responsibility and particularly of their responsibility for these men and their dependents along drastic lines. I do hope, when we get into Committee, that the Minister will be open to reconsider this Clause in many of its aspects in the light of the experience of Members of this House. I will not take up the time in dealing with the question of the permanence of the pensions. The Minister has earned the gratitude of service men for that Clause, and, in spite of the criticisms that I have made regarding the committees, I say that if the Bill did nothing else, it would be a, good thing that it had been drafted and laid before the House, notwithstanding the Sections with which we differ.

I should like to endorse the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman concerning the commutation of pensions. I have had experience in this respect, and I was looking forward to the time when we had a Minister who would take the view, with regard to the commutation of pensions, that the right hon. Gentleman has set forth this afternoon, because it has led to many regrettable things, which cast a reflection upon the country, the Government, and the House of Commons in general, for which there is no warrant. I would say a word concerning the time limit for the payment of pensions. The right hon. Gentleman has quoted the Labour party's memorandum, I do not know whether it was in anticipation of criticism or not. I have not seen that memorandum. I do not hold with it. I do not hold that there should be a seven years' limit. I do not think that there should be a limit. There are at the present time about 20 new cases a month coming before us—two years after the Armistice, and many of these cases are cases of men who have been discharged four, five, or six years. Is not that proof that one never knows how cases are going to develop, especially cases of shell-shock and gassing?

I understand there are some forms of gassing that wear off pretty quickly, but there are others which grow and eat into the system like cancer and ultimately, years later, the symptoms become active. While I can understand the Committee wanting to place a time limit, and a generous time limit, I must point out that I have come into contact with cases in my own experience which show that it may be possible, even after 8 or 10 years, for a man to become a hopeless wreck as a result of suffering from gassing or shell-shock or some other form of explosion whereas at the present moment there is no sign that they have any disease or at any rate if there is, they say nothing about it. I am speaking with some amount of personal knowledge on this matter. I am very sorry I was called upon to perform this function of moving the rejection of a Bill of this kind, but I think the House will understand the spirit in which I have moved it. I want to get consideration for a Bill which as it comes before this House is scarcely worthy of the matter with which we are dealing. It is a question for very serious consideration if we are going to deal with the whole system of administration, and it is bound to have an effect for good or for evil one way or the other. I trust when the matter does come before the Committee, the Minister will keep an open mind, particularly on the question of the areas of war pensions committees, and their functions, and that he will look closely into the departmental policy and not cling with undue rigidity to the Clause dealing with the time limit for pensions.

2.0 P.M.

I beg to second the Amendment. In passing, I would like to say that the Pensions Department is, in my opinion, one of the best of the Government Departments. But there is one thing I do not quite understand. We have been engaged during the last two or three months in cancelling or repealing legislation which has already been passed. I am wondering whether the Government have actually made up their minds whether this Bill represents their policy or whether it will be pushed through this Session and then an attempt made to cancel it next Session. A question was put last week to the Leader of the House on the point of having an Autumn Session, and in reply the right hon. Gentleman said that one of the objections to having an Autumn Session was that Ministers and officials had not time to look into matters and to properly prepare Bills. Is not that a very good reason why this Bill should for the moment be withdrawn, so that Ministers and officials may have a chance of looking into it and framing a proper policy during the Autumn Recess? There have been some communications sent to this House with regard to the character of this Measure, and I daresay hon. Members, like myself, have received letters on the point. There is also a letter in "The Times" to-day from Sir Marlay Samson to the effect that this partakes rather of the nature of hasty legislation. Members of the House have not had time to read the reports which have been issued on the subject, and again I suggest that that is a good reason for postponing the Bill so that Ministers and Members generally may have a chance of looking more carefully into the whole question, and then we may be sure that next Session we shall not be called upon to cancel legislation now passed in a hurry. I have no doubt there is great need for reform in many directions. The question of district areas is one of some importance, because they may be arranged so as to cause very great inconvenience to many men. There are a lot of things that want carefully going into, and I am supporting this Amendment with the idea of affording more time for the Government to make up their minds, and to look more carefully into the question, so that the Bill, when it is passed, may have some permanency in it.

I rise to support this Bill. As the first two Clauses, which have been the subject of all the criticism up to the present, are the result, or at any rate on the lines, of the Report of the Sub-committee with which I was associated, I think that perhaps I ought to say a word or two upon them. There has been a great deal of misapprehension as to the effect of these two Clauses, although I do not think the Minister can complain of the spirit in which the criticism has been rendered. The hon. Member who moved the Amendment said that he did so for the purpose of getting Amendments which the Minister says he would welcome, while the Seconder of the Amendment pleaded for rather more consideration of the question.

By the Government.

By the Government. I assure my hon. Friend that the Departmental Committee which went into this question started sitting last October or November, and has sat continuously ever since, hearing innumerable witnesses and thrashing the whole problem out to the minutest detail, so that at any rate it has not lacked consideration. I was rather surprised that the hon. and gallant Member for Liverpool (Major Cohen), seeing that he represents the British Legion, expressed some opposition to these Clauses. All of the ex-service men's associations are, he says, now united in the British Legion, and there were on the Committee three representatives of those associations, all three of whom were in favour of the Report which is carried out by these two Clauses. In fact, the whole Committee was unanimous. There was also a number of representatives of local committees, men of experience in local committee work since its inception. Some of those representatives at first approached this problem with considerable hostility, but, as the result of hearing all the evidence, which was overwhelming and convincing, they all came to the same conclusion, and the committee presented a unanimous Report. I am sure that these facts will have considerable influence in leading the House to support the statement of the Minister that this Bill is in no way designed to affect the benefits which the, ex-service man and the pensioner will obtain. There is nothing here which in any way affects the amount of pension or the amount of treatment, or anything of the kind. It is a pure question of administration, the object being to secure primarily, more efficient, and secondly, more economical administration.

We are inclined to approach the question of pensions with considerable fear and trembling, and even with all the speeches that we hear on economy, and the various Budgets of the country's finances that we get, no one ever dreams, of course, of attacking any money that is expended on pensions. That is perfectly right, so far as regards the amount of pensions and the benefit which the pensioners receive. That ought to be regarded as sacrosanct. As a member of the Select Committee on Pensions, which sat some two years ago, I was, indeed, anxious to advocate increased pensions, so I am the last one now to have any truck with interfering in any way with the benefits. That, however, does not mean that there is not a large amount of expenditure coming under the Ministry of Pensions Vote which is capable of reduction and economy through) better administration. Last year's Estimate was £123,000,000, but only £111,500,000 of that was actually expended. Out of that, however, only some £96,000,000 was spent in pensions and treatment allowances— £80,000,000 in pensions, and £16,000,000 in allowances—while £7,000,000 was purely cost of administration, and £10,000,000 went in medical services. It is obvious, therefore, that there is considerable room for administrative economies. In addition to that, we have to remember that, with more efficient administration, not only is economy in cost achieved, but leakages are stopped —improper payments which come under the head of benefits. No one would advocate that you should not stop undeserving people from receiving benefits. There have been experiences of irregular payments. There have been experiences of some committees which have paid a great deal more than others, and I am sure that the House does not desire that. We want uniformity of treatment throughout the country. You not only achieve actual economy in administrative expenditure by more efficient administration, but you ensure, not only that the deserving cases all get the benefits to which they are entitled, but also that undeserving people are prevented from getting that to which they are not entitled.

Personally, I think the Ministry of Pensions this year will not expend anything like the sum for which they have estimated. If the Vote had come on yesterday, I should have had something to say on that. I am certain that if this Bill is passed into law, and the alterations for which it provides are carried out, considerable economies will result, to the benefit of the pensioner as well as of the State. In Clauses 1 and 2, which deal with the alterations in the local administration of pensions, I am not sure that the drafting is very clear. It is a little obscure to me, but, from what the Minister has said, it is intended to carry out the recommendations of the Committee on this subject, namely, that local committees shall cease to be responsible for the routine administration of pensions, that the routine administration of pensions shall be placed under the control of the Ministry, and that, for that purpose, the staffs of local committees shall become Ministry officials. The present position is that local committees have certain executive functions which are strictly defined and restricted by Regulations and by the Warrants. There is no discretion left now to local committees. As the Minister has said, when they were formed in 1916 their principal function was to assist the families of serving men in cases of hardship. That was a discretionary power which was not strictly limited and restricted by Warrants and Regulations, and the work then was measurable in quantity. The position now is different. There is a huge expenditure of £20,000,000 which goes through their hands, mostly in the form of treatment allowances. That is not done by the members of the committee—the voluntary workers. There is a complete misapprehension on that point. They have a paid staff of officials. We hear it said that more officialism is going to be created, but that is not the case. The officials are there now; the only difference will be as to who will be their master. Should it be a master who in fact leaves them, as I shall endeavour to show, without any control, whose trust in the majority of cases is not misplaced in any way, but who, in fact, does not control them at all; or should they, as the Bill provides, be placed under the control of the Minister who is responsible to Parliament for this huge expenditure? The Ministry of Pensions Vote is almost the biggest item of expenditure in the whole of the Government's accounts, and surely the Minister who is responsible for this sum ought to have control over the officials. This expenditure at the present time is disbursed by officials under the Minister's own Regulations and in accordance with the Warrants which have been passed by this House.

That is a very different proposition from such a radical change as taking executive functions, which are actually being exercised now by voluntary members of committees and transferring them to a huge bureaucracy of officials. I am rather surprised that that objection should have been raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson). It is quite refreshing to have a criticism of bureaucracy from Members of the Labour party, and I hope we shall hear more of it on future occasions. If my hon. Friend had been accurate in that, I should have been very glad to join him in his criticism of bureaucracy. But you have your bureaucracy there now. The officials are there. They are paid whole-time officials who are doing purely routine work. There is no exercise of discretion. They are disbursing the payments under Regulations in accordance with Rules which are strictly laid down. The informed opposition to this Bill, if there is opposition, is not from people who will object to the officials of committees being put under Ministerial control. It will come from those who think that local committees now have not enough power. It is not the opposition of those who do not want to be deprived of existing powers, but the opposition of those who think those committees have not now the power they ought to have. There are undoubtedly members of local committees who think the committees as at present constituted should have the whole power of award in their hands and of the issue of pensions and should also have almost indefinite powers of discretion to deal with cases of hardship. We sympathise, of course, with that view, but I am certain if those views— and it is the only alternative which was put before our Committee to deal with the present anomalous situation—were carried out, instead of the Ministry of Pensions Vote being £120,000,000 it would be at least in the neighbourhood of £200,000,000, and I think the House would not contemplate such an enormous increase in our national expenditure with equanimity.

I want to emphasise that point that these executive functions which the local committees nominally now have are pure routine functions which are strictly regulated by Regulations, and that is eminently a thing which must be done by officials. My hon. Friend says he had not had any recent experience, but we have not only heard evidence, but we have seen the working of various local committees all over the country, and in fact what happens is this. All these payments are made by the officials. A list is made of the payments and of the beneficiaries, and that is brought up each week and signed. Sometimes it is subject to a resolution of the members of the committee, or it is just signed by the chairman, and in nearly every case without any investigation, even of test cases. That is the average thing that happens. That is not satisfactory. We have had cases before us where irregular payments were made by a paid official of a local committee. They were pointed out to the committee, and, in spite of that, the committee supported the officer and refused to have him removed, even in cases where he was proved to have been guilty of fraud. I do not say these are usual cases. They are exceptional, but there were 106 cases of proved fraud within six months; and can it be argued that it is reasonable that it should be in the power of the committee to insist on retaining an officer who has been shown to be guilty of irregular payment? That is the position to-day. It is an impossible one. You have the position where a committee thinks the regulations of the Minister are all wrong. [ Interruption. ] Payments to people who are not entitled under the Regulations. That is the average type of irregular payment of which I am speaking. But you have cases of committees who are shown to have been guilty of these irregular payments, and they have refused to comply with them and the Minister has been helpless. He had to go through a long rigmarole of an official inquiry or something of that kind.

These are, of course, exceptional cases. In an average case what happens is that the committee leaves these things in the hands of the officials, who are subject to an indirect financial control of the Ministry, and naturally, being men of good standing, the thing goes on without much trouble. But it is a perfectly anomalous position. It is not fair to the officials of the local committees themselves. A man is in a small committee in a small area. He may be extraordinarily efficient. He has no chance of promotion. There is no system of co-ordination between the various officials. He does not know who is his master. There is an extraordinary provision in the Regulations which says that where the Ministry, through the regional office, gives a direction and the local committee do not agree with that direction, the secretary of the committee has to obey the local committee and register his protest. That is a ridiculous position The local committee started off with the intention of disbursing voluntary funds which they had collected. Since then the whole position has altered. Now they do not provide any funds at all. The local authorities did bear a certain part of the expenses of administration. They do not do that now. All the cost of administration, all the disbursements of local committees, are State funds and, the Minister being responsible to Parliament for it, there is no other possible position but that he should be responsible for the servants who are disbursing these various funds. I think the Minister dealt very fully with the ground for bringing forward these first two Clauses and it is an overwhelming case. I wanted to emphasise two points. It has nothing whatever to do with the amount of pension or benefits. It does not really make any radical alteration in the present system, but it merely makes it an effectual control by the Ministry. That is to say, it is not a question of there being a great alteration or the appointment of a lot of other officials, or anything of that sort. There will be a reduction of officials when we get the reorganisation of areas such as the Minister recommends. But it would enable the Minister to get rid of certain overlapping in administration which at present exists.

Let me give an example. We have in certain towns a regional office. We have an area Deputy Commissioner of Medical Services Office, we have, say, a general local committee office and a couple of subcommittee offices. There are towns where you have as many as five different offices in connection with the Ministry of Pensions. When you come to the administration of treatment, in the advising and supervising of treatment, you have the following various officials concerned. You have the Commissioner of Medical Service of the region and also the Deputy-Commissioner of Medical Service, you have an area Deputy-Commissioner of Medical Service, you have a medical officer of Ministry clinics, you have an officer of the civil hospitals, you have medical referees and the local committees all supervising this treatment and all performing functions which are not properly co-ordinated and harmonised. And then you have, actually giving treatment, Ministry clinics and hospitals, civil hospitals and panel doctors. The mere list, I think, is sufficient to show that here you have various avenues for dealing with treatment which are too numerous and which are not properly co-ordinated and harmonised, and one of the reasons for this is the independent position which local committees enjoy at present. They are independent bodies, they appoint their own staff, or rather, the local authorities appoint them, and they are disbursing these large sums. These two Clauses are measures which effect no radical change, which make no difference to the pension, except insofar as you assure to the pensioner by more efficient administration, what he is properly entitled to, and they will result in more efficient administration and economy, which are very essential at present. I am sure that the Ministry of Pensions Vote need not be nearly as large as it is.

I want to offer a few words of criticism on the drafting of the Bill. I should like an explanation of paragraph ( a ), Subsection (1), of Clause 1— measure. When the Minister has got out the scheme it would be infinitely preferable to have it brought into operation all over the country and not to have a local committee temporarily with part of its area taken away, but continuing to exercise its functions as regards the remaining part of that area. In connection with Sub-section (2) as to the constitution of the committees, I notice that the wording is not in accordance with the wording of the Report of the Departmental Committee, which I understood the Minister to say he was prepared to adopt. The proportions of the representation are not mentioned in the Bill, although I understood the Minister to say he would accept them. It would be much better that they should be inserted, because they were the result of very careful deliberation, and the proportion is nearly as important as the representation you want on the committees.

The next point I have to criticise is the representation of ex-service men. In the Bill it reads: "Disabled men who have been discharged," etc. We went very carefully into this matter and the recommendation we made was that the direct representation of ex-service men, widows, or dependants should be increased to one-fourth as suggested in paragraph 67. That paragraph says: dations as to the administration of the Ministry. That is very important. There is also the recommendation that they should have power to call for returns from the officer. That also is very important. It provides that human touch and control over the bureaucracy of which we have heard so much. The local committees have executive functions which it is recommended they should exercise as regards voluntary funds. These apparently are omitted from the Bill. Then there is an important function which we recommended, namely, to report to the chief area officer any alleged inefficiency or neglect on the part of the staff in the local office, and to make representations thereon. This is a safeguard against some of the criticisms which are raised about having too much officialdom. I hope that these matters will be carefully considered by the Minister before the Committee stage, and that as far as possible the important functions which have been very carefully considered by the Departmental Committee should not be omitted.

The local committees are bodies which meet at more or less long intervals, probably every month or so. Their proper functions are to act as a watch dog and a safeguard for the pensioner and to provide that human touch which enables any pensioner to come to them to take up his case and to see that it is properly dealt with. It is also their function to watch those who are engaged in the routine administration of disbursements, to make recommendations as regards the conduct and administration of the Ministry and to deal with the care of children and the administration of voluntary funds. Their constitution enables them to carry out these powers, and these powers are reserved to them and clearly defined. If these functions are adopted the local committees will have an infinitely better position than they have at the present time. Undoubtedly, a great many of these committees are ceasing to take interest. They think that certain discretionary powers have been taken from them, and they are ceasing to take interest in their work. When they realise the importance of their functions, and that they are peculiarly suited to their constitution, we shall get increased interest by members of local committees, and that will be for the benefit not only of the pensioner, but of the State.

I welcome Clause 3, which has had universal approbation. This establishment of permanent pensions is a matter of very great importance. It has the support of the Labour party and the support of the ex-service organisations. We had a certain amount of evidence put before us on this subject. This Clause will result in the saving of administrative expenditure and a saving in the disbursement of pensions within the next few years, because there are a great many people who would much rather have a permanent pension of a slightly reduced amount if necessary rather than a larger pension for a short period of six months. In these days the ultimate liability to the State is important, but it is not so important as obtaining all the economies we can obtain during the next few years. I think this proposal will result in economies, but far more important than that, it will save the pensioner from the irritating examinations by the medical boards. There are 2,900 doctors engaged on medical boards part time, and 320 whole time and there are 1,200 medical referees. One-fifth of the whole medical profession is engaged on pensions administration, and however much we admire the medical profession it is evident that considerable economies in administration can be obtained by making these pensions permanent, which would be for the benefit of the State and also for the benefit of the pensioner.

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Macpherson) on the able speech with which he explained the Bill. I also pay a tribute to the Minister and to all the officers of the Ministry for the unfailing courtesy and efficiency with which they invariably have dealt with the, I may say, hundreds of letters which I have sent to them, and I pay a similar tribute to my two hon. Friends the Parliamentary Secretaries to the Ministry. There is one point about which I am frightened. Whereas the Minister is going, rightly, to take control and also to take responsibility yet, when looking at the thing from the point of view of the locality, the individual man may in one respect possibly fail to get that protection which the local committee now gives him, and I would be very glad to be reassured on this point. The matter to which I refer is those cases in which a man has been before a medical board and has got a certain disability assessed. Again and again cases have come to my notice—I had two of them yesterday—in which the findings of the medical board, who after all have seen the man and examined him, have been over-ruled by the Ministry of Pensions.

After a few words which I had with the Parliamentary Secretary last night he reassured me to a great extent, but in so far as you are going to put the Ministry of Pensions in supreme control over what happens in all areas, I am frightened lest the findings of the medical board may, even more than is the case at present, be upset in order to get that uniformity in treatment to which the Minister referred to-day. It is very much to be regretted that if in one locality, say in the North of England, disability is assessed at 70 per cent. for the loss of one leg it should be assessed at only 40 per cent. in the South of England. You have got to have the same amount assessed for the same disability. Therefore you must have uniformity. But where 100 per cent. is given and within a few days the man receives a letter from the Ministry of Pensions in London telling him that the pension which he is going to have for the next year is 8s. for himself and 2s. for his wife, there is such a conflict of testimony between the local medical board and the Ministry of Pensions that probably I shall be told, if inquiries are made, that there has been some mistake in that case. But I have had a great number of complaints that the findings of the medical board have been over-ruled.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman (Major Entwistle) referred to cases of fraud and irregularity. What may be called fraud must be done away with, but I was not certain that I followed the distinction which he drew between irregularities and frauds. If by irregularities he meant the case of a man who comes before the local committee, and the local committee find that there is no Regulation which quite fits the case and take upon themselves discretionary power to meet him half way or give him some assistance, or if, as is probably the case, this is done by the secretary, and the committee, having the matter brought before them afterwards, say, "You did quite right, and we will sanction the irregularity," is it to be the rule that such irregularities as that must not take place in future? If these hard and fast Regulations are going to be complied with, and there is going to be that lack of the human touch which I know there is now, then I shall regret that those irregularities are not going to continue.

May I ask the Minister whether he is going to appoint inquiry officers to assess the incomes of the claimants? If he is, then the analogy which my hon. Friend the Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson) drew between the administration of the old age pensions and what the administration of these pensions may ultimately become is more apparent than I thought it was at the time. That inquisition may be necessary to a certain extent, but it ought to be done with the greatest care. While I was delighted to hear that there are going to be economies and more efficiency in administration, I hope that these economies are not going to be effected at the expense of the 3,500,000 beneficiaries. I congratulate the Minister and all concerned who are bringing forward this scheme. My one hope is that when you get down to individual cases there will not be less of the human touch in the administration of pensions than there is at present.

My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for South West Hull (Major Entwistle) . has answered many of the questions which have been raised on this Bill because he was in a specially good position to do so, as he was Chairman of the Sub-committee which inquired into Committee administration, but there are one or two matters touched on in the Debate to which I may refer. My hon. and gallant Friend (Captain Bowyer) raised two points, both of which came within the purview of the Sub-committee of which I was Chairman. One was the question of the decision of the medical board being overturned by headquarters at the Ministry. That complaint was very prominently put before the members of the Committee at the time of our inquiry. At the end of January the Ministry issued a circular, known as 2007, making it quite clear that no decisions of a medical board were to be overruled unless a man was again examined by a medical, board. We are satisfied, or were satisfied, that that instruction was being carried out.

There is a great deal of misunderstanding on this point. A man is examined by a medical board, and the board assesses his disability or possibly two disabilities at such and such a percentage, but they have no authority to decide whether a disability is attributable to service or not and it is obvious that they cannot have that authority, because attributability is not entirely a medical question. It is a question of military law, and there are other factors which are not within the jurisdiction of medical men. Often it happens that a man goes before a medical board to be assessed for a disability on which he claims pension. He is assessed at so much, and possibly he is assessed on two disabilities at so much, say at 100 per cent. The case goes up to the Ministry and the Ministry finds that whereas one of these disabilities is attributable to service, the other disability has nothing whatever to do with service. Consequently the man finds his assessment is reduced. The difficulty arises because, although under the instructions of the Ministry a man should not be told what his assessment is when he first makes a claim, he very often finds out by overhearing members of the board discussing his case while he is present. It is an unfortunate occurrence and one which it is very difficult to avoid.

Instructions have been issued that every step should be taken to try to avoid a man being told his assessment on a new claim until the case has gone to the Ministry, because it is fully appreciated that until a new claim has been decided with regard to entitlement it is not desirable that the man should know anything about it. If he knows, it often raises false hopes in his breast. In the case of an old claim, in which a man comes up for reassessment, it is obvious that the question of entitlement has been decided. When in such a case a man is told his assessment, unless some palpable error takes place, that is the assessment on which he is awarded his pension. So far as existing instructions go, there is no possibility of a man, examined by a medical board on a particular disability for which he is entitled to claim pension, having that assessment overturned by the Ministry.

I have in my possession two letters. One is dated 11th May, and it informs a man that his disability was 100 per cent. It is a written docu- ment. On 14th June he received another letter stating that his pension is 10s. a week. How are those two statements to be reconciled?

I can reconcile them only by saying that a palpable error has occurred. In every Ministry you must get palpable errors, because the human element is always liable to err, but on the instructions sent out no occurrence of that kind should take place. We were satisfied on that point because it was one of the most important complaints put before us. With regard to the question of inquiry officers, that was also a recommendation of our Committee. So far as alternative pensions are concerned, inquiry officers already exist. There are inquiry officers in the Regions who are Ministry servants. In some cases the local work is carried out by registrars of county courts. That has been found extremely unsatisfactory, because working-class people and other people do not like anybody connected with the courts going round to make personal inquiries. It has been suggested that the system at present employed in London and in Scotland should be extended throughout the country, and that the Ministry inquiry officers should be established in every Region. All cases of one man businesses are dealt with by regional inquiry officers, working under the Ministry, and there has never been any complaint about their work.

The other recommendation, in keeping with that, was that the work of inquiry officers, which is confined to alternative pensions, should be extended so as to include dependents' pensions, because it was found that the existing system, by which local committees inquire into dependents' pensions, is extremely unsatisfactory in many cases, as they do not take enough trouble to obtain accurate information, and very often it results in a good deal of hardship and dissatisfaction, as the pension is subsequently varied. It would be very much better, if you are to have permanent inquiry officers doing particular work, that they should also do the other work. The hon. Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Hogge) referred to the question of the Ministry eventually and in a very short time losing control of a large number of existing pensions. It is quite true so far as children are concerned, and a good many widows who have been remarried, that the Ministry will lose control of a number of pensions. On the other hand I think the hon. Member forgot that a point the Minister made was that even if a man gets a permanent pension, he will be still entitled to claim treatment if he should become ill after his pension is granted. That is a most important provision, because it should make a man absolutely content.

Another point referred to was that the Minister should be careful not to make his time limit too drastic. I do not think the limit of seven years is in any way drastic. To begin with, it has been found that during the last two years, in a number of cases of pension, the percentage of injury claims to disease claims has very radically changed. Whereas shortly after the War the percentage of the one to the other was more or less 50 per cent. in each case, now the percentage of claims on account of injury is only about 17 per cent. and the balance represents claims on account of disease. Where you are getting the majority of claims on account of disease, it is obvious that you must have some time limit, because it is much more difficult to decide whether a man who is suffering from a particular disease originated that disease on War service seven years ago than it is to come to a decision in the case of injury, for you can trace the history of a bullet wound or injury of that kind.

Criticism has been directed against the time limit from the point of view that existing War Office warrants have no time limit. The existing War Office warrants are quite different from the Ministry warrants, for two reasons. One is that the existing War Office warrants take no account of the question of aggravation. It is on the question of aggravation that the difficulty arises. Any medical man will agree that it is extremely difficult to decide in the case of a man who was suffering from disease before the War, and, possibly, is still suffering from it, whether that disease was aggravated by the War or not. In the War Office warrants the question of aggravation is not allowed. In the Ministry warrants the question of aggravation is allowed, and you have to put some time limit in the matter of claims.

The other point upon which the War Office warrant differs from the Ministry warrant, is that in the War Office warrant, apart from certain classes of tropical diseases, diseases are not considered to exist at all for the purposes of making claims. Tropical diseases are much easier to define, and base a claim upon, than .the ordinary diseases which exist in this country, and a man who has a tropical disease has traces of a definite history of how he got that disease originally. Very few tropical diseases exist in this country at all, and if a man has, for instance, malaria, it is very obvious he has got it in the tropics. I think that criticism which has been made against the time limit, not in this House but elsewhere, does not hold water so far as the War Office warrants are concerned, because they are based on entirely different principles. I do not think myself the seven year time limit is in any way drastic. It is, from another point of view, extremely desirable. The widows' time limit is seven years, and if you are going to have a time limit for the men, it is essential the two limits should be of the same duration. Otherwise curious anomalies will arise.

The hon. Member who moved the rejection of this Bill stressed the point that the ex-service man would not have the advantage of being able to go to the local office which he has at present, and that these committees would be reduced in numbers so much that they would get out of touch with local conditions. I do not think it is appreciated that many of the committees which will be abolished are not main committees, but sub-committees. The old system, by which there was a county committee, with perhaps a dozen sub-committees, has not worked satisfactorily. The little sub-committees have done the work—perhaps in a more or less haphazard way—while the county committee has merely been the recording machine of that work.

That applies, not only to the country, but to cities like Glasgow. There we have a population of 1,250,000; we have one single local committee and ten district committees. The ten district committees do the work and the one single committee merely duplicates their records. That is not only a waste of time, but a waste of money and effort, and nobody can defend it. It is to effect reduction in this redundancy that the re-organisation is taking place. Personally, I do not think there is any hardship involved to local authorities, because the interest taken by local authorities in this work now has very largely diminished compared with what it was at the beginning of the War. And not only that, but they do not now contribute to the expenses as they originally did. Another point made is that a system of bureaucracy will be created, owing to the fact that the local committee officers will become officers of the new authority. It does not appear to be understood that existing secretaries and treasurers of local committees will be the clientele from which the new staff will be selected. That is to say, in ordinary cases the secretaries and treasurers of local committees will be nominated for these new appointments, and to a very large extent the membership of the local committees will remain the same. Their powers will be to a large extent advisory, and the Minister will have direct control over the secretary and treasurer, who will continue to do the work which they are doing at present. The Minister will be able to call, them to book if they attempt to do anything contrary to the Regulations. There is no committee or body in this country which spends public money and over which the responsible Minister has no control, and I am sure there will be no sympathy for any suggestion that anything contrary to the usual practice should be done in connection with these committees.

3.0 P.M.

It is in accordance with the existing procedure of all Government Departments that there should be this control over the expenditure of public money, but the system which exists at present is absolutely contrary to that of any other Government Department in the country, and cannot de defended by anyone who has experience of administration. The hon. Member for South-West Hull (Major Entwistle) referred to two small points in connection with Clause 1 of the Bill. I think it would be a great mistake if the re-organisation of the committees is carried out piece meal. If the Minister is going to deal with two or three counties, then wait for two or three months, and deal with some others, he will make a mistake. He may find it necessary to deal with the country Region by Region. He may deal with the different Regions covering England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland separately, but it will be a tremendous mistake if he attempts to deal with the committees in any single Region otherwise than simultaneously. I must also say, when I read the Clause, I was surprised to find that the actual percentages which were recommended are not reproduced. I hope the Minister will agree to reproduce more faithfully the recommendations of the Committee in that particular respect. In Clause IV, I do not understand the use of the expression "any person," because, so far as widows are concerned, they are already under the seven years' time limit, and I do not know why it is necessary to include them again in a statutory provision.

On Clause V there are two small points. I do not like the expression "Within six months after the date of rejection," because it is not sufficiently definite. If the Minister were to say "Within six months after the date of the notification of the rejection to the man," it would give a definite date on which to work. It is undesirable that you should throw out any implication that the Ministry is trying to take advantage even for two or three days, of a time-limit which works adversely from the man's point of view. The date on which a claim is actually rejected may be two or three days before the man receives notification. It is only a small point, but it is worthy of consideration. I do not understand the real meaning or object of the second part of Clause V, and I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will explain more fully what its real intention is. It appears very vague in its present form. I am not aware that any advantage has been taken in the matter of unfair appeals. The same remark applies to Clause VI, which the Minister says was founded on a recommendation that naval cases should be allowed the benefit of commutation. Why does this Clause not refer only to naval cases? It covers soldiers' cases as well, and it contains a paragraph which is of a penal nature. I can only suppose it has been drafted in this wide way in order to bring the soldier within the ambit of Part 2 of the Clause. If that is the case, I should like to ask the Minister whether he has found in his experience any wilfully false statements being made by ex-service men in claiming commutation. That could be the only justification, to my mind, for putting in this particular provision.

There is one other point I would like to make, although it is perhaps not relevant to the Bill, but it has been referred to by the hon. Member for East Edinburgh, and that is that this particular Report has been issued as a Parliamentary Paper. Members will know quite well that a Parliamentary Paper is not generally available in the Vote Office, but only in the Sales Office downstairs, and not only that, but it is always issued at a higher price than a Command Paper. Several hon. Members who were Members of this Committee asked the Minister specially if he would issue this Report as a Command Paper, and I believe it was the desire of the Parliamentary Secretary that it should be so issued. I gather that it lies in the discretion of the Treasury or the Stationery Office, but I would like to point out that the result of this Report being issued as a Parliamentary Paper and not as a Command Paper is that it is-issued at a higher price, and as this is a matter which concerns ex-service men and their organisations, and they are the last people in the world who should be expected to pay a higher price, I think that type of economy is not a type that deserves encouragement. I have endeavoured to reply to those points in the Debate that more immediately concerned me as Chairman of one of the particular Sub-committees of this Committee of Inquiry, and I hope hon. Members opposite, who have formally moved the rejection of the Bill have done so only with the idea of eliciting information and that they will not go to the extent of dividing against the Bill, because I feel convinced that the Bill is an extremely good one, and I hope the House will pass it without a Division.

I am sure the whole House is unanimous in recognising the two sides represented in this Debate. The first side is the absolute determination in all quarters to see justice done to every single case of a genuine war veteran who has suffered from his service. There is no question about that, but it is well constantly to emphasise it, because all hon. Members in their zeal for economy have always excluded the question of pensions as being naturally outside the scope of possible economy, and we now have to eat our own words and reconsider our declarations on the subject of economy, and we shall have to go before the country and say we are considering economy in the matter of pensions also. Therefore, I think it is necessary to anticipate possible misinterpretations that may be made in the public Press and again repeat that there is an absolute determination on all sides of this House to see that justice is done to the war veterans. I say so, not only in my capacity as a Member of the House, but also in my capacity as a medical man concerned all his life with the interests of the State in medicine. From that point of view, it may be necessary, looking into this Bill, to see how far these economies are justified or could possibly be increased by different provisions.

On the other hand, we have the second interest, the interest to prevent fraud and waste, and again this is a most difficult matter, because we are very liable to be misinterpreted. Already the Minister has been misinterpreted in his mention of 126 cases of fraud. That was misunderstood by some well-meaning Members who have spoken on behalf of the ex-service men's interests, but the Parliamentary Secretary explained that those 126 cases were cases in the secretariat and not ex-service men. I think a medical man, who is often asked to do the dirty work of this world, may also do the difficult work of saying that there are definite cases of fraud which have occurred and which have to be tackled, and I think we may definitely give our reasons for making that statement. If we are only square and face the facts, everybody knows that in the exigencies of the War the time came when we had to bring every single man into the forces of the Crown. We went into the highways and hedges and swept them in, and so long as they could pass the physical test by hook or by crook—and a very inadequate physical test it was in many cases —there was no question about their moral or other worth. Surely there is no question from any part of the House that as long as we understand men we know there are the "weary Willies" of this earth who were serving in the War in different capacities, and when the War came to an end these men wished to prop themselves as long as they could on the State. They tried not to get demobilised, and after they had been demobilised they naturally tried to "swing the lead," as it has been called, and this practice goes on at the present time.

It goes on unconsciously, because unconsciously there is a general kind of feeling about having to come up again and again for examination. Therefore, naturally, the pensioners are in an uncertain condition making them worse than their ill-health. Quite apart from that, there are conscious cases. I know very intimately the case of a' man in absolutely the pink of health to all appearances, a man earning first-class wages as a skilled mechanic. I have every reason to believe that he is in full health, because he plays football regularly, and even to this day he is drawing 30s. a week in pensions. That sort of thing spreads round, and in the locality they know that, and the influence extends elsewhere. I have in my service, I am glad to say, two men who used to work under me in the War, and they keep me informed of some of the natural feelings and some of the tricks that go on. They tell me it-has become a regular art among the men to prepare themselves for medical boards. It maybe said that that reflects upon my profession and that doctors should be able to see through these arts and to prevent such cases, but it is a case of very skilled controversy. I remember, when I was a medical student, a man coming to Guy's Hospital, and we had a long lecture upon him. It was an extremely interesting case of paralysis. The lecture was given by one of the most distinguished physicians of the day, and we all had our attention drawn to this case. We were entirely taken in, for when we got to another bed and were discussing another case at the end of the ward, somebody turned round and saw the paralytic holding up his newspaper with his paralysed hand. It was a most elaborate case, and this gentleman had been previously a professor of classics at a northern university and was a skilled and intelligent man and extremely able. Cases like that, which, we know, were liable to slip through the boards in the late War, are a crying scandal. No doubt they are very much exaggerated, both in numbers and very likely in quality, but they are the cases we want to stop. Elaborate steps have been taken by the Minister of Pensions in order to bring this matter to an end, without injustice to the genuine cases, which are in the enormous majority.

If it be carried through, this will be one of the greatest achievements that the Government have been able to show in recent times, and I think it is extraordinarily interesting that, for the first two and a half hours of this Debate, we have had no representatives of the Anti-Waste party in the House, although here is a Measure that is calculated to save from £6,000,000 to £12,000,000 a year. The so-called Anti-Waste party strain at the gnat and swallow the camel. I do not know whether the leader of that party is here, but, anyhow, the hon. Member for South Hackney (Mr. Bottomley) is not here. Perhaps the hon. Member for Thanet (Mr. E. Harmsworth) will be able to give us his opinion on the subject. This proposal does seem to outweigh, in the direction of anti-waste, all the proposals put forward in the by-elections at St. George's, Westminster, and Hertford. It seems to me that this procedure ought to be very thorough, because a Departmental Committee of 21 members considered this matter for something like nine months. It is very extraordinary that, considering the Measure is one dealing with the whole pensions question, which is dependent upon medical judgment, costing millions a year in medical expenses, and engaging something like one-third or one-quarter of the medical profession, yet, out of 21 members on that Departmental Committee, there was not a single medical man. I do not object on the score of the absurd idea of professional dignity involved. Medical men, like others, are only too delighted to be spared any amount of unnecessary work, especially when it is for nothing, but in this House medical men stand for medical experience in the Measures of Government, and it seems perfectly ridiculous that you should have again and again Government Departments setting up this kind of Committee without using that experience, or only bringing medical men in as experts to be sized-up and then thrown away.

I feel strongly on this, because of the value I attach to the right hon. Gentleman and his profession. I conclude that this is primarily a lawyers' Bill, and, as such, to be treated with suspicion, just as if I introduced a doctors' Bill, which, no doubt, hon. Members would treat with suspicion. Because this is a lawyers' Bill, it is suspect from the bottom from the medical point of view. Here is this Committee's Report that has not yet been circulated effectively to every Member of the House. I have borrowed the only copy from the Library of the House. The Report has only been issued this week, and, naturally, the medical profession have not been able to consider it, to see in what way it can be criticised or supported. I am not going to submit any hurried verdict on that Report, or on the Measure that is based upon it. The only thing I would say on that point is that the matter is of such vital importance on the medical side that it will have to be most carefully considered in Committee. I do not wish it to be construed that, therefore, I should yield to the common cry that this should be a reason for deferring this Measure to an Autumn Session. Heaven forfend that we should postpone this or any other Measure to an Autumn Session for that reason. My own feeling was very strongly brought out in the Debate this week on the Kangaroo Closure on the Railways Bill. There is a great deal too much unnecessary talk in this House. It would not be in order to elaborate this, but I am bound to make this statement, that if there is any suggestion to refer this Bill to an Autumn Session, it will only be in the interests of those who wish to speak for other reasons than to criticise and help debate on the Bill. So long as we can be given sufficient time to consider this Report, I believe we can get as much effective criticism as will be necessary before the end of this Session.

I want to emphasise the particular point that medical opinion is, above all, required on the question of the final award. Opinions have been stated on one side and the other. The Minister feels that generous justice is being done in allowing four years from the termination of service for the settlement of final awards, with a possible appeal up to V years from service. On the other hand, the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson) gave instances to the contrary. May I be allowed to say, with due respect, that, from a medical point of view, it does not matter two pins what any one Member of this House may think as to the frequency of excep- tional cases? This is a professional question, and you must have professional medical evidence upon it before anybody is really qualified to give an opinion upon it. I should like to know whether there is any foundation for saying that four years is sufficient. What is the medical evidence? There is none in this Report. As my hon. Friend says, it was not within the terms of reference. It is an extraordinarily difficult professional problem, to say what is the proportion of cases, for instance, that may be expected to recur at the end of four years after active service. I agree that if it were only two or three cases in a million, you could discount them, and it is quite right for the State to cut its losses in order to get finality; but if it should prove to be 10 or 20 per cent., it would be absolutely wrong.

We want to know what, between those two views, is the possibility of recurrence. There are cases where it is perfectly certain you will get recurrence later on. Mental cases have been mentioned, and they will always provide the great bulk. You may get a liver abscess many years after serving in the Tropics. I certainly had malaria after I got home. These kind of cases occur, and we want medical opinion to say how far is finality possible. It is difficult to suppose you can get strict finality, but, at any rate, you can discover what are the chances of the cases going up or going down, and discover in cases of improvement whether they are really deserving of a pension that is going to be granted finally, when, in cases getting worse, you would, of course, have to increase the pension. It is very well for us to take the matter as I think a lawyer does, from a general kind of common-sense point of view, but what is the medical evidence on the subject? This is a matter that should be subjected to medical evidence, and it will be very difficult to size it up. It will require all the King's forces and all the King's men in the medical profession in order to get that evidence together, and I think you will probably have a first-class Debate on the subject eventually. You do want, however, the most careful consideration in these matters, and if the right hon. Gentleman has medical evidence which may be given as the basis of his case, well, then we shall all be very glad to know it.

At the present moment it seems to me to be pure guesswork, and guesswork is dangerous from both points of view— from the point of view we have had raised and from the point of view of the pensioner, who, at the end of his four years' or seven years' appeal, might possibly and distinctly have got worse. He might have been written off as 30 or 40 per cent. disability, and at the end of the period be off his head in a lunatic asylum. On the other hand, you are running the State into an enormous liability if you fix the thing for the rest of the days of those who have served in the War. I do not think we have sufficiently dissected the subject. We are running the danger and possibility after 20, 30, 40, or 50 years of having what America has, following her Civil War, where there is an enormous pension bill, and many persons are drawing pensions quite unjustifiably. I see that medical men are to be on these boards, and seats are generously allotted to them. But I am not quite certain whether that is not an excessive representation of the medical profession. There are two out of the three on the board, and no lawyer. I think a lawyer ought to be on the appeal committee. Anyhow, I can imagine patients coming before these appeal boards and other boards. Medical men are kind-hearted. They are essentially so, and even if they have public spirit, and the interest of the State at heart, they may be ignorant of some of the points, and, after all is allowed, they always give the man the benefit of the doubt. I think you may say always, and especially when it is a case of a great hardship, and a small balance one way or the other. [An HON. MEMBER: "hey ought to give the benefit of the doubt!"] Yes, I agree it is perfectly right, the man ought to have the benefit of the doubt. That being so, I think you will find a lot of men, a comparatively large proportion of these cases, who will pass through these appeal boards, whose case will clear up within the next 10 or 20 years, and many of whom will go on living for 40, 50, or 60 years. There is thus a permanent liability on the State which will in these cases be unjustified. We want to size that up.

The right hon. Gentleman says, "Oh, let us cut our losses," and he makes a case. I wish to consider the great loss of the Government in the long run if we carry this through as it stands. I quite see the advantage of finality. The country can save enormously, but I do not see why it would not be possible to put in as an Amendment that these final awards should be liable to revision in ten years' time. It is purely limiting the State agreement just as we should do in our private affairs rather than rest under a lifelong obligation, which we were always trying to get reversed. I think the matter might be reconsidered at the end of ten years. That need not prevent the economies proposed; but it will give the State power, if found necessary, to introduce a combing-out process at the end of ten years, and again perhaps at the end of 20 years. I cannot help thinking that that might be considered, if possible, in the interests of economy.

Lastly, there is another point that I raise in relation to the Minister's opening speech, and that is in regard to the particular promise that he makes to the pensioner that he is going to be qualified for hospital treatment till the end of his life. What does that mean? I asked him whether it meant only illnesses and diseases arising out of the War, and he replied that the matter had not yet been settled. This is a very serious question. If there is the least possibility of any liability for treatment under the pension system for all conditions of disease to the end of a man's life, the Pensions Department will probably feel bound to extend the whole of their hospital system for the treatment of the various complaints for men, women and children in medicine, surgery and midwifery, and keep them up in all the areas of the country for the next 50 years. [ Laughter. ] That is the necessary corollary, I reply to that laugh, to the promises, unless those promises are definitely safeguarded. There is a danger in that. It might easily be said that after a certain time they could transfer the cases to the civil departments or the civil hospitals, and so on. We all know human nature much too well to believe that. We know that the system of hospitals under the Ministry of Pensions is extraordinarily efficient; that it prides itself on its efficiency, and that being so, it will continue to keep its efficiency and be very jealous of keeping its cases, in treating all the cases which it possibly can, and all that can possibly be brought in by hook or crook in order to keep its beds full when the cases perhaps begin to run short. It would be extremely difficult to deal with this system, and then you will have, along with your pensions system, and voluntary hospital system, and poor law system and Army and Navy hospitals, one more medical provision throughout the whole of the country.

I want to make this protest against the refusal of the Government authorities to co-ordinate the work one with another. I raised this matter last year in my maiden speech on the Army Estimates, and I hops to raise it whenever possible on the Army Estimates and the Navy Estimates, and whenever I get the opportunity—this raising and continuance of new services. I have not heard anything from the Minister of Pensions as to when the Ministry of Health are going to take over the Pensions hospitals. Perhaps he will inform us in his reply. I certainly hope that will happen sooner or later, because it means concentration. It is absolutely ridiculous, say, down at Chatham, that you have the Army hospital on one side of the river and the Naval hospital on the other, and the Pensions hospital in some other part, and the Poor Law and other hospitals not far away. You ought to have one State system over the whole country, and thus you will get enormous economies. I am afraid that there is a suggestion and a tendency in this Bill to perpetuate a separate medical service by the Pensions Ministry, and I hope that will not be achieved.

In view of the Amendment before the House which has been moved and seconded by hon. Friends of the party to which I belong, I only desire to make a few comments on the Bill. I am conscious of the fact of the cordial reception of the Bill and the very limited criticism of it, and that places me in the position of making no elaborate criticism on the objection to this particular Bill. I would like in the first instance to agree with the two remarks made by my hon. Friend, the Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Hogge) when he said this question was not a party question. It is one of those questions which appeals to all parties in this House, and I believe every man in the House, and any one here setting out to make it a party question would be rendering an ill-service to the disabled ex-service man. The second re- mark he made was in reference to the Report of the Committee not having been received in time to be read before this Bill was taken. I also share that regret. I understood from the Minister that the Report had been issued to each Member of the House, and I presume that the reason some hon. Members have not received the Report is that they have been sent to their private addresses and those not living at home have not been able to see the Report. There was not sufficient time for the Report to be read and to enable hon. Members to do justice to this Debate. Those who have, however, listened to the Minister of Pensions in the absence of the Report will, I have no doubt, feel that his lucid statement must have disarmed many hon. Members who otherwise would have criticised some portions of the Bill rather severely.

The greatest obligation devolving upon this country is to do the right thing by those who were maimed, bruised, and battered in the service of their country during the War, and to secure for those they have left behind, or who were dependent upon them, their just dues. Next to supplying these people with the necessary and adequate pensions, there is no question more urgent than that the provisions governing the administration of those pensions should be sympathetic and efficient in character, and it is because of that that I must state, as a Member of the Committee, that I believe this Bill is largely in the direction of efficiency in the administration of pensions. Every Member of this House must have received during the last two years many letters of complaint from individual soldiers and officers in relation to pension questions, and a good deal of the criticism in relation to these complaints has undoubtedly been placed at the door of the Minister of Pensions for the time being.

I should be failing in my duty if I did not say that hon. Members ought to read the Report in reference to the reasons why delays occurred, and if they do they will find there that the responsibility in some cases devolved upon the individual man himself, in other cases upon the local committees, and in some cases upon the regions and other causes. I am perfectly satisfied that in several of the cases brought to my own personal knowledge, when they were investigated, the individual man, either through want of proper information or negligence on his own part, was primarily responsible for the delay. I want to say that I think the Minister of Pensions, in setting up a Committee of this description, rendered a great service to the disabled soldiers and sailors of our country. I am not going to say it is the best Committee he could have appointed. Perhaps a Committee of ex-pension Ministers might have been appointed such as I have seen conferring on the Front Bench this afternoon. They might have placed the results of their own work into a common pool, and put forward better recommendations than the Committee did on this occasion.

The Minister of Pensions in his speech referred to the personnel of this Committee, but there was one thing which he did not refer to to which I desire to draw the attention of the Committee. The majority of the Committee were gentlemen who themselves were soldiers and had served in one or other capacity during the War, and that was a guarantee in itself that, whatever recommendations were put forward, they certainly would not be recommendations that could in any way strengthen the soulless bureaucracy referred to by the hon. and gallant Member for Fairfield (Major Cohen) or eliminate that human sympathy which we all desire to show. Through all the organisations represented on this Committee, I think we may take it that the interest of the ex-service man was well attended to. Who were they? One was the secretary of the Disabled Soldiers' Society. Another represented the Discharged Sailors and Soldiers' Federation, and the other was the general secretary of the Comrades of the Great War.

It is usual for those who are general secretaries to speak with authority on behalf of their various organisations, and on this occasion I am sure these gentlemen were voicing eloquently and sympathetically the needs of those whom they represented. It has been suggested in the House or outside that the personnel of this Committee was too much official. My right hon. Friend pointed out that there were only four of the official staff represented on this Departmental Committee. Others have said that some of the sub-committees were too much official. My own view is that that cannot be maintained in relation to the committee as a whole or to the sub-committees. I do want to say that without that official help we could not have got the information necessary, or the explanations required to enable us to come to a true decision in relation to the matters brought to our notice. I very cordially testify to the help we received from those gentlemen. In relation to the Bill itself, the controversy has largely ranged round the question of the local committees. We found that we had a very large and complicated machine. As one of those taking an active part in the trade union movement, I have no hesitation in saying that it is a mistake to suppose that a large machine composed of a large number of county committees and sub-committees is a machine that would work smoothly and economically, and even secure that human element which means direct sympathy for the men concerned.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson) made some reference to the old age pensions committees and gave his experience in that direction. Perhaps I may be allowed to give my experience in relation to similar matters not dealing with old age pensions. There was the question of the unemployment and sickness insurance benefit. In my organisation we had a very large machine, and it was thought necessary that every branch should be a dispensing factor of those benefits in the interests of the human sympathy required for the men out of employment or on the sick list. What did I find? The very same thing operated to a large extent as we find operating in connection with pensions, namely, that while the human element was there—no one objects when it is sympathy in the right direction—a thousand branches became a law unto themselves, and in the end we had to centralise the whole system not only in the interests of the members themselves, but also in the interests of economy. In this case we do not propose to carry centralisation to that extent. I believe my right hon. Friend accepts the suggestion that these committees should not be more than 450 in number. That is the suggestion of the Committee.

Some people have criticised this proposal by saying it is a considerable reduction and thereby the human element is being interfered with. It is not a reduction. There are not 450 committees now. There are less than 450 committees. A. certain number of them, however, have-delegated their authority to sub-committees, and it is the 900 sub-committees that have been displaced, so that more efficiency may be secured. It is not centralisation; it is the happy mean between over-centralisation on the one hand and over-devolution on the other. Under these circumstances, some of the objections that have been urged against the Bill fall to the ground. One objection outside is that we are interfering with the representation of the local authorities. I agree with the recommendation that the authorities should have more restricted representation than they have had in the past. The local authorities are allowed to appoint fewer representatives and the soldiers and sailors' organisations are allowed to appoint more, and I hope in this connection that the Minister will take into serious consideration the fixing of the numbers as laid down in our Report. The redistribution of the members of these new committees is in the right direction, making for the direct placing before the Committees of the views of the men who are represented by these soldiers' organisations.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chester-le-Street has pointed out that there were 14 functions of the Committees in the Recommendations, and that there are only six in the Bill. It is not necessary that we should expect the Minister to copy all these things as they appear in the Recommendations, but I have taken some pains to go over them, and I find that the majority of them are incorporated in the six, as laid down by the Minister. One strong reason for having some finality in the awards is that the worry and anxiety of the disabled man, through being repeatedly called up for examination, restricts his recovery to active and better health, and on that ground, if on no other, finality is necessary. I can appreciate the difficulty of the man who is always wondering whether his pension is going to be raised or lowered or disappear altogether. Finality will mean that he can go ahead and secure to the best of his ability increased health. Seven years may, in some circumstances, be too short. Something was made out by my hon. and gallant Friend (Lieut.-Colonel Fremantle) in relation to certain diseases, and I am certain that the Minister, in accordance with his promise, will be prepared to take into consideration any Amendment in that direction which in his judgment appears to be right.

I rejoiced to hear, indeed, no one needed the assurance, that the Minister would be no party to securing improvement at the expense of the soldier or sailor in relation to his pension. The whole object of the Bill is to secure efficiency plus economy. I agree that efficiency is absolutely necessary, and that is not saying one word against those who have done their best under the circumstances operating to give what help they could. The War has passed, and a certain amount of enthusiasm has died down. The ready service that was offered to all these men during the War and shortly afterwards has passed away. We notice it around this House. We do not sea wounded men in motor cars, as we did during the War. All that sort of thing has evidently passed away. It is the same in some degree with the committees. They have acted sympathetically and have done all that they could, but the lapse of time has made them indifferent, and, I have no hesitation in saying, in some cases neglectful. Therefore, it is altogether in the right direction to make the officers responsible to the Minister of this House. I know, as one who has had to deal with a large trade union, the necessity of being in direct touch with those for whom one is called upon to speak. Therefore, any impression that there is any attempt to secure economy at the expense of the soldier is altogether unjustifiable. There can, however, be enormous economies secured by proper administration, administration which will remove from these men and their dependants a great deal of worry, administration which will enable them to get their pensions in many cases probably much earlier than in the past, administration which will mean the perfecting of the machinery necessary for the distribution and payment of those pensions, and administration which will mean that those who are embraced in the Pensions Act will feel that they are under some obligation to the right hon. Gentleman for taking the step that he has taken.

Along with others, I desire, on behalf of the friends with whom I am associated, to enter a protest against this Bill being rushed through the House. It is only some 48 hours ago that the Report of the Committee was placed in our hands, and there has been no reasonable opportunity of reading it, let alone of studying it and finding out whether the Bill gives effect to the recommendations or not. It has been the practice of the Government during this Session to rush legislation through the House. The Amendment standing in the names of two or three of my colleagues and myself was not placed on the Paper for any hostile purpose, but simply with the object, if that be necessary, of making the Minister more reasonable. We are quite of the opinion that the right hon. Gentleman, in his treatment of any Amendments that are placed upon the Paper at a later stage, will be as sympathetically inclined towards them as I am sure every Member has found him in their dealings with him in respect of any hard cases which have been brought to their notice. Hon. Members will agree with me that the Minister of Pensions has shown the human touch in his dealings with the many hard cases which are continually coming before him.

My hon. Friend who has just sat down referred to the fact that certain ex-Pensions Ministers and ex-Parliamentary Secretaries have conferred together. Naturally, each of us thinks that he did the job better than anyone else. Again that is human nature. I may say that that is what we still want that the human touch shall not be lost sight of in the constitution of these local war pension committees. I feel some pride that it was a Bill I introduced that first brought disabled soldiers and sailors, and the wives of soldiers who had given their lives up for their country, under the local war pensions committees. In those early days I believe that these committees not only gave disinterested service, but did a great national work for their country. It was a demonstration to all who had suffered as a result of the War that the people as a whole were anxious to do the very best they could for them. My hon. Friend who last spoke rather complained that we did not see soldiers going about in motor cars as was the case in earlier days. But the reason is that so many hundreds of thousands of them have found employment. The hospitals in London are not now filled with wounded men as they were, and that is a symptom that we ought to be proud of rather than complain about.

4.0 P.M.

In reading the Report I find that the Committee condemn, although rather half-heartedly, the regional system. I can only say this to my right hon. Friend, I wish he had taken his courage into both hands and abolished it, as it was the institution of the regional system which added to the administrative cost of the Department. I had the proposal before me in 1918 to set up the regional system, but amongst many other reasons against it I found one of the greatest was the lack of proper office accommodation in the various districts. I notice that the Committee find that that is the obstacle to-day. If you are going to have a great number of regions with the office accommodation essential, then in these days of increased rent there will be a very great additional charge. Another reason why the proposal was turned down was that in the days of the Pensions Ministry the Ministry suffered from a lack of efficient assistance. The War had made such a call upon those who were likely to render such assistance that the Ministry had to call upon the wives of soldiers and sailors who were fighting, and upon women generally, and, although they rallied to the cause, they had never been used to that class of work previously, and they had to be trained. My fear was that, having trained your staff, if you adopted the regional system, you would not be able to get these people to go from London into the provinces, the regions would require staffs, and only untrained people would be forthcoming, and thereby further confusion and delay in the work of administration would be caused. That is exactly what happens. There was always a danger also of each region having a policy differing materially in the granting of awards, and of administration generally, as compared with the other regions. The great burden of the War is now a thing of the past. While the regional system, if it had been originally adopted, might have been beneficial, to-day it is absolutely unnecessary, and I will seriously put it to my right hon. Friend that he should not only consider the Report of this Committee so far as that is concerned, but that he should go a little further and abolish the regional system entirely. He will save greatly as far as administrative costs are concerned. Something has been said by one or two Members about the necessity of continued sympathy with disabled soldiers. I do not think that those remarks were called for. If it was the Amendment which we put on the Paper that caused them to be made, then I will say that the Labour party will not play second fiddle to any other part of the House so far as the desire is concerned to see justice done to disabled soldiers, sailors and airmen, because, after all, the great bulk of these people are of our own class and there is every reason why we should be sympathetic with them. The fact of the matter is that if in the House you do not enter your caveat against a Bill, when you get into the Committee stage you have the Minister and those associated with him saying "You did not oppose in the House, why bring these Amendments forward now?" We do not want to have that charge levelled against us when we go upstairs. There is, so far as we are concerned, the utmost desire to help the Minister in getting his Bill, provided that those Amendments which have been suggested by various members of the Departmental Committee are incorporated in the Measure. If that is done, in my opinion, the Bill will be very much improved. While several of my hon. Friends were speaking I noticed that the Parliamentary Secretary seemed by the motions of his head to agree with some of the points made by them. He nodded his head, and I imagine that if he had intended to oppose he would have shaken his head. It seemed to me they were affirmative nods that he was making. I can assure the House that the Amendment we placed on the paper was not put there with any hostile motive, but that we shall co-operate with my right hon. Friend in improving his Bill when we get into the Committee stage, and, of course, it will be up to us to do the very best we can to convince him, if he does not agree with us, that we are right and that his attitude is wrong.

I hope that the House will forgive me for rising after having been absent, unavoidably, for the past hour and a half. I am sure the House will know that that does not imply that I am not intensely interested in this Bill. I am anxious, first of all, to congratulate most respectfully the Minister of Pensions and the Parliamentary Secretary on the atmosphere in which the Bill has been received. There was a time when the whole pension administration in this country was viewed with suspicion, and it has been owing to the fortunate succession of able and tactful administrators from the beginning that that suspicion, which I think was a wrong suspicion, has been gradually dispelled. I should like also to say that I think many Members of this House would like to take this opportunity—the only one that we have—of congratulating the hon. and gallant Member for Hexham (Major Brown), the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister, for he, after all, is one of the main connecting links between the administration, this House, and the country.

My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Fairfield (Major Cohen) referred to a remark of the Minister that he knew that this Bill would be opposed by vested interests, which my hon. and gallant Friend took to mean the soldiers throughout the country. It was, however, perfectly clear to me that the Minister was certainly not referring to soldiers, and particularly not to disabled soldiers, but he made with great frankness a reference which I think ought to be faced. He obviously referred, as it appeared to me, to officials at present employed under pension committees. These gentlemen have done most excellent work, but they do represent a vested interest, and it is obvious that they, being, after all, only human beings, will put up a most lively opposition to this Bill. It struck me as being particularly frank of the Minister to make special reference to that. I should be very sorry to be accused of not appreciating the excellent work that these officials have done, but I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman would not like the reference to vested interests to be taken as referring to soldiers.

Those of us who have taken a rather specialised interest in ex-service matters ought boldly to state how we stand, if we are prepared to do so at such short notice, in regard to this cutting down, to a certain extent, of pension committees, and whether we agree or not that they should come directly under the Ministry itself. I must acknowledge that, in my opinion, the Minister has taken a step which is in the best interests of economy and in the best interests of administration, and is, generally speaking, good business. There always appeared to me to be a. possibility, under the old system, of there being something of the nature of two rival camps. There was the regional office directly under the Minister and there were the committees, which we all agree did most admirable and excellent work, but they did not come under the control of the Minister.

We must recognise the position that there is a great necessity in these days for the direct Parliamentary control of public funds, and my right hon. Friend is responsible to this House, and I feel that he ought to have that direct control, particularly as there is no one in the country who suspects him of anything but having the best interests of disabled men at heart, and I cannot see how, for a moment, we can oppose this direct control for which he asks. I feel that in dealing with soldiers, and particularly disabled soldiers, the psychological effect of your moves is of tremendous importance, and we want pension committees and regional headquarters to be operating in every direction, and to be understood, and that full benefit shall be derived from these measures. At present it appears to me that there is not that same personal incentive towards explaining things. It is quite possible for the pension committees to say—I do not say they do it—"Had it been left to us, you would have had very different treatment," whereas under the new system it appears to me the official should be doing what he ought to be doing, that is, representing the actions of the Ministry in the best possible light to the people whom he is serving. The composition of the Committee appears to me to have been drafted on sound lines and not on such lines that one need have any suspicion. It is of vital importance that the pensioner should have ample opportunities for ventilating his grievances, and it appears to me that, although they will come directly under the control of the Ministry, there is not the slightest fear that when he has a legitimate grievance, when a local agitation even might be necessary, under the new scheme of things it cannot be ventilated. In reference to permanent pensions, I agree with my hon. Friends, opposite who have spoken that that is a tremendous advance. It is, in my opinion, better for the disabled man to know that he is going to get 10s. a week permanently and fixed than that he is going to get £l a week with the continual anxiety that we know operates upon the mind of these men that it may be taken away. My ex-comrades as a class are rather suspicious people and we are always afraid that we are going to be done down by this official and that official, and in neurasthenic cases in particular it is a continual source of anxiety and concern and unrest, and ever since I was interested in pensions I have felt that, if we could cut down the cost of administration on the one hand and make pensions more permanent on the other, it would be a tremendous saving to the State.

I should like at this point to offer something in the nature of criticism. Tremendous care must be taken, and I have no doubt will be taken, to ensure that these awards are carefully examined. It is also of great importance that the atmosphere of the open court should be preserved in these tribunals, as far as possible. My right hon. Friend may answer quite truly and say: "Nobody has done more to produce that atmosphere than I have." At the present time when a man is appealing before a medical board he is entitled to be told the degree of his disability. He can then find out what this translated into terms of pounds, shillings, and pence. He is told at the same time that whether he is entitled to a pension or not is not a matter for that particular tribunal. I would urge my right hon. Friend to go still further in this question of making the awards of these tribunals final. Get it into the minds of the men that the people who see them fix their pension and that it is not liable to be cut down by any official, and will not be cut down.

In regard to entitlement, could he not go further and say that, whether a man is entitled to a pension or not, whether he got his wound on service or not, must be left to the Minister. If we could settle attributability away from entitlement, it should be left to the court to give its final adjudication. Courts have made great mistakes upon this point, They might well be asked to make that final adjudication. For example, where a man has heart trouble brought on by service complicated by appendicitis at a later date, because that frequently happens, the court should make the adjudication and say that 30 per cent. is due to heart trouble and 20 per cent. is due to appendicitis. In other words, the man is pensionable as if he is a 30 per cent. man. Whether or not it would save the State money in the long run, it would give very much more satisfaction to the pensioner. The pensioner, the disabled man, is intensely suspicious of the official bureaucrat in the background, very wrongly so, and that is a fact that must be faced. There are two omissions from the Bill. What the soldier wants is, in the first place, that the scale of pensions should be ample, and, in the second place, that he should get a fair deal. Your pension system will never be completely satisfactory until you have tackled with a courage that the Select Committee did not have the question of the widowed mother whose son was her sole support, who to-day is in a weaker position than the young widow who was only married for three months and who may be getting up to £200 a year under the pension scheme? We are going to save £10,000,000 on this scheme. Could not my right hon. Friend tackle this particular problem, which is the blot upon this scheme, out of the savings? I hold a letter from the Prime Minister stating that the matter is under consideration, and I think I have letters from my right hon. Friend to the same effect. This is an excellent scheme and the point to which I refer could be put right at a cost which would not be excessive. There is another point in reference to the Appeal Courts. It never was the intention of the Select Committee which recommended these Courts that the Minister's prerogative should be taken away from him. Is it not possible to restore the prerogative of the Minister so as to enable him to put right the cases which occur from time to time, in which there has been an obvious blunder creating real hardship under the findings of those Courts?

It is a great happiness for me, as Chairman of the Departmental Committee, to have been associated with its members in a work which everybody in this House has at heart, that is, to try to get pensions on the soundest possible footing so that each man should a proper pension and get it without delay. The first thing which I put before the Committee was efficiency in the interest of the pensioner After that there was the problem of economy, with the proviso that there must be no economy at the expense of the pensioner, but economy solely in administration and without impairing the efficiency of the machine. I believe that under this Bill we shall achieve these objects. I rejoice that the same harmony which prevailed in the Committee has prevailed in this House, and that all parties have come together in this matter and that pensions are in no way a party question. It is vital that the question of pensions should be kept clear of all party policy. We could not have had a better example of that than in to-day's Debate.

There have been complaints that time was not allowed for the House to see and consider the Report of the Committee before the Bill was presented. But the Bill depends very largely on the details and the explanations which were given by the Minister. There will be a good lapse of time before the Bill is taken in Committee, and we were faced with the difficulty of keeping back from the House for some time our intentions with regard to the Bill or of coming to the House at the earliest possible moment and telling the House what we propose to do, and then allowing a reasonable time to elapse before the Bill was taken in Committee. But the rapidity with which the Bill was brought forward was in no sense due to any desire to evade the issue. Nothing would have helped the Bill more than for the Report to have been in the hands of Members and to have been carefully read. But throughout this Committee the Ministry have gone on this principle that the moment we could find anything to improve the state of pensions administration we should do it at once. Undue haste is not generally the charge which is brought against Government Departments, and any charge of that kind would not be well founded. Rapidity of movement, however, is desirable when the course is clear.

Let me give an example of such rapid movement. Inquiry took place at the Issue Office in Regent's Park among the workers and was accompanied by frequent examination of people who came in to make complaints. We discovered one afternoon an obvious case for reform. We suggested a reform in the afternoon; it was sent to the Minister and came into operation the next morning. When the Committee was set up there were hon. Members who pressed us to deal with arrears. It was on that very point that this reform was effected. By the change we introduced a saving of clerks was possible. It may be argued that the Committee has been sitting for some time. Those who have sat on the Committee are well aware of the fact. I should like to pay, in terms that are justified, some tribute of respect to the Members of the Committee, drawn from every party, from outside the House as well as from Parliament, ex-service men and others, who held over 100 sittings. Sometimes they sat in the morning as a sub-committee and then considered bigger issues at main committee meetings in the afternoon. There was a case where such a committee sat till nearly nine o'clock one evening, and sittings until seven and eight o'clock were fairly frequent. If the inquiry has been long the Bill shows that the inquiry was justified. I am very proud to have been publicly associated with this Bill. To me it is a source of never-failing astonishment that we should have got 19 people on so controversial a subject to agree upon anything. Yet they have presented a unanimous Report and made very definite recommendations. The Bill is the result.

I hope the House will not consider the Bill merely as it stands. It is part of a wide scheme of reforms, some of which will be carried out by administration. The Committee examined the whole machinery of the Ministry. You have nearly 3,500,000 men, women and children drawing pensions and allowances. Many of the allowances change from week to week. Boards sit and if a man is found to be better or worse, the whole scale of payment is altered. The work is of a most complicated nature. It is not like paying out a fixed sum at regular intervals. It involves most difficult and complicated administration. The Committee went into the central part of the machinery at headquarters, whence, necessarily, matters of policy arise, where schemes are drawn up, legislative proposals have to be drafted, and so on. We also inquired into the great problem of local administration.

I should like, in passing, to thank the members of the Sub-committee who dealt with that matter for their valuable work; and particularly the hon. Member for South-West Hull (Major Entwistle), his excellent speech on the Bill will enable the House to realise what good work he has done on the Committee. The regional system was found necessary for various reasons, but one reason which operated more strongly than others, was the necessity for organising hospital and medical administration, and having all hospital and medical arrangements directed from convenient centres. Another reason was, that all problems of pension awards were delegated to the regions. We come now to the local committee itself. May I, from personal experience, pay a tribute to the great services which the local committees have rendered to the pensioner and to the country? This Ministry was suddenly founded in 1917, with about half a million people to care for. Now that number has grown to three and a half millions. There was no mechanism, no arrangements in the various areas, by which we could keep in personal touch with the pensioners, and the services of the local committees in that respect were invaluable. We are glad we retain all that valuable personal help which we appreciate so much. This change is not in the direction of the diminution of their advice and help; it is rather a change in the position of their staffs.

The proposals which we are putting forward aim at the enforcement of Parliamentary control over public money. Our proposal is that the Minister responsible for this large sum shall have the means of controlling its distribution. It is not only a question as between the Ministry, the pensioner, and the State; in many cases it has been a question involving the payment of the staffs of these committees. We laid down a certain scale of payments, but some committees have paid much less to the lower grades of their servants than these servants could get under other committees. Some committees underpaid their officials; others paid sums largely in excess of those laid down in the scale. Such cases have occurred as that of one committee, whose members in a burst of enthusiasm raised the salary of the secretary by the sum of £100 a year. They paid him the money, and then it was left to us to recover it. Are we to recover it by making a claim against those who have voluntarily done good work and are continuing to do it? Are we to reward those who have assisted us by asking them to pay a heavy surcharge? If Parliamentary control is to be a real thing, we must give the Minister a proper means of supervising the expenditure of the money entrusted to him by Parliament. In reference to the problem of awards, may I say the awarding of pensions is a most difficult thing. I do not wish to use highly technical language, but a man may be assessed for a certain disablement or loss and his claim may afterwards break down on entitlement, on the ground that the loss-was not in any way due to the War. I mention that to show how technical these things are, and that is why we all owe a deep debt of gratitude to the Sub-committee which dealt with the problem of awards. That Sub-committee was most ably presided over by the hon. and gallant Member for the Tradeston Division of Glasgow (Major Henderson), who, in his speech this afternoon, showed a high technical knowledge of this most difficult problem. I cannot adequately thank him and the other members of the Sub-committee for their assistance. It is easy to make a speech on pensions, but going into the actual working of the machine is a less publicly popular but more useful and more exacting task, and those who have to work the machine are doing a great work. I should like to thank the hon. and gallant Member and his Subcommittee, including the hon. Member for the Newton Division (Mr. R. Young), whom I should like to congratulate on his contribution not only to the Debate, but to the work of the Committee. I feel that in him Labour was well represented on the Committee, and through him we have had great help in our difficult problem.

I should now like to deal with another branch of our work which vitally affects this question, the medical branch. The medical question is one the magnitude of which may be gauged from the fact that at present 125,000 officers and men are in the hands' of the Ministry for treatment as a result of their wounds or their sickness in the great War. That is a very large number, and I think it is not altogether realised in the country that this task has been put upon the Ministry of Pensions quite lately. As the Navy, Army, and Air Force were demobilised, the wounded and the sick of those three Services passed into the hands of the Pensions Ministry, and that threw an enormous burden of medical responsibility on the Ministry. In the last year we have had to start under the control of the Ministry ten additional hospitals, taken over from the fighting Services. We are criticised for adding to our staff, but the additions consist of nurses and doctors dealing with the sick. There would be a considerable reduction but for the addition caused by taking over doctors and nurses; I think the reduction is about 1,400 in officials, but there has been an increase in nurses and doctors under the responsibility of the Ministry, because they have been transferred to us from the fighting Services. It is a very great responsibility, for which I am sure no one would grudge a proper expenditure. One of the very happy features of this work is that, although the expenditure on medical services is £9,000,000, it has produced large numbers of cases where men have been restored to health, and I cannot imagine a better expenditure for this country than the restoration to health and to useful activity as citizens of these men who have suffered from their participation in the Great War.

Allusion has been made to the work of medical boards. Enormous numbers of these boards have been held. The number has been greatly reduced by giving longer awards each time. The great bulk of the awards now are for a year, and we have been watching week by week, and month by month, the result of these medical boards very closely. We find that about half the cases examined have shown no change, but, lately, about 8 per cent. have shown an increase, and about 42 per cent. some decrease. Somebody may suggest that if we had brought this in two or three years ago, and fixed pensions permanently, we might have saved money, and been denounced less for our elaborate machinery, but we should have made this injustice, that men getting worse would not have got larger pensions, and others would have obtained pensions to which they were no longer entitled. The net result of all these changes comes to about 4 per cent. reduction only for the year, and the great bulk of changes is among cases which have comparatively lately come into our hands. Therefore, while reserving the right to relieve a man longer if he is getting worse, we are taking powers under this Bill to grant a very large proportion of permanent pensions. The saving to the State will be enormous. All the elaborate cost of medical boards—about £1,500,000 this year—will be vastly reduced. The whole machinery of award and notification to Issue Office will disappear when the pensions are permanent, and something will disappear, which I shall be still more glad to see gone, and that is the anxiety of the men who do not know their income. I have been told, and I have no doubt it is right, that it has a material effect on a man's health if he feels that for once and all his case is settled.

Therefore, taking the balance of all these things, there seems to me a very strong case for taking powers to grant a large proportion of permanent pensions. I believe it to be of advantage to the pensioner, whose interest comes first, and to be an enormous saving in administration. If you are going to deal with the problem of pension administration, you have got to deal with the problem as a whole. We, on the Committee, went into the whole question of the issue office. We went, on the spot, into the cases, because I do not believe in hearing a lot of witnesses selected to prove something or other. It is far better to take a number of witnesses by chance, which was what we did, and we found a task of colossal magnitude, perhaps many hundreds of thousands of pounds being dealt with in-the issue of pensions and allowances to about 3,500,000 people, with all the complications of checking life certificates to see whether the people were still living, of looking at signatures to see if the same people were drawing pensions, checking the ages of children to see that they had not got beyond the age limit, investigating cases of re-marriage of widows, and dealing with the change that occurs when the pensioner, unfortunately, gets worse and goes to hospital, when the payment is made through the local committee.

That is a colossal task full of change from day to day dealing with hundreds of thousands of pounds and 3,500,000 people. I must express my admiration at the way that office has improved, and the way in which the clerks have set to work to clear off the arrears and keep the machine going. There has been plenty of criticism, but we owe a debt of gratitude to those engaged in the work.

Further than this, there is the problem of the officers. This was considered by a Sub-committee. It is a problem of very great difficulty and complication. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Carnarvon (Major Breeze) presided over that Sub-committee. There are the questions of the awards, appeals, etc. The recommendation of the Sub-committee is that the administration of the officers' pensions should be centralised and not connected in any way with the local committee. I mention that because the local committees are in the Bill, and I want to make it clear what we are going to do. We are under a debt of gratitude for the work of the hon. and gallant Gentleman and his Committee: it was a wide inquiry and the findings brought forward were valuable. In reply to several questions put, I may say that, although for the first time the officials of the local War Pensions Committees will appear in the Treasury Returns as being officials in the employ of the Government, there will be no ground for attacking the Government on the score of an increase of officials, for it is not so. It is simply taking certain existing officials under our control. No one, of course, in this House will so attack the Government. As regards the question of the hon. Member for the Fairfield Division (Major Cohen), whose help on all questions of ex-service men we value, I am sorry that he said that the ex-service men were against these proposals. That is not altogether justified. There were, as a matter of fact, representatives of the three great bodies of ex-service men on the Committee. They were men whose names were suggested to us by these associations. Their services were of great value. They all signed the Report in favour of these recommendations. Moreover, the Committee had on it other ex-service members who had served and been disabled in War, and had had experience of medical boards, etc., so that they gave sympathetic attention to the subject.

The Report was unanimous. May I point out that the arrangements do not put in any difficulty the man who becomes worse, or seriously and gradually worse, from disablement for which he has a pension. He retains unchanged his full rights for treatment, and if seriously ill he goes into hospital; he not only gets treatment, but full allowance for him- self and family; therefore, the case of the man who unexpectedly gets worse is dealt with fully. The hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for South-West Hull (Major Entwistle) put forward certain points that perhaps may be dealt with in Committee. We have much sympathy with his proposals. The hon. and gallant Member for St. Albans (Lieut.-Colonel Fremantle) puts forward the somewhat curious proposition that final decisions should not be final. His proposal that the whole thing should be re-examined in ten years' time would amount to a complete resurrection of the whole machinery of medical boards and all that mass of complicated official machinery which we are anxious to get rid of. I am not at all convinced that it would be an advantage. You might save a few shillings a week on a certain number of cases, but you would spend an enormous sum on medical boards, and I cannot commend the proposal either on the ground of justice to the pensioners or of economy.

I should like to deal with the wider issue. This country has been faced with a problem of enormous difficulty. There was no Ministry of Pensions before the War; the whole thing had to be created. The Department only started work in 1917. It had to be created at a time when all the best energies of the country were in great demand, either overseas fighting or else at work on other things, and when skilled people were difficult to obtain. The Department was faced with a huge task; and the number of cases has grown from 500,000 to 3,500,000; but I am thankful to feel, though I would not like to be too confident about it, that we are getting into somewhat calmer waters: we are reaching a time when it may be possible, and when it will be possible, to reassure the pensioners, and to give a greater number of permanent pensions. Though we are sweeping away much of the machinery of administration and medical boards, we want to retain all those beneficent activities of local committees which are so invaluable. In retaining them we shall have regard to those who have done the work and made good attendances. I shall not view with much sympathy the claims of people who, while not attending local committees, are anxious that they should not be abolished. We hope to effect great economies, not at the cost of the pensioners, but in administrative costs. I would only conclude by thanking most respectfully the House for the support which it has given, and thanking once more everybody who served on the Committee for the work they did, and I believe they have secured the great object they had in view, which was more efficient administration for the good of the pensioners.

In the two or three minutes left I should like to make a point or two arising out of the Debate. In the first place, let me say we do not intend to take a Division. We put down a notice in order that we might safeguard our position if we decided to fight certain Clauses in Committee. We are as anxious as the Minister himself can be to get some of the provisions of the Bill put on the Statute Book as speedily as possible, but I want to enter a caveat against the rushing tactics which the Minister has adopted. We have been reminded repeatedly of the long period during which the Committee sat inquiring into the multitude of subjects referred to in their Report. Now we are presented with this Bill, and I have no hesitation in saying that I do not think a score of the Members who have listened to the Debate have had an opportunity of reading through the Report of the Committee upon which the Bill is founded. That is not quite fair. If we appoint a Committee and it takes many months to investigate a subject, surely it is fair that we should be given an opportunity of considering not only the Report but the evidence, and, moreover, there are, I think, considerably over 100 recommendations made by the Committee. In order to show that there is some force in the position that I am putting before the House, here is a resolution which has been sent to me within the last half-hour, and, as the Minister made some reference to the organisation, I cannot do better than read it. It is from the Association of Local War Pensions Committees, which the right hon. Gentleman has been praising, and to the work of many of which he made some kindly references:

"That the executive council of the Association of Local War Pensions Committees of England, Wales, and Ireland, representing 268 local war pensions committees, protests in the strongest possible terms against the action of the Minister of Pensions in proceeding with the War Pensions Bill now before Parliament without waiting for the Report of the Departmental Committee to be made public in time to be adequately considered. By such action, the association has been deprived of the opportunity to meet and make such representations on the Bill as they would have desired. The council strongly protests at this endeavour to pass through the Houses of Parliament a Bill making fundamental changes in war pensions administration with such undue haste."

They very fully supported the point of protest that I have made against the Minister's rushing tactics. During this Session, I have heard many speeches against the danger of bureaucracy. I have been wondering where the Members who have so eloquently made those speeches in days gone by have been during this Debate. After all we are, in Clauses 1 and 2 of this Bill, sweeping away all the powers hitherto enjoyed by the war pensions committee and given to them by Parliament, and we are going to recast the local administration, the inevitable effect of which will be that all the power will go to the Department itself and the officers that will be controlled by the Department. I should like to have heard some of the speeches that have been made against bureaucracy repeated on this occasion—

This does not affect it.

when are are going to leave the ex-service men's interests entirely in the hands of bureaucracy, and take away the powers of the local committees. There are many points which we shall have to raise in Committee, but there are valuable points in the Bill, and we hope that it will be passed into law.

Question, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question," put, and agreed to.

Bill read a Second time, and committed to a Standing Committee.

The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

Whereupon Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 3, till Monday next (11th July).

Adjourned at One Minute after Five o'clock.