asked the Prime Minister if he can state when the House resumes in November whether the ballot for Private Members' Bills will be taken at once; whether Wednesdays will be available for Private Members' Motions; whether Fridays will be available for Private Members' Bills, and which Fridays will be available for the subsequent stages of Private Members' Bills which have passed their Committee stage; whether any alteration of the dates for depositing Private Legislation Bills is necessary; whether time will be provided so that such Bills may have a reasonable chance of becoming law in the next Session of Parliament, and whether it is proposed to make any alteration in the Standing Orders of the House to meet the new circumstances of a new Session opening in the autumn?

I would ask the hon. Gentleman to await the statement on the course of Business which it is customary for the Leader of the House to make at the commencement of a new Session of Parliament. It is not proposed to make any alteration in the arrangements for Private Bill Legislation, and Private Bills will proceed under the Standing Orders which regulate dates for Notices and deposits.

Am I to understand that the Leader of the House will state, at the opening of the new Session, that he is going to take over all the time for the Government, and we shall have no previous notice of the fact?

Sufficient for the Session are the evils thereof.

Ordered,

"That the Proceedings on Government Business he not interrupted this day at Four or half-past Four may be entered upon at opposed."—[Commander Eyres Monsell.]

I wish to speak, for my usual five minutes and no more, on a topic on which I was unable to expand myself the other day, that is to say, the bad postal service of Great Britain at the moment. Owing to the eloquence of the Minister in charge, which lasted nearly an hour and a half, and the subsidiary eloquence of an ex-Minister and two Privy Councillors who, after the manner of Privy Councillors, spoke for 40 minutes each, it was impossible for a back bencher to make the few humble remarks which I intended to offer. When about 3½ hours is given to a discussion of one of the great departments of the State it is intolerable that these bursts of eloquence by eminent people should take up all the time.

On a point of Order. Can some arrangement be made to notify the Postmaster-General and the Assistant Postmaster-General that this important matter is being raised by the hon. Member. I understand that pensions questions would come up for discussion.

It is no part of my duty to notify Ministers.

The complaint I wish to make is that, whilst other Departments of this great Kingdom are attempting to get back to pre-War conditions, the Post Office is notoriously the one Department which refuses to do so. I am not referring to the extra charge for the letter or telegam. It is possible that these extra charges have relieved us from a certain amount of the dreadful incubus of unnecessary letters and circulars which we used to receive. I am referring to the dreadful want of prompt and frequent delivery. Before the War the Post Office of England gave us a great many more posts than we have at present, and I must remark that they took a good deal more trouble in seeing that letters were delivered. For example, a very distinguished constituent of mine had a letter, which I sent to the Postmaster-General the day before yesterday, posted in Stafford on the 18th of July and delivered at Kiddlington, Oxfordshire, on the 21st of July, three days afterwards, although it was most clearly addressed. That is one example of modern postal habits. Nowadays no trouble is taken to search out individual letter which used to be taken before the War. Before the War there was some intelligent attempt to see that letters got to their destination, but at present that has slackened off very much.

The main thing is that our deliveries are fewer and the price of our letters is greater. We are getting a worse service for a larger sum. The Postmaster-General may say that instead of giving us more letters he is delivering to us all sorts of other things, wireless, concerts, lectures on the habits of spiders, jazz music and talks for little ones. I do not patronise them myself; in fact, the last broadcast I heard on the habits of spiders was more disgusting than I can say. What I want to say is that we require more posts, better delivered, and much more quickly dealt with, and I see no reason why we should not have it. We do not want sounding brass and tinkling cymbals, telephones on which we can be talked to unintelligibly in the tongues of men and angels, of which I frequently do not understand one word. What we want is more letters, and that the Postmaster-General is determined we shall not have. When I asked a question about my own city with a population of 75,000, the Postmaster-General said that a four o'clock delivery is good enough for 75,000 people and that he sees no reason to alter it. Before the War we used to have a delivery at six o'clock and a delivery at nine o'clock.

I am begging for pre-War conditions, and I do not see why on the excuse that that we are getting telephones and wireless we should not get a better letter delivery. After all the Postmaster-General, as his name shows, is the arch-postman of England. He is not the arch-wireless lord of England; he is not the arch-telephonist of England. He is the high postman of England, and I contend that he and his predecessors—and he is the fourth Postmaster-General to whom I have made this complaint—have made no attempt to live up to the position of arch-postman. They have devoted themselves to all manner of side issues and do not give us our letters nearly so frequently as before the War.

Naval and Military Pensions and Grants

In view of the important statement which was made by the Minister of Pensions recently I take this opportunity of raising the question of pensions. In the short time available it will be extremely difficult to deal with all the matters which have been raised, but I am certain the House will realise the important points that are before it. No one could be more solicitous and more sympathetic than the present Minister of Pensions, but, unfortunately, he is bound and guided by Regulations and it is those Regulations which we think ought, in some instances, to be altered. Long ago we advocated that the rate of pensions should be stabilised. Consider the hardship, almost the cruelty, to those men and women who receive pensions looking forward to a reduction of the too small rate of pensions, and I rejoice that the Minister and the Government have taken this occasion to do a thing which has been long overdue. There is one point in the statement on which I should like some elucidation, and that is the question of allowances for treatment. When I am talking of treatment I must point out that it was quite right and proper 10 years ago, after the War had ended, for men and women to receive treatment so that their condition might be ameliorated and the demands on the State reduced.

We have now got so far away from the War that many of those who are still suffering from wounds, and gas and nervous disability, can be considered chronic, and their condition is on quite a different plane from what it was 10 years ago. I suggest that there are a great many cases which would be much better cared for in regular institutions, where their condition might be ameliorated, than by trying to do away with what has become a chronic disability. One knows of cases where people have been sent for treatment again and again by medical boards, and the nervous exhaustion of the individuals who have to undergo that treatment, and in some cases undergo operations, is pitiful. I know that the right. hon. Gentleman is extremely sympathetic in the matter, but, of course, he is the hands of the Boards that deal with these cases, and no doubt they have various regulations to guide them. Some attention ought to be given to this very serious matter.

My next point is as to the continuance of re-examination before medical Boards for reassessment of pension in quite a small number of cases. Of course the argument is used that after a final assessment and the giving of a final pension there are cases that get worse, but statistics will prove that almost 95 per cent. of the cases that have been given final awards do not come up for reassessment. It seems to me that the time has arrived when the Ministry should deal generously with the remaining cases and should give them a final pension now, even though it may be to the detriment of the State. The amount of money involved must be small compared with the total expenditure. The Ministry ought to give all pensioners who are now being assessed for pension a final and permanent pension for life. I am sure such a decision would relieve very many individuals who nurse their disability in order to obtain their pension. I can quite understand the nervous strain on individuals who have to go before a Board again and again to have their pensions reassessed.

Then the Government might consider a definite proposal for closing down the Ministry step by step I do not say that it can be done at once, but over a period of a few years it might be done in stages. Large blocks of people could be given a statutory right to their pensions, which would be paid through the Post Office, and the cases that fall for continued attention might be handed over to institutions or to the care of a medical authority through the Ministry of Health. In that way money could be saved in a direction in which at present there is extravagance, considering the work to be done. There are cases which we all know. I am sure that Members of this House receive them almost weekly—hard cases of people who do not come inside the regulations. I knew of a case not long since of a poor woman who had lost her husband. He died this year, undoubtedly as a result of his War service. The case does not come inside the regulations. The man had gas poisoning, but got better. But the gas had undermined his health. There must be many cases in which men died sooner than they would have done if they had not gone to the War, and yet they cannot come within the regulations. Their hardships I realise, and we are bound to have hardship. But with the decreasing amount of money that the State has to provide towards pensions we might now be a little generous in some of these cases, and possibly through more generous application of the special cases fund these cases could be met.

Then there is the case of the widow that I wish to bring forward. After the War, the pension authorities were right in saying that if a woman married again, after her husband had been killed, she lost her pension. In many cases women had been married for a fortnight or similar short period. They were young and the State was perfectly right in looking to the new husbands to support them. But now we are 10 years away from the War, and that type of case disappears. It seems to me a little harsh to say that when a widow has a pension and she marries again, she must lose the pension. After all, she has suffered the loss of her husband; she has lived all these years without a husband; and if she marries again it is a little harsh that she should lose her pension. It tends, I think, for a certain class of women to live with men without going through the marriage service. It is also, I am sorry to say, inducing a certain amount of inquisition into the lives of these widows. I do not say that that is general, but it does take place in some cases. Therefore I suggest that the Minister might well induce the Government to stabilise a final award to these widows, and say that from now on, or from a stated date, those having pensions could retain them even in the case of remarriage.

Then I want to know how far the Ministry is looking after the limbless men. I have heard complaints, though not many, of the condition of the limbs provided. Such limbs can be only a prop, yet there are many men who choose not to wear their limbs because they are said to be uncomfortable or bad. Is the Minister continuing his investigations as to whether newer and better appliances can be used to assist those poor fellows who are incapacitated in this way? Is anything being done to assist limbless men to get into Government service and do work which they can very well undertake when manual labour is impossible? I know that commercial firms have done a tremendous lot for these men, and we all rejoice at the fact. But there are undoubtedly cases where these men are existing on pensions so meagre as hardly to keep them in bodily health. Perhaps something could be done by the Ministry to help that particular class of man.

I repeat that I think the time has come when a definite policy ought to be mapped out towards a definite closing down of the Ministry and dealing with pensioners in a final sense. It would be to the advantage of the State and I think to the advantage of the pensioners. The statement made by the Minister has gladdened the hearts of many and, certainly, we in this House are delighted with it, but the more we can close down the Ministry the better it will be for all concerned. I am certain the pensioners themselves, if they had to vote in a referendum on the question, would move in that direction.

The hon. and Gallant Baronet the Member for Montrose (Sir R. Hutchison) made two points with which I do not agree, and the latter of which certainly I do not understand. He proposes that the Ministry should "map out," as he describes it, some means whereby its existence can be brought to an end and he bases that proposal on grounds of economy. If such a proposal is based on grounds of economy, then it will be necessary to get rid of the Ministry quickly. On the other hand, it seems to me that the Ministry, in the interests of the ex-service men themselves, should be continued for a considerable time, quite irrespective of economy. It would be doing a great disservice to these men to take away from this House the one person who can answer questions, and make it possible for their grievances and wrongs, or alleged wrongs, to be thrashed out publicly. It is true that the Ministry must come to an end in a certain period, because wounded ex-service men cannot last for ever, and in the natural course, therefore, there will be a time when the Ministry must cease. But I am sure nobody on this side of the House will agree with the suggestion from the Liberal Benches that now, or even in the next two or three years, the Ministry's operations should be brought to a close.

The hon. Baronet also makes the point that there should be finality in pensions at once. Again I cannot agree with him, because there are hundreds of cases where men are suffering to-day in a mild degree from heart trouble and tuberculosis arising out of or aggravated by war service. These men to-day are able to carry on their employment under those conditions, but, with progressive diseases of that kind, as age advances, they are faced with the terrible chance of those diseases suddenly becoming far worse. If you fix their pensions and make those pensions final to-day, you expose them to the possibilities of great hardship. For that reason, it is important that we should leave the position as it is and retain in this House a Minister who can be appealed to, when reviews of pension are made and when questions affecting pensions arise. The hon. Baronet did not specify a date but he said he would close down the Ministry at some time in the future and leave the administration of pensions to be carried out entirely through the Post Office.

No I did not. I suggested that the Minister to deal with the cases which the hon. Member is speaking about, ought to be the Minister of Health.

I do not want to misstate the hon. Baronet's proposals, but I thought he said distinctly that the administration should be done through the Post Office.

Yes, that is the final awards.

I cannot imagine anything which would give a greater feeling of insecurity to ex-service men, either those whose pensions may be varied in the future, or, even those who have come to final awards, than to feel that whatever happened the only people to whom they could refer would be the mechanical operators of pensions through the Post Office. For that reason I am strongly in favour of maintaining the Ministry as it is. I feel certain that the reason of economy which is advanced in support of this proposal, will not bear examina- tion at all, either from the point of view of the amount involved, or from the point of view of the ex-service men's interests. I congratulate the Minister on the splendid arrangement announced in the House this week. The stabilisation is one which all ex-service men throughout the country can welcome. I am sure they feel glad that, whatever happens now, however much the cost of living may go down, their pensions will remain unaffected. Even better than that, is the arrangement that if the cost of living should go up, then when it reaches a certain point the matter will be left open—

Yes—120 above.

Never mind. The condition is there and one never knows when circumstances may change causing that figure to be reached. If the figure is ever reached, this arrangement will leave the matter open and the Minister then in charge of the Department will be able to increase pensions. For those reasons, I congratulate the Minister. I should be very sorry indeed if this House were to lose the one Minister who is responsible to the ex-service men of the country and to whom Members of Parliament can expose and explain the wrongs—if they have any—of ex-service men.

I am sure everyone in the House recognises the great importance of the Minister's announcement in connection with the stabilisation of War pensions. It is quite evident that the House agrees that the Government and the Ministry have taken the right and proper course. I go further and say that I believe the public would not have tolerated any other kind of action in this respect. While expressing this degree of satisfaction at what has been done, I may add that when we see the diversity of views expressed in regard to other matters which the Government have introduced to the country, the right hon. Gentleman is fortunate in being able to announce one proposal which has been received with whole-hearted approval. I desire to address one or two questions to the Minister on the question of stabilisation. I would ask him whether, in addition to stabilising rates, he is prepared to restore the right of the men in receipt of life pensions to receive increased pensions if their disability becomes worse. A number of men have been placed on life pensions whose disability has not become stabilised. It may become considerably worse, and I think it would be a good concession if the Minister would consider the possibility of giving a chance of reconsideration and of an increased pension being paid in cases of that kind.

In regard to commutation, the commutation rates have been fixed, but will it now be possible for anyone to commute part of their pension on the rates now made stable, instead of the 1918 rates plus the 10 per cent? I think those are two points on which, if the right hon. Gentlemen could give an expression of view, it would be helpful, not only to the pensioners, but to hon. Members interested in them. When the Minister made his statement the other day, I addressed a question to him in regard to his interpretation of the stabilisation of treatment allowances. I believe the answer given was that he meant that it stabilised the existing rates which are being paid, but I think the question of treatment requires a much wider consideration than that. While it may be possible to stabilise the rates which are paid in certain directions, we are encountering to-day difficulties in connection with treatment which I believe warrant the much more serious consideration of the Minister. Only this morning I received a letter which illustrates the difficulties in this connection. A man who has had his treatment allowances taken away, who is suffering from total incapacity, and is receiving a 12s. a week pension, writes to me as follows— mitted, I wish the right hon. Gentleman could give us some assurance that there will not be this sudden cutting off of treatment allowances in the case of men who have received them for a given period, particularly when we know that there has been no change in the disability from which the individual pensioner is suffering.

I would like now to come to the references which have been made to the closing down of this Department, and as strongly as I can—and I believe in this I am speaking for the party which I represent—I shall offer resistance to proposals of that kind. I do not think there is the slightest justification for the plea which has been adduced by the hon. baronet speaking from the Liberal benches, and the argument which he has used in supporting his contention, I believe, would not be found practicable of application. One recognises, of course, that there must be some contraction of the work, but the more one looks around, I think the more one understands how big is the question confronting us and how important was the statement made by the hon. Member for Wirral (Mr. Grace) just now as to the importance of there being in this Chamber a Minister responsible for the Department, to whom questions can be addressed and attention thus drawn to the problems associated with ex-service men.

Further, I wonder sometimes, with the methods which have been adopted, particularly in recent times, in closing down areas and amalgamating various offices, whether there has not been too sudden a contraction to permit of that amount of official supervision which is necessary in the best interests of the ex-service men. Above all, I feel that it is essential to retain this Department, with its voluntary workers and officers throughout the country, in order that we can keep in operation that human touch which is more necessary in connection with pensioners than perhaps any other department of our social life. But I believe there is another side to this question, and in order to give my own particular point of view, may I be permitted to read an extract to the House from something that I wrote in 1925? There had been suggestions as long ago as 1925 that the time had come for this Department to be closed down. I then took exception to it, and I said:

I want now to make reference to the question of time limits, and I regret that in the important announcement which the Minister made this week he was not able to incorporate the statement that the Government had agreed to the abolition of the time limits. The Minister in his statement suggested that they could not contemplate the acceptance of fresh burdens in the future.

Those are not my words, and if the right hon. Member wishes to quote me, I must ask him to quote what I did say.

The statement to which I was alluding was this: hon. Gentleman give us any information as to the number of cases which would be liable to admission to pension if he were to accept the proposal for the abolition of the time limits? A lot of concern is exercising the minds of ex-service men because of the closing of the lists on 31st August next. Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us whether the Lists would be increased, say, by 5,000 or 10,000, or might it be 20,000, or might it be more? We have endeavoured to elicit a certain amount of information on this point, but up to the present we have never been able to get any figures at all. I think the answer which the right hon. Gentleman has given from time to time is that this information is not procurable inside his Department, but I believe that in the old days, through the War Pensions Committees, very careful statistics were compiled, and if we had these figures they would be very helpful for our consideration.

In connection with the operation of the existing order to close down the list of applications on 31st August of this year, could the right hon. Gentleman tell us to what extent he is going to exercise the individual power and responsibility which rest with him for the consideration of exceptional cases? When no other fresh applications can be made, there will undoubtedly arise, particularly when we consider those who are suffering from neurasthenia, all kinds and types of very difficult cases indeed. We know that the Minister can exercise a certain measure of power. He can make recommendations with regard to the exception of special types of cases. We know that he has already exercised his power to the extent of accepting cases outside the seven years' limit. If we could get an assurance that he would widen the use of the power he now holds, there might not be quite so much concern with regard to the closing down of the application list or not so much concern perhaps about the exercise of the seven years' limit. I, personally, prefer that there should be no time limit operating at all, and that if a man is suffering from War disability, he should thereby be entitled to pension. If the right hon. Gentleman and his Government are not prepared to accept that view, then I would ask the right hon. Gentleman to what extent he is prepared to go in meeting the needs of those neurasthenic and tuberculous cases which establish a measure of hardship to the individual concerned, his wife and family, and which, from time to time, are certainly such a source of great anxiety to Members of this House who have their notice drawn to the circumstances

There is one further question, in passing. We have so far not yet received the Report of the Ministry. I do not exactly know what is the usual time for it to reach Members, but I think I shall be expressing the wish of the House when I say that Members would like to receive this important document, giving a summary of the work of the Ministry for the year, at any rate before Parliament rises in the ordinary way in the month of August. I would like to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he could see that another year, perhaps, we might get the Report in our hands as soon as possible after May, so that then we should have some ground on which to base a discussion in this House, and have information to guide us in the conclusions to which we can come.

12 n.

Lastly, I want to quote, as I have done whenever I have had an opportunity of addressing the House on this very important question, one or two individual cases by way of illustration, and to ask the Minister whether any consideration has been given to the question of special treatment for border-line cases, which do not seem to warrant the application of the power which he has, and whether it is his intention to ask the Government to set up special machinery to deal with the types of cases to which I am going to make reference. Hon. Members who have already spoken have informed the House how we frequently have brought to our attention types of cases which come very near the border-line, types of cases which, it seems to me, should have exercised for them what has been the declaration—and, I believe, a declaration which has been sincerely meant—made on behalf of successive Governments, that applicants for pension should always receive the benefit of the doubt. When we get types of cases like these which I will now take the opportunity of quoting, there does seem reason to doubt whether that policy is being applied in the sense in which I feel that Parliament desires it should be applied, and which certainly the country would support the Minister in carrying into fuller effect than he is doing at the present moment. The first case to which I want to refer is the case of a man named Doherty, which has been under the consideration of my right hon. Friend for some considerable time, and has been dealt with by various Departments. I have just received a letter from my right hon. Friend, after my making further representations to him. He says that this is a type of case which he feels does not come within the scope of the power he can use. According to the information which has been given to me from the man's medical history sheet, it is shown that on 6th August, 1918, he went into a field hospital suffering from osteo-myelitis of tibia. He was there for three days. On 9th August he went into the 20th General Hospital suffering from the same complaint, and was there for one day. He was then transferred to the 5th and 6th Convalescent Depot suffering from osteo-myelitis and was there for three weeks. Subsequently the man was taken into a Ministry hospital, and had his leg amputated from the same disability, I understand, for which he was sent into hospital in 1918. It is true there was a somewhat long intervening period—it was 1926 or 1927—but if you get a man going into hospital suffering from osteo-myelitis and there is a recurrence of that disease, you are not giving the man the real benefit of the doubt which ought to be exercised if, after a leg has been taken off in a Ministry hospital for that same disability, you subsequently declare that he is not entitled to pension for the disability from which he is suffering. That is the first type of case to which I want to make reference and about which I want to say that if the present Regulations cannot meet the case, there should be some special operation of machinery which will certainly do justice to it.

The second case is that of Mrs. Stock. I was only able to give short notice to my right hon. Friend, and I hope he will forgive me. If he has it in hand, perhaps he will permit me to go on with my reference. This is the case of a man whose health in every way was excellent before the War. He gradually failed on his return to civil life, and tried to get on with his work until he collapsed. He claimed a pension in May, 1926, and on appeal it was decided that he was suffering from pernicious anaemia, and this was admitted to be due to service. He continued to suffer from pernicious anaemia until he died on 3rd March, 1928, and his death was certified as due to this particular form of disease. The Awards Officer, it seems, according to the information given to me, based his refusal of the widow's claim on the allegation that "the deceased man was able to carry on his occupation from demobilisation until September, 1927." Now I am told that his employer, out of pity and out of regard for the great service which the man had already rendered to him, kept him on his books until that particular date, but that this man had done no work for about 18 months previous to his death. This is another case of the type which I have previously put. He was certified to have died of the disease which the Ministry admitted was due to War service, and I agree with the contention that has been made, that there seem to be no grounds for the decision to which the Ministry has come. I was personally acquainted with Mr. Stock before his death. I had visited him on many occasions in a friendly and personal way, and knowing him as I did before the War, understanding the difficulties of his position, and receiving the assurances from the medical men, both of the Ministry and privately, that undoubtedly this disability of pernicious anaemia was due to the service which the man gave in the War, I am convinced that this is the type of ease which seems to justify some alteration in the machinery which the Minister has at his command.

The next case is one of a man named Smith, who was wounded in the left chest in 1916. He was ill for five months and was never sent back to the line. He had a perfect record of health before the War, and as soon as he was demobilised, he was taken ill at his work and had to be sent home on an ambulance. Mr. Smith, in addition to receiving his orrinary medical treatment, treated himself by special diet and other things. He made an appeal for a pension on the ground of tuberculosis. He was refused a pension, and his appeal was rejected on the ground that the disease was a postwar infection, and not connected with war service. The Appeal Tribunal said that there was co evidence of penetra- tion of the lung, and that the chest was probably not penetrated. The Ministry said that they could not admit any connection with a bronchial illness in 1919, and the tuberculosis which was first diagnosed in 1925, but two independent medical men, including the medical superintendent of the sanatorium, considered that the bronchial trouble in 1919 was the beginning of the tuberculosis. A third medical man, a specialist, said that the fact that the tuberculosis was in both lungs in 1925 indicated that it was of long standing. All three medical men agreed that the tuberculosis, from which he suffered and died, was attributable to war service. This is just a brief summary of the cases of a particular kind to which I desire to draw the attention of my right hon. Friend. The medical Members will tell us that disabilities like tuberculosis do bring forward a variety of decisions from medical men, but when we get the direct testimony of three medical men that in their judgment this man's disability was due to war service, it is difficult to understand why no pension should have been awarded.

I am wondering whether, in connection with this work, because certain voluntary organisations are doing a magnificent work in helping ex-service men, there is a tendency to leave too much to these organisations. I feel that a great deal of the work which is now being undertaken by the voluntary organisations, such as the Ex-service Welfare League, the British Legion, and the rest of them, ought to be undertaken directly by the State. As long as we can get from both the records of the British Legion and the other voluntary ex-service men's organisations, cases such as those which we might quote at length, I feel that to a very large extent the Ministry is failing to realise its opportunities and to understand the work which it ought to perform. I recognise that this is a great State Department which must be as scientifically controlled as possible. At the same time I feel that if it is to function properly, every one of its branches must be sweetened with sympathy and human understanding. I acknowledge that on every hand, from the Minister downwards, I have received always the most sympathetic co-operation, and it is in no personal or departmental sense that I am raising these questions, but I feel that, unless and until the Ministry is prepared to accept that burden of responsibility which is now being thrown in large degree on the voluntary organisations, there is lacking that element of mutual sympathy and human understanding which is so essential in the treatment of the ex-service men.

It also seems to me that we have now reached a stage in pensions administration when we could stabilise a very large percentage of the cases concerned, and when a great proportion of those who are affected can be placed on a definite and assured basis, but there still remains this residue to which I have made allusion in the cases I have quoted. Each one of these cases seems to present a great human problem, which requires closer personal and more individual consideration than that which so far possibly has been given to it. These are the types of cases that cannot possibly be met by the administration of hard and fast regulations. If you try to apply hard and fast regulations to cases like this, I am certain that you are bound to fail, and you will incur a burden of hardship and misery. It is the application of common sense in the observance of regulations, combined with the human touch, that we require in these cases, more than the rigid observance of the regulations which govern the working of the Department. It still seems necessary that Parliament should from time to time consider this question, and I trust that the House will not listen to the plea that has been made for the abolition of this Department, but that we shall continue its operation, and see that in its working it does everything humanly possible to ensure justice to those who fought that the rest of us might live. We can remove all cases of complaint, and I trust that the House from time to time will give its attention in that direction.

I would like to say a word or two from the point of view of the medical service and medical administration in the Ministry of Pensions, which is a subject which must appeal to us of the medical profession. At the same time, I am bound to say that we sometimes seem to forget, in treating the subject of the Ministry of Pensions, that this is a most influential part of the health of the nation, which is divorced from the general health services of the nation. It is from that point of view that I listened with some sympathy to the remarks of the hon. and gallant Gentleman for Montrose (Sir R. Hutchison), who spoke as regards the future of the Ministry of Pensions. I think that he has been a little misunderstood when it is suggested that he spoke of the break-up of the Ministry as a matter of immediate politics. I do not think that he meant that because he particularly referred to the gradual transference of the working of the Ministry to different Departments of State. He particularly said "gradual transference." We are all, of course, immense admirers of the Minister of Pensions, and the work of all his staff, but the stoutest defender of the Ministry as a separate entity must admit that it will come to an end one of these days, and it is right that we should envisage the future, and try to consider to what extent it is likely to be changed.

After you have stabilised the greatest number of pensions this largely becomes a medical question. From the medical point of view one obviously supposes, before the general body of pensioners has passed into another world, that rather than have the whole system of treatment of the few who remain dying of inanition, with the Ministry in being for the sake of individuals scattered here and there over the country, the duties would obviously have to be passed over to some other Department, and the question is, How soon? I think it is quite true, as two or three critics of the hon. and gallant Member for Montrose have said, that it is not a question of immediate politics; but it is obvious that sooner or later the responsibility for the institutions and the personnel will be transferred. The natural body to complete and wind up that service would seem to be the Ministry of Health, but that would associate itself in our minds with the Poor Law guardians, and there has always been a great and a natural reluctance to imagine the possibility of in any way fusing this service with the service of the Poor Law guardians. The proposal of the Government in the big Bill foreshadowed for next Session is, however, to transfer the whole system of the Poor Law into the hands of larger authorities, the county councils and county borough councils, and I think we shall there have a new envisagement of institutional treatment of the public health. There we shall have a larger authority possessing an enlarged service of institutions with a very large field of employment; because if the Bill passes substantially in the form in which it is proposed, they will be taking over the whole of the services of that kind, whether they are in the hands of the guardians or, as I understand it, in the hands of the district sanitary authorities.

I am not going to say straight away that that will in itself qualify them to take over or operate the services of the Ministry of Pensions, but I think it is perfectly obvious that it gives us a prima facie reason for believing that they will be the body for the purpose. But all that is in the future, and it is not practical politics at the moment. We shall want first of all to see how this reform works out, and when the counties have produced their schemes and got to work and have been working for a year or two, then we shall be able to judge whether they will be able to relieve and to help the Ministry of Pensions in this work. It seems to me that that is the real way in which to look at the future, on the medical service side, of the Ministry of Pensions. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral (Mr. Grace) and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bromwich, each of whom sees that we cannot contemplate such a change in policy for some considerable time; that appeals to all of us who have served with ex-service men and have an interest in ex-service men.

But the Minister himself will have to consider what is to be the future of his institutions and of his personnel. The personnel must be a gradually diminishing one. It will be a very difficult thing to know how to deal with his personnel. There is a whole series of eminent medical men who have given themselves up to the pensions service, who were chosen for the work at the end of the War as the result, perhaps, of their War service, and it would be a difficult thing to turn those men out of the service and give them no future at all. In the same way with institutions; it would be a bad thing to see institutions contracting and contracting and becoming less efficient and to have to undertake big schemes for their fusion, with all the geographical difficulties which would be entailed upon the pensioners and in other directions. Therefore it is right that the Ministry should envisage the possibility of bit by bit and gradually working in and co-operating with the Ministry of Health and, eventually, the county and county borough councils, for the gradual fusion of the two services for which, in so far as pensions are concerned, the Ministry of Pensions will naturally retain its responsibility. Only at a later stage will the Minister transfer the institutions to the Ministry of Health.

Then we have to consider yet another side, and that is the future to the nation as a whole of these institutions, with their personnel, and this service which has been built up by the present Minister and his predecessors. They have developed a new medical science. This subject of the assessment of liability and the attributability of disease to War, with all its difficulties, has been developed by this service and has become a fine art, akin only to the medical service in connection with insurance.

A very fine art!

A very fine art and an honourable art and science which, like all things, is open to discussion. That is a point of view which should not be lost sight of. It will be invaluable to the nation as a whole. The institutions, with their specialist forms of treatment, as well as their general forms of treatment, have attained a very high professional position and high degree of skill and equipment. The great pity is that that should not be made available to the civil population in the future, and if they are left gradually to shrink down and down through living an independent life they will lose their standing and their value in a large degree before they are transferred to the civil side. Therefore, I think it is right that we should envisage the future, and that the Minister himself should be considering in what way he can co-operate with the Ministry of Health and the other civil authorities, to what extent he can cater for some of the civil needs of the population, as his services and his requirements are gradually shrinking, taking analogous cases from the civil population into his institutions, and in that way helping to keep alive his institutions and to maintain them at their highest possible pitch of fitness.

I am sorry that I am unable to join in the mild congratulations which have been generally given to the Minister, because I am thoroughly dissatisfied both with the policy and the spirit of the Ministry of Pensions, and have been so for some considerable time, as the Minister is very well aware. I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bromwich (Mr. F. Roberts) called attention to the very important fact that on this last day of the Session we have not yet received the report for the year ending March 31st last. I believe the report was laid on the Table yesterday in readiness for printing, but the last day of the Session has arrived and we are still without the facts and figures on which to base an adequate criticism of the work of the Department. The work of the Ministry is very largely standardised, there are fortnightly or monthly statements prepared, and surely there could have been no difficulty in having that report in our hands a considerable time ago. Here we are discussing the subject now without all the recent figures before us.

I now wish to deal with the statement this week on the stabilisation of pensions. That statement was given an air of great importance and a memorandum on it was sent out to the Press by the Ministry—a very unusual practice. In most of the papers of the country there were leading articles upon this subject, many of them word for word with those in the memorandum which had been sent out. I would not object quite so much to this if the facts of the case justified the general implications of the memorandum, but what are the facts? In 1925 a pledge was given that the pensions would not be reduced unless the cost of living figure fell below a 60 average for three years. As the figure has never fallen below 64 since then, and, at the present time, is showing a tendency to go up, the pensions could not have been reduced until at least 1931, or probably, as next March would commence the next three years, until 1932. Therefore the impression that the pensions were in a position of abso- lute uncertainty at the present time was not really the case.

I certainly agree, as we all do, that it was very desirable to have that intimation, although, in effect, it only means that after 1931 the present position of pensions is to continue. The Minister of Pensions claims that his action has been taken spontaneously and that it was not the result of pressure. As a matter of fact, this question has been spoken of for years by various bodies and individuals in this House and outside. Again, the impression was given by that statement that this year pensioners are getting £6,500,000 which they would not have got had it not been for this generous concession. As I have already explained the pledge which was given in 1925 and under which the pensioners are working at the present time makes that claim absolutely unfounded. I think the whole tone of the statement, and the accompaniments of it, were misleading, and were pure political propaganda.

The right. hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bromwich stated quite truly that while this so-called concession was being made there was an accompanying implied threat that if we persisted in our endeavours to get the abolition of the seven years' limit; if we tried to secure that the men whose disabilities got worse should have their pensions increased; if we tried to improve the position of widows, about which a great deal might be said, including the fact that widows who get their pensions under Article 17 are deprived of privileges, as are also their children; if we continued to press these things we should be told that we must not advocate them because there would be a danger, if we carried our agitation to a successful conclusion, that the Government would have to reconsider the scale of pensions. The pensioners would be in a state of fear and trembling, and agitation would drop. I think it is very unfair that something which has been put forward under the guise of giving a great concession and benefit to pensioners should be used to prevent proposals being put forward and measures being taken for securing that justice to pensioners and their widows and children of which many of them have been deprived.

I do not criticise the present Minister specially, except that I think he has been more accommodating to pressure from the Treasury than any other Pension Minister. The pensions Ministry has been under the domination of the Treasury ever since. January, 1920. I think I showed in my speech on the Estimates last year that ever since that time, and even before that time, there have been encroachments on the original warrants, reinterpretations and new regulations which have steadily diminished the privileges of ex-service men and of their widows and dependants. All that has gradually reduced the liability of the State and has excluded many individuals who from an ordinary common-sense point of view—not to speak of humanity and justice—were obviously entitled to compensation for what they have gone through. There has been no reply given to the facts I then put forward, and into which I have gone very carefully. There can be no doubt that the Treasury influence on the Ministry of Pensions has been predominant and has prevented that justice being done which the British public intended should be done.

When the Minister of Pensions speaks on this subject he generally makes a very complacent comparison between what this country has done and what other countries have done. What countries does he take? As a rule he takes Germany and France. Even the right hon. Gentleman's method of comparison might be open to question in view of the transfer of their currency into our currency. We have to bear in mind, also, the lower average of remuneration of all State servants in those countries, including the Civil Service. The pay and position of their pre-War conscript armies makes the comparison not a fair one. The right hon. Gentleman never takes the United States or Canada or Australia in order to make his comparison. He carefully avoids doing that. We all know that those countries have treated their pensioners much more generously than we have treated ours. The Minister makes a comparison also with pre-War pensioners in our own country. We all know that the pre-War pay and the rates of pensions of the former soldiers of this country were a by-word. The popular view in the old days is very well summed up in the following familiar lines:

I also must say that there is a generally unfair, and almost mean, attitude in regard to certain aspects of the administration of the Department—for instance, the refusal to tell men, and to allow the hospital staff to tell men, of the proper procedure for the correction of errors in cases where their disability has become worse; and the very bad cases where, when one aged parent is getting a dependant's allowance, and dies, the surviving parent is not informed that the pension can be transferred to him or her. The whole policy, in this and other matters, is to leave it to the pensioner to find out his rights and to struggle and fight for them, instead of the Ministry of Pensions acting in loco parentis and seeking to help and to do everything and give everything to which the pensioner is entitled. Why should justice for pensioners have to be fought for? Why should Members of Parliament have to press cases before the Ministry, and why should it be necessary to get influential people to go to tribunals and fight and struggle in order to secure bare justice? The public do not understand the effort that it is to get justice in these cases. It sometimes takes weeks and months, and then the case is often turned down.

The hon. and gallant Member for St. Albans (Lieut.-Colonel Fremantle) spoke about the medical point of view. I am not particularly concerned, at present, on the question of the future organisation. It is, I agree, a very interesting and important subject in its own place, but the medical point of view in which I am presently interested in connection with the Ministry of Pensions is the way in which the Ministry turns down the opinions of medical men—not only panel doctors, many of whom are extremely and naturally indignant, but also well known specialists, whose opinion is flaunted by the Ministry of Pensions. [ Interruption. ] I am not sure that it is by the medical men in the Ministry of Pensions. The medical men in the Ministry of Pensions are not supreme there. But we all know of cases where a man has been told that his case is one which makes home treatment suitable—that he does not require any hospital treatment, but that his case can be dealt with by the panel doctor. He goes to the panel doctor, the panel doctor examines him, and says that in his opinion the man requires either hospital treatment or specialist treatment, and he sends him back again. Then the man is pushed backwards and forwards, and is refused the treatment which the panel doctor thinks is desirable; and even, as I have said, the opinions of specialists —well known medical men, than whom in their own service the Ministry of Pensions have no better, if as good—even their opinions are put aside, and the Ministry say that they disagree with the opinions of these well known specialists that the particular disease in question was due to War service. That is the medical side of the question that I would like to put—that the Ministry of Pensions should give more heed to the opinions of conscientious medical men who know the patients, and, in many cases, knew them before the War, and who understand the change that has taken place.

I could go into a great many other matters, because many parts of the administration are full of little petty meannesses, which I am all against, but I do not wish to take up the time of the House. I do, however, say quite frankly, and, as I have said before, regretfully, that in my opinion many ex-service men and their widows and children have net received that justice to which they were entitled, and which the British public believed they would get. I do hone that the Minister will not be misled by the chorus of mild congratulations which he receives, and which, very largely, is given in the spirit of encouraging him and helping him to go on and do justice and to treat ex-service men generously. I hope that he will not be misled by that, but that, if there is a difficulty on the financial side, and if he is asked to conform his regulations to pressure from the Treasury, he will remember that the British public do demand that those who fought for us in the War, and especially their widows and little children, shall not suffer as a result of that, and I hope that some attempt will be made to meet and to satisfy the pledges which were given so plentifully to the men when we needed them so much.

I do not altogether agree with my hon. Friend the Member for East Edinburgh (Dr. Shiels) in reference to the point raised by the hon. and gallant Member for St. Albans (Lieut.-Colonel Fremantle), because I thought that the hon. and gallant Member's reference to the use of an efficient State medical service for the civil population was a very big advance towards the point of view that we hold in regard to medicine and the nation as a whole. I certainly look forward to the time when the hon. and gallant Member will support the Labour party in their advocacy of a State medical service generally. I know, of course, that the hon. and gallant Member will not agree with that, because it does not fit in with the private enterprise and voluntary point of view of his party, but what he said on the subject certainly indicated that, where there is a finely developed system of medical service, it ought not to be scrapped after the immediate military necessity has gone, but should be used ultimately for the benefit of the civil population. Listening to the earlier part of the hon. and gallant Member's speech, and also to the speech of the hon. and gallant Member for Montrose (Sir R. Hutchison), I could not help feeling that the tone and atmosphere of those speeches indicated a point of view which is a very disturbing one to me—the idea that the ex-service man has become a bit of a nuisance, and that the sooner his class dies out the better.

No!

Nothing of the sort was said, I quite agree; I am talking about the tone and atmosphere of the speeches. Nothing of the sort would be said, because such a statement as that would be very largely reported throughout the country.

Will the hon. Member allow me to say quite definitely that we only want to face facts?

That is the excuse of 'the whole administration of the Department on this question of ex-service pensions—the facing of facts. The facing of facts means interminable red tape, and forcing upon the wounded soldier, upon the disabled soldier, all the indignities and all the hardships and all the difficulties possible in making out his claim to an adequate and decent pension. That is the attitude generally, it seems to me, of people to-day who talk about facing facts. If there is one thing on which I think every ex-service man will agree, it is that the experiences of the four years of war are the most vivid experiences of their lives. The experiences which I had in France are as vivid to-day as the experiences of yesterday. One of the things that bit into my mind, and that I realise very thoroughly to-day, is that when these men went out to fight for their country, they very firmly believed in the gratitude of the nation. They were convinced, not that they would have a struggle, if they were unfortunately wounded or disabled, in order to get justice, but that the nation would do that justice gratefully, quickly and thoroughly. They certainly had that idea. I know it can be said that the men who went to fight for their country did so from patriotic motives. That is true, but patriotism, as Nurse Cavell said, is not enough. They went out for patriotic motives, and the agony of their service and the agonies they went through are sufficient test of their patriotism, but when on the top of that you force them to see not only themselves but their wives and children suffer, then to talk about patriotism is not good enough for them. We have a right to demand that these men shall be treated not merely justly but generously by the nation, which said so much at the time of the War about being grateful to them for saving the country, as they did.

There is one particular point to which I wish to refer, and that is the expiration of the seven years' limit on the 31st of the present month. I want to put a question to the Minister of Pensions on this point. I maintain that the seven years' limit has been in operation for a number of years and that that operation has been if not illegal, if that word is considered too strong, certainly illegitimate. It is impossible for me to suggest fresh legislation, and I do not want to suggest that, but I suggest to the Minister of Pensions that he has no right at all to have dealt with any of the men upon the seven years' limit before the 31st of the present month, because he has no authority under the Royal Warrant to do anything of the kind.

Under Act of Parliament.

I will justify my statement and I would ask the Minister of Pensions what authority he has in the following words from Section 5 of the War Pensions Act, 1921: says nothing at all about demobilisation. It speaks of discharge. The men who were demobilised in 1919 were prevented two or three years ago from making any claim under the seven years' provision. That is perfectly illegal; it is contrary to the Act and contrary to the Section which I have just read. "Discharge" is not demobilisation. These men were not discharged. I was demobilised in 1919 and placed in the "Z" reserve. Thousands of men who were demobilised in 1919 were not discharged but simply demobilised from active service and placed in the "Z" reserve; but the seven years' time limit has been made to apply to them, and during these two or three years these men have been deprived of the opportunity of making any claim for pension, even in cases of extreme hardship, where the effect of War service only shows itself after a number of years. I would like the Minister of Pensions to deal with that point. I do not pretend to be a lawyer and I may be wrong but discharge and demobilisation are two different things. No soldier was discharged until the official end of the War, and the official end of the War was not in 1919 but in September, 1921. Therefore, the 31st August, 1928, is the first date, in my opinion, that the seven years' time limit should have operated in regard to all these soldiers.

Although it is impossible to talk about fresh legislation on this subject, the Minister of Pensions has certain discretionary powers and I would ask him to exercise his discretionary powers under the dispensing Warrant of 1884. If a soldier can prove—and he has to prove it right up to the hilt before he gets anything—that his disability is a result of War service, why should there be any time limit? The Government are talking about their stabilisation of pensions and how generous and fair they are in their treatment of ex-service men. They have been nothing of the kind. They have been niggardly all the way through, and in the actual departmental work of administration they have made it hard and difficult on the score of economy, in order to force as many men off the finances of the State as they possibly could. They would have stabilised pensions earlier on the 1918 minimum, plus 20 per cent., but for the power of the Press, the power of political move- ments, such as the Labour party, and bodies such as the British Legion. They dared not do anything of the kind. Public opinion has prevented the Government forcing pensions down instead of keeping them at their present level. I deny their generosity, and especially do I deny their generosity in regard to the administration of the Department. I may be wrong in what I have said, and I certainly do not claim to be a greater authority than, or as great an authority as, the Minister of Pensions, in regard to the Pensions Acts, but I do claim that I have put a point which requires an answer. I suggest that there has been an illegal application of the Act of Parliament and that the seven years' limit should never have applied to anyone until the 31st August of this year.

I am very glad that the House is having this opportunity of dealing with the question of pensions, before we go away. Members of Parliament in the West of Scotland were approached by representatives of associations of ex-service men and asked to meet them some time ago. Members of the Conservative party and of the Labour party—there were no Liberal Members of Parliament in the district—had a talk with the representatives of these ex-service men in connection with the problems that they had to face. Therefore, I am glad to have this opportunity to-day to bring to the attention of the Minister some of the points which were felt very strongly and given expression to at the Conference. One thing that exercised them has exercised, I think, the ex-service men's organisation in every part of the country, and that is the operation of the seven years' limit. It is true that the Minister has from time to time in this House given his reasons for not altering the existing position. At the same time, I am quite convinced that every Member of this House of Commons knows that there are many very hard cases because of the operation of the seven years' limit. I hope that the Minister, by virtue of the dispensing order, and in considering the whole case, will seek to take as generous a view as possible in order to see what can be done to remedy this grievance.

Another point that was raised was what they described as the sequelæ, which follow upon the disability. For example, suppose a man has an acute attack of chronic bronchitis and that it is followed by pneumonia, and he dies, and the certificate in respect of the man's death is that he has died from pneumonia. Then the Ministry say that death was not the result of the chronic bronchitis. I take that case as an illustration. It is perhaps not the best case, because I dare say the Minister would to some extent give consideration as to whether the pneumonia was the result of chronic bronchitis. But there are many cases where the ordinary individual would say that there was no doubt that the sufferer must have contracted the more serious illness because his disability due to service had not given him a chance. Such a man is ruled out, because it is said that his condition is not due to his Army service. I do not want to blame the Minister specially in this connection. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for West Islington (Mr. Montague) when he said that since 1920 the Minister has always seemed to have been curtailed by the action of the Treasury, or the undue influence of the Treasury. The Minister shakes his head. I believe that, and I say that it was the same in 1924 as in any of the other years. I am not making any special charge against the right hon. and gallant Gentleman that he is more unduly under the influence of the Treasury than were my hon. Friends on this side. I think that there has been undue influence on the part of the Treasury in the way of restricting these matters.

1.0 p.m.

There has been a point made to-day in connection with the medical authorities. The hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for St. Albans (Lieut.-Colonel Fremantle) paid a tribute to his own profession, and to the wonderful service that they have given in this connection. I must confess—and I have placed a lot of cases before the Minister—that I have always had a feeling that I could get a thing out of the present Minister of Pensions, or out of the ex-Minister, or out of the Parliamentary Secretary more easily than I could get it out of the medical advisers. I also found in connection with these matters that they seemed to take a much more common-sense view than their medical advisers. For example, one of the things with which we have all had to deal in connection with pensions is "aggravation having passed away." A man has bronchitis, and some medical authority certifies that the aggravation has passed away. It shows the state of mind of the medical profession when they venture to be responsible for such an absurdity. How can they tell any such thing? It only shows, I think, to a certain extent the truth of what Mr. Bernard Shaw referred to as "the quackery of the medical faculty." At the same time poor people have had to suffer. I have sympathy with the case that was brought forward by the member of the medical profession on those benches. I raised it with the Minister of Pensions some few weeks ago by means of a question. I asked the Minister what remedy a man had who went to the Ministry of Pensions and asked for treatment and was told that all that he required—and mark you, told by the very medical men upon whose advice the Minister has to work—could be got by him from his panel doctor. Acting on the advice of the medical authority who advises the Minister of Pensions, the man goes to his panel doctor and asks for treatment. The doctor says to him, "Well, I am anxious to help you and do everything I can for you, but you are quite obviously a case for institutional treatment. You should be in an institution." What remedy has the man? The Minister of Pensions says. "Well, go to the panel doctor; he will advise you." I next went to the Secretary of State for Scotland on the matter. He, as far as my country is concerned, is responsible for the administration of the National Health Service. I asked him:

Or the Poor Law.

But the Poor Law institution is only for certain people. The man may be excluded from the Poor Law institution or he may not want to go into a Poor Law institution. There is the voluntary institution, but in his district there may be no voluntary institution. Therefore, when his panel doctor says, "You require institutional treatment," and the Ministry of Pensions doctor says, "You do not require institutional treatment," what is the man to do? This is a problem which, I think, the Minister of Pensions ought to face, and find some solution which will give justice to the people concerned. I am glad the Minister has received some encouragement to-day, but I believe ex-service men may be put into an unfortunate position. The effect upon a man's mind is bad when he goes to one medical man, who says, "No institutional treatment," and he goes to the man who is primarily responsible, and he says, "I can do nothing for you, you must have institutional treatment." Is it strange that that man should feel he is being defrauded by the State, to which he gave his service during the Great War? I am not really making complaint. I am asking the Minister to look into it and try to find some solution of the problem which will be acceptable to everyone.

Another point that was brought to our notice was the case of some people in mental institutions. There was a certain amount of public agitation when my hon. Friend was in office with regard to men who became mental sufferers after their service in the War and yet, in the opinion of medical authorities, it could not be traced to the War. I think the medical authorities have been responsible for ever so much hardship. An Exchequer grant was given and certain people are now being paid for, under this Exchequer grant, in the institutions in which they are. Those people have dependants, who are left in the position they were left in by the Ministry. The Ministry says, "While there is this Exchequer grant, and you are not an ordinary Poor Law patient, we cannot admit that you are a victim of the War and we can do nothing for your dependants." If they are not victims of the War why a special Exchequer grant? The Poor Law would provide for them if they were not victims of the War. But because the medical testimony somehow or other seems to be that the medical man cannot say that at the particular moment when the man came back, say, from the Battle of the Somme something in his mental apparatus went wrong, his dependants are to be no concern of the Ministry. Again I am not making any special complaint as against the administration but there is a problem, and our people feel that something ought to be done.

I want to refer to the case of the need pensions. I think the maximum is 25s. a week for a single person. Suppose there is a case where the father and mother are left. They had only one son, and he was killed. They have no income. Do they automatically get the full maximum need pension? Then since the Contributory Pensions Act came into operation it has had its effect upon the need pension. Old people feel very strongly that, after all, the State pension is a contributory pension. It is something they have paid for and something that ought to add to their comfort, but they find it makes no difference to them, because while the State pension is paid to them it is followed by corresponding action by the Ministry of Pensions, who take from them the corresponding amount from their pension from the Ministry of Pensions. I do not want to complain. I want to get future consideration for something that we all feel deserves consideration. The Minister should consider the alteration of the limit, so that persons who have been in receipt of an old age pension will not feel that they are being robbed, that it is being given with one hand and taken away with the other. If it is not the case, as we feel, that the Ministry is being curtailed and crabbed by the Treasury, I am hopeful that the right hon. Gentleman will take a very generous view of these points and see that something is done to put them right. In Glasgow the representatives of the various associations have come together in a way that has not been possible in the past. There is a general feeling that there are certain grievances that ought to be remedied, and I have put the matter here to-day as peacefully and quietly as I am capable of doing in the hope that we are really going to get a concession to this very widespread opinion in the West of Scotland.

I hope the Minister of Pensions will answer the interrogation addressed to him by the hon. Member for West Islington (Mr. Montague). If the hon. Member is correct, I confess that I have been hopelessly wrong, because I have taken quite the contrary view. Ex-service men are concerned with two questions. Whilst they desire the stabilisation of their pensions because they feel that they will know where they are, they are not so keen on the stabilisation of the disability pension. This is one of the most vexing problems with which every Member of this House, the British Legion and the medical profession has to deal. Everybody who served in the War gets a twinge now and again, but I suppose it is human nature to attribute most of the ills with which we are afflicted not to anno domini but to the War. It s almost impossible, even for the most expert medical man, to determine whether the disability in many instances is due to the War or not. Men who have gone through the terrible experiences of the War should I think get the benefit of the doubt; his disability, if there is a doubt, should be attributed to War service. I cannot think that anyone has gone through even a short campaign without his powers of resistance being reduced.

I was sorry to hear the hon. Member for West Islington say that we are rather apt to regard the ex-service man as a bit of a nuisance. He cannot mean that. No one should regard him as a bit of a nuisance, although there are moments when you come across, as we do occasionally, a malingerer, when we feel rather peevish and vexed and tell him off. One of the worst opponents of the ex-service men, in fact I might almost say that he is his enemy, is the fellow who tells the tale and gets his case reviewed again and again, to the detriment of men who are really deserving. We have all had experience of the man who refers to his present Member of Parliament and his former Member of Parliament, who refers to various Field Marshals and Admirals and Generals; and one feels that there should be legislation to punish these men because of the obstacle they place in the way of the proper treatment of those men who are really deserving.

Sometimes it takes years to get justice.

Why should you punish men for taking constitutional action?

I do not call it constitutional action to obtain a disability pension when a man has done no soldiering at all. I have a case in Islington of a man who was on the Reserve. He was called up, but went into hospital, and did not do a day's soldiering. He was there six weeks and discharged, and in the confusion of the War he got away with 16s. a week pension for five years. That man had appealed to the Sovereign, to the Prince of Wales, to Earl Haig, to Admiral Jellicoe, to the former Member of the Division, Mr. Comyns Carr, and to myself and a host of other people. Such action as that is detrimental to the case of other men who did serve, and I do not call it constitutional. In that sense I agree with the hon. Member for West Islington, that such a man is a bit of a nuisance.

The hon. Member is not agreeing with me in saying that these ex-service men are a bit of a nuisance. I said that they were thought so by the Department.

Yes, I gathered that the hon. Member thought that they were considered by the Department as a bit of a nuisance. I do not agree with him. Every case I have brought before the notice of the Minister and the Department has been treated most sympathetically. The cases have been gone into in the greatest detail, the greatest care taken to find out the real facts. That is one reason why I hope the Ministry of Pensions will not be abolished. Everyone who has sent a case to the Minister of Pensions has received the greatest consideration, and where an element of doubt exists, whether in the mind of the applicant or of the hon. Member, there has been no hesitation on the part of the Ministry to review the case again. I think we can all pay testimony to the great care and sympathy exercised by the Minister and his subordinates.

I will not detain the House for more than three minutes because I know there are hon. Members who have come with prepared speeches and it is undoubtedly right that they should be delivered. But it will be for the clarification of the Debate if I clear up one point which has been mentioned, and which ought never to have been mentioned. Most of the speeches have been devoted to an endeavour to assist the Minister of Pensions in his very difficult task, but the hon. Member for West Islington (Mr. Montague) deliberately attributed to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Montrose Burghs (Sir R. Hutchison) sentiments Which he never suggested in any shape or form, when he said that he entertained the idea that the ex-service man was a bit of a nuisance. When I challenged him to give a single word in the speech of my hon. and gallant Friend to support that statement all he could say was that "there was an air—an atmosphere." Very strange opinions might be attributed around this House if we could say to any man "you did not say it but you looked it." I could attribute to the hon. Member for West Islington some opinions which would surprise him if we acted on that basis.

In the speech he delivered all that the hon. and gallant Member for Montrose Burghs was trying to do, as everybody must recognise, was to ask for better conditions and more generous treatment for the ex-service men, perhaps in some ways with which the Minister of Pensions may not be able to agree. But that was the object of his speech. When he suggested that in course of time the Ministry of Pensions must come to an end he was, after all, doing no more than what was suggested in a different way by the right hon. Member for West Bromwich (Mr. F. Roberts), who made a most interesting and fruitful suggestion, that there should be a consolidation of all the pensions authorities into one Ministry which would really make it much easier for the House and the Ministry to deal with pension problems. That is a suggestion which appeals to me strongly, but it involves, amongst other things, exactly what was suggested by the hon. and gallant Member for Montrose Burghs, and that is that the present Ministry of Pensions as a separate entity shall cease to exist. A fact which has to be faced by everybody is that the pensions problem is changing, and that methods of administration which originally were suitable must also change; but I think it is the desire of everyone to help the Minister of Pensions in his task and not make suggestions, either in this House or anywhere else, that the men who served their country during the War are regarded as a nuisance.

Lest it should be assumed that silence gives approval to the existing Regulations in connection with disability pensions, War pensions or widows' and orphans' pensions, I feel that I must take this opportunity of expressing the opinion, which I think is generally felt by ex-service men throughout the country and by members of the British Legion, that the treatment by the Ministry in the matter of pensions is not at all satisfactory. I welcome, as everyone welcomes, the pronouncement made this week on stabilisation. I took the opportunity of congratulating my right hon. Friend the Minister and his colleague the Parliamentary Secretary on that pronouncement; but since reading the full statement I find that it is hemmed in with conditions. I do not propose to mention all the conditions but will quote one. It states that the stabilisation

I must say that I am far from being satisfied, while so many cases of hardship remain to be dealt with satisfactorily. I am not speaking from hearsay evidence, nor solely from documentary evidence, but because I come in touch with those who served the country in its hour of need, and who now have to go, cap in hand, to the guardians to obtain relief for themselves and their dependants because they are suffering from disabilities caused by War service but cannot rove it in face of these hard-and-fast regulations. The Minister of Pensions and the Parliamentary Secretary are, I am sure, reasonable, and in their heart of hearts would welcome a modification of the regulations. One has only to look at the race of either of those gallant Gentlemen to realise, that they are bubbling over with the milk of human kindness; but they have to take the regulations and administer them as they find them and I am convinced that they are prevented from dealing more generously with the cases that come before them, by the hidden hand of the Treasury.

I would agree to ruthless cutting down of expenditure in all Departments, but not in the Ministry of Pensions. There is no taxpayer who grudges money well spent in keeping faith with ex-service men. You get expert opinions of specialists on diseases reversed by the Minister's doctors, who have the last word in every case, and on their judgment the Minister decides. Why not reverse the regulation which requires that the applicant for a disability pension must prove that his disability was caused or aggravated by War service, and make the Ministry prove that the disability was not caused or aggravated by War service? I may be told that I am talking very wildly. That may be so, but I feel so strongly on the subject, that I must express myself in this way. I know the hardships and injustices inflicted upon ex-service men, and I am sure that in the few words I have spoken I have the backing not only of the British Legion but of ex-service men throughout the country.

I would like to say, in regard to the case mentioned by the hon. Member for East Islington (Mr. Tasker), of a man who received a pension but did no War service, that it must be a very exceptional case. I am sure that for every one who got a pension to which he was not entitled, it would be easy to produce a thousand who had a very good claim and were not able to get a pension for some reason. I rise to state a single case which will appeal to the sympathy of the House, and as a matter of public policy it ought to be stated. It is the case of James Winning, a Private of the South Wales Borderers, of 82, Watsonville, Motherwell. He was awarded a gratuity of £32 10s. on 13th August, 1919, and an identity certificate was sent to him on 22nd September in that year. I have a copy of the certificate, but simply read the words which make it plain that a gratuity pension was awarded to him: was due. That was all perfectly plain. He had only to go to the Post Office to cash it. For some reason his mother did not understand what it was, and put it away in a drawer, and it was only discovered after some years had elapsed. When it was discovered it was found that it was not stamped. If it had been taken to the Post Office and paid there would have been a stamp on the ring. It was not returned to headquarters. The case was taken up by Bailie Mincher in my Division. At the request of the Minister the papers were sent to the Ministry of Pensions. A reply came that, owing to the lapse of time, the application could not be entertained. When he asked that the ring paper should be returned he received a reply that these were the property of the Ministry and they should not have been in his hands. But they had been retained by him because he did not know of their existence and they only came to light when there was a removal and they were discovered in a drawer of the house.

The Minister's contention was that in the event of non-payment this form should have been returned to the Ministry for cancellation and adjustment of the pensioner's account, and that there was no evidence that payment was not duly made. That is the statement in a letter from the Ministry on 27th June. There is the evidence that it was not paid in the fact that the ring paper was not stamped, and either the Post Office or the Ministry should have known that it had never been implemented. Their further statement is that when the last weekly payment of pension was due, there were two date-stamps, which might be taken to mean that one of these has been cashed along with the ordinary weekly payment. If that argument is to prevail, there should have been three cashed because there were these three special gratuity pensions, namely, the one I have indicated and the arrears of the small sum that was due and the ordinary weekly payment. They add that the possibility cannot be excluded of the gratuity having been paid on the production of this certificate. If there had been any case of default or of taking advantage, these sheets should have been returned to the postmaster to enable him to recover from the Ministry of Pensions. I find that the records are not kept further back than 1924 and, on that account, the Ministry say they are not able to meet the case. The Admiralty ledger, I am informed, is kept for 60 years and the umpire's records since 1912.

The further point is made in the reply of the Ministry that, in any event, under the terms of the Royal Warrant, any pension or gratuity not claimed within 12 months is deemed to be forfeited, except in such exceptional circumstances as may be approved by the Minister. They add that in this case there is nothing to justify the Minister in taking such action. I can hardly think of any case in which there would be stronger grounds for the Minister exercising his discretion. The suggestion is that the sum might have been paid and the ring-paper might have been kept. That is distinctly stated as a possibility. The man who would do such a thing must be a man of very twisted character indeed, and I am able to say that this man has an excellent character, which can be testified to by persons of the highest esteem in my constituency. Such a thing is not to be supposed in his case, and I plead with the Minister and with the Parliamentary Secretary—who has taken a great deal of care, I admit, and shown me great courtesy in this and other cases—not to close this matter to-day, but to consider the exercise of their prerogative. This is the only case with which I have ever troubled the Minister on the Floor of the House, and I appeal to him to find some way in which to honour the Ministry's own warrant, and give this man the sum which was awarded to him.

In the very short time which is now available, I will endeavour to deal with the various points raised by hon. Members.

Is this the closing of the Debate?

Is there a time limit?

Some of us have been waiting here to speak and have to leave to go to Scotland.

I went out of my way to give the hon. Member a chance to speak before, and I hope he will now listen to me. With reference to the point which has just been raised by the hon. Member for Motherwell (Mr. Barr), the evidence in the possession of the Ministry shows that no unpaid allowance forms were returned to the Ministry by the Post Office in accordance with the practice regularly followed in cases where payment has not been made. I wish to thank the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Montrose (Sir R. Hutchison) for his very kindly references both to myself and to the work of the Ministry, but I cannot agree with his suggestion that there should be final awards for all pensioners and that for the reason very clearly stated by my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral (Mr. Grace) who made such a valuable contribution to our discussion. We have now given final awards to over 300,000 men, but there are certain forms of disablement and certain individual cases, where it would not be in the interests of the men if the suggestion put forward by the hon. and gallant Member were adopted. There are actually certain cases of disablement in which as a rule, we do not give final awards. That is done in the interests of the men.

I do not think the House is likely to adopt the suggestion that widows who re-marry after a period of 10 years should be allowed to keep their pensions. I cannot see any particular reason why widows who re-marry before 10 years, should lose their pensions, and those who marry after 10 years should keep them; but in any case it would be a complete contradiction of the principle of compensation. The woman who lost her husband in the War was compensated for the loss of her husband. If she remarries, her new husband is responsible for her, and therefore she is not entitled to be maintained by the new husband and also to retain the pension given to her as compensation for the loss of her former husband. In any case, I think the 10 year suggestion would be quite impracticable. The hon. and gallant Member made reference to the case of the limbless men, and I am very glad to be able to take this opportunity of thanking one of his colleagues in the Liberal party, the hon. Member for Greenock (Sir Godfrey Collins) for the work which he did in presiding over the committee of inquiry into this very question, on which we also had the advantage of the assistance of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Fairfield (Major Cohen). As a result of that committee, the problem of artificial limbs for ex-service men has been most satisfactorily settled. I have examined the limbs often, and I believe they are probably the best supplied to its disabled men by any country which took part in the War. As a matter of some interest to the House, I may mention that I have had the pleasure of sending a specimen out to the Australian authorities who were sincerely pleased with it and much admired its workmanship and mechanism.

Is it like the one which got up the Matterhorn the other day?

I cannot say. That is one case in which I have not been able to keep in close touch with the pensioner. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bromwich (Mr. F. Roberts) raised three or four cases with which I shall deal before proceeding to his general propositions. He mentioned the case of Doherty as one in which the benefit of the doubt should be given, but I think he had forgotten the system by which this country and this House have decided to deal with these problems. The position asked for by the ex-service man was that in these cases of doubt on questions of disability, the decision should not rest finally with the Ministry, but the matter should be decided by a tribunal. This case has been before the tribunal and has been decided against the man. Therefore, my right hon. Friend is hardly right in submitting it as a case in which the Minister may exercise his discretion on a nicely balanced point. The other case which he mentioned was that of Mrs. Stock.

Do you ever interfere with the tribunal's decision?

That decision is by law final and binding. On the next point, the case of Mrs. Stock, the full claim of the widow was rejected by the tribunal. A statement was put in the papers, but not made by the right hon. Gentleman, that the widow had been robbed by us of a pension. As a matter of fact, if it had been stated that we had given her a pension, amounting, with allowances, to 31s. 8d., it would have been more correct. The Ministry did not rob the widow of a pension, but gave her one. The case of Smith was also one which was rejected by the tribunal, a point which ought to have been mentioned when it was put before the House, because the whole tendency of the Debate has been to suggest that this was a matter in which the Minister might personally come to a decision. The right hon. Gentleman filled my present office, and knows very well that that is not a fair way to put the matter, because this is one of the cases which is decided, not by the Minister, but by the tribunal.

The way in which the right hon. Gentleman has interpreted my observations shows that he has misunderstood my object. I expressed the view that the machinery had been worked quite properly, but I put forward the case with the object of trying to urge the necessity of some special consideration being given to it.

That is impossible to do unless you withdraw the whole system which is in operation, and which the ex-service men wish to see retained. The right hon. Gentleman then made a most extraordinary allusion to the Ex-Services Welfare Society, and said that cases should not be left with them but dealt with by the State. I saw a suggestion that the 6,000 ex-service men who have lost their reason would get nothing if it was not for this Society. That is a statement which no doubt enables the Society to obtain funds from the charitable public, but it is absolutely untrue, because that Society is, under the law, not able to deal with a single one of the 6,000 mentally-afflicted men in the asylums; and so far from it being the case that the State has done nothing for them, the State has for many years past been spending about £3,000,000 a year on mental cases alone. If I remember rightly, the right hon. Gentleman himself paid a tribute to the wonderful work which has been done by the medical staff of the Ministry for the mentally afflicted, and, therefore, he was well aware when he made that statement that the doctors of the Ministry are doing a wonderful work for these cases, and that this particular society is able to do nothing whatever for those who are in asylums.

Does not that society assist relatives?

My point is that it is not fair to suggest that nothing is being done by the State for them and that everything is being done by the society.

I did not suggest that.

That was the right hon. Gentleman's point as I understood it. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for St. Albans (Lieut.-Colonel Fremantle) paid a tribute to the staff of the Ministry. I do not think the country generally realises how much the ex-service men owe to the wonderful work which has been done for the sick and disabled by the medical staff of the Ministry. What he said is true, namely, that medical science has advanced, and I am glad to see that in a hospital which has hitherto been doing much work for the ex-service men the great experience gained in connection with the loss of limbs has been used to help railwaymen who in civil life lose their limbs. In that way we hope to carry on the medical experience gained through these terrible sufferings in order that the knowledge so obtained may be of assistance in civil life to other sufferers, though I hope not sufferers from another war.

In regard to the hon. Member who spoke about the question of "discharge," discharge is defined in the Acts as "termination of active service," and, therefore, there is nothing at all in the suggestion that he made that our action had been illegal. It is, I think, a pity that he did not raise the question earlier, because the Labour Government enforced the seven years' limit. The hon. Member for Camlachie (Mr. Stephen) raised a point about need pension, and asked whether aged parents with no means would get the full amount. He asked if aged parents, with no other children to support them, and qualifying under the conditions with reference to having no income and being infirm, would get the full allowance, although there had been only one son in the family. The answer is "Yes."

The full 25s.?

The full 20s. The hon. Member for West Middlesbrough (Mr. K. Griffith) made a comment on the Debate with which I should like to ex- press my entire sympathy. The hon. Member for the Deritend Division (Mr. Smedley Crooke) seems to me to err rather on the side of continuously and almost invariably trying to discount the efforts which have been made by all parties for the ex-service men; and when he suggests comparisons with other countries, it is a pity that he has not read the speech of a member of the British Legion who is one of their experts on War pensions and who said:

"England has done more for her ex-service men than any other people in the world, not excluding the United States."

I think that would be a fairer statement of the efforts which successive Governments have made on behalf of the ex-service men.

That does not say that the members of the British Legion are entirely satisfied with the way in which pensions are administered.

Certainly not. It only means that the hon. Member's comparisons with other countries are not accepted by one member of the British Legion who is an expert on this subject.

Is it not true that other countries do not have a time limit?

As a rule they have one, and a shorter one. I will now deal with the question of stabilisation, and I am sorry to have to refer to two speeches which seemed to be directed rather to the political aspect of this matter than to the point of view of the ex-service men. We were told, for instance, that this new concession is due to years of work on behalf of one political party, and I think the right hon. Member for West Bromwich took that attitude. I am hound to say, as that issue has been raised, that there was one year in which the Labour party did not make any persistent effort in this direction, and that was the year when they were in office.

May I correct the right hon. Gentleman. There was nothing in my observations which would lead him to make that statement.

The right hon. Gentleman was asked whether he could not stabilise when he was in office, and he said:

With regard to the seven years' limit, the right hon. Gentleman asked how many people would be affected if it was removed. One of the great difficulties about that is that it must be remembered that the proposal which he has made himself responsible for is not only the removal of the seven years' limit, but the Bill which he introduced into the House of Commons. In that Bill it is proposed that any ex-service man suffering from an illness of a kind that might be attributed to the War should have that illness accepted as necessarily due to the War in the absence of evidence of any kind whatever. That Bill would have done no additional good for the ex-service men who came back wounded. It would have had very little effect on the men suffering from sickness just after the War, but it would have meant that 20 or 30 years afterwards any ex-service man, who fell sick of any illness whatever, would have to be taken over by the Ministry of Pensions until we could show that his illness was not attributable to the War. That would, I believe, provoke a reaction in the country against the present rates of pension. That is a most dangerous proposal from the point of view of the ex-service men. I have always supported the present rate of pension. I believe that £2 a week for the totally disabled man of the Great War is a figure that should not be reduced, but, if you are going to abolish the seven years' limit and to confer compensation at War rates upon 5,000,000 men whenever they get sick of any illness in civil life, you may provoke a reaction against the rates now prevailing for ex-service men.

Who proposed that?

I have the Bill here. I am speaking of a Bill which was proposed in the House of Commons by the right hon. Gentleman who was Minister of Pensions in the Labour Government. That is the proposal of the Bill, and I believe it is thoroughly unsound. My own view is that it is right to keep up the standard of payment, but it can only be justified in comparison with those who are in civil life by basing the scheme upon disability really due to the War. I am very glad therefore that these rates have been stabilised. I should like to say that, when the hon. Member for East Edinburgh (Dr. Shiels) said that £6,500,000 was not the value of the change, he forgets what we are referring to. We are referring to the contrast between the present situation created by the present Government, and the Royal Warrant as it was left when the Labour Government went out of office. As the Labour Government left it, the men were liable to this reduction, and the change we have made protects them from these reductions, and £6,500,000 is the difference between the Royal Warrant as the Labour party left it and the situation created by the present Government, and welcomed in every part of the House.

But there has not been any change since 1925.

That was another improvement effected by the present Government. He did not make that point either. I am making a contrast between the Royal Warrant, as the Labour party left it, and the situation as changed by the present Government. There have been somewhat scornful references to the fact that pensions would only be increased if the cost of living went up to 115, but my predecessor has forgotten that suggeations came to me from the Labour party that we should remove the sliding scale altogether and leave the pensioners without the advantage of the rise. That is not an advantage to be ignored, since during the time I have been at the Ministry—in 1920—the cost of living has been at a point that would have produced a rise according to the present scale. Moreover, hon. Members must not forget that part of their policy is to attack the capitalists by taking over the banks and the Bank of England and the issue of currency notes, and deliberately to inflate the currency of this country.

No, no!

2.0 p.m.

Hon. Members opposite cannot have it both ways. They complain that the capitalists who lent money during the War have got much more value for their money now because prices have come down. I presume they will tackle that situation and put the matter right by altering the value of money. You cannot alter the value of money without hitting thousands of people throughout the country who are not capitalists. Among those who would suffer by the inflation of the currency urged by hon. Members opposite are those receiving War pensions.

There are many points you have not replied to.

I notice the hon. Member is very much annoyed at the point I am making.

I was afraid the right hon. and gallant Gentleman was going to sit down without answering the questions put to him.

The hon. Member is obviously trying to get me off a point that causes his party annoyance. I have heard speeches made in this House suggesting the whole value of money is going to be changed under the Labour Government. That has been done in other countries. It has happened in Russia and Germany, and, if that change is made, one of the first classes to suffer would be the War pensioners, and the protection for them against that is the proposal of the present Government.

Are we not going to have a reply? We have not had a reply to a tenth part of the points. It is a shocking disgrace.

I could not understand the anxiety of the Minister about time and his hurried glances at the clock, and then his digression into many things far remote from his Department. I do not rise in any spirit of hostility to the Minister or his Parliamentary Secretary, but there is one point which affects a large number of men which merited a reply from the Minister and which he has ignored. That is the point raised by the hon. Member for Camlachie (Mr. Stephen) when he spoke of men who are recognised as suffering from war disabilities, and who are told they require only treatment by a panel practitioner. That is shelving the responsibility of the Ministry on to the Health Insurance Fund. The worst is that, when they go to those panel practitioners and are recommended a course of institutional treatment, the panel doctors are treated with contempt by the Ministry. They are ignored, and no notice is taken of their recommendations, and even protests from Members of Parliament to the Ministry do not get these cases put right.

There have been cases to my knowledge where, although the Ministry have at last examined the men on that recommendation from the panel practitioner, they would not recognise the necessity for treatment. These men have then gone to hospital and there have been recommended for treatment and have had to go in and receive from the Poor Law the treatment they ought to have had from the Ministry. During the time a man was away like this he was not recognised by the Ministry and his wife and family have been charged to the Poor Law instead of getting the treatment allowance. That is a point to reply to which the Minister ought to have found a few minutes, because it is becoming more and more the practice, and when medical men of the Department have said that they cannot recommend such institutional treatment, the men have had that institutional treatment from the Poor Law and have been considerably benefited by it, so that they have been able to return to work.

When we specify cases to the Minister or his Parliamentary Secretary, they do the best that they can for us, but I am afraid that there are a great many of the medical staff of the Department who think that they are serving the interests of the State by being difficult to persuade that the men are entitled to the treatment they ought to have. Those with experience of different districts will find that that does occur. In one particular area one has felt a difference when there has been a change of personnel. That is a thing that ought to be altered, and where a panel doctor has been given charge of a man for his War disability, he should have as much respect and recognition from the Ministry as their own medical officers. It is an insult and degrading to the panel doctors that their word should not be taken when the responsibility is thrown upon them. I hope that the Minister will look carefully into it. I am sorry that he seemed to want to make this a party issue. I have never put a question on the Order Paper on pensions cases because I have always fought them outside, and I deplore very much that anything in connection with this question should be made a party issue at all. I am not speaking in any sense of hostility, but I feel strongly with regard to it, and particularly with regard to the poor fellows who left their appeals until the end of the 12 months, and were too late and are still suffering from their War disabilities and have no right to a pension.

The treatment which we have had to-day is nothing short of abominable. To talk about non-party and decency of the House after the display to-day is the last word. Some of us came definitely to raise certain cases in no spirit of irritation, and all we have had from the Minister of Pensions is a 20 minutes' reply in which he never dealt with one-tenth of the points which were put to him. It is a shocking display, and shows that decency in this House is never appreciated, and that the only way to get decency is to take matters into one's own hands. Some of us came here to put point after point to the Minister. The hon. Member for Motherwell (Mr. Barr) seriously raised a case, and it is dismissed in a sentence. The hon. Member for Edinburgh (Dr. Shiels) raised several points, and he gets hardly any reply at all. The hon. Member for Camlachie (Mr. Stephen) and the hon. and gallant Member for Montrose (Sir R. Hutchison) also raised points, and all that we get is a 20 minutes' speech, most of which time is taken up by the Minister looking at the clock and making a dissertation on finance and inflation of the currency.

That is how we are treated, and now, if we raise eases, we cannot get the courtesy of a reply because of the mysterious "usual channels" have arranged to finish at 2 o'clock. It does not matter about the back bench Member. I could have caught a train for Scotland with the hon. Member for Camlachie at 1.30, but we waited for the Minister's reply, that is all that we get. That is all that the ex-service man is worth. Talk about non-party spirit and the new coalition and the new decency! It is enough to make Members rebel. Here is the Member for Leith (Mr. E. Brown) who has given some consideration to a case, but he is not going to raise it because there is no chance of a reply owing to the sacredness of time. Two o'clock must operate and damn the ex- service men! Trains must be caught and arrangements must be carried out! It is a shocking display, and it is only my regard for you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, and your first weeks in office that makes me have regard for business, and prevents me taking the whole matter into my own hands.

I want to call attention to the case of a man who was in hospital, and whose doctor told him on discharge that his trouble would never occur again. The poor fellow accepted the doctor's advice, but after the 12 months' limit, he found that the same trouble occurred. An appeal to the Minister did not bring him anything whatever. He is to-day without pension, and his wife and family are dependent on the guardians for their existence. Another case which I want to place before the Minister is that of a man discharged from the Navy suffering from tuberculosis. He was advised by his doctor to go out of the country to another country where he would soon be restored to health. He accepted the doctor's advice, and went to Canada, and for a time he did very well, but unfortunately the disease again overtook him, and he was ordered back to this country. Today he is in a hospital for tuberculosis in my own county, with no pension for himself or his wife. These are cases in respect of which the Minister ought to ask the Government to give him further powers, so that he can do justice to them.

I plead with the Minister, because we know that no one ever expected that a man who served his country and suffered for it would ever have to appeal to the guardians or to charity. We told these people, "You do your best for the country, and the country will do its best for you"; but, apparently, the latter part of that promise has been forgotten. We have been told that we are going to do many things when we come into office. I hope we are going to do something. The Minister has talked about the inflation of capital. Has not deflation and the return to the gold standard affected the ex-service men who were working in our industries? The Minister knows full well that the coal miners have suffered very much through that policy. Thousands of them who were never compelled to go went to fight for this country; at one pit 62 per cent. of the men left to fight for the country and had to be brought back in order to win coal. Things like that we cannot forget, and what we plead for is ordinary justice for those who have done their best for the country.

Question put, "That the Bill be now read the Third Time."

The House proceeded to a Division. Mr. PENNY and Sir VICTOR WARRENDER were appointed Tellers for the Ayes, but there being no Members willing to act as Tellers for the Noes, Mr. SPEAKER declared that the Ayes had it.

Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.

On a point of Order. I want to submit that according to a previous Speaker's Ruling the hon. Member for West Middlesbrough (Mr. Griffith) has already made his speech, and that he has now exhausted his right to speak.

The hon. Member for West Middlesbrough (Mr. Griffith) has a right to make a speech in moving the Second Reading of the Bill.

But I submit that it has been ruled in a previous case that the mere rising in your place to move a Bill constitutes a speech, and the hon. Member having made an appeal for the Second Reading that constitutes a speech. I want to assure the hon. Member that I am not raising this point of Order on personal grounds against him, and that if the House allows him to make a second speech I do not mind. The point I am raising is that the mere fact of his having moved this Bill constitutes a speech, and that he cannot now make another speech.

On a point of Order. May I point out that all that the hon. Member did was to say the word "Now."

I submit that that constitutes a speech, according to a previous Ruling. The hon. and gallant Member representing the Home Office, as a matter of fact, rose to reply.

I did not understand that the hon. Member had made a speech on the Bill.

As a matter of fact, the hon. Member for West Middlesbrough said "Now" and moved the Bill, and the hon. and gallant Member representing the Home Office rose to reply. My point of Order is that as "Now" was said by the hon. Member for Middlesbrough, it constitutes a speech.

Is it not the case that the hon. Member, by rising in his place and saying "Now," has moved the Second Reading and that you have put the Question, "That the Bill be now read a Second time," and, consequently, that the hon Member has exhausted his right to speak?

If the hon. Member for West Middlesbrough rose in his place and said "Now" he has exhausted his right. I did not hear the hon. Member say "Now," and if he did say "Now" he has exhausted his right.

Then I rise for the purpose of asking one question. I am sure the representative of the Home Office will be glad to make a statement on this Bill if it is possible. It is a Bill to overcome a very grave difficulty which has resulted from a recent judgment in the Courts, a judgment which may affect many thousands and, in the course of years, hundreds of thousands of workmen as regards their compensation. The hon. Member for West Middlesbrough (Mr. K. Griffith) brought in this Bill in order to amend what obviously is a flaw in the law. It is clear that it was not intended that the law should be what the Courts have decided that it is, and. therefore, we shall be very glad if the Home Office can give us a statement as to the attitude of the Ministry, in the hope that when the new Session begins in November they themselves will take the matter up and meet the hardships which will undoubtedly fall upon hundreds of thousands of workmen in regard to their compensation claims.

The hon. Member for West Middlesbrough (Mr. K. Griffith) introduced this Bill on Tuesday. He said at the time that it was being introduced as a result of a decision in an appeal to the House of Lords which took place last Thursday. I think he has overlooked a question which was put to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary on the same day on which he introduced his Bill. The hon. Member for Don Valley (Mr. T. Williams) drew his attention to this particular case, and asked him what he proposed to do in the matter.

I was present at Question Time, and that question was not reached. The reply was only given in "Written Answers" afterwards, and therefore the Bill was introduced before that answer was known.

I was suggesting that the hon. Member for West Middlesbrough had possibly not had the opportunity of reading the answer. It is an answer of considerable importance and very pertinent to the Second Reading of this Bill. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said: It has not been seen by my right hon. Friend's advisers in the Department, and they have had no opportunity to study it.

In the brief time I have had to examine this Measure, it does not appear to me to carry out the point which the hon. Member for West Middlesbrough had in view, and it goes very much wider than the point decided in the House of Lords. The point I gather was that this man was a hewer who was working at the face. He suffered from nystagmus and as a result he was given workmen's compensation. He subsequently recovered sufficiently to be able to follow employment on the surface, but not on the coal face as a skilled worker. The claim was that he should be allowed the full compensation of £1 a week rather than the 5s. which was half the difference between the skilled and the unskilled scale. It may be said with some justice that if the skilled workman is unable to follow his former skilled occupation because of an injury, although he has recovered sufficiently to follow an unskilled occupation, he is entitled to compensation in accordance with his skill. If you say that, you must say in some way that there is an opportunity for him to obtain employment in that skilled employment. The hon. Member has not linked up that particular point with what he has said in this Bill. What he has said in this Bill means that anybody can go on claiming compensation so long as he is unemployed.

I have only altered one sentence in the Act as it stands.

Yes, but that one sentence puts an entirely different complexion on the matter, and it would practically convert the Workmen's Compensation Act into an Unemployment Insurance Act.

( standing in the Clerk's place at the Table ): I have to acquaint the House that the House has been to the House of Peers, where a Commission, under the Great Seal, was read, authorising the Royal Assent to—

And to the following Measures passed under the provisions of the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act, 1919:

1. Tithe (Administration of Trusts) Measure, 1928.

2. Clergy Pensions (Amendment) Measure, 1928.

I have further to acquaint the House that the Lord High Chancellor, being one of the High Commissioners, delivered His Majesty's Most Gracious Speech to both House of Parliament in pursuance of His Majesty's Command, as followeth:

My Lords and Members of the House of Commons,

The visit of Their Majesties the King and Queen of Afghanistan in March last was an auspicious event in. the history of Our two countries. To Me it will always be a pleasant memory, and I have received with much gratification messages from King Amanulla expressing His warm appreciation of the welcome accorded to Their Majesties. It is a matter of national congratulation that the visit has confirmed and strengthened the good relations existing between Afghanistan and the British Empire.

My Government have been happy to accept the proposed treaty for the renunciation of war in the form in which it was finally proposed to them by the Government of the United States. The proposed treaty has similarly been accepted by My Governments in the Dominions and by the Government of India. It is My confident expectation that, when completed, it will constitute a new and important guarantee of the world's peace.

Negotiations between My Government and the French, Italian and Spanish Governments for the revision of the Tangier Statute have just reached a successful conclusion. Under the terms of the instrument embodying the results of these negotiations, which I have caused to be laid before you, Italy becomes a contracting party to the Statute and Spain receives additional guarantees for the security of her zone.

A treaty between Myself and His Imperial Majesty the Shah of Persia, regulating the commercial relations between Our countries, and providing for the abrogation of existing treaty provisions which limit the right of Persia to settle her customs tariff autonomously, has been signed by Our respective representatives. They have also recorded agreements on other important questions in subsidiary notes. The texts of these documents will be laid before you in due course.

In harmony with the Resolution of the Imperial Conference of 1926, recommending the further development of the present system of consultation between My Governments, arrangements have been completed for the appointment by My Government in Great Britain of a representative in Canada, with the title of High Commissioner. He will proceed to Ottawa in September.

The Imperial Wireless and Cables Conference has submitted a unanimous Report on the improvement of telegraphic communications between the several parts of My Empire. To the principles underlying the Report the Governments concerned are favourably disposed. I hope that with wholehearted co-operation the telegraph systems which unite its various parts will be organised to the lasting benefit of My Empire.

The Order in Council under the British Guiana Act, 1928, enabling Me to create a new Constitution for that Colony, has been passed.

The Commission appointed to examine the Constitution of Ceylon has now presented its Report, and its recommendations will receive the careful consideration of My Ministers.

The Commissioners appointed to inquire into agriculture and rural economy in British India have submitted a unanimous Report, containing many recommendations for the promotion of the welfare of the rural population. I am confident that these recommendations will receive sympathetic and fruitful consideration from the competent authorities in India.

Members of the House of Commons,

I thank you for the provision you have made for the public service.

My Lords and Members of the House of Commons,

The condition of our basic industries and the high level of unemployment continue to cause Me anxiety. My Ministers have prepared a scheme for relieving agriculture and other productive industries from the onerous burden of rates. The relief will affect not only the direct burden of rates but also the indirect burden thrown specially upon the basic industries by the present system of rating railways, docks and canals. This policy involves as a necessary consequence the enactment of long-desired reforms in local government and in the financial relations between the State and local authorities. My Ministers are hopeful that in respect of selected industrial and agricultural traffic the relief may come into force at the end of the present year. I trust that these comprehensive proposals will not only increase employment generally, but will also bring special relief to the areas which are most in need of it.

I have given My assent to a Measure assimilating the Local Government and Parliamentary Franchise of men and women. This will confer equal electoral rights on the two sexes.

A Bill has been passed, based generally on the recommendations of My Commission on National Health Insurance, whereby the existing system will be materially simplified and improved.

Steady progress has been made during the year in the provision of housing for the people, and the price of house construction has continued generally to fall.

I have given My assent to a Measure for assisting the credit of persons engaged in agriculture in England and Wales, and My Government have prepared a scheme for effecting the same object in Scotland.

A Bill has been passed to provide for the grading and marking of agricultural produce.

It is a source of special satisfaction to Me that it has been found possible, subject to suitable safeguards, to secure permanently the present rates of disability pension for the Great War against any reduction owing to a fall in the cost of living. This will remove an element of uncertainty which disturbs the minds of those who are, unhappily, still suffering from the effects of their War service.

The rapid growth of road traffic has created new problems which demand investigation. I have appointed a Commission which will, I hope, result in measures for the wise development of all available means of transport.

Bills have also been passed to reorganise certain Scottish Departments, and for setting up a Commission to deal with educational endowments in Scotland.

It is My earnest prayer that the blessing of Almighty God may rest upon all your past and coming labours.

Then a Commission for Proroguing the Parliament was read in the House of Lords.

After which the LORD CHANCELLOR said:

My Lords and Members,—By virtue of His Majesty's Commission, under the Great Seal, to us and other Lords directed, and now read, we do in His Majesty's name and in obedience to His Majesty's Commands, prorogue this Parliament to Tuesday, the sixth day of November, one thousand nine hundred and twenty-eight, to be then here holden; and this Parliament is accordingly Prorogued until Tuesday, the sixth day of November, one thousand nine hundred and twenty-eight.

End of the Fourth Session ( opened Tuesday, 7th February, 1928) of the Thirty-fourth Parliament of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in the Nineteenth Year of the Reign of His Majesty King George the Fifth.