The next Amendment on the Paper—in page 60, line 23, at the end, to add the words:

"Provided always that this section shall apply also to the County of London."

—is out of order. The Clause deals with districts the councils of which have established maternity and child welfare committees, and there are no such districts in London.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill."

The object of this Clause is an excellent one, but the question which is vexing some of us is this: Where is the money to come from? The Clause proposes, in the case of any county in which there is a district the council of which shall have established a maternity and child welfare committee, that the Minister shall have power to make a scheme with the council for increasing the sum set aside out of the county apportionment in respect of the district by such amount as he thinks fit. That is to say, the Minister has a sort of partial compulsory power. I want to say at once that if this were a proposal to make this service compulsory, it would have our support provided it was aided by a Government grant, and provided also that some preliminary measure of rate relief on a very large scale had been passed, but what is proposed here is to give the Minister power, wherever in a county any authority has shown any willingness in the matter, to force the county to spend as much as may be neces- sary out of the county apportionment on this service. The county apportionment is in the main, with regard to the largest item, a compensation for rating which has been taken away, and the rest of it comes from certain grants which already exist, while there is in addition some new money.

Supposing the Minister, for any good purpose, set aside a large sum for a new service out of the county apportionment, there would be so much less in that apportionment, and this service which we are considering now is a service of the most necessary character, which, if properly carried out, would involve very large sums of money. The number of districts and counties which have taken the preliminary step of establishing maternity and child welfare centres is very large indeed, and their organisation would mean a very great deal of money. Under this head you have already such institutions as day nurseries, hospitals, and institutional treatment, but. institutional treatment for this class of service is still in a backward condition. You have, for instance, only 2,460 local authority beds at maternity hospitals, and only 122 local authorities who have got institutional treatment for puerperal fever, and only 252 that have made any arrangements for special nursing. There are only in all 98 day nurseries in England and Wales. This is not a cheap service, and, as I have said, needs development. Surgical tuberculosis is a disease which comes very commonly in children under five and which, if it is to be regulated at all, needs early treatment. We have, therefore, a great deal to do and an enormous amount of extra money can be expended.

We ought to spend something like £4,000,000 or £5,000,000 extra in order to deal with this question. There is an enormous work to be done, but it is a service which, if done, will improve the health of the nation beyond measure, and I am all in favour of very much more severe compulsion than is proposed under this Clause, provided that the State does its part and does not throw any more expenditure on the already overburdened rates.

Where is the money to come from? Whenever we approach this question, we are always told by every Minister who has, so to speak, an axe to grind for his own Department, that the additional money will be enough to develop the service he is interested in. We had the Minister of Transport saying that the new money—he rather over-reckoned it— would suffice for a highly improved system of roads, and you can see the Minister of Transport, in his mind, covering England with a network of beautiful roads and applying every penny of extra money in that way. We had the other day a Debate upon other health services, namely, mental deficiency, which is very backward, and tuberculosis, which is also very backward, and the Minister of Health pointed out how very much more money ought to be spent on those services.

The right hon. Gentleman apparently looks at the new money as something extra which he is giving to every locality, but the new money does not, in the opinion of the localities, cover even the future loss of rates that is expected. When you say you are going to put this new service, without any additional financial provision, on to the local authority out of the county apportionment, I say that you are imposing a very great burden on all those authorities which have begun to do something. Those counties where nothing at all has been done will be free to go on doing nothing; it is only the willing horse that will be whipped. Speaking on this question, an hon. Member opposite said it was perfectly well known that when the Socialist party came into office it would put up the rates, and, therefore, it was hypocrisy for us to object to an increase. That observation was, I think, 20 years behind the times. It is perfectly true that in the smooth days before the War when Mr. John Burns was standing for Battersea we said wisely that it would not hurt the rates to spend more money, and I should say if I were back to 1881 that the rates could stand a good many more pence. But since the War our one desire has been to get money off the rates. The first part of our programme would take nearly £50,000,000 off the rates, and if that were done, and the needs of the authorities for extra grants met, then, I think, these services of all others might properly be made compulsory, not merely on the local authorities who have taken the preliminary steps.

What is the situation? A district in a county may be backward. The Minister will take power to make the county give that district as much as he thinks proper out of the county apportionment. If he were doing all he ought, and all that we wish, he would make the county apportionment a very large amount, because the county will be left with so much less to bear the loss of the rates on education, police, roads, and other services. Otherwise, one of two things must happen. Either the county for its own purpose will have to make up the difference by laying another burden on the shopkeepers and so forth, or else the county will economise on the social services. It will not be able to economise on the police, but it will be able to economise on education and on roads, and on all the other services. Therefore, though this reform is a partially good thing in itself, it does mean that it is carried out in the long run at the expense of the ratepayers of the country.

I am trying to put our point as clearly as I can. We do not in the least object to a large increase in health services. We do not object to vast amounts of money being spent on the health services. The question is, who is to spend the money? Our one objection to this Clause is that it contemplates an extension of health services in certain districts which has to be paid for out of the county apportionment. If we had a great relief of the rates, we should welcome this proposal, but the financial difficulty stands in our way, that what has been spent upon the districts out of the county apportionment must, as I see it, fall on the county, either in the shape of reduction of rating. or in the shape of some economy of other services almost as worthy.

I almost suspect, after the speech we have just heard, that the Minister is fast making converts to this portion of his Bill. One of the great objects of the Bill is to reduce rates, and it will be noticed that although the reduction suggested in the last speech was something in the nature of £50,000,000, at any rate under this Bill there will be a direct reduction of rates of more than £20,000,000, plus a large amount of new money, about £8,500,000, which will go directly to the relief of rates. In other words, we shall be reducing the amount to be paid by the ratepayer by something over £30,000,000, so that before the next election we shall have carried out more than half the items in the programme of the party opposite on their point of reducing rates.

This is not an argument that can be used on a Clause which provides for district schemes for maternity and child welfare.

I apologise most sincerely for having followed rather closely on the lines of the speech to which we have just been listening, but I will not go any further into this matter at present, but return to the question of maternity welfare in this Clause. I was merely at that point endeavouring to take up the connecting link between maternity and child welfare and the new money which comes in under the Bill. As far as maternity and child welfare is concerned, probably all sections of the Committee can agree on the importance of this work. I am the last person who would wish to make out of so valuable a scheme any sort of party point. The real value of the work is that it is being done in the locality by the thinking people and many of the best people in the various localities, for the common interest of these mothers and children. No one can get away from that. I have hoard it stated here in the last few days that it is not a popular service. I dispute that statement. I believe it is about the most popular service there is at the present time, because of its value, and because people are beginning to realise the growing value of that service. But although it is a growing service, although it is a popular service, and although the value of the work is absolutely not disputed, as far as I can understand, you are, as regards this Clause, getting into a position in which it is difficult for the Committee to arrive at the exact position as to the finance of this service in the future. It is growing by something roughly over £100,000 a year, I believe. It is developing, but it is not a service which is likely to develop into enormous proportions. It is never likely to reach £10,000,000 or £15,000,000. It may develop, and many of us hope it will, into at least double what it is now in the course of the next few years.

That brings us to this position with regard to this Clause. If I understand the meaning of the Clause rightly, what will happen is that the Minister will have to see that grants to the counties make an adequate proportion of all those grants to the smaller local authorities within the area. That, I think, is really the crux of the whole position. It may very well be that a county i? not particularly interested in this thing, but in the small town or the small borough people come very directly into communication with the lives of the people, whom this maternity benefit most affects. They have just started their scheme, perhaps, and it is essential that we should be assured under this Clause that a full proportion of the new money coming; into the county does really go to these new services. The county will have to set aside, in conjunction with the Minister, a certain sum out of their new money, so as to ensure that these grants are at least on a similar basis as before. It is quite clear that the influence of the Minister, whoever he may happen to be, on the county, will be of almost paramount importance in dealing with this money. I believe that the bulk of my party would like a definite assurance from the Minister—and I think we can speak in this case for all sections—that he will do his best to see that in this particular service, if there should be the slightest danger at any point of the money not being adequate to the growing needs, that he will out of the new money give an additional sum. Even if that new money did not come up to the exact amount that was required, might it not be possible, even at this comparatively late time in the progress of this Bill, to set aside a further sum, if necessary, beyond the £8,500,000 new money that will be provided for various things?

There is a great deal of kindly feeling towards the work of the Minister, and I ask him if it is not possible to set aside a sum out of the new money, or even to make provision beyond that, so that there will be a sufficient amount to meet the full possibilities of growth in this service. There- can be little doubt of the value of this service. I am not going into the question whether the counties will gain or lose; that was discussed last night, and we came to a definite con- elusion. I believe that the county position is safe and adequate, and that the position of the smaller boroughs is better in the Bill now than it was a short time ago. I am still not certain, however, that in every case the counties will see that the fullest possible gain will be made in respect of this service. I believe that these are points which we can well spend a short time in discussing, and I feel sure that the Minister will quite easily be able to give us a guarantee in regard to a service which is so close to his heart.

I cannot share the optimism of the hon. and gallant Member who has just spoken, although when one first read this Clause, it certainly gave one a favourable impression. It seemed to give the Minister power to go into a county area and see that fair play was done to these maternity and child welfare schemes. I am afraid, however, that the Clause, like a good many other parts of the Bill, only flatters to deceive. When the Clause is studied, it is seen that the Minister is only taking power to go into a county to advise with regard to the apportionment of money for schemes that have already been inaugurated. Although it is very desirable that the Minister should see that sufficient money is apportioned from the county fund for the schemes that are already in existence, the fear that most of us have is that the extension of this work will be arrested.

I hold the contrary opinion to that of the hon. and gallant Member for Torquay (Commander Williams). These services are not popular among those who benefit most. One can hardly expect that the person who considers himself an authority on the subject will very readily take advice from anyone, but it is in order to rescue the unfortunate offspring of that type of person, that maternity and child welfare schemes have been inaugurated. Unfortunately, the initiative has been taken away under this Bill from the small local authority which is closest to the people, and which is more likely to initiate such schemes than the county authority. I cannot imagine a county official going round stirring up local authorities to spend money. It is the last thing that they are likely to do.

I did it frequently.

I am afraid that the hon. and gallant Member is an exception. They do not do it in Yorkshire or Lancashire. The county official, if our experience under the Education Act is to be any guide, is constantly going round and pulling up local authorities for inaugurating schemes which will involve the spending of money. I am borne out in that feeling by the fact that the county authority will have many pre-occupations when they come to consider how the money is to be apportioned. Under this Clause the Minister of Health is to be a stimulant, but I would point out that in other parts of the Bill he has to undertake the role of debt collector. My experience is that it is his duty to call upon local authorities to pay the debt which has been incurred for unemployment and relief. Up to the 1st of October last there was a sum outstanding of over £8,000,000, -which it will be the Minister's duty to collect from the local authorities. I cannot imagine him going to a county like Durham or Glamorgan, and urging them to apportion larger sums for maternity and child welfare, and at the same time saying, "I have remitted to you the interest on your debt, but you must pay the principal; the Treasury is pressing me on this matter, and the Government cannot be carried on like this. You must reduce your liability." So, however much hope we may have built up on the first reading of this Clause, we feel that, in view of the fact that the Minister is to collect debts on the one hand, he will not do much stirring up and much stimulating on the other.

There is undoubtedly as great need in the counties—it has, unfortunately, not been fully recognised—for this service, as there is in the large industrial centres, particularly in the mining areas, where such an unexampled amount of distress exists. It is not a case of doling out coal and blankets; there is a place undoubtedly for the curate's lady to assist with a little advice and so on, but in essence, what is required in the establishment of a maternity and child welfare centre is, in the first place, skilled medical and nursing services. That is the foundation, and however much voluntary assistance you may have, you must Have money to establish the nucleus in the form of medical and nursing services. These people cannot be expected to work for nothing; their training has been a very expensive one, and consequently they must be appointed as salaried officers.

If the Minister takes any notice of the kindly suggestion made to him just now from the benches behind, it would seem as though, quite apart from any new money which is going into the pool, a definite sum might be set aside for the inauguration and the development of these services. If such a sum were provided, either under this Bill or in some other way, so that the Minister could lay the foundation stone of these services in the districts most needing them, I think we should be able to make very real progress.

At the moment I cannot see where Clause 75 gives the Minister the power which it is said to give him. Over and over again this week both the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary have said they have no power of compulsion. If they cannot drive, then they have got to lead. Take the counties of Durham and Glamorgan, which are two of the most distressed counties. I have no doubt the will to establish these services exists there, because there is an excellent public spirit among their local administrators, but they have not the money. We know the difficulties which have occurred in these distressed areas regarding the feeding of school children. They had the power to feed them, but they had not the money. It will be the same story when the Minister sends his inspectors to confer with the local authorities on this subject. It will be found that they are wanting roads, that they want to reduce their debt; there will be so many calls on their money that I am afraid the maternity and child welfare work, which does not loom large in the eyes of the man in the street, will get very short shrift indeed. All the skilled promptings which the Ministry's officials are so well qualified to administer will be without avail, and I fear we shall find the maternity and child welfare centres becoming the Cinderella of the public service. Instead of this work being stimulated and developed it will be neglected; this munificent work may possibly have to. mark time, for a good many years to come.

The remarks of the hon. Member for West Newcastle (Mr. Palin) must naturally have great weight with us owing to his considerable experience and his hearty and enthusiastic work on. behalf of the public health services in a very poor, though industrially important, area. At. the same time he strikes me as a good man struggling with adversity. He realises on which side of the House he is sitting, and the attitude his party have taken up, and is trying to twist the dangers and difficulties of effecting any reform to accord with the line which his party have taken of general opposition to the Bill. I feel certain that in his. quieter moments, when he is relieved of the necessity of declaring himself in public, and when he comes to think out how this Clause will work, he will realise that there are very great hopes for the future. I do not wish to express my feelings in any exaggerated party form, and I think the only way in which I can usefully contribute to this discussion is to take up the challenge of the hon. Member as to how this proposal will work out and to consider it in the light of the practical experience I have had as a county medical officer of health.

The hon. Member said that county officials were not given to "gingering" local authorities in their areas to undertake increased expenditure. I can assure him that the contrary is the case. I can speak chiefly from the point of view of medical officers of health. When I remonstrated with him on that point he suggested that I was an exception, but I can assure him I am no exception. In attending here to-day I am absenting myself from the annual meeting of the County Medical Officers of Health. They take a very definite line. Their attitude all the way through has been to try to do exactly what is suggested in this case. I would prefer not to use the rather ungracious and unkind expression "gingering up," but I would say instead that their object has been to try to help authorities to establish services and, where they have been able to establish them, to assist them to extend and enlarge them. The difficulty hitherto has been that under the Local Government Act, 1888, the power of county councils over district councils has been shadowy in the extreme. It consisted solely of the power, in the last resort, of reporting them to the Local Government Board, now the Ministry of Health, and leaving it to the Minister to take action. All that could be done was to argue with them and try to persuade them. As a rule, however, there was not sufficient money available; that is the real reason why they have not been able to develop these services in the past.

Despite the guarantee given yesterday by the Minister with reference to the increase of Is. per head, apparently it is not yet acknowledged by the Opposition that there will be more money available in future. I say most definitely that there is going to be more money available for every county and county (borough, and that there is a great possibility of its being expended. There is, of course, a possibility that it may be expended wrongly, that is, wrongly from the point of view which we are now discussing; the money may be applied to other services, and not sufficient devoted to these services. But from the point of view of the county medical officer of health I feel that we now have a new factor in the situation. The county medical officer of health will go round to the district medical officers of health and inquire "How do you stand with regard to these services in your urban or rural district?" He may be told "My authority have always turned down the question of introducing these services". Then the county medical officer will be able to say, in view of this extra money," Will it not be possible to bring the question forward again?"

That is the real way in which these things are worked. They are worked informally between the county medical officer on the one hand and the district medical officers on the other hand. Then it comes before the clerks of the local authorities. The clerk of the county council always works with the clerks of the district councils to see in what way they can get a move on. They will now have a new opportunity of doing so. The various committees will also be able to give more attention to this matter when considering the commitments and charges which they have to provide for. Altogether, it will be possible to make a good case for starting new centres and developing the work. I cannot see the objections of the other side. To me there appears to be a great possibility of levelling up the work. It has been assumed by hon. Members opposite that there has been no such stirring up of this work in Yorkshire by the district authorities. I happen to know a medical officer in the West Riding district who was very active in this direction. Here we have a big instrument to hand, and, although I wish to make criticisms in regard to some of the proposals of this Bill, as far as this particular Clause is concerned, I think it will be a great help to the cause of maternity and child welfare.

I should not have intervened in this Debate but for the remarks which have been made by the hon. Member for St. Albans (Lieut.-Colonel Fremantle). I notice from the return of rates levied in various towns that, so far as St. Albans is concerned, there are only two out of ninety-eight boroughs which contribute a smaller sum to public health services than St. Albans. The amount contributed by St. Albans is l¾d. in the £ for public health services, whereas in most of the other boroughs the rate devoted to public health services averages between five-pence and sixpence. It seems to me very strange, after listening to what the hon. Member for St. Albans has said, to find that the amount spent in the county he represents should be so extremely small when compared with other places.

I am not quite certain from the speeches to which I have listened whether I thoroughly understand the point which has been raised. The Clause we are discussing provides:

"As respects any county in which there is a district the council of which have established a maternity and child welfare committee under the Maternity and Child Welfare Act, 1918."

Under that Act the local authorities were empowered to establish maternity and child welfare centres, and they had nothing to do with the county councils. As I read the Clause, it means that some of these centres will be allowed to carry on irrespective of county control, and no doubt the time will come when they will require more money. Therefore, it is quite possible that these local districts may ask for more money than the County Council think they ought to have, and, after the discussion between the Council and the local authority, the matter will be referred to the Minister of Health, who will in future see that a fair amount is given to these local maternity and child welfare centres. As far as I understand this proposal, those centres will be worked independently of the County Council, and the County Council will have no direct control over either their administration or their medical service. That is where I think hon. Members have been wrong in their statements this morning.

I would also like to refer to some of the fears which have been expressed that proper provision will not be made at these centres. May I remind hon. Members that such centres are intended to work more in a consultative capacity, and only to a small extent as treatment centres. They may be able to treat minor cases, but their principal object is to collect and distribute such cases where they can receive the best treatment. No maternity or child welfare centre could undertake the treatment of cases of tuberculosis, venereal diseases, or early mental trouble, neither could they treat the various diseases of women. For every serious case they would have to make definite hospital arrangements wherever accommodation was available, and distribute these cases to these hospitals. Of course, none of these things can be done without payment, but the expense does not amount to very much after all.

Very often at these centres it is only necessary to employ a medical officer and a nurse. and by this means the centres are able to get through an enormous amount of work in the course of a year. Even if the expense of maintaining these centres is increased by 100 per cent., it only means the expense of the doctor and the nurse and a few other subsidiary expenses. By this means an enormous amount of work can be done in a new centre. Some hon. Members fear that this particular service is going to be hampered and hindered by this Clause, but I think those fears are groundless. In the light of experience, I think hon. Members will be astonished to find how these centres will grow and develop under this Bill, and there will be provided more than ample money for their development. I think in the years to come that those of us who are alive will look back upon this Bill as being one of the most stimulating and advantageous Bills for the development of the health services of this country.

We are getting quite accustomed to the kind of speech made by the hon. Member for Royton (Dr. Davies), and his remarks make me realise more than ever to what extent professional jealousy can go. We are hearing continually from the hon. Member appeals for clinics on the cheap, and he tells us that we are dealing with a public service which can be carried on with as small an expense as possible and as cheaply as possible. The hon. Member wants the doctor and the nurse to do as much work as possible, and receive as little pay as possible.

The hon. Lady is not treating me fairly. She has never heard me suggest that medical officers or the members of nursing staffs should be hampered for want of funds.

I humbly apologise to the hon. Member for suggesting that he desires to pay as little as possible to the medical profession. The hon. Member, however, did make the suggestion that if you doubled the cost of maternity and child welfare services, it would only mean a few hundred pounds a year in addition to the present cost, and then everything would go on smoothly and well. Under those circumstances, all that would be done would be for someone to come and look at the tongues of these patients and give advice to the mothers, and that sort of thing is what we are fighting against. On these matters, we generally find the hon. Member for Royton expressing reactionary views. We all recognise the extraordinary amount of good work done by the hon. Member for St. Albans in regard to this kind of work, but it seemed to me that a great deal of his speech would have been quite different if he had read more carefully the first sentence in Clause 75 which we are discussing, namely:—

"As respects any county in which there is a district the council of which have a standing maternity and child welfare committee…

I do not want to put forward any captious criticism of the Clause. It would have been possible, if this Clause had been slightly differently worded, to have in the Ministry's hands a very powerful weapon for improving the maternity and child welfare of the country, but, as the Clause is drawn, it has two weak points. One is that it does not say anything at all about what is going to happen to those districts where there is not a maternity and child welfare committee. I am only asking for information, and a number of other people also want information on this matter. I am not putting forward captious criticism—[Interruption]—I am merely trying to help, and, in the course of my desire to help, I want to know what is going to happen to those districts where there is not a maternity and child-welfare committee. That is the crux of the whole question. The Ministry may have enormous powers to deal with those people who are already trying to do their best, but what we want to know is what he is going to do with those people who are doing nothing at all. I would remind the right hon. Gentleman that many of the districts which are the worst are not crowded industrial areas, which are now largely dominated by the Labour party, and in which excellent maternity welfare work is being done where there is money to do it; the difficulties are in the rural areas, which are dominated by the squires, who are all solid supporters of the right hon. Gentlemen opposite. In many of these areas nothing at all is being done. They have enough money, and they could do it very well with a few more rates to pay. The farmers are going to be relieved under the Bill as it is. These areas, however, or very many of them, do need "gingering up," if I may use the phrase, and they not only need "gingering up," but these schemes ought to be made compulsory. The Minister should have the power to say to these people that, if they are not doing this work, they will suffer in another direction, whether by not having grants or whatever the method is likely to be. This question seems to me to be extraordinarily important, and I would urge the Minister to consider, when the Report stage comes, whether it is not possible for him, under Clause 75, to take to himself power to deal with those authorities where no committee exists. The hon. and gallant Member for St. Albans, who has been a medical officer of health, gave us a delightful picture of what was going to happen when the County Medical Officer went down to one of these areas when it became a little slack. That is all right as far as those people are concerned, but what is going to happen to the people who have not anything? We have had a good many bouquets offered to the Minister in the course of the discussion, on maternity and child welfare in particular, and a number have been presented by the hon. Member for the Sutton Division of Plymouth (Viscountess Astor). I am not, however, so sure as the hon. Member seems to be that the Minister of Health can be trusted in this matter. Everybody has said, "We have a great Minister of Health with a great heart, and this service is very near to his heart, and, if you will only trust the right hon. Gentleman, everything will be well." It is not what is in the heart of the right hon. Gentleman, but what is the record of the right hon. Gentleman—what he has done already with regard to this service. I suggest that the record of the right hon. Gentleman—he thinks it convenient not to listen when I tell him what his record is—the record of the right hon. Gentleman has been to issue circulars which have definitely, as we know, cut down grants for milk for children and nursing and expectant mothers. We remember those circulars of the Ministry of Health that have gone out during the right hon. Gentleman's term of office, and we say that a man who is responsible for those circulars is not likely to be the kind of man who is going to do all this wonderful work for maternity and child welfare. I think that this has to be said, because people get reputations in this House, and, if everyone goes round saying the same thing about them, the people outside in the country say what wonderful people they must be.

12 n.

It is becoming—and I say this very seriously—it is becoming a convention to say that the Minister of Health is the type of person who can be trusted, whatever the law says, to take the very best measures. I just want to say that I do not think he is; and I do not think he is because of his record. I should think far worse if his Parliamentary Secretary were in his shoes. Therefore, we should have liked to see something very much more explicit in this Bill, because the man who is responsible for those milk circulars will be responsible for these services if the Ministry and the Minister mean to carry out this Clause. I ought to make a correction there. Thank goodness, he will not be the Minister who is actually going to carry it out; but it will need, when the Labour party comes into office next June—[Interruption]—a real effort on the part of that Ministry to put this Bill into proper form. The Minister has said a good deal about those areas where Committees are in operation, but I want to bring before him the record of the Ministry in another matter. I want to ask him what is the position under this Clause of schemes which are not now in operation, but which are contemplated, and have been proceeded with under the guarantee of the Minister that 50 per cent. of the expenses will be paid. I have received a letter from the County Borough of Walsall, which I understand has been sent to all the other women Members—

This Clause has nothing to do with the county boroughs at all.

It is an illustration of the same thing, and I am only using it as an illustration. I am asking what will be the position if, under the district councils the same sort of thing happens. Walsall, which I am taking as an example of what others may be doing, got from the Ministry of Health a guarantee in 1927 that they would pay 50 per cent. of the annual cost of the maintenance of the home, including annual loan charges. They went ahead on that basis. That was in January, 1927. It is now January, 1929. There were endless delays on the part of the Ministry of Health, and finally, in November, 1928, after a definite promise that 50 per cent. of the maintenance charges would be paid, they received this letter:

"With regard to the question of grant, I am to point out that the Minister's letter of the 5th September, 1927"—

be it noted—

"must now be read in connection with the provision of the Local Government Bill which is at present before the House of Commons, and the Council will no doubt consider the effect of that Bill upon the scheme in the event of its becoming law."

There may be, under the first sentence of this Clause, and one knows that there is, a number of areas where schemes are in course of preparation and where they have received from the Minister a definite understanding that 50 per cent. of the maintenance charges will be paid; and now, months after the giving of that guarantee, they are told that they are to read the Minister's guarantee in connection with the Local Government Act. What is going to be the position? The position, of course, in this particular case is that the whole thing is being held up, and a very urgently needed maternity home in a very crowded area is being held up until we have carried through this Bill, and then there is no guarantee that it will be proceeded with. These are the sort of practical things that we are up against under this and other Clauses in the maternity and child welfare part of the Bill. We want to have some guarantee that this service is going to be extended and is going to have the enthusiastic backing of the Ministry. There is nothing in the Bill that gives such a guarantee. We admit frankly that, under this Clause, where a committee is in operation and has gone slack, the Minister has powers, but those very areas where they have gone slack are very often the areas where the money is badly needed for other purposes. The women who are most concerned about this part of the Bill are learning to distrust the Ministry of Health. We feel that either they have not that interest in the service that they ought to have or they do not realise how tremendous the burdens are on the county, and how much greater they would be under the county apportionment grant, and they feel that it is a service that they have to leave over for the time being. That is the whole difficulty, as it has been the difficulty in the case I am quoting—the leaving it over. I would ask the Minister to deal with these three points, which are the points upon which we need to be satisfied, under this Clause.

I want to come back to the words in the Clause

"as respects any county in which there is a district the council of -which have established a maternity and child welfare committee."

In view of all the lip service which has been given to the necessity of the development of a child welfare service on a national scale, the problems that are the most pressing at present are those districts which have not established such a welfare service. [Interruption.] The hon. Member will not find any other Clause in this Bill which will effectively deal with this matter, in view of all the lip service which has been paid, which is the main problem confronting us. What has happened is that under the system operating hitherto, the system of the percentage grant, there have come into existence a number of centres where the work is being carried on, and, if the system had been retained—I accept fully what the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for St. Albans (Lieut.-Colonel Fremantle) said, that in some areas county medical officers are pressing for an extension of the service— there is every likelihood that the work would have gone on.

But now what is the situation? You are making an arrangement, it seems to me, in connection with this Clause by which you will increase, from the county apportionment, the amount that is necessary in some areas for this work. That will have an influence in drawing away from other services money that is required for those other services, but it will also have an influence with those authorities which have done nothing in the matter of maternity and child welfare and which will be dependent to some extent upon general county funds for their development. It will be an incentive to them, even more than now exists. to continue to do nothing at all. It is this crystallizing of the service at the present point that we are now objecting to. We agree, of course, that you must make some arrangement by which the money can be raised to carry on the services as they now exist. We are glad that something at least is being done, but the point of our criticism is that it is being done in a bad way, that it will react upon the service itself, particularly in backward areas, and that it will draw money away from other services for which adequate arrangements have not been made.

I want, further, to draw attention to the point that has been raised, that this work probably will not need a very great extension of public expenditure. I am sure the hon. Member for Royton (Dr. Davies), from his own practical experience, must know much about it, but I do not feel that the hon. and gallant, Gentleman the Member for Torquay (Commander Williams) can have given sufficient study to the possibilities of what can come from the work when he says that all we need is about a doubling of the expenditure that we are now making. I gave an instance the other night drawn from what had happened in my own constituency, where, instead of using nurses, an appointment was made of a further medical staff. Women doctors were appointed to go round before the child was born and to continue to visit the home at least once a month, and sometimes oftener, during the first year of the child's life. It seems to me that by that sort of extension of the work, you really would be dealing with the difficulty that the Minister says is close to his heart, the casualties on the birth of children that occur to the extent of 3,000 a year, by bringing in a trained medical man instead of a well-meaning sympathetic nurse who has not all the knowledge necessary to deal with difficult cases. The visitation by the medical officer before birth in the home of the woman who is to have the child would have a very great deal to do with some solution of this problem.

You are not going to deal with it by an expenditure of merely twice as much as we are spending now. I am not going to pretend how much we shall have to spend. This service, before we have completed it, will be spending several millions and not the £1,000,000 that is now being spent in order that the difficulty may be dealt with. May I again refer to the figures the Board of Education is constantly emphasising, the 25 per cent. of children with ailments, who never need have suffered if they had been dealt with before they became of school age. How can you pretend that by the appointment of a few nurses, and perhaps one doctor, in big areas, you can deal with a situation represented by statistics of that sort? It is because we know that this system will need very much more expended upon it, and because we also know that the Minister has actually withdrawn money from one of the greatest necessities, the expenditure upon milk, that we are thoroughly distrustful of the attitude he has taken up, and we cannot join with hon. Members opposite when they give him all these bouquets about the pretended extension of this service that they say he is carrying on.

When my right hon. Friend the Member of Seahara (Mr. Webb) published a pamphlet in 1918 called "Democracy and the New Social Order," he imparted into it more heat than in any other piece of writing he had ever published. The right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Health has done what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Seaham often does. He has shed light over the whole surface of this Bill and into its very remote corners and crannies. There is only one point where he has shown heat, and it is upon the subject which we are discussing this morning. I do not want to deny the existence of this heat energy. What we are concerned about is that it shall be so generated that the whole country will benefit from it. It is from that point of view that we are directing our criticism this morning. I want to support the point of view of my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr. J. Hudson) and say that, as we understand the financial provisions in this Clause, the Minister is not armed with effective powers for the development of the existing maternity services, and secondly, that he is taking no steps to encourage the development of services where they are non-existent. As we see this Clause, the powers which the Minister is taking are likely to retard development in the nonexistent areas.

I should like to remind the Committee of the present situation with which we have to deal. Prior to the Act of 1918 the whole of this work was the result of voluntary activity in the country. We had only 400 infant welfare centres at the outbreak of the world War. Under the influence of Government co-operation in these schemes we had, by 1925, 1,363 schemes, and, under the continued influence of the percentage grant, the number, according to the Ministry's current report, has increased to 1,561, with the addition of some 870 voluntary centres up and down the country. It is interesting to see how many local authorities which are optionally entitled to undertake this work have done so. I find, according to the latest figures which I can obtain, that of 62 county council authorities in this country, 4a have established maternity and child welfare centres. Of the 82 county boroughs, 79 have established some kind of institution. Of the 247 non-county boroughs, only 115 have taken steps since the passing of the Act of 1918. Of 791 urban district councils—I am not saying they are all optionally entitled to do this under existing legislation—only 118 have used these powers at all.

In relation to the great need that there is in this country for the development of these services, it is quite clear that there is a very big area in the country—a necessitous area from the point of view of the development of these services— which has not been touched under existing agencies. The Minister knows perfectly well that even where these services have been developed they have not proved adequate to cope with the special problems with which they have to deal. The right hon. Gentleman took special pride the other day in reminding the Committee that the latest report points out that the death-rate has fallen from 75 per thousand two years ago to 65. That is a very welcome development, and I think he will be prepared to admit that it is very largely duo to the post-natal work developed under the stimulus of the percentage grants since 1918. He knows perfectly well that the main part of this problem has hardly yet been tackled, for while it is true that the death-rate has fallen in this remarkable way, the death-rate of mothers, and the death-rate of children under four weeks old, have responded very slightly to the existing circumstances.

I would like to draw special attention to this point. As far as I can see from the latest report, including the very valuable one made by the right hon. Gentleman's Department, and particularly that made by Dr. Campbell, there has been only a very slight percentage decrease in the actual rate of mortality of young children below four weeks old. This is not because we have not the medical science which can prevent these deaths. The Minister knows, if he looks back to the early days of the War, that Sir Arthur Newsholme, in his report in 1015, stated that

"800 mothers die in each year in England and Wales, as the result of childbearing, whose lives would be saved if the experience of the rest of England and Wales were as favourable as that of London."

The report goes on to say that there would be a further saving of 1,100 lives of mothers secured annually in England and Wales if puerperal fever were to be eliminated as it had been substantially from the experience of many lying-in hospitals. It is very remarkable that although that position had been established in science, and in practice in one or two areas, as early as 1915, Dr. Campbell, in his valuable report in 1925 said:

"Avoidable maternal deaths are a matter of everyday occurrence,"

and

"puerperal infection leads to more deaths and more injury than any other complication of childbearing."

I submit that, although there has been very remarkable improvement in antenatal work, due to the provision of milk and regular visitation after birth, we have to face the fact that the nation as a whole lags terribly behind in the prenatal efforts and in the co-ordination of the best scientific treatment round about the period of actual birth.

I want to ask the Minister whether in the light, not of Labour party recommendation, but of recommendations by his own Department, which are ten years old, and in view of the fact that we are dealing with one of the most important social and health questions in the country, he cannot reconsider this question. The Minister has from time to time stated that he regards this Bill as a contribution to the development of industry. I think he will be the first to admit that there is no side of the development of industry that is more important than that of the preservation of children and of bringing into the world of well born children. I want to ask him, in the light of the accumulated evidence of the last ten years of our hopelessly backward position as a nation in relation to the best established practice, whether he cannot reconsider the inadquate financial powers he is taking to himself under this Clause.

Does the hon. Member suggest that the powers in the Clause are inadequate?

I do not want to traverse ground which has already been covered by hon. Members who have spoken from this side of the Committee, but there is no specific provision in this Clause for the allocation of money for these particular services. The local authorities which have established maternity and child welfare centres cannot be constrained under the Minister's present powers to allocate more money. The money is subject to competition with regard to other services for which they are responsible. I am asking that he should take more specific powers to allocate in a more definite way more money for these particular services, and that he ought to pay attention in Clause 75 to the development of these services in the areas where they are non-existent. The big need is for a very considerable allocation of money in order that we may get trained medical officers and nurses, not only in the present areas where we have not enough but in the very large number of other areas where those services are non-existent.

I should like to make one definite suggestion to the right hon. Gentleman. He knows that there is a sum of £650,000 going a-begging under the Bill. The brewers and the tobacco manufacturers have said, quite frankly, that they do not want the £650,000 which is to be made a gift to them under this Bill. Is it too much to ask that the Minister should take this £650,000 from those two services and allocate it for the purpose of extending the maternity and child welfare services. I hope that when he replies he will go into the financial side of the Clause with real care and give us some assurance that we are going to get, not only within the framework of the existing services but outside of them, some real guarantee whereby these very important services may be stimulated in the direction which everyone in this House wishes to see them develop.

Yesterday, the word "subtlety" was used. This is one of the subtle Clauses of the Bill. It conveys the impression that it will confer an advantage on maternity and child welfare work, without openly disclosing the fact that it is doing that at the expense of other services. So many of the supposed advantages that will follow from this Bill are given at the expense of other people. That is precisely what is happening under Clause 75. The right hon. Gentleman in order to make provision for expenditure on maternity and child welfare has prepared this Clause, which takes any increased expenditure to be devoted to that purpose out of the total county allocation. That is merely the policy of robbing Peter to pay Paul. It does not add a single penny to the expenditure on the social services of the county districts. It is really a dodge for distributing that sum in different ways, to enable the Minister to claim the credit of doing something for maternity and child welfare work. He is doing it, and he knows that he is doing it, at the expense of other services. There is a definite County apportionment to the county council and any sums taken out of that for any special purpose means, first, that there is less left for the county itself for its various purposes. It means, also, that there is less left for other county districts within the county and it means, therefore, that there will be less left for all the other services carried out by the county and the county districts, whether non-county boroughs, urban districts or rural districts. If the right. hon. Gentleman says the additional expenditure out of the county allocation which is to be transferred to maternisy and child welfare services is relatively small, and, therefore, will not affect the money available for expenditure upon all the other services in the county and by the local authorities in the county, then I fear it is not going to be the advantage to the maternity and child welfare services that he would lead us to believe. What the local authority gains on the swings it loses on the roundabouts.

As I understand the Clause, every county district is to be consulted before any additional expenditure can be provided for in those county districts which have maternity and child welfare services. If it should be that only a minority of the county districts have such services, then I can well understand the attitude of the other county districts in resisting any such additional expense for the county districts that have maternity and child welfare schemes. Although the Minister has certain powers in this regard, it is clear that it will be very difficult for him to take any very firm line against a county or against a majority of county districts within a county. My own experience is, and I think it is the experience of other hon. Members, that Departments of State— I am not complaining of this, because they must have regard to local feeling and to democratically elected local authorities—are very l0th to run against the prevailing opinion in an area. I am not blaming the State Department for doing that, but I can quite see that in many county areas where there are only a few maternity and child welfare schemes in operation the general sense of other local authorities in the areas and of the counties would be rather against the expenditure of additional money. If that were so, it is quite clear that the Minister would be unwilling to apply any very considerable pressure.

As I understand the Minister's attitude, it is that this scheme will give a certain new measure of control over the development of these services. That is true; but I would welcome an explanation of the Minister's powers to deal with these services. The truth is, that he gets what influence he does get under this Clause, in so far as it is effective at all, merely at the expense of other services, and it would be possible to make out as strong a case for other services that are conducted by the minor authorities as it is in the case of the maternity and child welfare service?, but it is not extended to them. If the right hon. Gentleman wishes to obtain increased powers of developing maternity and child welfare schemes, this plan is about the worst way of doing it, for I am convinced that in many county areas the scheme will result in next to nothing. It is undoubtedly true that in a large number of the counties the county authorities are doing very little themselves as regards the operation of the Maternity and Child Welfare Act. It is, I think, true that only the minority of counties are active in this direction but that the counties that are doing this kind of work are not exercising half the powers that they could exercise. If that be the attitude of the county councils and if, as I imagine it is the case in all the county areas, there are a large number of authorities who are doing next to nothing, what hope will there be of this Clause operating in such a way that the county councils and the county districts within the area whether they are running schemes or not, will come to a decision to restrict their own resources in order to allow the maternity and child welfare schemes to be developed, when they themselves have shown so little interest in the matter that they have not developed the service themselves. If the right hon. Gentleman is seeking for new methods of control he should look for it in other directions.

This is one of the most subtle clauses in the Bill. It is a very specious Clause, because if one opposes it he may find himself subject to misrepresentation. It may be said that he voted against more money for maternity and child welfare service. The subtlety has been a little overdone in this Bill. I am not denying that the Minister wishes to develop more schemes, but this is not a fair and just way of doing it because every new scheme, every new development, will be at the expense of all the other county districts, and at the expense of the county council itself. There is no guarantee under this Clause that in those county districts, whether they are boroughs or urban or rural districts, where nothing is being done at the moment anything more will be done, in the future. On the contrary, the effect of the Bill will be further to discourage those county districts where nothing is being done to-day. This is a misleading Clause. It is misleading to the general public, will do nothing substantial for the maternity and child welfare services of the country, and is bound to react adversely against other social services in county districts.

I agree with the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Greenwood) that this is a subtle Clause, and this is illustrated by the debate this morning. Exception has been taken to the distinction which this places on established maternity homes as against new services. Personally, I do not think there is much in the criticism. The real point in the Clause is in the middle part of it, and the words at the end. The Clause provides:

"The Minister shall six months at least before the beginning of each quinquennium prepare, in consultation with the county and district councils, a scheme for increasing the sum to be set aside out of the county apportionment."

That is the scheme he is going to prepare. He is not giving any additional sum of money. The last part of the Clause says:

"The sum to be set aside out of the county apportionment in respect of the district shall be increased accordingly.

That is, according to the scheme the Minister has prepared. If the Minister is not satisfied that the welfare committee is having its fair share of the amount he can interfere, but he has provided no additional sum of money from the Exchequer. It is provided from the county apportionment fund which he has allotted to the county. He has power to step in and say that he is not satisfied that the county authority is carrying out the scheme properly so far as the health services are concerned; he has power to say that he wants more money spent on the services. So far, so good; but that power in itself is a new principle in local administration. Hitherto we have allowed local authorities, whether they are exercising their power well or ill, to have complete control over their local affairs; it has been left to them to administer their local services as they think fit. Now you are giving the Minister of Health absolute power to interfere, not only with the administration of the health services but to gay to local authorities, "I am not satisfied that you are carrying out your duties; I am not pleased with your decision as to the way in which you propose to develop your health services."

Is the hon. Member referring to this Clause in what he is saying now?

Yes, because the way in which the county apportionment fund is administered is bound to affect all the services controlled by a county council. The moment you give this power to the Minister—he may exercise it in a benevolent way—you are introducing a new principle so far as local government is concerned. It is a dangerous power. You are giving the Minister power to say that so much of the apportionment fund shall be allocated to the health services. There may be other services, and the county authority will, therefore, have so much less money to devote to them. The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but that is what this Clause does, and this power given now to the Minister is an entirely new principle in local government administration.

I have listened, I must say, to a good part of this Debate with a great deal of weariness of spirit. We have heard over and over again the same old fallacies. The same misstatements have been made so often in the course of the discussions on the Bill that weariness of spirit comes because so much of what has been said is quite irrelevant to the particular Clause we are supposed to be discussing. I am going to take notice of one speech which seemed to show some earnestness and sincerity. That is the speech of the hon. Member for Penistone (Mr Rennie Smith), although I must class it among those which were not relevant to the Clause. The hon. Member who has just sat down, like some other hon. Members, appears to be labouring under a complete misapprehension as to the real purpose of the Clause. I was interested in the observations of the hon. Member for West Newcastle (Mr Palin), and I thought his description of the way in which he approached it very illuminating as to his process of thought. Ho said that at first sight it made a favourable impression upon him. Of course, that upset him at once. He never appears to be happy unless he can make himself miserable. Indeed, he reminds me of a song which used to be sung by a well-known comedian who I am afraid is now no more. The refrain, I think, used to go like this

"I've often said to myself, I've said,

Cheer up, Cully, you'll soon be dead."

Having examined the Clause in vain to find anything which was really unsatisfactory about it the hon. Member proceeded to recast it according to his own ideas, and then he had no difficulty in finding in it all the evils which he had desired to find when he first examined it. If we turn the Clause round and put things in which are not there, we can soon make ourselves miserable, and make ourselves happy in being miserable. The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. A. Greenwood) made the solemn and portentous discovery that every shilling which you take out of the county apportionment fund leaves a shilling less in that fund. I wonder what the hon. Member thinks that we are doing in this particular Clause? I wonder what the hon. Member who spoke last thought? He seemed to think that this gave some new power to the Minister to regulate the health service or the amount of money spent by local authorities. That is indeed apparently the policy of the Labour party. In their attachment to bureaucracy, which is growing upon them, they are apparently prepared to lay down in an Act of Parliament, that a specific sum of money is to be spent by each local authority on this specific purpose. [HON. MEMBERS: "No !"]. That is the compulsory Clause which the hon. Member for East Ham North (Miss Lawrence) was advocating.

It is very unsafe to let anything pass without contradiction at once. I advocated that these health services should be made compulsory with proportional grants, as is done at present with education.

If you are to make that compulsory, you must lay down for each local authority what precisely it has to do. That I call bureaucracy. Let me now come to the real purpose of the Clause. I must try to explain it in an elementary way, because it is so obvious that only the most elementary explanation is going to be understood. The maternity and child welfare services in a county are normally the work of the county council, but there are certain county districts which have been given powers under certain Acts of Parliament to carry on these services themselves in their own areas. Where they carry on these services in their own areas, of course the county council does not receive the money. These are, as it were, islands in the county, where the local authorities carry on maternity and child welfare, and they pay for it, and the county council does not pay for it. In making out the county apportionment we had to take account of the discontinued grants in the counties, and included in those discontinued grants are the discontinued grants to any individual county district that is a maternity and child welfare authority.

Therefore, in the county apportionment we are including the grants which have hitherto been given to these separate maternity and child welfare areas. Of course, if they are still to carry on these services, you must take out the equivalent sum from the county apportionment and see that it goes to the district for which it is intended. That is precisely the purpose of this Clause. Therefore when an hon. Member opposite says that it is robbing Peter to pay Paul, he is talking nonsense. It must be obvious to the hon. Member that what the Minister has to do here is to determine the amount of money which is to be taken out of the county apportionment, and to hand it over to the authority which has to carry on this service in its own particular area. That is not settling what the health services are to be.

Would the right hon. Gentleman explain what is the object of putting in the word "increasing" in both parts of the Clause?

Of course, under the Bill anyhow, there has to be given to every county district in the county, some money out of the county apportionment, but that amount has to be increased in the case of the maternity and child welfare service authorities by the extra amount that has to come from the county apportionment in order to enable the service to be carried on.

The right hon Gentleman has a special provision here to put up a special scheme in consultation with the council. In respect of that new scheme he is given power to give an increasing amount in respect of that scheme. Does the increasing sum not come out of the amount of the county apportionment fund?

The hon. Member still has not got the real interpretation of the word. He thinks that the increase mentioned means an increased maternity and child welfare grant for some other grant. I have explained it once and I will do so again. It means that out of the county apportionment a sum of money has to be deducted for every county district. It is part of the scheme of distribution within the county. That is not for maternity and child welfare. It is part of the distribution under the scheme which we have already dis- cussed. That amount has to be increased in the case of maternity and child welfare authorities by the appropriate sum to enable them to carry on that service in future. The county must not therefore have the money formerly given to it; it must be taken away from the county and given to the district, because the county will not have the expense of carrying on the service.

Would the Minister say whether, under the proposed scheme, each of the authorities now receiving the grant will receive as much?

Whether they will receive as much in future as in the past?

Yes.

Yes, certainly. The Clause says that the Minister himself is to prepare the scheme. Do not let the Committee think that this is a very big matter. There are only about 250 of these authorities. I say again that there is no case where these authorities are doing nothing. An hon. Member opposite talked about the authorities doing nothing. He does not understand the Clause. There is no case of any authority doing nothing. Therefore that case cannot arise at all. What the Clause says is that the Minister is to make a scheme for increasing the sum or setting aside the sum out of the county apportionment in respect of the district, by such amount as he thinks fit—he has every latitude there and he has to consult the county council and the district council—having regard to the expenditure which will be defrayed by the county or district upon the service in connection with maternity and child welfare. The hon. Member for Newcastle West said that in this Clause there was no provision for doing anything more than just keeping up the service as it now stands. Where did he find that in the Clause? It is not there. He put it there himself, just in order to make himself unhappy.

I shall have to assist the right hon. Gentleman to read the Clause.

I have read the Clause, and when I read it it wag more intelligible to me than to the hon. Gentleman. What it says is that in fixing the amount of the contribution that has to be made to the authority, the Minister has to have regard, not to what the county council has spent, but to what it will spend. Therefore, it does not only provide for the existing service, but the Minister has to bear in mind what the council is to spend in future, when he is fixing the amount. I have given the Committee a plain account of what the Clause means, and only those who are determined not to understand will have any difficulty in comprehending it. In response to the hon. Member for Penistone, who had something to say about the maternity and child welfare service generally, I would make this remark: Do not let us take too gloomy a view of the progress of the maternity and child welfare service. I am doing all I can to improve it. I hope I may have an opportunity of doing still more. But do not let us talk as though the service were standing still.

If we compare the position of the service to-day with what it was when the party opposite went out of office, it will be seen that there is a very considerable improvement, particularly due to the fact that we have spent a good deal more money upon it. The amount included in the Labour party's programme for the maternity and child welfare service was £814,000. We have increased that, until this year it is £1,052.000. If we take the number or ante-natal clinics in the country, we find that in 1924–25 it was 639. That figure is now increased to 847. The number of beds in maternity homes and hospitals recognised by the depart-

The right hon. Gentleman referred to a figure of something over £1,000,000 as the amount spent on the maternity and child welfare service. The return in regard to public social services shows, in 1927, an amount of £2,156,000 under this head, and in the next year, an amount of £2.069,000 which would appear to be almost double the figure mentioned by the Minister.

I was only speaking of the Exchequer contribution. Of course, there is the rate money as well.

The first two Amendments standing in the name of the hon. and learned Member for South Shields (Mr. Harney)—in page 62, line 2, after the word "of," to insert the words "the sum of," and, after the word "Borough," to insert the word"(Rates)."—are consequential upon an Amendment which was not accepted. The next Amendment standing in the name of the hon. Member for Ilford (Sir G. Hamilton) in page 62, line 2, after the word "Borough," to insert the words "or non-county Borough of over one hundred thousand population."—is inconsistent with the decision of the Committee on Clause 69, Sub-section (2). The remaining Amendment in the name of the hon. and learned Member for South Shields—in page 62, line 3, after the word "Apportionment," to insert the words "and of every County Borough (Grants) Apportionment"—is part of the same scheme, and has therefore, also been rejected by the Committee.

I beg to move, in page 62, to leave out from the word "and," in line 24, to the end of line 38, and to insert instead thereof the words:

"as if for the words the amount of the loss on account of rates and grants of that county' there were substituted the words an amount equal to the county borough apportionment for the first fixed grant period increased by the loss or reduced by the gain of the borough as a whole, as ascertained under Sub-section (1) of this Section.'"

This Clause is the analogue in respect of county boroughs to Clause 72, which dealt with counties. Both Clauses refer to the additional Exchequer grants which are given in certain cases. There is, however, a difference between the two. We have amended Clause 72 by extending the guarantees. We are extending the extension to county boroughs, but the words which I move to put in here make clear again that the guarantee in the case of a county borough applies after account has been taken of any changes brought about by the alteration of the Poor Law areas. Generally speaking, this Bill may be considered to be a Bill which enlarges the area of Poor Law administration, and where you have in country districts unions or boards of guardians the county will become the unit in future, and that will mean an extension of the area of charge. When you come to the county boroughs you find cases exactly the opposite. You find cases where there are existing unions which include county boroughs or perhaps parts of county boroughs, and other districts outside those boroughs, and as in future the units are to be the county on the one hand and the county borough on the other, that involves the splitting up of the units which take in county boroughs or parts of them, and the creation of an area in which Poor Law will be administered on the one hand by the county borough and on the other hand by the county council.

The result, of course, is that where the county districts adjoining county boroughs were formerly included in the union, they did actually bear a certain part of the cost of the poor of the county boroughs, and one may take it generally that the provision for the poor in those districts would not be so high as in the industrial districts. Consequently, if you restrict the area in the future, making the county borough take upon itself the whole charge of its own poor, thereby, of course, you increase the burden on the county borough. Under the terms of the guarantee which we apply to the county borough, calculations have to be made to see whether any increased charge is put on the county borough by reason of the alteration of the boundaries for the administration of the poor, and if the county borough has suffered a loss in respect of that which is not made up by the county borough apportionment, then the guarantee comes in, and we not only make up to the county borough the loss owing to this change, but we also give it a gain of one shilling per head of its population. Therefore, one may say that the arrangement in respect of the county borough guarantees are in all ways similar to those given to the counties, except that as the county boroughs are subject to this special difficulty, where they are now included in unions, which include also other districts adjoining the county borough, that difficulty has been met by the Amendment I have now the pleasure of moving.

I want, first of all, to point out that this Clause must be read in connection with Clause 111. We are now dealing with exceptional areas. The state of affairs which the Minister has briefly outlined is the state of affairs applying to areas under Clause 111, so that we must bear in mind that a great part of these difficulties have been left to be dealt with by the Minister under his very wide powers. Indeed, if you take Clause 111, it seems very difficult to see what is really left of Clause 78. Under Clause 111, in every case where the boundaries are altered in this way, the Minister, apparently, may do anything "which appears to him necessary or expedient," for applying the Act to that particular district. I say that in passing, because that is the first shadow of complexity which is thrown upon the operation of Clause 78. All the districts where the Poor Law union does not agree with the boundaries of the borough are exceptional areas under Clause 111, and under that Clause the Minister may modify the provisions of the Measure. That is the first cloud on our horizon—the degree of uncertainty imported into the provisions of Clause 78 by the very wide, general and overruling powers given by Clause 111.

I come to what is, perhaps, one of the great difficulties of the Clause. There are two ways in which the county borough can gain or lose, and those two ways are not at all connected with each other. First of all, there is this difficulty with regard to the gain or the loss which happens, for instance, in a borough when you take away a suburban fringe which has formerly paid Poor Law rate. What is the gain or loss in such circumstances? I will take my own extreme case. I do not suppose there is any case where the contributory districts pay so heavily. In the Union of West Ham the Poor Rate is now uniformly 8s. 8d. If the scheme were applied the West Ham Rate would be 12s. 8d. and the richer parts would be relieved of about 5s., since they have been paying to relieve the poorer parts.

That sort of case arises in a great many boroughs where the population occupies a central part of the town which is usually poor, and when the borough will be deprived of the tributes of suburban districts which commonly give a good deal more to the Poor Fund than they receive. That loss is a serious thing, and one of my complaints with regard to this Clause is that you lump into one sum the losses or gains due to the loss of territory and the losses or gains due to the operation of Part V of the Bill. They are determined by different considerations and by considerations of an entirely foreign character; and you introduce a degree of confusion into the Bill when you lump into one repayment considerations which are so different in their nature. In my district it failed so completely that they are left to the operation of Clause 111 or to the operation of the other Clause which allows the Minister to put the whole of the proceedings into cold storage for seven years in the hope chat somebody else may take care of the matter. As to the gain or loss of each county borough under Part I and Parts V and VI, the ascertainment of the loss under Part 1 is a desperately complicated question. It depends on the loss of territory and gives rise to all the familiar difficulties of the alteration of county boundaries, which is perhaps one of the most troublesome things with which a Minister of Health has to deal.

Let me come to the gains and losses under Parts V and VI. These are the creations of the Bill—compensation for loss of rates and grants of new money and so on—and have nothing to do with the boundary difficulties. I will not go on to describe the very sketchy nature of the guarantee afforded to county boroughs. The sketchiness of that guarantee is very much the same as the sketchiness of the guarantee given to the counties. We debated that at some length yesterday, and all that we said then about the smallness of the sum, and the fact that that sum was stereotyped on the rates of 1928–29. applies equally to the boroughs. I cannot see any equivalent condition with regard to the losses in the districts in the counties. There is not any estimation of what the county gains or loses by the transfer of certain portions of the county borough districts. Essex, for instance, will gain enormously at the expense of West Ham borough if the arrangements so set forth apply to the Union of West Ham. It seems to me that the county may be given a little extra by the transfer of territory, and in some cases the county may be making a little less by the transfer of territory. I think, on the whole, that the county council under this recommendation will get a little extra in some cases. It depends on the circumstances, but considering what the fringes of the boroughs are, it looks as if most county councils in those areas will gain a trifle.

I come to the victory of the local authorities—a victory on which we desired to comment on Clause 76, but which under the Guillotine could not be mentioned. The boroughs have been united in a desperately hard fight to keep the benefits of the scheme away from them as long as possible, and this new Amendment of the Minister, coupled with the Amendment in a later Clause, proclaims their partial victory. The boroughs have been able, like the counties, to say that the whole scheme should be revised in the light of future experience, and that the results of that revision should be submitted to Parliament. They have not gained as much as the smaller towns, because they do not lose so much. Here we have a real commentary on all that the Minister of Health has said with regard to the important addition to the health services of the county, and we come back to the stubborn fact that every local authority has been stining heaven and earth to escape from the scheme. The only way in which their opposition to the scheme has been put off has been by a promise that they shall not in any way lose anything on the standard year, but shall gain a little on the standard year for four years, and that then the matter shall come back to Parliament. I am very glad that the local authorities have maintained the status quo, and, it may be, in some cases have done a little better than maintain the status quo in some cases.

What have we done with all these long Debates in Parliament? What have we done with our Debates on Parts V and V1? On what have we wasted this morning? We have done nothing but discuss what is essentially a provisional matter, which must confessedly be revised within four years from now. We have done nothing; we have settled nothing. At the end of four years, what we have done during the past six months will be revised, and whoever sits at Whitehall—even if we can imagine the Minister of Health there passionately attached to his scheme—will have to make similar concessions. He will have to do what the Minister should do now, and seriously set to work in con- sultation with the local authorities and provide a permanent scheme of which they can approve. I want the Parliamentary Secretary to deal a little more closely with the actual gains and losses with regard to Part 1, and with the application of Clause 111 and Clause 78. It seems to me that all this business almost goes by the board if the Minister can do anything he pleases to bring the provisions of the Bill into operation. I wish to ask whether, in regard to these exceptional districts, the wide powers given by Clause 111 will not enable the Minister to do away with the financial provisions of this particular Clause. If the Minister may do anything he pleases to bring the provisions of the Act into operation, it seems to me he may deal with the financial matters set out here in such a way as will disappoint the expectations of the local authorities. It is difficult for us to fight something which is reserved to this extent for the Minister's decision, and perhaps it is hardly worth while for the Committee to spend so much time over these intricate details when we know that everything is to come back to be re-discussed by us, probably, after there has been consultation with the local authorities.

I wish to emphasise the point made by the last speaker regarding Clause 111, as to what will be the. effect of the power which the Minister possesses to introduce modifications. If the Parliamentary Secretary would be so good, I should like to have from him an assurance to supplement that which was given by the Minister, in order that I may have a right understanding of what this Amendment really does, because I have received from the Town Clerk of the County Borough of Stockport a communication indicating a very great degree of apprehension as to the effect which the Clause in its original form would have upon the finances of the borough. I would like to know from the Parliamentary Secretary whether I had a correct understanding of what the Minister means by his Amendment. In the case to which I am referring, the union not only covers the county borough of Stockport itself but extends beyond the boundaries of the borough, and the common fund expenses of the union are so divided that the county borough has to raise three-fifths of the sum expended as against two-fifths contributed by the area outside its boundaries; but the measure of relief is not shared in the same three-fifths to two-fifths proportions.

I frankly confess that we reap a benefit from our connection with the outside areas. While the outside areas contribute two-fifths of the money expended, the number of cases from those areas needing relief total only one-fifth of the whole. Therefore, the Stockport borough benefits by a relief of one-fifth, that is, the difference between three-fifths and four-fifths, at the expense of the outside areas. Four persons out of five requiring relief come from within the borough boundaries. One-fifth of the expenditure amounts to £22,000, according to the figures supplied by the local authority, and that is equivalent to a 7d. rate, applied over the whole borough. The question I wish to put to the Parliamentary Secretary is whether, in the event of the Amendment submitted by the Minister operating in the way he indicated to the Committee—at least as I understood it—the whole of the £22,000 will be met by the Ministry, and no additional expenditure will be involved through the operation of this Clause, if it is allowed to go through as amended?

There is another point to which I wish to draw attention. According to the figures quoted in the White Paper, we as an area find ourselves in a position of marked disadvantage in relation to another area very close to our own; the fairness which we are told is to be assured by this Measure is not evident. The area which I represent is almost a necessitous area; as a matter of fact, I believe the figures now indicate that it is a necessitous area; but the amount of relief which will be enjoyed by our area is less proportionately than that of a more happily placed area like Southport. The names are similar, but the conditions are widely different. The need for this relief is nothing like so strong in the case of Southport as in the case of Stockport, and we feel that the basis upon which the figures have been arrived at calls for some explanation. I ask the Parliamentary Secretary, when he comes to answer the points raised by various speakers in the Debate, to give a cate- gorical answer to at any rate the first question which I have put to him.

From the point of view of Sheffield, I can confirm what the two previous speakers have said regarding the many disadvantages which will be suffered. There are on the outskirts of Sheffield, certain areas which are in the same position as those to which the hon. Member for Stockport (Mr. Townend) has just referred. They are areas where much less necessity exists than exists in the borough itself. Further, there are a very large number of persons using the borough for business purposes but living entirely outside the area and make no contribution towards relieving the poverty of the borough. Whether you regard them from the point of view of the number of children under five, which is very much larger in the poorer areas, or whether you regard them from the point of view of the number of unemployed, there is a very marked difference between these areas, and when it comes to the allocation of assistance between them we do not feel that we in Sheffield are getting the proportion which we ought to have. It may be well for us to consider how this matter is going to be left at the end of a few years and whether it is going to be satisfactory to Sheffield as a whole. We ought to consider it also from the point of view of those who are in no sense associated with the Labour policy in Sheffield. I would like to mention in this connection the Sheffield Chamber of Commerce, which does not contain any, or at any rate very few, persons in that position. The Committee of the Sheffield Chamber of Commerce has passed a resolution to this effect:

"That this Committee, having considered the Government proposals in Part VI of the Bill, records the opinion that the relief to Sheffield provided by the Government's formula is totally inadequate owing to the burden upon the rates of the past, present and future maintenance of the able-bodied unemployed."

That is a pretty strong resolution to come from such a body as the Sheffield Chamber of Commerce. When considering the grounds for making that statement they say:

"Comparing, therefore, the hypothetical relief to the rates of say £90.000, with the figures for the year ended March last, it will be seen that the cost, including repayment of debt, of dealing with able-bodied unemployed is £99,267, plus the cost of administration. In other words, apart from the concession as to the repayment of loan, the City is left to take a load of approximately £300,000 per annum."

It is all very well under these circumstances for the Government to represent that there is going to be a substantial contribution in this particular case, but, when we come to analyse the facts, what does it mean? It means that out of an expenditure of £400,000 there is going to be a relief of only £90,000, and that after Sheffield has been losing year after year. Under those circumstances it is no satisfaction to tell us that the matter will be reconsidered later because then we shall only be very slightly better off than we are now.

When we look at the matter from another point of view in the same manner as the case of two county boroughs which have been referred to, comparing Sheffield on the one hand with Southend-on-Sea on the other hand, it appears that while the estimated loss of grants and rates expressed in pence per head of the actual population in Sheffield is 236, in Southend it would only be 52. When we come to consider the gain or the loss under the scheme in pence per head of the actual population the figure for Sheffield is 41 and Southend 37. While we have in Sheffield a loss represented by 236 and we secure an ultimate gain of 41, Southend has only a loss of 52 and an ultimate gain of 37, which is practically the same as ours. Anyone who endeavours to compare these two county boroughs must be shocked by the entirely different circumstances. In Sheffield we have a percentage weighting for unemployment represented by 27 whereas in the case of Southend there is no weighting at all. Even that weighting for unemployment in the case of Sheffield does not take into account the whole of the circumstances. It may take them into account for one particular year, but it is quite unfair to consider it in that way.

Taking unemployment for a year, and beginning at a particular figure, before you have reached the end of the year you may have a figure which has increased by something like 12 or 15 per cent., and you make this calculation at a time when that figure is going up by leaps and bounds. When you get back again to a comparison between these two places, one suffering losses for a long time, and the other not suffering at all, and where there is none of the disadvantages from which county boroughs suffer, it is ridiculous to say that they are both having the same amount of benefit. In Sheffield, we are equally divided so far as political representation is concerned for voting purposes in this House. My three hon. Friends opposite who represent Sheffield are satisfied that this Bill provides a very generous contribution on the part of the Government towards Sheffield's needs. On the other hand the Labour representatives of Sheffield think it is a very miserable contribution, and we cannot get away from the fact that a very large part of Sheffield's difficulty is that during the War we had a very great influx of population, and that has not been taken into account at all.

We have had an influx of population, and so far as our industries are concerned, we have had an enormous amount of work done in Sheffield for war purposes, and that has been rated in the past. Consequently there will be an immense drop in the amount derived from derating. When you come to deal with this case, and when you consider the whole question from the point of view of rateable value, again we are not going to get in Sheffield anything like the proportion which we ought to have. Whilst we may he able to go on for a few years in the hope that something better is coming, what is now proposed can never really satisfy us even if the county borough may have been driven into the position of accepting some slight concession from the Government, because what we are to receive is entirely inadequate.

I would like to deal with this question from the point of view of practical experience in my own constituency. The town of Huddersfield, which is largely covered by the Huddersfield Union, will be very much affected by the terms of the Amendment and by the Clause we are discussing. I want to know whether the Government will make some allowance when they come to deal with the gains and losses of a town like Huddersfield for the loss sustained by the removal of the present control of the Huddersfield Board of Guardians, and transferring that control to other authorities in the county area. Let me make clearer what I mean, because I do urge the Parliamentary Secretary to realise that a serious point is here involved. In the Huddersfield Union we have developed, during the last few years, a very remarkable school, which, as it seems to me, could be used to assist the Huddersfield Education Authority, if it were kept in the Huddersfield area, to carry on some of its most important work. It is a school placed out in a country district; it might be called a country school, though the guardians do not use that term. It has done a very great deal to improve the health of the children that the board of guardians have sent to it.

The town of Huddersfield at the present moment is contemplating extending certain work which at present is done by voluntary associations. The medical officer of health, who is co-operating with those voluntary associations, has found that, by taking children from the schools of the education authority and placing them in a specially-developed country school run voluntarily, the health of those children has been tremendously advanced, and their weight increased, in a very short time. I can see the possibility that that school will now go out of the Huddersfield area, and be operated by the county authority or some committee set up by the county authority, and I want to know whether, in estimating the gain and loss from the county borough point of view in Huddersfield, account is taken of the probability that Huddersfield will have to spend, from its general rates or from its education rates, an amount of money to build a new country school, whereas possibly they could have had part use, shall I say, of the existing school run by the board of guardians. In the terms of the Clause and of the Amendment there is no reference to a point of this sort, but merely a statement in general terms about gain and loss.

2.0 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary may say in reply that some of these institutions now run by the board of guardians will be left to the new municipal authority of Huddersfield after the changes have been made. For example, the casual wards, certain of the infirmaries, and other workhouse accommodation are within the borough. But, naturally, when we are thinking about the institutions of which we are most proud, and which represent the highest value from the social point of view, such as the country school to which I have referred, we feel that as a borough we shall lose very considerably from the fact that that institution will go entirely outside borough control. What we want to know from the Parliamentary Secretary is whether, in com puting gains and losses, account will be taken of the loss of certain institutions by boroughs like Huddersfield and many others similarly situated. I know, for instance, that in the case of Stockport, to which my hon. Friend has referred, there are excellent institutions outside the borough. Manchester, again, has some most wonderful institutions in the county of Cheshire, and these, I suppose, will be lost to the management of the Manchester Municipality, which would have been able to use those institutions for the purpose either of its general health scheme or of its general educational scheme. It seems to me that those losses will be very considerable, and the work will have to be done by the new municipal authorities. Do the Government propose to allow anything for the losses that municipalities will suffer in cases of that sort? That is a very explicit question, and I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will treat it more seriously than the points we have raised up to the present in the presence of the Minister himself have been treated. I know that it is a point about which guidance is wanted in Huddersfield itself and in the other authorities to which I have referred. Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether the values of these institutions will be taken into account in computing gain and loss?

My hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr. J. Hudson) has raised a very interesting and rather important point, upon which the Committee is entitled to some enlightenment. He made the statement that the institutions belonging to an authority, but existing outside its own area, are likely to be taken from under its control. The Parliamentary Secretary indicated no dissent from that point of view, and, if the statement is correct, it constitutes a very serious question indeed. If the institutions that Manchester has in various parts of Cheshire and North Wales are to be taken out of the control of the local authority—the town council—that is a matter upon which this Committee and the various authorities concerned are entitled to some assurance, or at least some enlightenment. I want to put the point of view of my own constituency and I want to be sure that I have understood the Minister aright.

It has been held that Merthyr is one of the places that are going to benefit under the Bill, and it has been pointed out that Merthyr is going to benefit to the extent of 3s. 7d. in the£. Owing, however, to the splitting of the Merthyr Union as the Bill originally stood, part of the advantage that Merthyr was supposed to derive would have been taken from it because of an increase, estimated at Is. id. in the£,for the relief of the proportion of the poor remaining in the county borough after its dissociation from the larger and wider area. I understand that the Minister's present Amendment will guarantee county boroughs like Merthyr against the loss which I have indicated, but I should have liked to see the Minister give way a little further than he has. I suppose he has really been bullied into this Amendment, because apparently it has been given in rather a grudging spirit, as the relief is only granted for the first quinquennium, after which it comes under the review of the Minister of Health under Clause 111. On that point a question arises. One would like to know here and now whether under Clause 111 the Minister is going to claim the right to exercise a supervisory power over the scales of relief that may be granted in those areas whose control he takes upon himself under the present Amendment and under Clause 111. If that be so, it is another serious matter.

The Minister has talked this morning about bureaucracy, but apparently this Bill can lead to a good deal of bureaucracy, and to the exercise of bureaucratic powers the extent of which is undisclosed at the present moment. I imagine that the Minister claims that Merthyr gains some advantage, but that advantage is of a purely illusory character, and is not nearly so great as the Minister plumes himself upon having given by this Bill, because, under the pressure of the Ministry of Health, all the health services in Merthyr have been reduced to what I call a dangerous minimum, and, if they were restored to the normal, Merthyr would not gain, but would lose, under this new Bill. Every service, including street lighting, has been brought down, and the Minister has not quite played the game. It appears to me that the Ministry of Health have adopted a sort of double-crossing game, because, while they were pressing these various authorities to depress their services to economise, to bring them down, they did it with the knowledge of what they were proposing to do. The various municipalities have fallen into the trap, and, under the standard rating for 1929 under this Bill, block grants are to be made on the standard year 1928-9, when the service had been depressed under the pressure of the Ministry without the municipalities realising what they were laying up for themselves in the years that were to come. That does not seem to me to be quite playing the game, and I should like to know that the same game is not going to be repeated under the present Amendment and under Clause 111. I should imagine from what we have seen already that it is just as likely to be as not because, as far as I can gather, even this grudging Amendment has been given to us under the pressure of great authorities like Liverpool, which has been stripped away from West Derby, and it is the fear of the loss of seats at Liverpool, I take it, that has moved the Government to give the grudging relief they have given up to now. The Minister says "We will grant you some relief and will guarantee you against loss for the first five years and, after that, you can come to us again and, if you are pretty good boys and bring your relief down to what a Conservative Ministry of Health thinks it ought to be, we will probably go on and, if not, you will bear the loss yourselves." That is not a prospect to which enlightened authorities can look forward with any degree of pleasure and I should like to know, broadly, what are the powers the Ministry is proposing to take to itself, as to whether we are right in assuming the loss is to be made up as the Minister has indicated, and to what extent. There are various other things which lave to be made un. There is the question of unemployment and the question of all the Goschen grants to be made up. There is the question of the relief which we are going to get in that direction and whether we are going to have more of the impositions of the Ministry placed upon our shoulders. I should like to know at least that this little relief which has been offered to us is real in essence and in fact.

I invite the Parliamentary Secretary to apply the force of the Amendment to a concrete case. There is going to be, in the case of Penistone, a very considerable redistribution of road and Poor Law powers to the county boroughs of Sheffield on the one hand and Huddersfield on the other and the County Council of the West Riding. I should like to ask him to make it plain just how the Amendment will affect the relations between those two county boroughs and the county council. I think the whole of the councillors, without discrimination of party whatever, on these three authorities, who are so much involved in this Clause, with the further powers contained in Clause 111, would be very grateful. I can imagine some of them on Sunday including a special prayer of thanks to the Parliamentary Secretary for an explanation.

The second point that I should like to put is in the form of a question. Laborious days were spent during the sittings of the Local Government Commission on the question of boundaries. Is the Amendment going to increase or diminish the difficulties arising out of boundary questions? The West Riding Council and the County Boroughs of Sheffield and Huddersfield try to act, as we do in Yorkshire, as a band of brothers, but there have been some very real problems with regard to boundary questions. This redistribution service cannot be described technically as a boundary question, but it is psychologically of the same nature, and I want to ask the Minister whether he can give us some assurance that the changes contained in this Amendment are not going to make more difficult what is a very difficult set of problems in relation to the county boroughs and county council authorities. I want to ask him particularly, not simply to deal with the question as it affects county boroughs directly with the Government, but to show us that in relation to county boroughs and county councils the difficulties of the situation well be met.

I will do my best to earn these prayers to-morrow, especially if the hon. Member himself will join in them. The Clause and the Amendment of my right hon. friend correspond in general terms with the provision which is made, and which we have already discussed, in relation to the counties, and, putting it broadly, it provides that there shall be a minimum grant in each year, and, where the apportionment share of the county borough is below the minimum, that the deficit should be made good by an additional Exchequer grant. The special case in relation to certain county boroughs which has been referred to by hon. Members opposite really arises from the special position in relation to the Poor Law and Poor Law functions which arises when you have to deal with the case where the area for Poor Law functions cover more than the county borough, and in some cases what we may call the area of charge has been narrowed. Under those circumstances, we have a special provision for it, and, speaking broadly—I would not attempt to deal with individual cases—as regards the scheme generally, this has taken into account the question of Poor Law burdens, both gains and losses, due to the scheme on the calculation:! of the standard year. The whole guarantee of the minimum annual grant in the case of the county boroughs as in the case of counties will, for the first grant period, be the standard sum increased by a sum equivalent to a shilling a hen I of the population, and the standard sum in the case of county boroughs will be the county borough apportionment increased or reduced by the estimated loss or gain by the operation of Parts I, V and VI of the Bill.

Arising out of that, there are two important questions that have been put to me. Hon. Members have read extracts purporting; to be from reports of the proceedings of chambers of commerce, borough councils, and authorities of that kind. I think it will be found that those observations were made before the further concessions had been given by the Government. I observe that one speaker—I wish the hon. Member was present—from one of the Divisions of Sheffield stated, quite fairly, that these criticisms had been made before the further concessions had been granted. We have not to consider this afternoon the criticisms in relation to the scheme as it was then, but the criticisms in relation to the further concessions that have been given by the Government. I gather from the observations that have been made by hon. Gentlemen opposite that their view is that these concessions have been extracted horn the Government, that we have been forced into making them, and that they are not, at any rate, adverse to the concessions that have been made.

We take anything that we can get.

That is the usual attitude in life. Sometimes it happens that if you give people something, that very fact makes them want more, and perhaps the Opposition would not be doing their duty unless, whatever concession was given by the Government, they asked for a bigger concession. That is such an obvious attitude of an Opposition that we find the greater Opposition putting it into operation this afternoon. Whatever concession might be given by the Government in this connection, the hon. Gentleman the Member for Merthyr (Mr. Wallhead), who valiantly defends that district, would come forward and say that we ought to do more for that distressed area. He will probably go down to his constituency and say, "It is true that the Government have given this concession, but I asked for more," and by that means, no doubt, he will impress the electors of Merthyr by his endeavours on their behalf. I think it can be said both from the point of view of Sheffield and of Merthyr that we have come to the assistance of these particular areas, and that the only criticism that can be made in connection with this Clause and other Clauses in the Bill is to say that one ought to do more.

It is not germane to this Amendment to compare the position of Brighton with some other place, or say, Southport with Stockport. You cannot compare the new proposals with the old on the assumption that the old rates and payments are good. The more one examines the way that grants are made under the present system, and the amount that the respective authorities, especially the poorer, and the rich, are receiving, the more one is impressed by the unfairness of the present financial arrangements. Therefore, it is not fair, in the first place, to say that because we are making an alteration the thing is not right. The very fact that we are making an alteration, and that different results are being achieved, really points to the value of our new financial arrangements, particularly with regard to the poorer areas. I would remind hon. Gentlemen in that connection that in any criticism they may make, they should carefully see what are the actual concessions that we are giving these various areas, and not look at them from the present position. For instance, under our scheme, as far as the county boroughs are concerned, we give Eastbourne per head of the population 97 pence, and a place like Southport 128 pence per head; but when you come to distressed areas like Dudley you get a figure of 313 pence per head, and in West Hartlepool or Sunderland 319 pence per head. I quote this, not because it is a proper subject for discussion under this Clause, but in order to remind hon. Gentlemen of that particular side of the question.

The hon. Lady the Member for East Ham, North (Miss Lawrence) said—and this is really one of the important questions which arose from the discussion—"Well, it is all very well to put forward an Amendment like this, and it may be a step in the right direction, but what about Clause 111?"One is rather apt, in looking for subjects for discussion, to bring in this Clause, which, after all, is one with which we are familiar in complicated Acts of Parliament of this kind. It is a Clause entitled "Power to remove difficulties." The Clause is of limited duration, and anything done under it has to be laid before Parliament. Of course, one could not say definitely what would or would not be done under a particular Clause of an Act of Parliament. It would be foolish for anyone to make such a statement, but I can say this—that as far as the financial adjustments which will be required in the ease of a county borough and part of a county in one unit are concerned they will be fully dealt with in the Clauses of this Bill. We do not think, as far as we can see at the present time, that there will be any necessity to use Clause 111. Clause 111 is put into the Measure, as it was put into the National Insurance Act, in order to give the Minister power to bring schemes into operation and to deal with points which may arise on a complicated matter of this kind and which are not fully covered by the Bill.

Does that mean that at the end of the period indicated in the Amendment—the four years and the one year, that is the first quinquennium—any new proposal put forward by the Ministry would have to some before this House for ratification or otherwise?

No. The hon. Gentleman could not have heard the hon. Lady who has put the question to me. She rather implied that we might put into operation Clause 111, which gives very exceptional powers to the Minister, and that by using that Clause, we might upset the arrangements that had been made. I have given a reply—and I have put it in careful language—to show that there is really no intention of using Clause 111 for that purpose, and that we do not think there will be any necessity to do so. There is no intention of that kind. Of course, one cannot give a definite undertaking on a matter of that kind. With regard to the point raised by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Merthyr, what the authorities have secured from the Government is the inquiry at the end of the seven years' term. The Government undertake that there shall be a full inquiry and that it shall be made in consultation and association with the local authorities of the country. Thus, a good deal of the argument which has been addressed to the Committee to-day and which was addressed to the Committee yesterday, and which, no doubt, will be addressed to the Committee next week, is met by the short answer that, after all, under the scheme, as now proposed by the Government, you have your guarantee for five years. There will then be only two years, before you have a complete inquiry into the matter. The reason why we in- clude these further two years is to get some experience of the working of the scheme in the county districts. Even on the figures contained in the White Paper, the variations are very small. One did not want to prevent Parliamentary discussion or anything of that kind, but what has satisfied a very large number of people who are not in the Government, or in the official Opposition, are those two facts which I have mentioned.

The hon. Member also raised the question of the buildings. We must not assume that the Poor Law institutions in such a case would go away from the county borough to the county, because we have provided that in Clause 93 the matter is to be one of agreement between the county and the county borough as to the way in which the buildings shall be most properly used. It may be that arrangements may be made for either or both of them to use the buildings. In the case of an institution such as the one mentioned by the hon. Member, it will be a question how the building is to be used and it may be that. notwithstanding the provisions in the Clause, an agreement may be arrived at under which the building may be utilised for common purposes. I think that is the answer so far as the existing Poor Law schools are concerned.

In the case of a decision by the Minister and having regard to the point that there may be loss in the sense that the building—I am referring to the institution which I have mentioned— may not be used by the county borough for its educational purposes, will that fact that loss has taken place under agreement, or by Ministerial decision, be taken into account in reckoning the loss?

It will not be taken into account in the operations of this Clause, but if arrangements have been made by which the county has the complete use of the building, that will be a matter of financial adjustment outside the terms of this Clause. The point which the hon. Member has put has been a subject of discussion with the local authorities. All sorts of suggestions were made as to how it could be dealt with, and they came to the conclusion that it would be better to allow the two local authorities to get together and to make arrangements, if they could, concerning these particular buildings. In the great majority of eases they will probably come to an agreement, but if they fail to do so, the Minister will have to make arrangements and make the necessary financial adjustments.

My worst fears regarding the operations of Clause 111 have been confirmed by the reply of the right hon. Gentleman. I expressed my doubts as to whether the Minister could override by Clause 111 the whole of the financial provisions. I hoped that the answer would be an unhesitating "no." I looked for a statement that nothing in Clause 111 would affect the financial provisions of this Clause. I thought that answer would be given by the Minister, but he only said that the financial provisions were so satisfactory that it would be unnecessary to use Clause 111.

I did not quite quite say that. I said that there might he no necessity to bring Clause 111 into operation. That Clause is only to operate when difficulty arises, and we think that the financial adjustments are already sufficiently specified.

Then, may I take it that the right hon. Gentleman says that nothing in Clause 111 can override the words in italics in this Clause? Is that so?

The hon. Member must not misinterpret what I say.

I hoped that the Minister would say "Nonsense! The words in italics cannot be overridden."

I hope not.

The right hon. Gentleman says that he hopes not. Then, instead of a firm guarantee being given it is true that the words in italics are or may be overridden. The right hon. Gentleman only says that he hopes it will not be necessary to override them. I have been a little persistent on this point. If those words can be overridden, then the whole of the financial Clauses are thrown over. I believe that the right hon. Gentleman is wrong about the Standing Orders. I do not believe that anything which is not in italics in a Clause can override a special Financial Resolution. The Minister adheres to a gloomy view of the subject.

No.

The right hon. Gentleman adheres to the gloomy view of the subject that his right hon. Friend can use the powers in Clause 111 to override the financial guarantee. That seems almost too dreadful to be true, and I hope that when the Minister of Health comes back he will say that as far as the words in italics are concerned, he cannot touch them by Clause 111.

The hon. Member must look at the terms of Clause 111. If a difficulty arises in connection with the application of this Act in any exceptional area or the other conditions referred to in this Clause, then that Clause can be put into operation. Every Order made by the Minister under the Clause must be laid before Parliament. The real answer is that the Clause, as drafted, operates in connection with the machinery provisions of the Bill.

Then Clause 111 gives the Minister power to override the guarantee. Is that true? It seems to me too dreadful to be true. I have put the point to experienced Parliamentarians, and they say that it cannot be true. Parliament votes money for a particular purpose under a Financial Resolution, and we are now told that an overriding Clause, given to the Minister to do what he likes, extends to a jurisdiction over the money voted by Parliament under a Financial Resolution. That is a new doctrine, and I do not believe that it is a true doctrine. I think that the Minister under Clause 111 can arrange the accounts, upon which the Parliamentary grant depends, as he likes; it comes to the same thing. He can determine that the loss is 2d. or £20,000, and then the guarantee will have to apply.

The fact that a district may lose or gain by an alteration in the formula is a very important matter indeed, as it may run into hundreds of thousands of pounds. As it is, the position is not very satisfactory. If this monstrous claim is upheld, then, despite what Parliament has done in the financial Clause, the right hon. Gentleman may do exactly what appears to him expedient in these financial matters and the whole position becomes extremely complicated. It is indeed made more confused and complicated than the nature of the subject matter justifies. I am glad to have that point established, and I hope the Parliamentary Secretary after reflection will think that his Department is a little more bound than he supposes at present. This scheme was proposed as a partial remedy for the inequality and unfairnesses in our rating system, but when you apply it to the boroughs the amount of relief given is of such a capricious nature, so much of it goes to districts which do not want it and so little to districts which do, that we have now profound distrust of the whole scheme. It was pointed out that under the guarantee certain boroughs and districts seem to come out in a very curious way. They do. There does net seem to be any connection between the needs of a district and the amount of their gain.

The Parliamentary Secretary dismissed the question in a very airy manner, but the fact remains that a place like Southend-on-Sea comes out much better than a place like Stockport. Southend-on-Sea gets 4.1d. of relief, while Stockport gets 3.7d. Why should Southend-on-Sea, one of the happiest, jolliest and most prosperous places in the country, get a greater measure of relief than Stockport? Brighton gets a rate relief of 4d. Some of the other districts mentioned, necessitous areas, may get a rate relief as little as 2d. Bradford, without the guarantee, would lose very heavily by the unrestricted operation of the Minister's scheme, and other districts which ought to get money would actually lose if it were not for the guarantee. Why on earth should Brighton gain and Bradford lose? The truth is that the scheme does not work; the formula does not work, or, at any rate, it works so badly that the Minister has had to run away from his own scheme and buy off all the authorities with the promise that they shall not be very hard hit for a few years. That is the root of the matter, and that is why this Committee is wasting its time in discussing these fantastic financial provisions. The only solid and serious thing in the Bill is the guarantee that nobody shall be hurt by these proposals for a short period of time, and that Parliament shall afterwards review the matter.

Local authorities do not like the scheme, but they have promised not to fight the Bill on condition that it shall be put into cold storage for a few years. The formula is hated and disliked by every local authority, and it has never been adequately defended or explained. I have always been very much amused at the defence of the formula. The right hon. Gentleman says, "There are places with high rates; unemployment is a great burden, and the care of children is very expensive." All very well. "I have got them all in the formula. I have multiplied the percentage of all these things by a figure I have been pleased to take and then I have multiplied them altogether and it must, therefore, make a perfectly scientific formula." That is the only defence of the formula, against which we are trying to protect local authorities; all the things mentioned apply to local affairs; they represent special burdens, and very low incomes, and the Minister is therefore justified in multiplying them all by anything he likes, multiplying them altogether again, and then ask the House of Commons to distribute their money on that basis. It will not work. The only thing we are doing is to say that local authorities shall be able to put the thing in cold storage until some Minister will bring forward a suitable scheme. Now that the Minister of Health is in his place I should like to put once more the question which I have already put to the Parliamentary Secretary. Is it true that Clause 111 gives the Minister power to alter the financial guarantee? I think not. The Parliamentary Secretary thinks it does. I doubt very much whether the overriding provision of Clause HI with regard to any exceptional areas, does give the Minister power to do just what he likes.

I did not say that. I said that, if a difficulty arises in connection with the application of this Bill in any exceptional area, then the Clause can be put into operation.

I pressed the Parliamentary Secretary over and over again to tell the Committee plainly what I be- lieve to be the truth, that is, that nothing in Clause 111 can alter that part of this Clause which is in italics. He would not say that. I believe it is true. I think that nothing in Clause 111 enables the Minister to alter the guarantee, but it-gives him power to estimate the apportionment which is to be made in any way he likes. I do not think it gives him power to alter the financial guarantee.

indicated assent.

Now I have got it. I have been pleading with the Parliamentary Secretary to say that nothing in Clause 111 can override the part in italics in this particular Clause. The right hon. Gentleman has now admitted it. That is all right.

Just like a woman.

I also said that I believed the right hon. Gentleman would take the view I am taking and would say that he was entirely bound by this Clause. That is clear. Under Clause 111 the calculation of the loss can be, I think, determined by the Minister, but there is a shade of uncertainty as to that, and there is nothing more intricate than to determine what is the gain or loss of an area. I have at last got the Parliamentary Secretary to say "yes" or "no" to a simple question. It is an achievement which no one on this side has yet accomplished. I have seen experienced Members spend hours of time in trying to get an answer "yes" or "no." I and I alone am the one person in the whole House who has ever persuaded the Parliamentary Secretary to give a plain answer to a plain question.

I think we can congratulate ourselves on the exhibition we have had of the hon. Lady trying to persuade the Parliamentry Secretary to give way. It has been a lesson to us as to what must have happened since the earliest days in our history. On this side we have always been astonished at the want of perception in the Socialist party of the merits of the formula, and at the extraordinary fog which has spread over their minds as to the meaning of it. I think that the hon. Lady is responsible to the party, and perhaps to the country, for a great deal of the misconception which has permeated the Socialist party and the country on this point. Let me refer to some of her previous criticisms. I remember her saying that she remembered the time when the Poor rate was ten times smaller than now.

Domiciliary relief.

When dealing with a matter of mathematics, as the hon. Lady has done all the time, the question of the application of a sum which is ten times smaller is a little hard to apply. No doubt she meant a tenth of what it is now, but she mystified the Committee, and she cannot be surprised if, bearing in mind the remark of a previous Parliamentarian in regard to the decimal point, the Labour party have put that point in the wrong place.

What I said was that domiciliary relief was ten times smaller than it is to-day. Ten times smaller means that you divide the present figure by 10. It used to be just about one-tenth of what it is to-day.

I am very glad that the hon. Lady realises that it is an ambiguous phrase. I have referred to only one phrase, but there are many ambiguous phrases dealing with the formula which the hon. Lady has imparted to her own side. I would like an explanation of the second part of this Clause. In certain parts of the county, even with the new distribution of valuation and rates, it is clear that there may be an arbitrary line drawn and two sides of the street may be rated and valued on different bases, according to the private capacity of the valuation committees. I want to know what the system will be.

This does not deal with counties but with county boroughs.

I am as anxious as anyone that the Bill should be explained, so that the country may have a chance of appreciating the intention of the Government. With regard to the formula, can we have some explanation of what was in the mind of the Government when the Bill was being framed? Why is it that we have this great difference between certain districts? I shall not mention the names of towns, but there are manufacturing districts receiving little assistance compared with other districts which are not industrial. This is one of the things that makes me wonder whether the Government did intend to make this a helpful Measure for the country or whether it was intended simply to embody proposals for local government which suited the Government's particular ideas. References have been made to inland towns and seaside districts by way of comparison. I am not concerned with that method of discussion, but when one sees what is happening under the estimate that has been handed to us, one is justified in asking for an explanation. Then there is the point raised by the hon. Lady as to Clause 111. Is it to be used as a threat to the districts in case they do not conform quite

Clause 111 is a Clause which gives the Minister, as it states, "power to remove the difficulties" such as we are all familiar with. It says that the Minister

"may by order remove the difficulty or make any appointment or do any other thing which appears to him necessary or expedient for bringing the said provision into operation."

I beg to move, in page 63, line 2(3, after the word "day," to insert the words "and each of the four following years."

I wish that the Minister would make some statement upon this Amendment. I have no desire to detain the Committee or to prevent hon. Members dealing with some of the other matters which may arise on the question "That the Clause stand part of the Bill." But I would point out that this Clause dealing with the appointed day, is to be amended here by inserting words which will make it apply to each of the four following years. I think we may congratulate ourselves on the fact that this will destroy the whole effect of the formula and the financial basis of this scheme. I am not complaining about that. I should be delighted if any Amendment produced by the Minister would destroy the whole basis of this scheme, and I feel that we ought to offer our word of thanks to the right hon. Gentleman for having conceded the point that his scheme is such that he must postpone for a few years, not the whole measure of its operation, but a certain portion of it. I do not remember, during the course of this Bill, having congratulated the Minister before. I should wish to have done so earlier, but we have now at least his admission that, as a result of the statements made by the local authorities, as a result of the case put before the right hon. Gentleman by them, and as a result of his recognition that if the operation of the scheme were to be brought forward and made to coincide with the appointed day, the local authorities would be injured, he must temper the wind to the shorn lamb a little more. A certain measure of congratulation is therefore due to him, and I offer it, but in doing so I would point out that this extension of a further four years in this Clause will destroy the whole of the justification which he put forward for the scheme, and to that extent I think the local authorities in this country and the Opposition are also to be congratulated on having secured at least one concession of substantial importance on this Measure.

I notice that in this Clause and the Clause which we have spent some time in discussing this afternoon, we are saying that districts where a borough and a part of a county have been joined together will probably have to be divided under the new scheme. The whole of the financial arrangements are based solely upon the question of how much money certain districts received before this new Measure was introduced. If I were to take a district which is going to be divided and say that in some way they have had an income of £100,000, as I understand, roughly speaking, what the Government say is that during the next five years that district is not going to receive an amount less than that sum, but will probably receive somewhat more. In the whole of the discussion it does not seem to me that attention has been paid to the effect of this proposal upon these divisions, with regard to the cost of administration. I am quite prepared to hear from the Minister that he is hoping that the new scheme, generally speaking, will lead in many cases to a reduction in expenditure. I can quite imagine that in London, for instance, the amalgamation of many of these Poor Law bodies under the London County Council may lead to a reduction in expenditure; and it seems to me quite possible and feasible that, if you are going in the country to begin to cut what has been a whole into two parts, and perhaps throw a smaller part that may have been controlled by a town into a county, when you come to decide what proportion of the £100,000 is to go to one part and what proportion to the other, the evidence put before the Minister may be to the effect that it is costing more to administer the new system than the old. I cannot see that any reference is made to an emergency of that kind.

What I have in my mind is this: I believe that Sheffield and some of the large cities have been really controlling the Poor Law in what is virtually a part of the county. Supposing the new Poor Law rate is confined entirely to the county, and then some town is thrown into the county, it is quite possible that the expense of administering the Poor Law will be greater than it was when dealt with by large towns. Is any provision made, or any power given to the Minister under this Clause, to consider an emergency of that kind, or does it mean that if here and there there should be cases where the mere fact of the division has involved increased expenditure the Minister has no power whatever to meet an emergency of that kind? The whole Clause under which we are raising the money to be provided simply deals with the money received at the present time, and absolutely ignores the whole question of administration.

I should like to put this question. There is a part of the Rotherham Poor Law Union which will come into the city of Sheffield. On the other hand, part of another union may come into the city and another part may go out of the city. In the case of the Rotherham portion, which is the larger, we shall have, of course, additional expense in administration there; shall we, in addition to that have to meet the superannuation of the officer who is deprived of his duties because we are taking over part of the Rotherham Poor Law Union? The same thing may apply in a good many other cases.

Will the Minister also deal with the case of an area like Middlesbrough? I would like to know whether these supplementary grants would be available in a case such as this. A doubt has been expressed as to what would be the effect of dividing two areas. Shall we be assured that when the Eston area comes under the county area under this Clause no loss will be suffered?

Loss to whom?

That is the point I want to know. I want to be assured that any loss that may be incurred through the Eston area going into the; county area will be made up under this Clause. Here you have two areas which, for Poor Law purposes, are in such an extraordinarily bad condition that they are worried as to whether they are to bear any further loss.

There is a similar, though not identical, case in the County Borough of York. York is in the position that it is, for Poor Law purposes, inclusive not only of the county borough, but of a considerable number of adjacent parishes. Some anxiety is being caused to those who will be responsible for the administration of this Bid in the County Borough of York by the question of whether, owing to the lopping off of the county districts for which at present the county borough is responsible, the county borough will not in future have to incur considerably larger expenditure in respect of Poor Law administration. At present, it is notorious that the smaller country areas surrounding a county borough like York, although they contribute to the general fund in rates, take very much less out of the common pool. Therefore the county borough is exercised as to the effect of these proposals, if any, on its own position. I am not clear whether this Clause applies to such cases.

In reply to my hon. Friend who has just spoken, this Clause is not the one which deals with his particular point. That point is dealt with by what we call the additional Exchequer grants, and there is a guarantee that every county borough, after taking account of any loss in which it may be involved by reason of the lopping off of these county districts, shall have a gain of Is. per head of the population. There is therefore no reason why in the County Borough of York there should be any anxiety on that particular score.

May I ask whether by losses the right hon. Gentleman means losses in increased administration, or losses in the amount of income?

You have now a union which covers a county borough, or part of a county borough, and also certain districts outside, and the charge for the cost of Poor relief is equalised over the whole of that area. If you were to separate them into two areas, you would find that the cost of Poor relief in the county borough was much higher than the cost outside the county borough. That is, of course, a very natural and easily understood consequence. What is happening now is that these districts outside the county borough are bearing part of the cost of Poor relief in the county borough. Under this scheme that is changed, and the county borough becomes a self-contained unit, and has to bear what it bore before and also that part of the cost previously borne by the outside districts. It is that loss which is covered by the guarantee under the additional Exchequer grant.

Here we are dealing with a different point. Here we are dealing with a case where in a comity borough there are two separately rated areas inside the county borough. This Clause does not at all apply to the case where there is part of a union in the borough and part out of the borough, and therefore the hon. Member for Finsbury (Mr. Gillett) is raising here a point which does not arise on this; Clause. There is no question of the county districts here, it is merely a question of any loss which may be incurred by different parts of the same county borough which are now separately rated. Take the question of Poor Law officers, which was raised. That does not arise here at all.

I am sorry to interrupt, but I should like to get this right. If I may, I will refer to the case of Middlesbrough, purely as an example. There we have a big housing estate which comes into the borough for most purposes, but one section of which goes into the county for, I think, Poor Law purposes. Does it mean that those people will be excluded under the operation of this Clause?

If I have rightly understood the hon. Lady, part of this housing estate is in another union now, but it is within the county borough. Is that right?

Yes.

Then that part comes into the county borough for Poor Law purposes under the Bill. The question which I understood she was putting to me before was as to where you have a county borough divided into two parts which, being in separate unions, are separately rated and where you may have a loss in one and a gain in another, and the question to be determined is whether there is an aggregate loss in the whole borough. If there is an aggregate loss in the whole borough, then the additional grant comes in. In the case of the county districts. in addition to the guarantee which applies to the county as a whole, there is also an arrangement which applies to the differences and losses of the individual districts. Where you have a number of districts, some of which are going to gain and some of which are going to lose, what the Bill says is that those who would otherwise lose shall not lose for the first five years. The deficiency which has to be made up is to be made up half by the Exchequer and half by the districts which would gain. There is a similar arrangement in the boroughs. There may be a part of a borough which gains and a part which loses, and we have to modify our Clause in order to meet that. If the additional Exchequer grant is less than half of the aggregate loss of any part which lose in the