I beg to move, "That the Bill, as amended, be recommitted to a Committee of the Whole House in respect of Clause II."

As the House will remember, on Monday last there was an arrangement whereby we should defer any explanation, discussion or Debate on Clauses 10 and 11. We are very anxious this morning to have some explanation with regard to Clause 11. It is rather complicated, and for that reason we ask that the Bill should be recommitted.

I beg to move to leave out the Clause.

As my hon. Friend said, our main object in doing so is to ask for an explanation of this very complicated Clause. The centrepiece of it, to my mind, may have the result of placing some old people in a very difficult position. As we see it, if one man in a house is granted a supplementary pension and afterwards a member of the same household becomes entitled to an old age pension, and that pension had not been taken into consideration in assessing the needs of the previous pension, then the amount by which the supplementary pension exceeds what it would have been, if the old age pension had been taken into account, is to be deducted from the first payments of pension. Some old age pensioners would, therefore, find themselves in debt, and this is a very awkward situation for old people who live upon limited means. Members on both sides of the Committee have had experience of this kind of thing: of an old person in poor circumstances drawing an amount of pension in some form or other and suddenly being told that he was not entitled to what he was getting. We think that the Minister should give some explanation, not only of what the Clause means, but some reasons before we can agree to the penalisation of these old people. I think it will have been discovered by Ministers in the past that whatever the law has said, it could not be carried out because aged people, as in this case, could not live upon what they were getting after deductions had taken place. These old people would be thrown back on the Poor Law if these amounts were deducted.

I agree with the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson) that on reading this Clause it seems exceedingly difficult to understand. But I have had the good fortune to have it explained to me, and have questioned experts in order to get it perfectly clear, and I think I can now put it clearly to him. As he knows, this is not something new, but if I might give a concrete example of what we want to do in order to prevent anybody being put into a difficult position, I will take the case of a man of 65 who is drawing an old age pension of 10s. Under this Bill his wife will be able to get 10s. when she is 60. Supposing an old age pensioner's wife is due to get her pension at 60, and she applies for that pension. In ordinary times people sometimes did not apply in time to get their pension, and, therefore, there comes the day when the husband, who is drawing 10s., says, "My wife ought to have a pension; she has applied for it but has not received it. My income would then be £1 a week. At present my income is only 10s. per week."

The man applies for supplementation. Pension arrears could be paid a few weeks later, but under this Bill it will be possible for the Board to advance an amount of 10s. or more from a certain date. The man will then be drawing £1 a week for himself and his wife, and in due course there will be arrears of pension. From those arrears it will be possible for the Board to be paid back the amounts they paid for supplementation before the pension came. They may not have paid the full 10s. in supplementation, but the actual amount will be able to be paid back. Afterwards the full pension will be paid; there is no idea that that person should be reduced to poverty. Once the pension is awarded, the amount of money he will receive will be exactly the same as if the pension had been paid on the date it was due. I hope I have made that matter clear. The couple will receive just as much as they would have received if the pension had been paid from the date it was due. The Clause merely makes it possible for the Board to supplement pending payment of the pension, and then to get that sum of money back. There is no idea of pensioners receiving any less. In some cases it is difficult for people to know when their pension is due, but we have arranged with the Board that in every case a statement will be sent so that the pensioner on receiving the money will be told on what date the pension is due and that a certain amount has been advanced by the Board as from that date. We want there to be no misunderstanding in the matter. It is done simply to prevent difficult situations arising.

Are we to understand that the Clause is merely intended to cover the case of the wife of a pensioner, and does not extend any further? The Parliamentary Secretary has envisaged the case of a pensioner's wife who is going to receive a pension. The Board pay out money. Some part would represent her supplementary pension and some part would represent the pension she is going to get. Is the Clause merely intended to cover the case of a pensioner's wife?

I have given the case of the wife of a pensioner—

But there may be two brothers living in the same house, one a pensioner and the other not. Later, the second brother gets a pension with arrears. Will the Clause affect the first brother's pension?

Where a pension is held up the amount is given on loan. If the pension is not paid on the date when it is due, the Board can advance money, and then from the arrears can take back the amount they have advanced.

In the case of any member of the house?

I think this Clause introduces a new principle. The Unemployment Assistance Board does not grant anything on loan. This Clause means that pending the payment of a pension the Assistance Board can grant an allowance, which will be granted as relief, and can be deducted when the pension with arrears is paid. Does this not give the Assistance Board power to relieve on loan?

What we want to do is to get the old age pensioner his pension, and the Assistance Board has power to advance money in order that there should be no difficulty. In this case the Assistance Board has power to advance money in lieu of the pension and then get back the sum which has been advanced when the pension is paid.

I should like to know whether it is intended that whatever sum is advanced no more than 10s. a week will be reclaimed. There are cases under the present Act where pensions have not been granted for some reason or other, generally because the Ministry of Health have not made full inquiry. Two or three weeks pass before application is made for a loan to cover the period until the pension is granted. If a pension is granted three weeks after, will the payment granted in the first fortnight be utilised for the purpose of making up the deficiency? The Board may not only grant the 10s. pension but supplementation as well, making it 25s. a week. What the person is entitled to is 10s. per week in his or her own right, but an amount over and above that has been granted. Will the failure of the first week to obtain the pension be utilised for the purpose of making up the deficiton that which has been granted over the 10s.? My contention is that the Board are not entitled to reclaim more than 10s. for any one week.

May I put a question? I am perfectly satisfied with the explanation of the Parliamentary Secretary, but she has only dealt with the position where there is one pensioner in the house. Take the case where there is some difficulty in determining a person's right to a pension and there is some delay. The person applies to the Assistance Board for an allowance in respect of the pension which is outstanding and gets a supplementary allowance. Does the Clause apply to him? Is he a person with a right to a pension seeing that his right has not yet been determined? I should like to know the position of a household in which there is a pensioner whose right to a pension there has been some delay in determining.

There is no right to a supplementary pension until it is proved that the person is a pensioner. If we gave a supplementary pension to a person whose right to a pension has not been proved, we should cut right across the whole scheme, you would be giving a supplementary pension before it had been proved the person had a right to a pension. To give a supplementary pension you must have a pension first. In reply to the Member for Farnworth (Mr. Tomlinson) the amount recovered can never be more than the old age pension or the amount which is paid as supplementation, whichever is the less. The matter is necessarily complicated but I think it is absolutely clear in the Bill.

In view of the fact that there may be some delay, will the Government provide in the regulations powers to the assistance officer to deal with what is called, in the Unemployment Assistance Board's practice, an accumulated need? You allow a pension or supplementation for six weeks, and at the end of six weeks he receives the award of a pension, but there is an accumulated need. Suppose he is one of those men who will not go to the public assistance committee; in those circumstances will the officers of the Board be given authority to deal with that accumulated need?

All I can undertake to do at the moment is to look into the case and see what further we can do, but what we are anxious about is to get pensioners to make their application before they are of pensionable age. If we could only get it more clearly into the minds of the people of this country that four months before they reach pensionable age they should make application, we should have very few delays, which we all agree are difficult to deal with. We hope people will begin to understand how the thing works, and, when they understand that, we shall have no delays.

This Clause, while appearing to deal with a very simple matter turns the spot-light on to the whole of this business. The Board may be brought into this matter for the purpose of making investigation. We were told they were not going to pay supplementary pensions like the public assistance committees used to do, and that the job of the Unemployment Assistance Board was just to make investigations; but now instead of making investigations they take the place of the public assistance committee as well as dealing with the old age pension, because in ordinary circumstances these people go to the public assistance committee. The Unemployment Assistance Board's officer pays the pension in advance, and at the same time acts almost as a public assistance committee's officer. Apparently the only thing the Unemployment Assistance Board's officer has had to do is to make investigation, but now he is going to take the place of the public assistance officer. I really would suggest that this way of doing things is substituting not only the pensions officer but the public assistance officer. It seems to me quite clear that bringing in the Unemployment Assistance Board's officer is in the long run going to substitute the officers controlled by the local authorities.

From what the hon. Lady has said, the Unemployment Assistance Board is now going to carry out the practice of the public assistance committee where public assistance allowance has been paid in lieu of pension. I am very anxious to get a statement from the Minister or the Parliamentary Secretary about this. The Minister promised that a change of determination should only take place every three or six months as long as it was possible. There might be a change in the circumstances of a household, not as a result of the wife receiving a pension, but because of some other member of the family bringing income into the household. It might be possible that for two or three months a supplementary pension is being paid, whereas if the income were re-assessed when the change of circumstances took place, there would be little or no supplementary pension payable. I would like to know in a case of that kind, where a new determina- tion has been issued, whether any guarantee can be given by the Minister or his Parliamentary Secretary that the pension should not suffer a deduction by the action of the Unemployment Assistance Board on account of any over-payment that might have taken place. I think this point ought to be made quite clear.

I should be glad if the hon. Lady would explain the following complication which I think is a very real one. Let us assume there are two brothers in a household, A and B. A is an old age pensioner, while B is without income. In those circumstances A receives a supplement to his old age pension under the provisions of this Bill. Subsequently B becomes entitled to an old age pension, but there is some delay in his receiving it. If the old age pension is taken into consideration, the supplement to A's pension would be lower than the one actually given, and an adjustment has to be made afterwards. Would the adjustment take the form of reducing the amount of money that B is to receive in the way of arrears, when A has actually received the money? In those circumstances you would be penalising the wrong man. Could the hon. Lady explain that position.

I think the hon. Member for Central Hackney (Mr. Watkins) has set me a rather difficult question, because he is dealing with two people, A and B, in different circumstances. I think the case of the man and wife is clear. I was then given the case of two brothers. I think the question the hon. Member is putting to me now is this: If there is an old age pensioner in the house and a second person reaches pensionable age, and his pension is not paid, is the supplementation that is paid to pensioner A not really due to B? The real point is that the supplementation would only be paid on the pension of pensioner A if B were his dependant. Therefore, if B is a dependant of A, who has received supplementation, when the arrears of B's pension have accrued, it will have to be remembered that supplementation has been paid to A on B's account. A would only have received supplementation because B was a dependant.

With regard to the case which was put by the hon. Member for Aberdare (Mr. George Hall) the Clause has no bearing on the case where there has been a change in circumstances other than a pension becoming due during the time that the supplementary pension is being given. We all agree that with definite changes in income, changes in the supplementary pension would take place. That is quite definite. I can allay the fears of the hon. Member. There is no suggestion that the Board would look back over the time during which the supplementary pension had been given and say that as, on a certain day, the person had done a day's work, for instance, that would be taken into account in the next period.

This is a complicated matter, but may we take it that no sum of money will be deducted from any old age pensioner on account of money which has been overpaid to some other person and not to the recipient of the pension?

The hon. Lady has suggested that no dependent person in the household is to be excluded for the purpose of assessing the needs. Let us consider the position in a household such as that referred to by my hon. Friend. There is an old age pensioner and a younger brother. I take it that the needs of the household will be taken into account in assessing the amount of the supplementary pension and that those needs will be not only the needs of the pensioner, but the needs of the brother, so that any supplementary pension that may be paid in respect of the brother's need will be paid to the pensioner. When the brother becomes 65 and gets a pension, all that will be recovered will be in respect of the 10s. pension paid to the brother and not in respect of the supplementary pension. That portion of the supplementary pension which is over and above 10s. in respect of the needs of the brother will not be touched.

I think I can make the position clear. All that would be done would be that they would be put in exactly the same position as if the brother had received the pension on the day on which it was due.

What will be the position in cases which are doubtful? For instance, it may at first be assumed that a person is entitled to a pension, and then it may be found that he is not entitled to it. In such a case, if the Assistance Board have advanced the money to such a person, how will they recover it? In cases where there is very strong doubt, will the person be entitled to go to the public assistance committee and draw relief in the meantime, and if the person later becomes entitled to a pension, will the public assistance committee be entitled to recover it from the Board when the pension becomes due?

A supplementary pension will be paid to a pensioner if he is in need. The hon. Member asked about the position if there is somebody in the household in whose case there is doubt as to whether there should be a pension. I do not think it makes any difference. The supplementation will be paid to the pensioner, but it really comes to this, that if somebody draws a pension the supplementation naturally will be reduced if a further 10s. is going into the household. If under this Clause supplementation has been paid over a period, when the pension is drawn the arrears will go against the supplementation.

I do not think I have made the point clear. Suppose that there are a man and wife coming to the age of 65. Suppose that at first the man seems to be entitled to a pension, and the Assistance Board advances supplementation in the meantime—

The Assistance Board have nothing to do with advancing money to anyone who is not a pensioner. In the case to which the hon. Member refers, the man must be drawing a pension before he can apply for supplementation. Before it is proved that a person is a pensioner, the Board cannot give supplementation.

If a person becomes 65 and is not yet decided to be a pensioner, is he entitled to go to the public assistance committee for relief, and has the public assistance committee the right to recover the money from the Board if the person eventually becomes a pensioner and entitled to supplementation?

That brings us to the position as it is to-day. A man reaches the age of 65 and applies for a pension. This Bill makes no difference, and while the person is waiting to receive the pension he can go to the public assistance committee. The change which the Bill is making is only with regard to people who are pensioners. The public assistance committee can recover the money in exactly the same way as it does to-day.

When supplementation has been paid and later deductions have to be made in the cases to which the hon. Lady has referred, would the Board be prepared to spread the payment of the excess over a period or would they get it immediately from the accumulated 10s.?

The amount recovered in respect of any week can never be more than the old age pension or the amount paid in supplementary pension in respect of a dependant for that week, whichever is the less.

I think we need take no more time on this matter. The hon. Lady has made the position clear tous, but I hope that nobody will try to explain the position to the old age pensioners, because if that is done, it will leave the old age pensioners with the impression that they will be in debt for the rest of their life. However, the position is clear to us, and therefore, I beg to ask leave to withdraw my Amendment.

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

In moving this new Clause, we again return to the procedure proposed under the Bill which is one of the most important parts of it. Under the Bill, as it is drafted, it will not, strictly speaking, be necessary for the Board to introduce any regulations at all, and by the terms of the Schedule all the Board need do is to take the regulations already made under the Unemployment Act and to make adaptations by means of rules which will lie on the Table of the House and will not need the assent of either House before coming into force. This matter has been raised during the discussions on the Committee stage, and we have been given to understand by the Minister that if any major changes are proposed, the Board intends to make regulations. These need not come before Parliament, and the Minister himself cannot make regulations at any stage. It rests only with the Board, and all that the Minister has the right to do is to make amendments to the Board's original regulations. Supposing that happens and regulations are brought before the House, precisely the same thing will happen as on both occasions when we had the unemployment regulations coming before the House. On each occasion, after three days of debate, when a great deal of criticism was fired at the various details of the regulations, the House found itself in the ridiculous position of being unable to give effect to its criticisms by altering a single line or word; and that procedure is proposed again now.

It was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for West Middlesbrough (Mr. K. Griffith) that very often hon. Members are put into a difficulty, and particularly hon. Members opposite who on some rare occasions wish to display some degree of independence. They may have a very strong objection to one feature of a regulation and yet cannot express it in the Division Lobby except by voting against the regulation as a whole. Of course, it is a very convenient device for those hon. Gentlemen opposite, who are content to act as mere Lobby fodder throughout their Parliamentary careers, because if they are asked why they allowed a certain proportion of disability pensions to be taken into account for the purposes of a means test, they are able to reply that they were unable to vote on this particular matter when the regulation came before the House. It provides them with a very convenient defence. But, from the point of view of the House of Commons it puts hon. Members in a real difficulty. We are not even able to discuss one by one the various matters raised in the regulations, and we all know how easy it is for a Minister, wanting to avoid a difficult point when winding up after a long roving discussion, simply to get up and ignore or pass lightly over the points he has any difficulty in answering and to concentrate on those which are easy.

We have frequently raised objections when it is proposed to give to a Board or Government Department power to make regulations but I want to make one distinction as clear as I can. We have no particular objection when regulations are proposed merely to fill up gaps and provide for minor details of legislation, but we have a very strong objection indeed, and we have maintained it on every possible occasion, when regulations are made in fact a substitute for legislation. It means weakening and to a large extent destroying the control of this House. This new Clause is, of course, entirely in keeping with the Amendments we have put down on other stages of the Bill. I think we may claim that all the Amendments we have put down, dealing with the position of the Board and the procedure to be adopted when this Bill becomes an Act of Parliament, have been devoted to the one purpose of strengthening, increasing, and making more effective the control and supervision of this House. On the other hand the attempts of those in charge of the Bill have been the exact opposite. All the time they have been resisting our Amendments on these matters, and endeavouring to weaken and cut down the control of this House and to give as much power as they can to the Unemployment Assistance Board.

I beg to second the Motion.

On reading the hon. Member's proposed new Clause, I could see that he had apparently fallen into an error, and on hearing his explanation I am quite clear that he has. His new Clause actually goes so far as to say:

"Before any regulation is made by the Assistance Board…the Minister shall cause the regulation to be laid in draft before both Houses of Parliament…"

It means that it cannot apply to any of the main regulations at all, because the main regulations are not made by the Assistance Board but by the Minister. Section 52 of the Unemployment Act, 1934, states quite clearly:

"The Board…may prepare and submit to the Minister draft regulations…and the Minister shall consider any draft regulations so submitted to him and shall make draft regulations…

Provided where the Minister makes any draft regulations otherwise than in the form of the draft submitted to him he shall, before making the draft regulations, inform the Board…"

It is clear that the draft regulations are made by the Minister and further that any regulations made by the Minister shall be laid before Parliament as soon as may be. And so it is clear that the procedure and the clause suggested by the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Foot) do not apply to the main regulations at all, and I can hardly see that that is his idea in putting down the new Clause. But let us be clear about what the hon. Member is suggesting. He suggests that the procedure be adopted which can only be applicable, if at all, to the main group of regulations. If we are all agreed on that, I do not think it is necessary to carry this part of the argument very much further, because I cannot conceive that the House would desire that this elaborate machinery should be applied to the subordinate aspects of the procedure and should not be applied to the main technique of the Bill. Therefore, I am sure the House would not wish to accept the new Clause.

I agree that the right hon. Gentleman is entitled to make the point that the Clause is badly worded, but there could be some Amendment. Even if there is a slight inaccuracy of wording the Minister knows the purpose for which the Clause is directed.

I only wish to dismiss that point in the first instance—we are both agreed that the Clause would not carry out what the hon. Member desires. I am willing to argue on the point which the hon. Member desires to attain in the Clause, but I wish it to be clear in the first place that as it is worded the Clause does not cover his point and that it would only apply to rules and not regulations. I was reading it in an attempt to see whether it could in any way be applicable to the Amendment which the hon. Member has down later in which he wants to substitute "regulations" for "rules," and which would make it possible for such a procedure to apply where otherwise it would not.

I will come to the second point, whether the regulations should be so drafted as to be capable of modification and Amendment during their passage through the House. I suggest that of all the things which should be subject to such a procedure this is the least appropriate, because what the hon. Member suggests is that the regulations should be subject to modification, not by one House of Parliament, but by both Houses of Parliament. That is to say, the House of Lords should be at complete liberty to re-write the means test according to their good will, and that the House of Commons should be allowed to re-write it at their good will, and there would be no means of resolving the deadlock that might arise. On that ground alone it would be undesirable to adopt this procedure and it is not possible for the Government to recommend the House to accept the new Clause.

The right hon. Gentleman has exposed a technical error in the first part of the Clause, but he has not really touched the core of the matter. Legally it is true that the Minister makes regulations and is responsible for them, but is there anybody who knows anything about the subject who does not agree that regulations are in fact made by the Board? Before he gets through this matter the Minister will learn that the regulations are the Board's regulations and that however he handles them, unless he gets the power to amend them in this House, he will land into great trouble as a result of the operation of this Bill. Anyone who has experience in these matters knows that a Minister as wise as the right hon. Gentleman and who cares as much for the people with whom they are dealing as he does will land himself into trouble if he attempts to alter the regulations. In the previous Debate on this question the House tried to help the Minister. There were many Memberson this side who clearly saw many of the difficulties that would come up as the result of the regulations, but the House had no power to amend them. That is the core of this matter.

Anyone can see what will take place under these regulations. The right hon. Gentleman said on Second Reading that it is in his mind to base them on the standard of the best local authority. I hope that is so, but I do not believe it will be so in fact. The right hon. Gentleman will do what the last Minister did in dealing with the Unemployment Assistance Board Regulations; he will try to strike a happy medium, and it will not be very happy when it operates. The right hon. Gentleman would render himself a service if he accepted the purpose of this new Clause and took some power over the Board in order not only to safeguard himself, but to safeguard the people who will be affected by the regulations. The right hon. Gentleman during the proceedings on this Bill appears to have given something here and there, but in fact he has given nothing. When he has come up against something vital he has said, "I will consider it." What he really means is, "I will ask the Unemployment Assistance Board if they will let me do it." The right hon. Gentleman is too acute in his mental powers to be under any misapprehension on this matter.

The Assistance Board are a government outside the Government. That is the root of the matter. They make the regulations. The right hon. Gentleman has power to mould them, and he is responsible for them to the House, but he will in fact be subject to the experience of the Board, and the regulations will be theirs. It will be well for him if he will take the House into his confidence in dealing with these matters and take power to amend the regulations, if necessary, in the light of the experience of the average Member. If he does not, there will be a storm. In order to save that, he will be wise to accept the new Clause, so that the House will not only have power to help him but be able to regain the grip of administration and legislation—because the regulations are really legislation—which the House ought to have, instead of leaving the Minister and the House as the mere pawns of a dictatorial authority over which the House will have no control so long as it has no power to amend the regulations.

The fact that the Minister, in his short speech on this important subject, concentrated almost entirely upon verbal matters leads me to believe that he is not quite easy in his mind about it. I am certain that my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee (Mr. Foot) is perfectly ready to do anything which will clear up any purely verbal defects in the Clause, and the point made by the Minister would be met by leaving out "Assistance Board" and substituting "Minister." If the Minister desires an Amendment to that effect my hon. Friend would be ready to accept it. It is true in actual fact that it is the Assistance Board which initiates the regulations and that the Minister adopts them and presents them to this House with any alterations which he thinks desirable. Undoubtedly he is right, according to the wording of the Act, in saying that the regulations should be described as being made by the Minister and not by the Board, but that can very easily be put right.

As for his other objection, if he wants to make a distinction between the two Houses of Parliament and do something which would lessen further the powers of another place, in that way carrying on the work of the Parliament Act, I shall be glad to welcome him as a successor to Mr. Asquith, as he was in the old days. The reason we have not been so venturesome is that we thought we might be held to be trying to bring in a new and constitutional issue. Under the Bill the other House has power to reject the regulations, and we did not wish to introduce an innovation by giving to the House of Commons a particular power which was not given to the other House. Again, if the Minister places the slightest importance on this point we should be very glad to meet him in any way.

The real fact of the matter is that if the Minister had desired to accept the substance of this proposed new Clause there would have been no difficulty about doing it. He could have said to us, "I accept your Clause in principle, but I do not think its wording is exactly right, and in the other place we can improve it." But, of course, the Minister is afraid to give to this House the powers which are proposed and in that attitude I think he is very short-sighted. As the hon. Mem-for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson) said, it is in the interests of the Minister himself that he should have the opportunity of being advised by this House on these matters. This House is competent to advise the Minister on a matter like this. Hon. Members are accustomed to deal with the difficulties of old-age pensioners, just as they are accustomed to deal with the unemployed and their difficulties, and with that experience, drawn from all parts of the country, we should be able to avoid errors such as have been made in the past and will undoubtedly arise in the future if this machinery is allowed to rest on this entirely bureaucratic basis.

It is because we want to democratise this procedure that we are proposing to introduce the only machinery which will really give control to the House. The power to reject regulations has been proved to be illusory. Regulations would have to be almost inconceivably bad before they aroused such a revolt on the benches opposite that the Minister felt they had to be withdrawn. Without being inconceivably bad line by line regulations may yet contain some one or two provisions, occupying but little printed space, whose effect upon old age pensioners may be incalculable, and this House will lose all its importance and all its dignity if it is not able to deal with detailed matters which affect the lives of the poor. Therefore, we have put forward this new Clause believing it would do what, in substance, those who come under the provisions of the Bill would desire, and what anybody in this House would desire who has a real regard for its ancient privileges, its importance, and its dignity.

The Minister dealt some hefty and devastating blows at the wording of the proposed new Clause. In reading it I myself felt that the wording of it was risky, and I was rather surprised because I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee (Mr. Foot) is unusually fairly accurate in these matters. At the same time I do not think the Minister dealt in any way with the substance of the Clause and it is the substance of it with which I am concerned. We are asking that the great body of citizens whose interests are involved in this Bill shall be left to the care of the House of Commons. If this Clause is not accepted they will be handed over to the Unemployment Assistance Board lock, stock and barrel. It is no use the Minister pretending that he has some powers to deal with the matter. The hon. Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson), whose knowledge of the Unemployment Assistance Board Regulations is second to none, has shown clearly that in resisting this Clause the Minister will be placing himself in a very uncomfortable position in the days to come.

If this Clause were agreed to, the regulations would be presented to the House, and what would happen would be this: We should say that the bulk of them are not bad but that there are one or two which ought to be amended or excluded. Does the Minister suggest that this House is not competent to deal with the regulations in that way? Does he think too much Parliamentary time would be wasted? I do not think it is fair to this House to suggest that we could not amend the regulations in the way we thought fit. If the regulations were entirely acceptable does the Minister think we should waste time by having a Debate on them? Surely he knows the Opposition sufficiently well to know that we should not. All that we ask is that should there be among the regulations some to which we take objection we should have the opportunity of making a Parliamentary effort to secure their amendment or rejection.

The Minister pointed out that the Clause says that the regulations have to be approved by Parliament and not the House of Commons alone. I do not think the other place does understand these problems as we do, but, at the same time, I was surprised to hear such an objection put forward by the right hon. Gentleman. I thought he was being a bit smart, knowing that the moment the other place is mentioned we on this side at once jump up and object to their dealing with the workers' interests. I am sure that he did not think the other place ought to be excluded, but he ought to consider whether this House, representing the working classes, should not be given an opportunity, not only of approving the regulations in bulk, but of excluding some one or two regulations to which they take objection.

I hope that the Minister will reconsider his attitude towards this Clause. I do not altogether agree with the Clause as it is drafted, but I hoped that he would agree to the principle of it, and that it could be redrafted in another place in a way which would avoid some of the verbal difficulties to which he took objection. The Minister has said that he can bring individual cases to this House. If I were to ask Questions across the Floor of the House about all the individual cases which are brought to me we should have an Order Paper to which, I am certain, the committee on waste would object. During the last three weeks literally hundreds of people have written to me on the question of old age pensions and really some of the cases are too heart-rending to be dealt with here. To say that those cases shall be administered by a Board which has already shown itself in many respects to be absolutely out of sympathy with the people, and that we shall have no jurisdiction over its action is to delegate to the Board a power which should rest only in the hands of the House of Commons. During the earlier proceedings on this Bill the Minister moved an Amendment to Clause 9 to the effect that the administration of supplementary pensions should be conducted in such a manner as might best promote the welfare of the pensioner. Who is to decide whether that is being done or not? The Board is to say whether or not the administration is being conducted in the best interest of the pensioners and all the words which you put into this Bill, and all these sanctimonious arguments, will not give any assistance to the people once they are handed over to the Board. I ask my right hon. Friend to have regard to the human side of the matter and to see that if the consensus of opinion in the House is not in favour of regulations, we shall retain the right to amend them.

I am not concerned with the wording of the proposed new Clause but with its main purpose, and I want to remind the House of what has taken place with regard to regulations during the past four or five years. I remember when, either the first or second set of regulations, in connection with the Unemployment Assistance Board, came before the House. We were placed in a ludicrous position because one word in those regulations was misspelt. The printer or somebody else, had inserted the letter "n" instead of "t." We then had from one of the Law Officers—I believe the Attorney-General of that time—the view that the House could pass the regulations as they were worded and that we could then go to the High Court for an interpretation of them. When that argument had been laughed out of court, we were in such a position that the Prime Minister of the time—Mr. Baldwin, as he then was—had to announce from that Box, that, as the House had no power to amend the regulations, even to the extent of changing one letter, he had no alternative but to withdraw them, and to adjourn the House, in order that they might be reprinted and discussed on the following day. What a position in which to place a democratic assembly.

I do not wish the House to be placed in such a position again. After that incident I was astonished at the number of people who wrote letters asking what had happened to the House of Commons when they had not even the power to substitute "t" for "n" in regulations made under an Act of Parliament. I know that at that time the Chief Whip of the Tory Party and somebody else, had strong words to say about those regulations but that is not the point. The point is that if there had been power to move Amendments to those regulations, it would have been a simple matter to make the necessary alteration. I hope that the Minister, with all his experience, will not put the House into a similar position in the near future. In the regulations dealing with these supplementary pensions, various points are bound to arise. It may be found desirable that certain words should be deleted or that certain words should be inserted. Are we then to be told that we must either accept the regulations or reject them but that we cannot amend them? To me, that is a ludicrous situation and I hope that before the Bill reaches the Statute Book, either the Minister or the Attorney-General will see that the House is allowed more latitude to deal with the regulations.

As one who has on other occasions co-operated with the hon. Member who moved the Second Reading of the Clause, I find myself in disagreement with him this morning for reasons which I think I shall be able to sustain. If we make it possible, in this case, to amend regulations, then, clearly that should be done in all cases in which regulations are made under Acts of Parliament. We are not discussing merely the regulations which are to be made under this Measure. We are dealing with a very important practice and principle.

The Clause refers to regulations to be made "under this Act."

That does not matter. If we do what is proposed by the Clause, we shall be establishing a most important precedent. The question at issue is whether regulations made under Acts of Parliament, should be susceptible to amendment, or whether the proper procedure, if some part of such regulations are objected to, is to withdraw them altogether and re-introduce them in another form. I know that that course involves inconvenience, but if hon. Members go to the Vote Office now and obtain a list of the Rules and Orders at present lying on the Table of the House they will realise what the position is. I ask them to examine those documents and to contemplate what would be the position of a Government if an Opposition, for purposes of obstruction, sought to amend all those regulations. Why, they could bring the business of the House of Commons to a stop. That regulations ought to be laid before the House and that we ought to have the right to challenge them, will not be denied, but consider what is the normal procedure with regard to most regulations. They are drawn up as a result of consultation with all sorts of people, and if the Minister is wise they are submitted to those who are likely to be actively concerned with them when they are enforced. Regulations differ from legislation in that they deal with the details of practical administration.

I have been following the hon. Member's argument with great interest. He says that regulations deal with the details of practical administration. When regulations are solely for that purpose, we do not suggest that there should be power to amend them on the Floor of the House. But I do not think the hon. Member was in his place when I spoke or he would realise that my main argument was that, in a great many cases, regulations are not used merely to fill up a few details but have become a substitute for legislation. Parliament passes Acts which simply say that a Minister may make regulations dealing with some matter which may be of great importance, and in such cases, where procedure by regulation is substituted for procedure by Statute, this House is losing a great deal of its authority.

Regulations are intended to provide for the fact that, legislation having been passed and the detailed circumstances having changed, it becomes necessary to amend your practical working scheme. If the hon. Member's argument is followed out we come back to the point that most of the things to which he thinks objection is likely to be taken in the regulations, should be in the Statute itself. But everyone knows the difficulty of securing time for legislation of an amending character and it is an enormous advantage to have the power to make regulations, provided there is a measure of control. The fact that regulations have to be laid on the Table of the House and that in some cases an affirmative Resolution is required, while in other cases objection can be taken by means of a Prayer, gives ultimate control.

I would ask hon. Members opposite to remember the application of the same principle in another respect. Some 15 years ago they tabled a Resolution to the effect that no international engagement should be entered into unless formally approved by the House. But when they themselves came into office they found how stupid that proposal was. They found that in the course of a year perhaps a thousand international obligations were entered into and that the business of the House of Commons could not be conducted at all, if all these had to be submitted for the formal approval of the House. I do ask hon. and right hon. Gentlemen to consider how the machinery of Parliament is to work, if you load it in such a way that the ordinary business of the House of Commons will be stopped through lack of time. It is not undemocratic to hand over to Ministers, with their Civil servants and their power of consultation with those who will be affected, the power to apply certain legislation in detail, provided that there is ultimate control in this House and that the regu- lations cannot come into operation without the approval of the House. But if you introduce the power to amend regulations, the business of the House of Commons will be paralysed.

:The fact that the Minister has been supported by the hon. Member for South Croydon (Sir H. Williams) is an indication of what is behind the opposition to the proposed new Clause. The hon. Member for South Croydon put forward the case that because regulations had been dealt with in a certain way in the past, there was no reason for any departure from practice or for any more control or opportunities of discussion in relation to future regulations. But we have objected. The hon Gentleman who has brought forward this Clause and my hon. Friends on this side have objected constantly to this method of legislation by regulations, just as the hon. Gentleman himself would object to regulations which would restrict his right of freedom being imposed by the Government on any business in which he is interested. We have heard him on that point many times in the House. I would like to put an important point to the Minister for his consideration. I agree with hon. Members who have said that while dealing with some of the technical difficulties of the wording of the Clause, the Minister might at least have indicated what he is prepared to do in order to meet the opposition point of view. The hon. Member for South Croydon said that the regulations were composed after discussions and meetings with all sorts of people. (An hon. Member: "Except the old age pensioners"). I would like to know whether the old age pensioners are to be consulted or whether any of those associations which have fought for them in the past will be fully and freely consulted. I think not.

There is a further point. Despite the fact that it has been said by the hon. Lady and the right hon. Gentleman that this removes the burden from the local authorities, I think they would agree that a certain amount of responsibility still rests on the shoulders of public assistance authorities. That must be so. If these regulations are placed here in such a manner that we cannot discuss them except on the hard and fast principle of "accept or reject," you will be denying to those people and to those public assist- ance authorities who will still be involved in a certain amount of expenditure under this Bill the right to make proper representations to hon. Members of this House. If the Board are convinced, no matter what regulations they may submit, that the House of Commons will have the greatest difficulty in discussing them and practically no opportunity of amending them, does the Minister think that will result in more care being exercised by the Board in making regulations which they think will be in accord with the general desire of the House? Of course it will not. Any organisation which knows that the regulations will not be fully discussed and knows of the restrictions placed on hon. Members will be carefree with regard to making those regulations. We shall not have placed before us regulations based on what those people believe will be the general desire of the Members of the House. I think the Minister is creating very great difficulties, not only for the Opposition, but for himself and for hon. Members opposite.

The old age pensioners' movement in the country is not satisfied, and the movement will still carry on its fight politically. Representatives on the opposite side will still have to meet that case. When the old age pensioners make their representations with a voting strength behind them hon. Members opposite will find they have been considerably handicapped and hoodwinked by the Minister's insistence that, when regulations appear before the elected representatives in this House, representing the needs of the old aged people and the public assistance authorities, they shall not have full scope to represent those particular sections. They will find they have been hoodwinked and that a very dangerous precedent has been set up for themselves and for the Opposition.

The Minister of Health has been very lucky in having a Law Officer by his side, because it has enabled him to have legal advice. This Motion raises a most important matter. The hon. Member for South Croydon (Sir H. Williams) has said that all kinds of people will be consulted by the Board. Is that true? No one is more interested than the old age pensioners, and when we were told that everyone who is interested will be consulted—

The hon. Gentleman should not suppose that anything I have said is necessarily endorsed by the Minister. If the Minister commits himself to the precise category of the people whom he will consult, he will be very ill advised.

The hon. Gentleman forgets the experience that we on this side have had of this Board. We have also had experience of Ministers who have accepted regulations from the Board. That is why I intervened this morning. We are entitled to examine the history of the Unemployment Assistance Board. The Unemployment Assistance Board issued its first regulations under the Unemployment Act of 1934. Those regulations were placed on the Table of the House. They were discussed and approved by an affirmative Resolution. That means one afternoon's Debate of a general character, and then a vote is taken. There is no opportunity for discussing the details of any regulations put forward. What is the result? Those first regulations were approved—if I may have: the Minister's attention—

I was consulting with one of my learned Friends.

The regulations were then put into operation. What happened? There was an outcry all over the country. From the very first day those regulations were applied their severity and harshness and the way in which they treated the unemployed people created a revolt all over the country. I was not a Member of the House at the time. I was then President of the South Wales Miners' Federation, and in South Wales as in other parts of the country there were large numbers of people affected by the regulations. We had in South Wales a state of affairs such as I have never witnessed at any other time. I know perhaps we are temperamental, but we have suffered from terrible unemployment and distress for years. In that part of the country, perhaps because of an influence which I regard as a very fine influence, family ties of the household mean so much, and when those regulations came there was a revolt. We decided at a conference to send a deputation to interview the then Minister of Labour. As President of the Federation, I was asked to lead that deputation, and to present, with others, the case against those regulations.

Accompanied by the then Leader of the Labour party, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury), and by the chairman and secretary of the Trades Union Congress, we met the then Minister of Labour, who is now Secretary for War, and put before him the case against those regulations. We cited dozens of cases to show how the regulations would apply. The right hon. Gentleman is not here, but I am not misrepresenting him. He said, in reply, "It is the first time I have seen these regulations living. I have seen them in print; we have talked about them, and discussed them; but now I see them as they apply to human beings." He admitted, quite frankly, as the Minister that he had not realised what they meant. It was not only the Minister who said things of that sort from the other side. I remember two hon. Members opposite saying that they had never understood what those regulations meant, and that if they had, they would not have voted for them. That was the same Board and the same procedure.

Because of that experience, we say that it is essential that the House of Commons should have these regulations before it, and have the right to amend them. Why should the House of Commons have less power than anybody else in the country? The Minister says that he is taking the burden from the public assistance committees, and relieving them of a great deal of expenditure. At present, every elected member of a public assistance committee has the right to assist in determining the scale of relief paid to old age pensioners. This House will have less rights than those committees. If the public assistance officer presents to his committee a draft regulation relating to scales or conditions of relief for old age pensioners, the rights of the members of the committee are not confined to approving or rejecting the scales put before them—they can modify or amend them. But here the Board can make regulations, the Minister can approve them, they are brought before the House, and we are permitted at the end of the evening only to go into the Lobby to vote for or against them. In regard to the other regulations, after that has been done hon. Members came here and said, "We could not understand what we were voting for; if we had understood, we should not have voted for the regulations." I was amazed to hear it said on the other side, "Fancy the House of Lords drawing up regulations." I say, fancy the Unemployment Assistance Board doing it.

It is essential that we should have the right, as a House of Commons, to examine these regulations, clause by clause, and item by item. We are dealing with the rights of these old people who have done their best for this nation. We are their representatives. They come to us for advice. If hon. Members opposite do not mind my saying so—I do not say it offensively—they come to us much more than they come to hon. Members opposite, because they used to come to us before we were Members of this House. They call us by our Christian names, they have worked in the same pits with us, they have shared our lives. They will ask us about this or that regulation, and we shall have to say that it is nothing to do with us, that we have less power in this House of Commons than is possessed by an ordinary county council. An hon. Member opposite has tried to frighten us by saying that if this Clause is accepted, it will create precedents. Is not that what the House of Commons is for? Is not every new Measure a precedent? If we are not to create any more precedents, let us pack up and go home.

The hon. Member suggests that if we agree to this, the House of Commons will be overburdened. But the House of Commons should not begrudge time for this matter. How often have the other regulations come before the House? Only twice in four years. Yet one would imagine that it was suggested that we should be discussing these regulations every week. That is absurd. If the Minister does not grant us this right, he will not be in a position—I do not say this with any intention to give offence—to understand fully any regulation. He cannot understand these regulations without having the advantage of listening to Members of this House, with their wide experience, discussing each clause, throwing a search light on it, amending and modifying it. I ask the right hon. Gentleman not to reject this on a technical quibble, but to look at the principle which is embodied in the Clause. That principle is the right of the House of Commons to deal with the regulations, as we deal with this Bill, the right to decide what shall be in each of the regulations issued in future.

I readily respond to the appeal made by the hon. Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths) that we should also have regard to the principles of the proposal, as well as to the actual proposal itself. I think it is only courteous to the hon. Member who put down the proposal that we should examine it in that way. But I do not think the House of Commons can depart from the main issue concerned; that is, the very difficult question of how far an assembly like this should consider the details of proposals which are put before it. Every year this House engrosses to itself more power, and every year it has wider issues to deal with. At the present moment, it has greater and wider issues to deal with than ever it has had before. It has just, in this very Bill, engrossed to itself the great power, which it did not previously possess, of the supplementation of old age pensions, making the supplementary pensions a national charge. If the House of Commons is not able to delegate any of its duties, the danger of its choking in the flood of its own business will bring democratic procedure into greater disrepute than anything else that could happen. I suggest that the House of Commons must beware of acting as a body which fears to delegate its work. It is an accusation which is made against Government Departments, it is a common accusation against men of great genius and driving power, that they have all the qualities, but they cannot delegate. We know that ultimately such a man will break down, and that the administrative work he is responsible for will fail. There is a danger of this assembly failing in the same way if it takes on duties such as this clause suggests.

Is not the answer to that case: give the old age pensioner a flat rate, to which he will be entitled as a matter of right, so that it will not need to be discussed by Parliament at all?

The hon. Member does not seem to realise that the House has decided upon that matter, and that—and this is indeed my answer to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Sudbury (Colonel Burton)—whatever he says about entrusting the administration to the Board, it has already been decided that the administration shall be entrusted to the Board. I come back to the point that has been raised of whether the regulations ought to be amended or not. The hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Foot) and the hon. Member for West Middlesbrough (Mr. K. Griffith) said that whether we consider the affirmative Resolution or the negative Resolution, the affirmative Resolution being a stronger power than the negative Resolution, each is an illusory power. Surely the hon. Member for West Middlesbrough has forgotten the remark able pressure which was put upon the Government by his hon. Friend the Member for Dundee with regard to regulations when, on 31st October, 1939, he moved that an Address be presented praying that an Order in Council amending certain Defence Regulations under the Emergency Powers Act should be annulled.

It nearly brought down the Government.

Surely therefore he cannot say that it is illusory, and if the hon. Baronet says that it nearly brought down the Government, that is exactly the point. The House of Commons on that occasion showed its power of exercising control over the regulations, not by going through them as suggested line by line, and clause by clause, but by going through them as a whole and making its criticisms as a whole, and saying, "Withdraw these regulations and give us new regulations, which will be more satisfactory to the House as a whole." Then the procedure was seen in its full power. The Minister bowed to the will of the House of Commons. Any Minister must bow to the will of the House of Commons.

We brought in a new Minister.

No, the Home Secretary had the responsibility for it, and it was the Home Secretary who bowed to the will of the House of Commons. These regulations were introduced and the power of the House of Commons was manifested, and never more strikingly than on that occasion, and the regulations were amended in a proper and satisfactory way, as they should be, namely, by withdrawing them as a whole and redrafting them after consideration of the Debate that had taken place and by the bringing forward of new regulations which were subsequently approved by the House of Commons. That is what would happen again if the House desired it. I realise that my knowledge of these subjects may be less than that of the House as a whole, and even less than that of hon. Members sitting opposite or of hon. Members sitting on this side of the House. When these regulations come forward, as they will almost certainly have to come forward, they will be brought forward sufficiently long before supplementation comes into force to enable examination to be made of them in this House, always subject, of course, to the overriding condition of the possible development of affairs, since we are at war. I give the undertaking most gladly that, subject to any unforeseen circumstances, the regulations, which I think will be necessary and the Board themselves think will be necessary, will be laid before this House in time for it to consider them before they come into effect and affect the lives of the old people.

Is it not the fact that in any case the regulations must be laid before the House for a definite number of days?

Not in this case. The question is whether they are to be approved by an affirmative resolution of the House or not. I was merely giving an undertaking that regulations, as far I can see, will be necessary, and that, apart from unforeseen circumstances, they will be laid in time for them to be considered before they come into effect and possibly affect the lives of the old people. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland and I will give the very greatest attention to arguments advanced by hon. Members from all sides of the House in that connection.

I do not quite follow the statement that the Minister has made. He says that the regulations will be laid in time for the House to consider them before they come into effect. The Minister has got that provision in the Bill, as they cannot come into operation until the House has approved them anyhow.

I do not think that the hon. Member seems to have displayed his usual astuteness this morning. He knows that there are regulations which can be applied by amending rules. There are regulations in existence which can be applied by amending rules. The hon. Member, who has great parliamentary acumen, asked whether I could give an undertaking that regulations will be brought forward and laid. I can give him the assurance, that, as far as I and the Board can see, such regulations would need to be brought forward and laid, and would not come into effect until approved by an affirmative resolution of this House. I will do my utmost to see that the House gets an opportunity for a review of the regulations before supplementary pensions come into force, which is fundamentally what it desires. That is the first point, and I hope that I have met hon. Members opposite and indeed hon. Friends on this side of the House.

Is it not the case that regulations pertaining to the aged people will come to the House from the Board through the right hon. Gentleman, and that for the unemployed they will come through the Minister of Labour? We are anxious to know precisely how the regulations will come from the Board. Are there to be two channels or two Ministries through which the regulations are to come?

I am certainly willing to give the hon. Member that assurance. He will find in the Bill that regulations dealing with old age pensioners are to be submitted to the House on the responsibility of the two Ministers of the Health Departments—the Minister of Health, and the Secretary of State for Scotland. They will be submitted by us, and it is on our responsibility that the House will be asked to approve them. It is we who have to listen to the criticisms of the House, and, if necessary, withdraw the regulations and see that new regulations are laid. I think that that ought to go a long way, although I admit not the whole of the way, to meeting the case that has been made by hon. Members opposite, and indeed by hon. Friends on this side of the House as well.

I say again, that, on the main question, if these regulations were subject to examination or amendment, in this House, line by line and Clause by Clause, there would be a grievous danger, first of all, in this particular regard, that the House would be choked with the work which it was heaping upon itself, and secondly, a precedent would be established which would be of great disadvantage to this House in dealing with other procedure of the same kind. I hope that I have dealt with the further point that the control possessed by Parliament under the affirmative resolution procedure is illusory by proving the very powerful effect that the hon. Member for Dundee had upon certain regulations as recently as31st October of last year.

Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will allow me to refer to that matter again. It was possible to get the whole of the regulations withdrawn because they bristled with objections in every Clause. I hope that the new regulations will not be like that, but, even in that case, it was found impossible for any Amendment to be made except by the complete withdrawal of the regulations and the framing of entirely new regulations, and we were able to get them withdrawn because there were a great many objections. If there had been but a single objection, though it might have been substantial, to those regulations it might have been a very different matter.

At any rate, I think I have dealt with the point that this protection is illusory, because the hon. Member will agree that the protection is a very real protection. He said that those regulations were only withdrawn because they bristled with difficulties. I hope very much that, as the Minister responsible, I would wish to safeguard myself from the inevitable storm which would break upon my head if even one substantial objection was shown to the regulations and I allowed it to go because I was too stubborn or lazy to take account of the arguments used, and refused to withdraw the regulations and bring forward new ones. In such a case my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland and I would be guided by experience. It is realised that this is a very important matter touching many people, and that, if it is not satisfactorily settled, it will lead to a great many difficulties both inside and outside Parliament.

In that case would the right hon. Gentleman give a guarantee not to make unnecessary use of the Whips? The right hon. Gentleman has made some things clear, but he has given nothing to the House on this matter at all. He has not dealt with the real core of the position. That is the power to amend the regulations. I warn him that there is going to be trouble about this.

I should hope very much that I shall avoid unreasonable use of the Whips because the Whips, though they can solve a difficulty in the House, cannot solve a difficulty in the country. On more than one occasion I have made concessions in this Bill. I made one recent alteration in the Second Schedule. [Interruption.] The question was whether an unreasonable use would be made of the Whips. Undoubtedly, by use of the Government majority, we could have denied concessions on many points on which we have given them, and I do not think we have shown ourselves impervious to argument. I come back to the main point. If the administration of the Act is bad, it is in the country that it will be found to be bad and that difficulties will arise. Therefore, mere Parliamentary dodging will not get us out of our difficulties. I am more conscious of that than, I think, any Member of the House. Therefore, I will do my utmost to see that these things are properly done.

I think the Minister's reply is very disappointing. The House should be given some power of amending the regulations. He made the concession that the regulations would be laid, but he is as well aware as anyone that every time regulations have come before the House the House has felt itself tied intolerably by the fact that it had no power of amendment. I wonder whether he will not consider putting in a modification in another place, so that the House will have some opportunity of giving its experience to the Minister in a way in which it is not permitted to do by the regulations. My hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) had the idea that a Select Committee should be set up to deal with regulations such as these, which would have an opportunity of considering them and making recommendations which would come forward along with the draft regulations. I wonder whether the Minister would not consider some such proposal as that. I think it is worth while examining the suggestion, because on all sides there is a realization that the present procedure is unsatisfactory. I think the Minister himself, when he referred to the fact that the emergency regulations had had to be changed, showed that there was a necessity for something more, because there were consultations with all parties in the House with respect to the Amendments. Surely, with regard to this matter there should be the possibility of some previous consideration of the views of the parties in the House with regard to the draft regulations so that there would be some opportunity of more than simply saying "Yes" or "No" and of coming to a decision on the points of principle involved. I hope the Minister will think the matter over. After all, this regulation business is becoming intolerable in many respects. He is given an opportunity here of making an improvement on present procedure which might help to make the working of democracy much more efficient in the future.

The Minister's second speech was an extremely disappointing affair. He left us precisely as he began. The main argument that he has advanced for persisting in depriving the House of its rights is that we are an overloaded Assembly and are afraid to delegate our authority to other people. Why should we delegate our authority to any outsider? We are concerning ourselves with that which dominates and controls the lives and activities of our constituents, and it is we who are responsible for them and we ought not to delegate it to any other authority. As to the House being an overloaded assembly, that comes singularly strangely after the Prime Minister's announcement that we are to sit for three days a week after Easter. The charge of being overloaded has, of course, no substance whatever in it. As I understand the position, it is that the Executive can claim full rights of government, but that the Houses of Parliament ought to have an uncontrolled right to deal with legislation. In the attitude which the Government have taken, it is quite clear that the Executive, of which he is the mouthpiece in this matter, is encroaching on the rights and privileges of the House of Commons in denying us our legislative authority, and, that being so, it is clearly the duty of the House of Commons to mark such steps as these and, if possible, to put down any further departure of that character, In my judgment the successive encroachments upon the authority of the House that we have seen since this and the previous National Government came into power have dulled our sensibility, or Members on the other side, together with those below the Gangway and ourselves, would be viligent in defending the rights of the Commons.

The Minister advises us that the regulations are to be made by himself. He is a Member of the House, and therefore a servant of the House, and these regulations ought to be submitted for our approval and for examination of his handiwork in detail. We do know that, in practice, the regulations are not made by the Minister, and what possible argu-

I beg to move in page 7, line 30, to leave out from "and," to the end of line 31, and to insert:

"as to the manner in which supplementary pensions are to be paid and shall in particular provide for enabling pensioners to obtain payment thereof."

This is an Amendment put down to carry out the promise I gave to the hon. Member for East Stirling (Mr. Woodburn), and its effect is to require that the regulations shall enable pensioners to accept payment of their supplementary pensions at the post office.

I beg to move, in page 7, line 32, at the end, to insert:

"through the post office or otherwise if required."

This Amendment is to make it perfectly clear that the major way by which old age pensioners will receive their pensions is through the post office. I am sure that is the intention of the Minister and of Parliament. The Government have still left in the words "through the Post Office," but I think there is something to be said for making the position perfectly clear that the main method of paying pensions shall be through the post office.

I think the Amendment which has already been accepted makes the point perfectly clear, and there may be some difficulty if these words are inserted. I think the hon. Member put down his Amendment under the impression that the words "through the Post Office" were to be left out, but as they are not, I think the Clause is quite clear. If not, I will look at the point later.

On the assurance of the Minister, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move, in page 8, line 34, at the end, to insert:

"and shall have the right to appear in person or by some other person who satisfies the tribunal that he is a relative or personal friend of the applicant."

I understand that the Minister has given an assurance that this point will be implemented by the Government in another place.

I beg to second the Amendment.

I appreciate the purpose of the hon. Member in this Amendment, but I am rather unhappy about the precise words, and I hope that the Minister will not accept it in this form. The words are rather unduly restrictive. The Amendment reads:

"and shall have the right"—

he, of course, has that right—

"to appear in person or by some other person who satisfies the tribunal that he is a relative or personal friend of the applicant."

When an old age pensioner goes to the appeal tribunal that "other person" must prove to the satisfaction of the tribunal that he is a relative or a personal friend. That may be all right if the old age pensioner is fortunate enough to have a relative or personal friend who is able to state his case for him, but there are many cases where he has not that advantage and where the "other person," the relative or personal friend, will have the same difficulty as the old age pensioner himself in stating what may be a complicated case. That difficulty has arisen in connection with the hardshid tribunals, and hon. Members have protested against it. These words will have to be interpreted by the tribunal, and they may thus prevent an old age pensioner taking along the secretary of a tirade union or of any other organisation to which he may belong. All of us here belong to various political associations, whether a trades and labour council or a Liberal association or a Unionist association. All associations of that kind have some members who are old age pensioners. Is there any reason why an officer of any political organisation should not accompany the old age pensioner in order to state his case for him?

Perhaps I have been misled by the general practice into thinking that these words are necessary. My feeling was that this form of words would enable an old age pensioner to take with him anybody he liked. That is the practice.

That is the practice, but that is not what the words say. Let me take this case. I think I am right in saying, speaking from recollection, that the words, when we are dealing with insurance cases before the Court of Referees, are not so strict. There are many hon. Members who from time to time appear for people in their constituencies before the Court of Referees. I see hon. Members before me who are very familiar with the practice of appearing for their constituents in courts of referees, and even before the umpire. We know that very often the constituent who is assisted in this way is someone whom the Member has not seen before, and is certainly not a relative. If these words were inserted, it would be very difficult for anyone to prove he was a personal friend. We all want to secure the right of the old age pensioner to have any advocate he pleases. No one is trying to cut down the class of people who may appear before this tribunal. The aim of the hon. Member in moving this Amendment is to make sure, as I said, that the old age pensioner shall have the right to take with him anyone he pleases to assist in the presentation of his case, and it seems to me that purpose would probably be achieved if no words of this kind were in the Bill at all.

Would it not meet the case if the word "personal" were left out?

I find it a little difficult to draw a distinction between a friend and a personal friend.

He may not be a personal friend. You have the term "friend" under military law.

The term in military law is "the prisoner's friend," but that word is used in an entirely different sense. I want the old age pensioner to have his rights secured to have anyone he pleases to present his case. I want him to be able to take along anyone he wishes to help him. Therefore, as I say, while I entirely sympathise with the Amendment, I hope that before the Bill becomes an Act the words will be considered by the Government.

I do not know that I can say anything in detail to the question raised by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Dundee (Mr. Foot). The question of the legal definition of "personal friend," or "friend" in the ordinary sense, is one on which I certainly am not capable of making a- pronouncement but may I say in answer to the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Ness Edwards) that there is in fact no difference between the Government and the Opposition on these words. The only difference which exists is in the matter of the place where these words should come. It is the opinion of the Government that the right place for them is no there but rather in the rules, and that when the rules governing the tribunal are drafted there shall appear in them a form of words, not necessarily but quite possibly, covering this point which is recognised as being an eminently reasonable thing.

I think the Minister has gone a long way to meet the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Ness Edwards), but the words are still left open to various interpretations. I have had experience, and I am sure some of my hon. Friends have had the same experience, of the words being interpreted in different ways. For example, we know many of the people who will be chairmen of these tribunals, and when dealing with old age pensioners and unemployed people we know in what atmosphere and in what spirit people will be dealt with. I therefore suggest, because the words are left open to various interpretations, that they should be reconsidered, and that it should be left beyond any doubt that a trade union representative or a representative of the local pensions committee of the trades council should have the right to appear irrespective of whether he satisfies the tribunal, and the chairman of the tribunal in particular.

It is because we have had difficulties of this character that we are concerned about the wording. People who have had to appear before courts of referees in the past, and other tribunals and committees of this character, know the lack of confidence that exists in tribunals in certain areas. It is therefore most essential that these words should be made more definite, and it should not be left to the chairman or to the tribunal to say whether the tri- bunal is satisfied. In my view every responsible trade union official or responsible representative of a local trades council ought to have the right to appear for old age pensioners irrespective of whether he satisfies the tribunals. I therefore hope the Minister will reconsider the words.

When the Unemployment Assistance Board matter was before this House the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Ness Edwards) will remember that he moved an Amendment to safeguard this point, and that Amendment, which was carried, has worked admirably, and at the present moment nobody is barred. What I would say to the Minister is that the present system works well, and I would like his guarantee that the present system will continue. Under the present practice, as I know it, practically nobody is barred. Therefore, if the Minister will say that the present system will continue, I think that will be quite satisfactory.

I think I can give that assurance.

In view of the assurances that have been given, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move, in page 8, line 35, to leave out Sub-section (3).

I shall be brief in moving this Amendment as I think the Minister knows the point we have in mind. We consider that the sub-section places arbitrary powers in the hands of an officer of the Board. It does not state whether the officer of the Board who is to make the report is to be a medical officer or not, and we consider that the provision is sufficiently wide to enable only an investigator to submita report which would enable the Board to refuse a supplementary pension to the applicant. The powers which it is sought to take in this sub-section are rather arbitrary powers, because the provision gives to the officer, whether he be a medical officer or only an investigating officer, together with the tribunal, the power to throw back upon the public assistance authorities the entire cost of maintaining these people. There are in the sub-section the words,

"become chargeable to any public assistance authority."

Therefore, I hope that the Minister, although he may not accept the Amendment to delete the sub-section—which I would prefer to do—will give a pledge that in another place some alteration will be made to meet the desire of the public assistance authorities of the country. It may be argued that the public assistance authorities are given rights of appeal. That is true, but we know how often the rights of appeal given to public assistance authorities prevail against an institution which is looked upon as being a national body and which is directly under the control of a Government Department. I trust that, now that the public authorities have been given a promise by the Government that they will be relieved of the cost of the supplementation they are now giving to the incomes of old age pensioners, the charge will be taken over entirely by the Government, and that the Government will take upon their shoulders the cost of supplementing any charge that may be made by any institution when an old age pensioner is placed in such an institution because he or she is considered to be mentally deficient, or incapable, owing to old age, of going about in a normal way, living among his or her friends, and living the ordinary life of an old age pensioner.

I beg to second the Amendment.

I am rather concerned about the provision which enables an officer of the Assistance Board to decide upon the bodily or mental condition of an applicant. It seems to me that it leaves rather too much power in the hands of the officer. I should have thought that the Minister would have wanted some competent medical authority to report upon the bodily or mental state of the person, and that that report should be in the hands of the Assistance Board officer when he deals with the tribunal. I do not think that such an extensive power should be left in the hands of an officer of the Board. I have had some experience of the practice of public assistance committees in deciding upon the mental or physical condition of an applicant for assistance. We have always insisted upon a competent medical man giving a report informing us whether or not it was in the person's own interest that he or she should enter an institution for a short or long time. I do not think it is desirable that this power should be given to an officer of the Assistance Board, and I should feel much easier if the sub-section insisted upon a medical report from a competent authority as to the bodily or mental state of the applicant.

I hope that the Minister will reconsider this sub-section. This is a matter which we discussed at great length in connection with the Scottish Poor Law, when power was being given for people to be placed in institutions. I would point out to hon. Members that a person does not need to go into an institution if he or she does not claim a supplementary pension. It is only when a person claims the supplementary pension that this question of bodily or mental condition arises. If a person is mentally unfit the law already contains provisions for dealing with that person. There is the power of certification. The second point I want to make is that, in dealing with people who are bodily or mentally unfit, they should not be dealt with as a class of old-aged pensioners. That is a problem which ought to be dealt with from the point of view of society as a whole.

Frankly, I fear the power that is contained in this sub-section. In Scotland there is a saying "over the hills," which means in an institution. It may be said that some of these old people are not quite capable of looking after themselves. That may be true, but one ought to be extremely careful before shifting an old woman from her home into an institution. I remember that my mother, when she was old, was not able properly to look after her home, and there was difficulty in getting help, but I know also that it would have ended her life earlier if she had been put into an institution. Whatever may be done, do not leave this matter to an official for investigation. He may be an excellent official for finding out facts, but he is not the sort of person to determine bodily or mental illness. It may be said that there is an appeal to the tribunal, but I submit that the tribunal is not a tribunal that is suitable to decide this matter. It may be an excellent tribunal in applying the means test or for finding out what is the income, but if is not suitable to decide this matter. In deciding this matter, much stronger steps ought to be taken than are taken in the sub-section to safeguard the interests of the old persons. To say that they have an appeal to the tribunal is to beg the question. A person who is mentally unfit really has no appeal because he is mentally incapable of making one.

Before power is taken to put these old persons in an institution, much more consideration should be given in the matter. The Glasgow Corporation, whatever faults they may have, have shown the way in this question. In Glasgow, they have established homes for the aged. There is no need to order old people into these homes, for they are clamouring to get in. The way is not to threaten them with institutional treatment, but to show them decent homes, to change the institution from an institution into a home. If that is done there will be no need for this power. I earnestly appeal to the Minister to modify this part of the Bill. It is a cruel thing to put this power in the hands of an official, particularly in the country districts, and I ask the Minister to reconsider the matter. If he cannot accept in full the Amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for Govan (Mr. Maclean), I ask him at any rate to insert additional safeguards. Do not leave the matter to the tribunal, and do not give this power to an official.

I should like to see the whole thing struck out, but if that is not to be done, then at least the medical officer of health of the local authority should be consulted, and also consultation should take place with the relatives, who might be able to find other accommodation for the old folk. I have referred to the local authorities in my native city and the efforts they are making. I think local authorities should be encouraged in their work, and instead of the pension being taken away, there should be some provision for the old folk. I hope the Minister will at least consider this point.

I would like to underline the appeal which has been made by the last speaker, and to call attention to another angle of the problem. If this power is left in the hands of the investigator or the representative, the first decision he makes in any village or town will so prejudice his work that he will be looked upon with repugnance and askance. His work will be prejudiced, however kind and friendly he is in assisting the aged people. Before anything is done along these lines the most careful consideration should be given to the matter. The idea of an officer having to question in his own mind whether an old person is mentally fit, even if he is right, seems to be trespassing on the powers already existing. The Chancellor of the Exchequer used in his argument cases to show how beneficient is this new scheme and quoted one which might be applicable to this discussion. He told the House of a bedridden old lady who had a daughter attending to her, and he showed that the pension and supplementation would be 23s. in the summer and 25s. in winter. An officer in some part of the country, coming across that type of case, might look at it in an entirely different way and say that the old lady should go into an institution. Before an officer makes a report to his tribunal, at least the members of the family should be approached before any attempt is made to have the applicant removed to an institution or a Poor Law home.

I would like to follow the last point made in the speech of the hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan). I am opposed to this subsection because it perpetuates what I regard as a somewhat pernicious system, that of differentiating between aged people going into institutions. If a person enters an institution as fit and healthy within the meaning of the Act, the old age pension is restored to the State, but if the person is a mental or sickness case, he is allowed to retain a proportion of the pension. I hoped, when the Minister introduced this Bill, having as its main background the removal of old age pensioners from the Poor Law, that he would make provision allowing pensioners entering institutions to retain a portion of their pension for pocket money. I am extremely disappointed to find that there is no such provision in the Bill.

My right hon. Friend's predecessor at the Ministry of Health was good enough to enable me to pass a private Member's Bill giving permissive powers to local authorities to provide pocket money to people who had reached the age of 65. It had to be a permissive Bill with the money provided out of the funds of the local authorities, because, as a private Member, I was debarred from putting the charge upon the State. The point I wish to emphasise is that the Government acquiesced in the principle and did not oppose my Bill, and Members of all shades of opinion in this House did not disagree with it. Ever since the Bill was passed local authorities have felt disinclined to take advantage of the permissive powers on the ground that the Government were not right in taking away from the old age pensioner the whole of the pension and putting the whole of the charge, subject, of course, to the block grants, on the local authorities. When I have inquired from the Association of Municipal Corporations and the County Councils Association, they have always said that they were advising local authorities not to take advantage of the provisions of my Bill because of this disagreement between the Ministry of Health and the local authorities.

May I ask, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, what we are discussing at this moment?

:I must confess that I was not quite certain about what the hon. lady was driving at and I hope she will confine herself to the Amendment before the House.

May I make the position plain, because I do not want to be out of Order, and, of course, I should not be able to make my speech if I were. At the top of page 9 of the Bill, in line 5, it says that an officer

"after receiving such a special report and affording to the applicant an opportunity of being heard, the tribunal may direct that the applicant shall cease to be eligible for a supplementary pension:"

It seemed to me, therefore, that I was in order in arguing that the same provision applying to a supplementary pension applies to an ordinary pension and that when anybody enters an institution his or her pension is deducted and presumably the supplementary pension too is to be taken away. I much regret that my right hon. Friend has not seen his way to remedy the anomaly to which I have drawn attention. As I have often said before, Ministers have frequently to defend a policy which has been enunciated behind the scenes by the Treasury. If it is the Treasury which is not allowing this anomaly to be remedied, all I can say is that the Treasury is setting itself up against the will of Parliament, because Parliament approved the principle of allowing old people in institutions to have pocket money. I hope my right hon. Friend will make a note of this point and let me know that when the Bill is passed and aged persons have been taken from the public assistance committee and become chargeable to the State, he will write to the local authorities and say, "I hope you will take advantage of the permissive powers to grant pocket money to old people in institutions." If in this Bill we are making a difference in the lives of people outside institutions, there is no reason why we should not add a little happiness to those who go into institutions.

May I add a word of appeal to the Minister following the realistic and almost pathetic appeal of the hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan)? We have to picture the position of these old people if they are to be subject to the kind of treatment provided for in this Clause. The assistance officer will go into their homes and will have to make up his mind about their condition. He may decide to take a case to the tribunal. We can all imagine what will happen there. An old person living in a working-class street will be taken before the tribunal, who will consider whether he is fit to remain at home. Whatever the decision of the tribunal, this procedure will be very harmful to the old people. I appeal to the Minister to try and realise how terrifying to them a piece of machinery like this might be. The Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary know old people as well as we do. As we get old I suppose we get less mentally capable. There are some of us who tend sometimes to get in a. difficult position mentally and physically and we realise that it needs a very sympathetic and understanding person to go into these homes and give the kind of consideration which the old people need.

Is the assistance officer the person to do it? He is the man who goes round to collect particulars of the income of a home, and is he the right type of man to prepare a report on the mentality of an old age pensioner? Is the tribunal the right type of body to consider whether he is mentally capable of continuing to live in his home? This is the wrong type of machinery altogether. It may, as the hon. Member for Gorbals said, become extremely dangerous. You might get an indiscreet officer and he might create no end of feeling in a district because of the unfortunate actions he had taken. I wish I could make an appeal as strongly on human grounds as the hon. Member for Gorbals did. I cannot, but I can see what will happen, and I beg the Minister to give fair consideration to the matter. Does he not think that, instead of a piece of machinery like this, the problem should be dealt with under the provisions of the Bill for dealing with the welfare of the old people? They might be dealt with much more sympathetically under those arrangements. We know the type of woman who would go into a home and who would even turn up her sleeves to lend a hand. That is the type of person who should go to these people when they are in distress.

For the public assistance officer to have to report on the mental condition of an old person is illegal and contrary to every action of the Board of Control. No assistance officer has the right to make a pronouncement on the mentality of any person, and no tribunal set up under this Bill has the right under Common Law to say that a person is mentally affected. All this machinery is, therefore, ultra vires. Even if it was operating and a pronouncement were made about the mental condition of an old age pensioner, even if it were accepted as a legal act, a medical man would have to come in. The patient might be so bad that he would have to be examined with a view to seeing whether he should be certified. The House will understand how terrifying a piece of machinery like that may be to the old people. The neighbours would say, "Old Tom Tomkins has been reported by the assistance officer as not being mentally fit to live in a home; he has gone balmy". That is what the assistance officer would say. It is a wretched expression, but it is used. In this Bill we are arriving at the stage when we are allowing lay people, people who are not carefully selected and who may not be discreet, to make reports of that kind. I cannot imagine that the Minister or the Government desire it to be done. Realising its possibilities, I beg the Minister to withdraw this machinery and allow the treatment of the old people to come under the provisions dealing with their welfare.

I cannot help thinking that this Sub-section must have crept in almost by accident. I cannot assume that the Minister, with his knowledge of the lunacy laws and his long experience could really have intended to modify those laws through the machinery of an old age pension Bill. There is adequate machinery for dealing with such cases and it would be very unfortunate if by this Sub-section we were to strike at the root of the protection which the present laws afford against any section of people, young or old, rich or poor, being dragged into contact with lunacy administration, the Board of Control and so on. For the last 50 years we have been building up safeguards to protect people from being certified, and this Sub-section would, I fear, undermine many of these safeguards. Without some more adequate explanation I feel that we should not risk accepting this Sub-section.

I have been connected with mental hospital work for 25 years, and for that reason I want to plead with all my power that we should save these old people from what is proposed. Their bodily or mental condition is to be judged by an official, it says. Let me recount a personal experience of my own. One day I was passing an office in Sunderland when out rushed a relieving officer—an official on the same lines as these officials, so far as knowledge of mental conditions is concerned. He said to me, "I want you to sign this" and showed me a paper. He said, "We want this woman sent away." I was chairman of the mental hospital, and he thought he had got the right man, but he had not. I said, "Where is the doctor?" He said, "He is playing golf, and I cannot get at him." I said, "I want two doctors, and also I want to see the friends of this woman." The son was there, a noble boy protecting his mother.

What were the facts? The woman had had a serious operation for kidney trouble. The Minister of Health, from his practical medical experience, will know what that means, and what effect it may have on a person's bodily and mental condition. They are interlocked; the mental state can affect the bodily condition just as the bodily condition can affect the mind. In this case the kidneys were affected. The woman had not altogether recovered and had been a bit of a nuisance—with her state of mind and her bodily affliction. It was no more than a high state of fever might produce, but they said the woman was mentally affected. Any human being would have been affected who had gone through that type of operation. I said, "Before you go further I want two doctors. Fetch the doctor back from his golf. Magistrate as I am, I am not going to be an instrument to help you or anybody else to send a purely sane person to an institution and to mark her as a mental case."

It is getting them out that is the trouble.

Yes, getting them out is a trouble [Interruption]. I do not want my hon. Friends to talk about people being "balmy." I do not like the expression, and no one who has been connected with mental institutions likes it. Apply it if you like to this House or to politicians, but not to decent people in institutions. I hope the Minister will listen to my appeal—whatever I may have said about his actions in the past because I know I protested against those three political moss troopers coming from Scotland to raid us. His ancestry is creeping through that smile of his. [Interruption]. I know they can sing "Bonnie Dundee." I appear to the Minister to realise that we should not allow any official to judge of a person's mental state. I have worked with experts for 25 years and know that we are getting so far ahead now that we are not shutting off men with dark shutters and pulling the blinds down on their lives; but here we have a Bill to say that an official is to be allowed to judge the mental state of some old man or woman whose bodily ailments may, for the moment, be affecting the mind.

There are always plenty of people ready to assist in sending other people into an institution, but not the same desire to get them out. We ought to protect these old people. We are all going towards the setting sun, and there is no man in this great hall, historic as it is, who may not be affected mentally at some time through bodily affliction. Scores of people today are worrying about their lads going to the front to fight the battles of this country, and who can say that their mental state may not be affected? As far as I can prevent it, I am not going to allow to be subjected to the provisions of a Subsection like this people who have to go through the great war of industry, through all the worry and toil of life. In the case I have referred to the official said to me, thinking he was doing his duty, "She is a bit of a nuisance in the institution." That was no fault of hers.

I appeal to the Minister to go back to his advisers, to go to the Board of Control, and they will tell him that no man in this county can be sent to an institution and have the hall mark of mental deficiency or insanity put upon him until certain precautions have been taken. Civil authorities like magistrates, who are absolutely independent of the person altogether, are consulted. Though we may be amateurish in our ways, we act with long experience, and we can examine the friends and associates of the person and then call in medical evidence. Magistrates have, thank God, often refused to sign these certificates, and in many cases they have been proved to be right and the experts wrong. In asking a man who is merely a machine to do this work we are doing that which is not only illegal but unjust, unfair and mean. It is giving an official too much power over another person's liberty. We should not leave them at the mercy of the word of an official who is paid to do his job as instructed.

On a point of Order. Is the Minister aware that an Act introduced by the Lord- Advocate was passed only last week safeguarding the rights of people in Scotland who suffer from mental deficiency? In that Measure it is laid down that there must be an independent doctor, the individual's family doctor and an official doctor—

The hon. Member is entitled to ask a question, but I must point out to him that he has exhausted his right to speak in this discussion.

I am asking a question on a point of Order. Does not the passing of that Act for Scotland render this Sub-section inoperative in Scotland?

This Sub-section raises a very important point. We are passing a Bill the object of which it to give supplementary pensions to aged people, in addition to what is called the statutory pension. In this Sub-section we say in effect to the pensioner, "Before you can get the supplementary pension, you must satisfy us as to your mental condition." When it was originally decided to give pensions, did anyone ever anticipate that one of the conditions of a grant of pension would be that a person had to satisfy a tribunal that he or she was in a fit mental condition? What will be the effect of such a condition? A person will go before the committee to ask for a pension. He will be liable to be asked whether he is mentally fit or not. Following on that, there will be an examination and, possibly, an appeal. What will be the result afterwards? When the man goes home and goes among his friends the stigma will attach to him all the time, that there is a doubt about his mental fitness.

What will be the effect, on other old age pensioners, who desire a supplementary pension, of the knowledge that they will be subject to such questions? We know that as we get on in life, few of us retain that physical and mental vitality which we had in youth or middle age. As we grow older we do not see things in the same light as we did before. Aged people who may be in need of a supplementary pension may ask themselves, "Is it worth the indignity of being subjected to an examination as to whether I am mentally fit or not?" This will have the effect of preventing people applying who might, in other circumstances, have applied for supplementary pensions.

I wonder whether the House fully realises the implications behind this Subsection. I wonder whether the Minister himself realises them. When I read the Bill I could not understand why this provision had been put into it at all. I always understood that there were certain methods under the law of dealing with people who showed signs of mental affliction. Why should that matter be emphasised in this Bill? Is it the Minister's intention to save some of the money which is being forced out of him and which is being so grudgingly given? If that is the intention, I dare say this Sub-section will do what he has in mind, because it will save a vast amount of money by the effect which it will have on the applicants. But, whatever else may happen, whatever modifications the Minister may offer to make, unless he is prepared to take out this Sub-section entirely, I, for one, shall oppose it and I shall ask my hon. Friends to go into the Division Lobby against it. We have put up with that enough in connection with this Bill. We have given away point after point. This is the final point, and I am determined that we shall not give way upon it. If this Bill has to go through the House of Commons in its present form, at least let us remove from it this lunacy provision—because it is nothing less than that—to which we propose to subject these aged people.

Which of us would like to be treated in this way in similar circumstances? We have in this House a pensions scheme financed out of our own money. I can see the time coming when I may have to ask for a pension and I do not see why, in that case, I should not be subject to the same kind of treatment as the people with whom we are dealing in this Bill. The committee in charge of those pensions might call me before them and ask me whether I was mentally right or not. Some of them might be glad of the chance of telling me what they think about me. But if we subject the poorer section of the community to this kind of treatment, we should subject ourselves to it also. If we are to pass this Bill, let us at least take away this stain from it and remove a provision which calls upon these poor people to show that they are not mentally afflicted.

I desire to strengthen, if I can, the appeals which have been made to the Minister by my hon. Friends. I ask the Minister to give this question his most serious consideration. The first point I put to him is that this Bill does not deal with all old age pensioners but only with the poverty-stricken section of pensioners who are compelled to seek supplementation. It is the people who, because of dire poverty and distress, have to seek supplementation, who are being asked to show whether they are in their right minds or not. The Minister knows from his experience that among old people there are many who may be termed peculiar. An old person, perhaps as the result of some unfortunate past experience, may have a certain "kink" in one respect, while being otherwise a perfectly normal person.

I can give the Minister an instance. A very old woman who lost her son in the last war walked daily for five years to the military barracks nearest her home and asked the sentry, "Have you any word of my Jimmy yet?" The lad had been posted as missing and this poor old lady, affected in that one respect but in no other, made that inquiry every day for five years She was peculiar if you like, but under any system of justice she did not deserve either to be put into a mental institution or to be penalised if she applied for a supplementary pension. There is a large class, some of whom could be termed obstinate and some of whom have what is called "single-track" minds. No one knows better than public assistance officers and members of public assistance committees the great restraint that is needed in dealing with them and the great necessity for more that ordinary guidance and care for those people.

The Minister himself, in the normal course of events, will grow old, and the Minister has placed this Sub-section in the Bill. Suppose when he is an aged man he appears before some tribunal, the members of which I hope will be sufficiently educated to see the disgrace that attaches to this Sub-section. Suppose they say to him, "As a Minister you must have been mad to have said in a Clause that when poor persons ask for supplementary aid, a man with no knowledge of mental law or mental diseases, a man completely unequipped, an official whose real duty is that of making inquiries in other directions, shall have the power to send aged people into an institution because of their mental condition." I say to the Minister in all seriousness that if he insists on this particular Sub-section and presses it to a Division to-day knowing full well that the majority of hon. Members on the other side are absent and do not know the exact implications of this Sub-section, he will be committing one of the greatest pieces of injustice we have ever seen in the House.

There are other points to which I desire to refer, but before I depart from this question of mental condition I would say this. In the past public assistance authorities have incurred very great expense in connection with those people who were, shall we say, difficult and some obstinate. The Clause states:

"The tribunal may direct that the applicant shall cease to be eligible for a supplementary pension."

I ask the Minister to indicate in his reply what exactly happens to the old age pensioner who has applied for supplementary relief. To-day public assistance authorities meet with very difficult cases. It may be decided that a man shall go to an institution, but if he refuses to go to an institution, as the law stands to-day the public assistance authority must still give him his benefit and give him what he requires. If they refuse, their public assistance officers can be arraigned in the court. What is to happen to one of those old fellows who has been independent all his days, or one of those old ladies who feels that entering into an institution is the last word in degradation, if they refuse? Is the Minister going to throw them back on to the public assistance authority? Will they have to meet the extra expense? What does the Minister intend to do in order to recompense the public assistance authority for any such action?

I will now pass to another part of this Clause which shows that this class of aged person is to be sneered out of existence. Here we have the case of a man who applies for supplementary relief. He is examined and an officer of the Board sends in a report about him. This officer must report to the public assistance authority that he is taking such a course. Then, in accordance with this Clause, if the public assistance authority desire to fight the man's case, to see that he gets fair play, or if they want to protect the interests of their own local authority or if they desire to protect themselves from having a large number of aged persons swept into the institutions and kept there on local rates instead of by national funds, if they desire to make representations, what steps is the Minister taking to see that every encouragement will be given to the local authority to make those representations?

Will he recompense them for any expenditure in which they will be involved? Particularly where there is a big aged problem, they must have some expenditure. If the Minister does not make arrangements such as that you will have an aged person who has been the victim of such a report falling into a clash between the Board and the public assistance authority. As an aged man, he will be pitied very much, but as to the responsibility for keeping him in comfort there will be a continual clash and a continual fight. If an aged person is removed to an institution, if the tribunal decide and the public assistance authority agree, who is to keep this person? Is he to be passed back to the public assistance authority? That leaves an opening for some of the things that have happened in the past; it leaves an opening for a circular to be issued. I have met old men of 83 and 89 doddering along in their quaint old ways whom I consider to be peculiar and funny; they have certain set ideas in their heads, certain objections to things which to many of us appear to be sensible, but who under no law of justice could be sent to a mental institution. They are harmless, doddering old fellows. What will happen to them? Is the Minister going to say, "You will be swept back to the public assistance authorities, but an opening will be left for secret sub-departmental circulars to be issued saying that men over 80 or 85 should be transferred"?

Apart from Clause 8, this is the most dangerous and reactionary Clause in this Bill. It is a Clause which drives the poorest section of the old people down into the dirt, a Clause which the Minister could not defend before a single soldier who is defending the liberty of these people. It could not be defended except by a party who are putting in something they know nothing about. I ask the Minister at least to give us a full statement on this question, and before he asks his own Members to vote on this Clause I ask him to inform them fully of the results of the Clause and not to commit the greatest injustice of all by lining up his Members behind him in the Division Lobby against the aged people who cannot defend themselves except by minority representatives in the House.

I have listened with great interest to the Debate this afternoon, and I think that the difficulty in which hon. Members find themselves is that we are really debating on leaving out Sub-section (3) without taking into account fully the Amendments that have been placed on the Paper, many of which deal with this particular point. The Debate has taken place in general on Sub-section (3), and I think hon. Members have somewhat overlooked one or two of the points which I should like now to recall to the House before they finally decide.

Let us first be clear about it. There is no question here of putting people into institutions. [An HON. MEMBER: "The power is there."] No, that idea, I think, has led hon. Members a little astray. There is no power to put anybody into an institution. [An HON. MEMBER: "There is power to supplement."] That is different from the argument advanced in the very powerful speech of the hon. Member for Durham (Mr. Ritson), that nobody should have power to hale away an old person and put him or her into an institution. The hon. Member rightly said that not one doctor but two doctors would be necessary for that. The tendency nowadays is to keep people out of institutions, and to do everything possible to preserve their sanity, instead of giving them a little push, as it were, to tilt the balance towards insanity, by throwing doubts on their mental stability. That argument is not really raised here. Nobody, under this Clause, has any power to put anybody into an institution; and, therefore, the argument of the hon. Member for Durham and of the hon. Baronet the Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris) falls. But I do not deny that the question arises as to whether the payment of a supplementary pension should be made or withheld. There is a great difference between saying that you have the power of putting a person into an institution and saying that you have the power to grant or not grant money.

One of the chief arguments is that the Board officer is not qualified even to report on the mental condition of the old age pensioner.

The words in the Clause are:

"the appeal tribunal should consider whether it is in the interests of the, applicant that he should become an inmate of an institution."

Yes, but the first point I wish to establish is that neither the tribunal nor anyone else has the power, under the Bill, to commit anyone to an institution. The hon. Member for Durham has great experience in these matters, having been connected with this kind of work for 25 years. His argument dealt with the danger of somebody being put into an institution by some procedure which was not the procedure recognised by the law at present, and, as a result, losing the full rights of a citizen of this country. But I am now dealing with the question of payment or non-payment of money, and not of whether people should be put into institutions or not. I am sure the House is with me so far. We come to the next point, as to whether the procedure of a report on the pensioner's mental condition is an appropriate procedure to embody in this Clause. I do not think anybody would deny that some sort of review of the kind has always fallen upon our relief machinery, in that the public assistance committees themselves have such power.

That is a good admission. It is the power behind the Clause that we are concerned about.

I am not trying to run away from anything. I am drawing the attention of the House to the fact that in analogous cases the authority has had power to consider whether or not, in the applicant's own interest, he should be in an institution. Here, again, I am in a dilemma. We all remember the rather sudden storm which blew up on the question of welfare. Hon. Members on the back benches opposite pressed me strongly to say that welfare should form part of the objects of the Board. I accepted that view, and brought forward an Amendment, and was then attacked by the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson), who spoke very strongly about the evils that might arise owing to "the Tory party smiling upon the poor." I have to choose between the desire that we all have, that old age pensioners should be protected to the greatest possible extent, and the conflicting desire that the welfare of these old persons should be considered. The hon. Member for Ponty-pool (Mr. Jenkins) suggested that we might bring these cases under the welfare provisions of the Act, rather than under the part dealing with payments. I should like to examine that.

It is a public health matter.

Yes, but the hon. Member will not deny that the Debate has taken place on the suggestion that this sub-section should be left out altogether. I am the only Member of the House who has put down Amendments on the point that we are considering. One of those Amendments I am sure the Committee would be quite willing to accept. That is the proposal that the officer should consult with the appropriate officer of the authority in the applicant's area, and that he may, after such consultation, make a special report.

I have an Amendment down to provide that the report shall be based on medical evidence.

It is true that the hon. Member has such an Amendment on the Paper, but that would not get us away from the difficulty that it is undesirable to import, as a compulsory matter, medical evidence into the question of the payment of pensions. Hon. Members opposite desire that pensions should be paid as a matter of right, and that supplementation should be given without too much investigation. I hoped that the House would go so far with me as to accept the Amendment that I have put down, because it goes some distance towards meeting the point which has been made.

In view of the discussion in Committee, will the right hon. Gentleman give a pledge to bring forward an Amendment in another place that will meet our point?

There is some uncertainty arising from the wording of the right hon. Gentleman's Amendment. Some of my hon. Friends feel that

"the appropriate officer of the public assistance authority"

may mean the medical officer of health. Whom does it mean?

The appropriate officer would be, of course, the officer whom the authority itself considered to be the appropriate officer. If it thought that the medical officer of health was the appropriate officer, the officer of the tribunal would have to consult with him. We must presume that the authority would exercise its discretion in the most suitable way. Consultation with the relatives is extremely desirable, and indeed essential, and further, there is the danger of saying, or allowing it to be said, in any small village or valley, such as the hon. Member for Durham and I know so well, that the case of so-and-so is being inquired into because of his possible mental infirmities. To find some way in which we can meet the House on such points as this is not an easy task, but, at the same time, so anxious am I to meet the House in this matter that I will undertake to review the matter before the Bill becomes law and to consider it in another place and see whether words more particularly relating to welfare could be inserted at this pont, and whether we could omit altogether words, such as "mental condition" which I can easily see might cause a great deal of heart-burning in local and small communities. If the House will accept that assurance, I will certainly give it most readily and try to carry it out in the spirit in which this discussion has taken place.

May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether any words at all are necessary? The existing machinery may well deal with the situation. It does so now, and all these Sub-sections might very well be withdrawn and indeed the whole of the proposed scheme might be withdrawn entirely from the Bill. If they were, there would still be the existing machinery to deal with cases of mental illness, even of persons who applied for a supplementary pension. I beg of the Minister not to associate the supplementary pension with any words that will create any machinery to inquire into the mental condition of the applicant.

Is there not an obvious unfairness in the fact that the money is not granted to a person until the case has been decided by the Appeal Tribunal? Surely it is only elementary justice that at least the money payments ought to be made until the Appeal Tribunal has decided the case.

I am advised that the hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan) is not accurate in his reading of the Bill on that point. My reading of it—and naturally I am willing to discuss it with him—is that nothing can be taken away until the Appeal Tribunal has so decided.

The right hon. Gentleman has missed my point. A person is not getting the money, and he applies for it, and it is refused. In that case the money could not be payable until after the Tribunal had met.

The application for supplementary pension cannot be granted in any case until the application has been heard and decided. It is not only so in this case, but it covers any application. The pension cannot be granted until the case has been considered. With regard to the point raised by the hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. Jenkins), I think there is a difference here between the power of the Board and the power of the local authority. The Board does not have the institutions that the local authority has, and it certainly will not be my desire, or the desire of any Member of the House that the Board should set up institutions for the treatment of such cases. But there are occasions when cases will arise where it was desirable that a person should go into an institution, and some machinery will be necessary to deal with them, but, subject to that, I hope that the House will be willing to accept the undertaking that I have given.

I certainly hope that my hon. Friends will not accept the offer made by the Minister with regard to the Amendment. I have refrained from taking part in these Debates not because I have no special interest in the Bill and am not profoundly dissatisfied with the provisions of the Bill, but I have felt that there were Members of the House who had much more intimate knowledge of the subject than myself. But on this particular matter I would like to enter my own personal protest against this Sub-section. The Minister of Health in his last speech said that this Sub-section does not give power to put people into institutions. It gives power to certain officials to make inquiries as to whether those people should or should not be put into institutions, with the result that they are immediately stigmatised by people as persons who are perhaps not quite mentally fit and it would be better for them to be in an institution. But what is more important is that it means if they do not agree to go into an institution, they will be refused the supplementary pension. May it not be a definite proof of the sanity of these people if they refuse to go into these institutions?

This Clause is one of the worst Clauses of the whole Bill. The Minister has from time to time during the course of these Debates said that he has attempted to make concessions to the other side. I fail to see any generosity in the few concessions that he has made. I submit that if this Clause is an expression of the welfare treatment that is to be meted out to the old age pensioners, then the less of this kind of welfare they have the better. It is fundamentally wrong that these poor people, in the declining years of their life, and at the present time when they are being additionally tormented by the fact that their relatives are possibly in the fighting line, should be subjected to a form of persecution into their private and mental affairs. If they have not an adequacy of money at the present time with which to maintain themselves, they ought to be given that money irrespective of whether they are mental or otherwise.

The point I want to make is that this part of the Pensions Bill does not give to these aged people any additional comfort or assistance, but it brings into their lives an inquiry into their mental and bodily afflictions which will not only be distasteful but will reflect upon them. I do not understand how the Minister of Health could have permitted such a Clause to be put into this Bill without any safeguards whatever. The safeguard which he himself has suggested, and which, I gather, he will propose if the Clause still remains a part of the Bill, in my view, does not mitigate in any shape or form the seriousness of the implications of the Clause. I do not want to weary the House at this late hour with any additional comments, except to say that I want to make my protest against the Bill, and that I shall have the greatest possible pleasure in voting that this subsection be rejected.

I listened with care to the Minister's defence of this Sub-section, and I think it must have been perfectly clear to all who were present that he had been considerably affected by the speeches of my hon. Friends behind me. He promised carefully to consider such emendations of machinery as will tend to reduce the unpleasant features which are inherent in the Sub-section. Though we appreciate his motives and intentions, we are very doubtful whether he can, while retaining the substance of the subsection, really remove the most unpleasant and unfortunate features of its actual working. It has been pointed out that he will be taking this to a vote in the absence of nearly all those upon whose support he will be counting. The great bulk of his supporters are absent. I cannot help thinking that, if the House had been in full attendance while this was being discussed, there would have been expressed the feeling which we have all experienced that there are very grave dangers in the Sub-section. We shall certainly vote against it, and I hope the Minister will take very seriously to heart, if he carries it to victory, as I suppose he will if he insists upon it, the criticisms which have been made and, if he cannot withdraw the whole proposition, will at any rate amend it as considerably as he possibly can.

I should like to say a further word on the financial aspect. It was to have been raised on an Amendment which I understand is likely to be ruled out of Order. It seems to me to be a rather curious anomaly,,if I understand the Sub-section aright, that a tribunal on behalf of the Assistance Board shall have the power to push off a man from its charge on to the local authority. I am quite aware that, even as the law stands at present, when a local authority takes a man into an institution the liability for providing him with an ordinary pension, which up to that time fell on the Exchequer, is removed from the Exchequer and the local authority has to bear the whole brunt of the man's keep. I have always thought that a rather unfair provision, but, at any rate, it is made on the initiative of the local authority. But, if the provision in this Sub-section is carried into effect, it will be done on the initiative of the Assistance Board. An Assistance Board which is asked for a supplementary pension says the man would be much better if he were put into, an institution, and, if that contention prevails, it will be disposing of its liability for a supplemenary pension, it will be disposing of its liability for a pension and throwing the whole burden of the upkeep of the man on to the local authority. I am not going to suggest that officers of the tribunal will so abuse their power that they will, quite without cause, get rid of a man in order to save their pockets, but surely it is an anomaly that a decision by one set of people shall enable them to part with a liability and hand it on to someone else. That being so, I wonder whether I am interpreting the Sub-section correctly or whether it is in any way possible to read Sub-section (3) with Sub-section (1), because Sub-section (1) specifically says that a supplementary pension can be paid to some other person than the applicant himself.

I am wondering whether the Minister possibly intends to interpret Sub-section (3) in the light of Sub-section (1) and, if a supplementary pension is not going to be paid to this man because he is going into a public institution, whether it is their intention under Sub-section (1) that the supplementary pension should still be paid out of the funds of the Assistance Board and handed over to the local authorities. If that is not his intention, and I am afraid it is not, I think the local authorities have a grievance in the matter. The right hon. Gentleman said that the Assistance Board is not actually putting the man into a local authority institution. That, of course, is technically and literally true, but if a man is in such a position that he cannot live without a supplementary pension, which he has hitherto been getting in the form of public assistance, and if he is now getting it from the local authority and makes application to the assistance board and they say, "You cannot have a supplementary pension be-

I want the Minister to know exactly what he is doing. This is not a question of something which might happen. It is happening every day. He said the power is not there to force an individual into an institution. I grant that the power is not there on the part of the officer to sign a paper which will confine him to an institution. The only way our people can be got into an institution is by refusing them the right to live outside and, if money is refused, the only place they have to go to is the institution. I can give half a dozen cases of people who have gone for assistance and been offered inside relief. Let us be honest and straight about it. To talk about welfare, when you are casting people into institutions at the same time, is to talk about two things that do not run together. You never put a person into an institution for his welfare; you put him there for the welfare of the community. That is the idea behind this whole business and I hope that we will not only divide against it but let it be known in the country that the people responsible for imposing these conditions on the old folk are the National Government.

I beg to move, in page 8, line 41, after "report," to insert "based on medical evidence."

The main point of the Amendment is that any report of an official should be based on medical evidence.

I beg to second the Amendment.

:I will certainly look into that aspect of the matter and see how medical evidence can best be made use of. I do not think it would be advisable to insert words in the Bill because it might mean a compulsory medical examination.

In view of that assurance, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move, in page 9, line 22, at the end, to insert:

"(4) In the last foregoing subsection the expression 'appropriate officer' means in relation to any public assistance authority such officer as may have been named by that authority to the Board, or, if no such officer has been so named, a relieving officer of that authority,"

On a point of order. May I ask if it is not intended to call on my Amendment—in page 9, line 22 at the end, to insert:

"(c) any costs, medical or otherwise, incurred by a public assistance authority under paragraphs (a) and (b) of sub-section (3) shall be met by the Board;

(d) any public assistance authority to which a person has been made chargeable by direction of the aforesaid tribunal shall be entitled to such pension and supplementation as would normally be granted to the person so transferred."

My business is to see that an Amendment moved on the Report stage does not increase the charge on the ratepayers to a greater extent than when the Bill left Committee. I am afraid this Amendment might do so, and therefore it is out of Order.

May I submit that Clause 10, which is a Government Clause, states that if it is considered that the whole or any part of the supplementary pension granted should be issued to some other person, the officer or tribunal may determine that it shall be so issued, and shall specify the name of that person in the determination. My point with regard to that is, could a public assistance authority to whom has been transferred the responsibility of maintaining this person by the Board not be termed the other person in accordance with this Clause? A second point is this: At present an applicant falls between two stools if he refuses to go into an institution. Normally the applicant to the Board would be entitled to a supplementary pension. My Amendment says:

"shall be entitled to such pension and supplementation as would normally be granted to the person so transferred."

That is, the person already coming within the ambit of the financial expenditure is transferred, and another authority gets what the Board normally would be paid for him. Could that be termed an increase of expenditure?

My business is not to see whether it would increase the charge, but whether it might increase it. In the case of a transferring from one authority to another, that in itself would make it out of Order on the Report stage as it might transfer the charge from the taxes on to the rates.

Actually in accordance with the law to-day this does not increase the charge on the rates as it stands in the Bill. The cost cannot be avoided. If the Assistance Board does not bear the cost of these old people, then under the law the public assistance authority must, because it is the duty of the relieving officer not to allow a person to die, otherwise he is liable to proscution in a criminal court. I suggest with great respect there can be no increased charge in this. It is simply a question which authority is going to bear it. Under the law the Assistance Board would bear it normally. When a person is ordered into an institution and refuses to go, the charge is transferred to the local authority. The suggestion in the Amendment is that the charge should be retained on the Assistance Board.

The Amendment might transfer the charge from the rates on to the taxes, and therefore, it would not be in Order on the Report stage.

:I understand your Ruling to be that the Amendment might increase the cost to the Exchequer. May I draw your attention to the fact—

That is one point. The other point is the one to which I last referred, that the Amendment might transfer the charge from the rates on to the taxes and that would make it out of Order on the Report stage.

All the remaining Amendments on the Order Paper are out of Order as they would increase the charge.