Orders of the Day — Ministry of Pensions.

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 31 July 1919.

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Photo of Mr William Graham Mr William Graham , Edinburgh Central

Hon. Members will agree that there is no difference of opinion between us as to the object we have in view. What has occurred really is a competition in our constructive criticism to try to help, and not to hinder, the work of this great public Department. It is in that spirit that I wish to address a few practical criticisms to the Minister of Pensions. I am glad to think that, to some minor extent, some of us were associated with a scheme for the decentralisation of war pensions administration in this country. We realised almost from the outset, what the right hon. Gentleman and all those who have worked on war pensions committees have realised, that a very large amount of the unrest and dissatisfaction are due not so much to the terms of the Warrant, or even to the scale of the pensions which were in operation, inadequate as they were, but to the weakness and inefficiency of the administration. Very large numbers of both voluntary and paid workers rendered all the help in their power, but they were defeated, largely by a system which was wrong from the roots. Now we have arrived at the establishment ment of regional districts throughout the country. I desire to press this point very strongly on the Minister: that if these regional districts are going to be efficient, we shall have to depend to a large extent on the efficiency of the unit, the local war pensions committee. As long as the War lasted we had the advantage of a large number of voluntary workers. For various reasons, many of which are not within their control, they are now giving up their services, and we shall require to rely in many districts more and more on paid help. Most unfortunately, just when we have reached this stage of decentralisation of war pension administration, we are confronted with the fact that many of the local war pensions committees, even where they have a paid staff of some experience, are not familiar with the ordinary rules and regulations of the Department. One would imagine that at this hour there could be very little doubt or difference of opinion regarding such a thing as the administration of the childless wife's allowance. There were conditions as to inability, from the point of view of physique, for work or employment, but those conditions were modified, and I think I am correct in saying that at the present time either inability to work, or the fact that the applicant has been unaccustomed to work, or mere failure to find employment, is sufficient to entitle an applicant to this 6s. 6d. extra where no separation allowance is available beyond the rate for a soldier who is without children. While those facts are plain, it is true, not so much in the country districts as in some of the large urban centres, that perfectly unreasonable questions are put to these applicants, and in many eases the grant is being refused or withheld on grounds that the Ministry itself could never sanction.

For example, without giving details of towns, one large local war pensions committee actually required an applicant to fill up an additional form which had reference to a local fund, before they agreed to pay the 6s. 6d. per week. Other committees have asked questions regarding allowances, the general circumstances of the home, and have even inquired into character and so forth. That, I think, can hardly be justified. For this state of affairs I am not blaming the Ministry in any way, still less do I blame some of the paid workers of the local war pensions committees. They have not had great experience of this class of work. On the other side, it is impossible for a large Ministry responsible for thousands, it may be hundreds of thousands of cases, to keep an eye on occurrences of that kind. I am quite content at the moment to take the facts as they are and to try to point to a line of remedy. We have the first remedy in the establishment of the regional district. We have made the Regional Director the Minister of Pensions for the area over which he presides. He is going to rely on the local war pensions committee for the efficiency of his work, and my respectful suggestion is that it may be worth while to apply in the districts throughout the country the device you have adopted at headquarters in London, and to instruct the workers, paid and voluntary, in the regulations and the whole range of duties they have to undertake. That should be possible. Having instructed the workers, the next step would be to make absolutely certain that all applicants and would-be applicants were made fully aware of the terms and the allowances to which they are entitled either under the War Office or under the regulations of local war pensions committees. I think most Members will agree that it is extraordinary, after nearly five years of war and two or three years of war pensions administration on the lines we are now discussing, that it should be possible for any dependant of a soldier to write and ask us if she is entitled to sickness allowance, yet within quite recent days I and other Members have had letters asking such questions. Perhaps a great deal of blame does attach to the, applicant under these circumstances, but at the moment I have more particularly the rural district in mind. I know that in many of these country districts there are not the facilities for bringing within the reach of applicants a general knowledge of the regulations. I know that the Ministry has attempted a very great deal in bringing the benefits to the notice of the people, but probably the hour has come when we should try to put in a very simple form, for the benefit of all concerned, exactly what they are entitled to under local war pension committee regulations, so that there may be no doubt on the point, and to place that information in centres which they are in the habit of using every day, perhaps every hour of most days, in the localities in which they reside.

Very briefly I desire in the second place to call attention to a very hard class of ease which has come under the notice of all who are engaged in war pensions administration. I refer to that class of case where a pension has been refused to the discharged man himself, or has been refused to a dependant of the discharged man after he has died. Let me give a case in Edinburgh which came under our notice a few days ago. Two years ago a soldier who had rendered very distinguished service in the War was invalided out. It was held afterwards that he had fully recovered from the illness which caused his discharge. Within quite recent times he fell again in ill-health, from a different disease from the one for which he was discharged, and as a result of a very few days attack he passed away, leaving a widow and five young children. The controversy with the Ministry of Pensions then started. I am making no accusation at all, because I can claim to have received a very large measure of consideration at its hands. The Ministry ruled that the illness from which that discharged man died could not in any way be associated either with the illness for which he was discharged or with the service that he had rendered in the War, and the effect of that service upon his health. Against that I put the certificate of a very eminent medical man in Edinburgh, the considered verdict of one of the most outstanding men in his profession, that that discharged man could have resisted the disease with which he was attacked, but for the fact that during his period of service his health had been undermined by the other illness he had incurred, and he was not able to fight this new attack. The present position of that case is this, that except for anything that may be done to the extent of a few shil- lings per week, that widow and her five children, all under fourteen years of age, have to face the future under the darkest and unhappiest possible auspices. The only possible course under existing conditions, unless some friend is forthcoming, for that widow and children is to rely upon the Poor Law for such allowances as are afforded under the Scottish Poor Law administration. I need hardly remind hon. Members that so carefully do we guard our money North of the Tweed that anything she may receive will in no way maintain her and her five children. That seems a very hard and very unjust position. I know that according to the rules of the Department the case may be excluded, although I hope still that it is not beyond the reach of agreement. I want to impress upon, the Parliamentary Secretary the fact that even one case of that kind happening in the locality where the woman resides, and where they knew the man in health and strength at work, and the fact that the woman and her children are compelled to turn to the Poor Law, is sufficient to hinder and to hamper the best activity of a local war pensions committee in that area.

9.0 p.m.

I have had rather hard experiences in these matters, but I have no desire to inflict my personal experiences on the House. The right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Barnes) happens to know that I was responsible for the very large part of this work in the City of Edinburgh, and in the light of that experience I do press most strongly upon the Ministry the consideration that the time has come when within the machinery of war pensions regulations we must establish a compassionate Department of the Ministry or a Department under another name, by which cases of that kind can be considered. I know that it is utterly impossible to frame any Warrant or any set of regulations which will meet all the conditions and all the cases which will arise. It would be idle for anybody to attempt that task when we know that, having made all allowances for elasticity, there will still be the cases of undeniable hardship. Let us try to relegate those cases to a sympathetic Department which will consider them upon their merits and give a Grant under some head, in order that the widow and children of men who have died in the service of the country may not be penalised. Another consideration which I desire to advance is in reference to a very important point raised by the Minister in his introductory speech. We in the South and East of Scotland and, indeed, throughout Scotland generally, have lost a very large part of our population within recent years by emigration to Canada and other parts of the world. That is true also—although, perhaps, not so acutely—of England and Wales. Those men went to Canada and established homes, and many of them married, and many were unmarried men who were rapidly piling up wealth and prosperity in the Dominions beyond the seas. Not forgetting their relatives at home, they made allowances from week to week or from month to month till the commencement of the War, when they joined the Canadian or other forces. A very large number of those men have, unfortunately, fallen in action, leaving those dependent parents behind on this side. Where the dependants were wives they were covered, up to recent times, by the Canadian War Pensions Regulation. Where they were dependants of single men who had served from Canada they were covered by the allowances made. But a very large number of aged parents remained. The aged parents of married sons in Canada, although they depended in many ways to a material extent upon those sons, were refused any allowance under the Canadian War Pensions Regulations, and it was ruled—because we discussed the matter with the Ministry here—that they were not entitled to anything tinder our British Warrants or under what was provided by the local war pensions committees. Quite recently, I am glad to think, there has been some modification of that very harsh and unjust rule by the Canadian pension authorities, but may I mention that the consideration is not yet in any way adequate, nor does it meet the acute and growing needs of those people because of their age at the present time. I would respectfully suggest that it is well worth the consideration of the Ministry of Pensions whether it should not embark on a kind of unified or uniform policy with the Canadian War Pensions Department and with the war pension authorities of other parts of the British Empire, and make it absolutely certain that, if these dependants are not provided for under one set of Regulations, that they will be fully covered under another.

Let me allude to one or two aspects of the disablement scheme. The training for new occupations has been transferred to the Ministry of Labour, but the duty of providing treatment, which is the preliminary to that training, remains with the Ministry of Pensions. I desire to pay all possible tribute to the work which the Ministry of Pensions has done in this respect, and also to the very large amount of ground which has been overtaken by the joint disablement committees throughout the country. There are, however, one or two difficulties which, despite that activity, we have not succeeded in solving. There is, first of all, the difficulty of providing treatment for the neurasthenics. A very large number of men have been discharged in various stages of neurasthenia as a result either of their experience in France in the firing line or of the hardship through which they have passed. In many cases that neurasthenia was in the incipient or initial stage when they left the Colours, and was not even apparent to the medical men who examined them; but the minute those men are up against the hard grind of daily toil, or the noise of the factory or the workshop, and came back to industrial conditions, neurasthenia or nerve trouble commenced to manifest itself in their lives. So far the disablement committees have afforded help and established centres for its treatment, but I have come, with some regret and hesitation, to the conclusion, in the light of experience in the South-east of Scotland, that we are probably on the wrong lines in trying to treat neurasthenia on what I may call the principle of association—that is, gathering comparatively large numbers of neurasthenics under one roof and treating them there in a kind of colony. The very same criticism applies, and, I think, with far more emphasis, to the case of epileptics. In point of fact, our efforts in that direction absolutely broke down, because we could not get the patients to remain together, and we had to abandon the whole business more or less in deep despair. Now, the difficulty and drawback of this associated treatment is this, that, while it may apply to mild neurasthenia, it is just about the worst thing we could devise for the advanced cases of neurasthenia, because, when these men are herded together—I do not use that phrase offensively—under one roof, ray experience in disablement-scheme work has been that they immediately start to interchange views on their troubles and their anxieties, and one depressed or gloomy man in that colony has the effect of para- lysing the efficient treatment, even from the medical point of view, of quite a large number of his fellows.

May I make this suggestion, with all respect, to the Ministry? Let them try to devise a system of boarding out, so to speak, the worst cases of neurasthenia. I would like to see these men placed either on farms or with people in the rural districts up and down the country, where they would have the benefit of the association of only a small number of people, and that number of people happy and healthy and generous in outlook. At the same time, let us try to give them the benefit of employment in the kind of conditions I have tried to picture, and we shall find that we are doing far more to effect their recovery than we are doing now by comparatively expensive institutions, no matter how perfect and how thoroughly up-to-date these may be. That applies to the advanced case of the neurasthenic. With reference to the mild case, I should suggest, as I also suggest for the cases of incipient consumption, the wide extension of convalescent treatment on the lines recommended in the Report of the Committee which has inquired into this matter. I believe it would be one of the soundest investments for the Ministry of Pensions as this time to devote its activity as far as it possibly can to the prevention of the disease rather than to its cure after it has emerged, and the value of that convalescent treatment for these men who are on the border-line of their discharge at the present time would be this, that we could take them for one month or two months per annum out of their employment and give them the benefit of the fresh air and the healthy surroundings of a convalescent colony of the kind I have mentioned, and we should find by doing that, that either the neurasthenia, in many cases, or the consumption itself would be arrested or cured, and that investment of public money, which could be used also for the civilian population, would be the means of preventing the expenditure later in the day of very large sums when, I regret to think from rather hard and painful experience, many of these cases arc beyond our cure and care. I feel that, perhaps, I have detained the Committee at undue length, but these are very important considerations, as they seem to me, in war pensions administration. I desire, before resuming my seat, to congratulate the Minister on the very large measure of success he has achieved in the concessions announced. I respectfully appeal to him to back up that success with equal success in the sphere of curative effort, and I can assure him, from the standpoint of the local war pensions committees throughout the country, that if that policy, broad, generous, statesmanlike, is adopted, he may rely upon all our sympathy and all our help and consideration in the days to come.