I want to support the proposal in order that there may be no suggestion that those who are not directly concerned with manual labour, but who have had experience of it, are not in full sympathy with the recommendations of the Committee. I want to join in the appeal to the Home Secretary that he should treat this, not as a sectional application from one part of the House, but as a humanitarian application to which all sides of the House would wish him to pay attention. The time has long since passed when the employment of a man in any industry can be looked upon as the employment of a piece of the plant. The human element is recognised to-day more than ever. Industry is now required to make provision for the difficulty that arises when a man is not sufficiently employed, and it is far more important that the industry should also have to carry the risk concerned with the employment of those who make the profits in the industry.

I am speaking from some experience, for I was ten years in engineering workshops, and I know something about starting at six o'clock in the morning and working until six o'clock at night. I have seen men who had served many years of apprenticeship in order that they might give their skill to the industry, broken down by accident. An accident happens and a small sum is paid to the man, but nothing like the sum that has been lost by the years of apprenticeship which the man went through in order to give his skill to the industry. The industry should carry the risk to the men engaged in it. Exactly as a man owning property thinks it is essential to protect his property against the risk of fire and damage, a man employing a workman in connection with an industry in which he expects to make a profit should carry the risk of injury that may arise to that workman, in order that when trouble arises it will not be a case of simply displacing one man and then engaging another to take his place, but that there should be some continuing benefit to those who have suffered and to those who have been bereft of the one, perhaps, who was the mainstay of the home by the wages that he earned, and which had ceased. I suggest to the Home Secretary that this should be viewed as something that is essential in modern industry.

We cannot allow those connected with the manual side of industry any longer to feel that they are of a class apart from those who are employing them. We want, if we can, to have a spirit which will produce comradeship in industry, if we are to get the best out of those who are working and out of the industry itself. We can only do that by letting those who are giving their skill feel that they are not considered as so many hands that are employed. The day, surely, has gone when any employer can consider that he has so many hands in his place, rather than so many human beings to be responsible for. If that day has gone, the human element must be taken into account rather than the mechanical side to which the man may be considered as contributing. There are some industries in which the men form an essential part of what may be considered the mechanical portion. If the man is removed, or the human part is removed, another man or another human part can usually be found to take his place. If a human is thus removed, he should not be considered as being just a part of a plant that has got to be renewed. If he is displaced by someone else, he is to be looked upon as a risk with which the industry is to be saddled, and you cannot proceed to work at that industry without carrying at all times the possibility of risk and danger to those associated with it.

In connection with the insurance the hon. Member for Bother Valley (Mr. Grundy) suggested that the State should take over the whole of the insurance and be responsible for it. My experience in connection with insurances that has been proposed goes to show that competition with insurance companies, with schemes provided by different minds for the purpose of dealing with insurances, produce a far better result in connection with the benefits that are to accrue to those who are insured than would be likely to come from any Government Department. Government Departments become stereotyped. There is no suggestion for betterment, no suggestion for alteration, no need to vary, once a new set of rules and forms has been established. Different insurance companies in order to obtain business must vary their proposals. Therefore I believe that if only the Government would consider that it is essential to impose upon the industries the making of further and better provision for all those engaged in the industry, the insurance companies in this country are able and fit to accommodate their rates and proposals to meet new conditions that would be put down, without any further Government Department being called upon to do as an experiment the work which is now being done by the insurance companies who have experience in connection with the risks.

We do not want to multiply Government Departments, or to have a new body of officials to do the work that is already done by a body of men of experience. The less we have to do with Government officials associated with the control of industry the better for the industry itself. The industry can best be looked after by those who are associated with it having an opportunity of gathering from one mind or another mind the opportunity for betterment such as it could not get from any one Government Department. There are many Government Departments to-day that are instances of failure that has resulted to that which they have done, where previously private ownership contributed to the service which has been taken over by a Government Department, and I am persuaded that if insurance were to be taken over by a Government Department we should be saddled with many more expenses. We should have another huge army of officials and more inspectors in connection with the industry, and the whole business would be laden with those charges and overburdened altogether out of proportion to the benefits that could accrue. Therefore, if the Home Secretary is contemplating making proposals, which I hope he may see his way to make, not as a demand coming from one section, but as a demand recognised by all who know anything about Industry, I hope that he will not think it necessary also to say that the Government itself must assume a responsibility and must take over the insurance and must be the administrators of the fund to which the industry must pay.

If you impose conditions, there are societies in existence, strong and experienced, who can easily do that which, may be imposed upon them, but if a Government Department takes over these things we shall have an end of betterment. We shall have no competition which may produce improvements in results, we shall have stereotyped forms which cannot be varied, and we shall have less confidence among the workers when they know that this is the beginning of the end of that which they are to receive through a Government Department, who cannot vary unless a new Act of Parliament gives them authority so to do. The various companies now are continually proposing schemes to meet the different conditions of insurance. If these, companies are given an opportunity they can, and in my opinion will, do much better work than any new Government Department can possibly undertake, and the industries themselves will benefit by having a lesser charge thrown upon them than would be the case if a Government Department were responsible. I want, with all the emphasis I can, to ask the Home Secretary not to imagine that the claim or the appeal comes from that side of the House, but that it comes from all who know anything about industry, and that we make the appeal not because we fear anything, not because we want anything, but because it is right when we are dealing with an industry that that industry should carry the risk which the person himself is utterly unable to bear.