Unemployment Assistance Board.

Part of Civil Estimates, 1938. – in the House of Commons at on 18 July 1938.

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Photo of Lieut-Colonel Leo Amery Lieut-Colonel Leo Amery , Birmingham Sparkbrook

I am not making a proposal, and indeed I should not be in order in making a proposal now. I am drawing attention to a very serious problem which the Government ought to look into with a minimum of delay and produce in due time, and according to proper Parliamentary procedure, their own proposals. However, I wish to make one answer to what the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition said in regard to the suggestion that this is, in some sense, a device for interfering with the raising of wages and for spreading a reduction in the wages of the wage-earning community. That objection, if it means anything, is an objection to every form of insurance which we have to-day, and indeed to every form of social legislation, for it might always be argued that social legislation involves expenditure, which expenditure falls on the taxpayer, including the working classes, and that therefore, there should be no social legislation, but that we should press all the time for a rise in the wages standard, and leave everything to the care of the individual. I think that is an impossible attitude to take up, and in all sincerity I appeal to hon. Members opposite not to regard this question in any other light than that in which they would regard any other social reform.

I believe this is the one reform that would deal with the greatest amount of distress and hardship to our growing generation most easily and at the least cost to whoever pays, whether it be the taxpayer, the employer, or anybody else. What I am asking is that these children, who to-day are inadequately fed over a large range of industry, should be adequately fed. My appeal to hon. Members opposite is to regard the matter in a spirit of sympathy and from the point of view of those who are affected, and not in an atmosphere of suspicion, in which they think that any proposal made from this side of the Committee, whether by the Government or by Private Members, is tinged with a desire to maintain the capitalist system or tinged with a desire to relieve distress at the expense of wages. It is not so. I hope hon. Members will give us the credit of believing that we care for our country and for our fellow-countrymen, and that we are gravely concerned with the state of affairs which is revealed to-day by the report and with the prospect for the children who are growing up. If we put forward our suggestions, we put them forward as a contribution to the common stock of suggestions for the well being of the country. I honestly hope that they will be received in that spirit.