THE MINISTRY OF LABOUR.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.") • SIR,—Mr. Mark Scott has a letter in your issue of last week which purports to be a reply to an article in the Spectator of September 17th on " The Ministry of Labour." It is, of course, not a reply at all but a confirmation, innocent and ingenuous. The whole question is : Have the Labour Exchanges justified themselves?
(1) Mr. Scott says that their " Primary and most important function was the administration of unemployment insurance."
This is easily answered. The Labour Exchanges were founded in 1909, and it was not until 1912 that they were entrusted with the administration of a new scheme of unemployment insurance.
(2) The second object of the Exchanges, according to Mr. Scott, was " to bring together employers in need of workers and workers in need of employment; to save the time of both."
Mr. Scott gives some figures extending over a period of eleven years, ending January, 1921, to show that 40 per cent. of the applicants found work during this period, and about 80 per cent. of this 40 per cent. found work through the medium of the Employment Exchanges. The figures are quite useless as a justification of the Labour Exchanges. If Mr. Scott had taken the figures up to the commencement of the war he would have drawn quite a different picture. During the war, as a result of the Military Service Acts, practically every man employed at home on work of national importance had to be registered as an administrative formality on the books of the Exchanges. Similarly, this was the case in regard to Government Depart- ments employing temporary labour. The same man might work in six different places in the course of the year and figure six times in the Labour Exchange statistics. The whole point—and it applies to-day—is that a registered vacancy is deemed to be filled irrespective of how it is found. The Exchanges, for instance, are deemed to have filled vacancies which have been filled by other bodies, such as the Y.M.C.A., the Soldiers' and Sailors' Help Society, &c. Mr. Scott's statistics might be attacked on many other grounds, but they are entirely vitiated by the history of the last three years, by which Ministries and other Departments concerned with employment have been bound not to take anybody on except through the Exchanges, and by the fact that the Government have directly inflated the figures through the mere fact of making out-of-work donation payable through the Exchanges. Consequently any man who gets a job for whatever cause is credited to the Exchanges. Likewise, because the Unemployment Insurance Act is administered through the Exchanges it is made compulsory for recipients to come regularly to the Exchange and report. If they find work and do not come the Exchanges take the credit. So much for Mr. Scott's figures.
(3) Mr. Scott says that the number of police court cases are an indication of the valuable work the Exchanges are per- forming in weeding out the " humbug " and the " lead- swinger." It is as if he said that the autumn sales at the retail shops were justified by the number of cases of klepto- mania that were discovered, or that the cases of prosecution for travelling without a ticket were a tribute to the success of mechanical traction. No. What the police court cases show is this : The efficient manner in which the Exchanges have been bamboozled after they have been bamboozled, and the taxpayer has lost his money.
(4) The three classes into which men struck off the Ministry's returns are sub-divided, according to Mr. Scott, give away his case. Divisions 2 and 3 are an admission that the Exchanges take the credit for work they have not done.
(5) The white-washing Committee of Inquiry to which Mr. Scott refers is not generally held up by the apologists of the Exchanges as a triumph for their cause. If the Committee had been instructed to inquire into whether insurance was hest administered through the State it might have reached different conclusions. The Committee, instead of inquiring freely as to whether the Exchanges were necessary, found no difficulty in finding that the Government having embarked upon a policy must needs have an agency to carry it out. That was before public attention was drawn to another agency in Poplar which, without an inflated staff, has found no difficulty in distributing public money on a very generous scale.
(6) Mr. Mark Scott, who is Chairman of the Selby Labour Exchange Unemployment Committee, is proud of the fact that 20 per cent. of the applications in Selby have been rejected in respect of applicants who failed to comply with the regulations. May I be permitted to congratulate Selby on its unique
experience—it seems to have justified itself without the use of
the police court.—I am, Sir, &c., LESLIE HORE-BELISRA. 7 Duke Street, Adelphi, W.C. 2.
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