THE OLD-AGE PENSIONS DEBATE.
rrHE Government may congratulate themselves upon a numerical triumph. The second reading of their Old-Age Pensions Bill was carried by 417 votes to 29. To make this triumph more complete, the Liberals had the pleasure of watching Mr. Balfour remaining in his seat unable to vote either for or against the amendment to the Bill. Such a confession of impotence on the part of the leader of a great historic party may well inspire the Government with a feeling of confidence. Nevertheless, we still sincerely believe that the Bill which has been carried by such an overwhelming majority involves the gravest danger to the Liberal Party, and to the cause of Free. trade. That one member of the Government is dimly conscious of this danger may be inferred from Mr. Lloyd George's speech. According to all witnesses, the speech was, from the dramatic point of view, a complete failure. It was halting in manner and apologetic in tone. Some of Mr. Lloyd George's friends even began to fear that his hand had lost its cunning. That is not our view. On the contrary, we rather welcome, for Mr. Lloyd George's own sake, the relative failure of his speech this week, for it was a sign that he was conscious of the gravity of the issues involved, and realised that those issues could not be dealt with by the ordinary methods of political controversy in which he is such an accomplished expert. Mr. Lloyd George is still a very young man as politicians go, and the mere fact of his hesitating manner in dealing with such an issue as the present indicates a spirit of caution and a sense of responsibility which may serve him well in the future.
The real weakness of his position, and, indeed, of that of all the advocates of non-contributory pensions, is that they have none of them troubled to think out the meaning of the propositions which they put forward. Throughout this week's debate the supporters of the pension scheme were constantly using such phrases as " the worn-out veterans of industry," " the debt which the State owes to those who have toiled for it," " the remuneration due for services rendered," and so on. Yet there is nothing in the wording of the Bill to restrict pensions to persons who have been workers. The only words which even approximate to such a test are those which make it a disqualification for a pension that a man has " habitually refused to work or habitually refrained from working when he was physically able to work." Assuming for the moment that these words are to remain, though the whole tenor of the debate sug- gested the probability of their abandonment, we are still left with the fact that people who have been physically unable to work will receive pensions. That fact alone eompletely disposes of the idea that pensions are to be given in return for services rendered. It may be right that the State should give relief to those who throughout life have been so unfortunate as to be unable to support themselves by their own industry, but it is impossible to defend.such relief with the arguments used by Mr. Lloyd deorge. He and the other supporters of the Bill, with the exception of Mr. Haldane, mix up two completely distinct conceptions,—the conception of the duty of the community to help its necessitous members, and the conception of the right of the worker to receive recompense for his work. Both these conceptions have their place in any social system, but only mischief can result from confusing the two, and doing in the name of the one acts which really depend upon the other. If a pension is to be given as a right, it must either be worked for or be paid for. If a pension is given merely out of pity, it is dishonest to pretend that it is given as a recompense for labour.
Mr. Lloyd George might be inclined to dismiss this consideration as merely one of those intellectual subtleties in which " the organ of the Anarchist Party," as he was pleased to describe the Spectator, is fond of indulging. But the distinction is not merely theoretical ; it is of the most direct practical importance. For if the two conceptions are confused, it will in practice be impossible to prevent people who have never done a stroke of work from receiving pensions primarily intended as a reward for industry. On the other hand, it will be equally impossible to prevent cases arising where men who have worked hard are deprived of a reward to which they are legitimately entitled. The reason is clear enough. Any scheme of non-contributory pensions must be surrounded with a con- siderable number of safeguards to prevent the exhaustion of the revenues of the State by the claims of would-be pensioners. These safeguards must be enforced by some human instruments—whether they are called Pension Committees or Boards of Guardians matters not a brass farthing—and these human instruments, applying tests which are necessarily arbitrary, will again and again, with the best will in the world, inflict real injustice. The clever rogue will be able to avoid pitfalls into which the honest man will tumble, and the spectacle will be presented of the State imposing takes upon honourable and hard- working men in order to provide pensions for men who have neither worked hard nor acted honourably. Nor is the case improved if we take the arguments put forward by the Labour Party, which, though they have not yet been adopted by the Government, really under- lie the Government proposals. The main Socialist argument in favour of old-age pensions is that the establishment of such pensions at the cott of the tax- payer will permit the community partially to redress the inequalities Of fortune, and to make up to a man in his old age for the wages of which the community has robbed him by underpaying him when he was young. This plausible theory also breaks down in practice, for it constantly happens that of two men drawing equal wages, the one will always be living in squalor, the other will succeed in maintaining a respectable home, in bringing up his children comfortably, and in making provision for his own old age. It is a question of self-restraint and good management. When these two men have both reached old age, the latter will be in the possession of an income which rules him out of all benefit under the Goiernment pension scheme, the former will receive a subsidy paid for partly by the taxes of his more prudent fellow-workman. There is no restitu- tion here; there is merely the penalising of prudence and the subsidising of self-indulgence.
It is because theboialists, with all their muddled &Mem* instinctively feel the injustice of such an arrangement that they are now Clamouring for the abOlition of any income-limit for the redipients of $r e. They kro quite tight El peiniteitii 62.6 to be the reward of industry, they should be paid without regard to the income which the recipient enjoys from other sources. When a Civil servant retires after forty or fifty years of service, the State pays him the pension which it has guaranteed to pay as part of the remunera• tion of his labour without asking what other income he may possess. In the same way, if a man subscribes to a pension in some insurance office or Friendly Society or Trade-Union, he is entitled on a given date to receive the pension for which be has paid without being compelled to submit to an inquisitorial examination into his private affairs. Again, a man who has subscribed for, or worked for, a pension is free from any inquiries into his personal character. It comes to him as a right, and no Committee of busybodies can rake up his past history in order to find out whether at some period of his career he did something or other of which somebody might disapprove. On a non• contributory system investigations into private character and into means are absolutely essential. It would be ridiculous to give pensions at the expense of the taxpayer to persons already possessing such means as to place them beyond the reach of want. It would be intolerable to give pensions at the expense of honest men and women to confirmed criminals and habitual drunkards. That is why we have always held, and still hold, that any pension scheme which is to differ from Poor Law relief must be established on a contributory basis, and we are not in the least convinced by Mr. Asquith's assertions—for they are nothing more than assertions—that contributory pensions are impossible in this country. The Trade-Unions and the Friendly Societies succeed in raising every year enormous sums of money by levies upon workmen's wages. In scores of factories and workshops it is already the practice for the employer to make a levy upon wages for local infirmaries. There is absolutely no reason why these practices should not be systematised and extended without any serious interference with the work of existing institutions, and without the creation of any excessive officialism.
At the same time, no thoughtful man has ever con- tended that the establishment of contributory pensions by such means would solve the whole problem of poverty in old age. There must in every country be many persons who will remain outside any contributory scheme, just as there must be many persons remaining outside the scheme put forward by the Government. Mr. Haldane, indeed, insisted very strongly that the Govern- ment Bill was only part of a general .reform of the Poor Law, and frankly expressed regret that the Govern. meat had not been able to wait for the Report of the Poor Law Commission. This amusing confession is less significant than the contrast between Mr. Haldaue's pro- position that the Government Bill was intended to relieve the necessitous, and Mr. Lloyd George's claim that the pensions were to be given as the reward of industry. This contrast exhibits the hopeless mental confusion which pervades the whole subject ; and until that is cleared away, the problem of poverty in old age cannot be solved. Two quite separate and distinct lines must be followed in seeking for a solution of that problem,—the reform of the Poor Law and the establishment of contributory pensions. The Government, by confusing these two distinct things, have committed the country to a vast expenditure for which no preparation has been made, and have introduced an element of corruption into our political life of which we already get a foretaste in the pitiful spectacle of the Unionist Party refusing to vote against a Bill which is utterly opposed to the principles that the party has hitherto upheld.
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