MR. LLOYD GEORGE AND HIS SCHEME. " T HAVE devoted three
years of labour, research, con- sultation, and continuous thouftt to this proposal." This is one of the sentences with which Mr. Lloyd George began his speech at Birmingham in defence of his scheme of national insurance. Apparently, in his judgment, it ought to be sufficient for the fifteen or sixteen million people who will be personally affected by this scheme to know that he has given three years of continuous thought to the subject. The statement, by the way, suggests a little exaggeration, for those of us whose business it has been to watch political events during the past three years have chanced to observe that Mr. Lloyd George during that period has been somewhat actively engaged on other questions besides national insurance. However, he now claims that he has produced a scheme so carefully thought out that he is justified in rushing it through the House of Commons within three months, and forcing it upon the country. If Englishmen have still left any respect for the principle of self-government they will certainly resist this monstrous proposal to the utmost of their ability.
It would be a miracle if a scheme of such magnitude as this could have been so framed in the secrecy of Mr. Lloyd George's office as to meet all the numerous difficulties which must be overcome if any scheme of compulsory insurance is to work smoothly. It is therefore no dis- credit to Mr. Lloyd George if his scheme fails to satisfy this test. The whole discredit consists in his cool assump- tion that because he has prepared the scheme there- fore the nation must be willing to accept it. This assumption is all the more intolerable when it is seen that Mr. Lloyd George does not himself under- stand the scheme which he has put forward. In many cases, as we pointed out the other week, his own descriptions of the Bill differ profoundly from the text. Take, for example, the statement which he made at Birmingham that he was going " to start everybody as if he were sixteen years of age." This statement is in direct conflict with the terms of the Bill, for Clause 9, Section 3, says that in the case of persons over fifty years of age sickness benefit is to be reduced in accordance with Table C of the fourth schedule, and the clause, which is very badly drafted, seems to imply that there will also be a reduction of benefit in the case of men under fifty if they have not paid 500 weekly sub- scriptions. This condition would apply to everybody who had just turned forty. Yet Mr. Lloyd George was emphatic in his Birmingham speech that up to the age of sixty-five everybody was to be put on the same footing, and explained, what is indeed obvious, that this would mean a heavy initial burden on the scheme, because the men of forty-five and fifty would entail a loss. He speaks as if this loss would be entirely borne by the State, by which, of course, he means the taxpayer. But surely the more accurate way of regarding the matter is that the loss is met by the increased rates of contribution imposed upon the younger men. No doubt this loss will disappear in time. In Mr. Lloyd George's flowery phrase, at the end of sixteen and a half years the loss " vanishes like the mist on our hills when the sun comes." He then promises that the money of the taxpayer which will be set free can be used for giving increased benefits to the younger men who are now paying an exorbitant rate. Surely the sound method of dealing with such a problem is to contract now for the full benefits to which the younger men ought to be entitled in the future in consideration of the higher rata they are paying, and if it is desirable to supplement the benefits paid to the older men to do so frankly by a grAnt from the Exchequer.
But these questions of accurate finance are not attractive to Mr. Lloyd George's temperament. He prefers, as in Birmingham, to indulge in rhetoric which may or may not have any relation to the 'real facts, but which stimulates the enthusiasm of a crowded audience. In his Birmingham speech there was a characteristic passe 'e in which he drew a picture of the " multitudes of people =ho cannot con- sider even a bare subsistence as assured to thcm. . . . . mean that minimum of food, raiment, shelter, which is essential to keep human life in its tenement of clay. . . . Our object, our goal, ought to be enough to maintain efficiency for every man, woman, and child. The individual demands it ; the State needs it ; humanity cries for it ; religion insists on it." That sounds very well, but what does Mr. Lloyd George do 2- His scheme does nothing at all for many of the very poorest people in the cocintry, while, on the other hand, it iszevides a substantial State subsidy for an equally large number of people who are perfectly well able to take care of themselves, and many of whom may be living in actual luxury. As far as we can construe the text of this extremely complicated and badly drafted Bill, persons who are not employed, and who are not members of a friendly society, cannot obtain any benefit at all. Among persons not employed are small shopkeepers, costermongers, newspaper vendors, wives and daughters working for husbands or fathers without remuneration, and many others—altogether a vast multi- tude of extremely poor people, some of them the poorest in the country. Many of these people, through physical defects or sheer dovvnrightpoverty, are unable to obtain admissionto a friendly society. Mr. Lloyd George does nothing for them. He passes them by, except for rhetorical purposes. On the other hand, workmen in regular employment earning £3 a week are to be entitled to obtain benefits under this scheme, which will be partly paid for by taxation drawn from the pockets of the very poorest members of the community who get no benefits themselves. We are not suggesting that it is possible to include all the poorest people in an insurance scheme. What we do protest against is Mr. Lloyd George's rhetorical appeal for support for his scheme on grounds that will not bear examination.
A scheme of this character must be judged by what it does, not by what its author says he would like it to do. Many of the things it does ,we regret to say, are altogether indefensible. For example Clause 51, prohibiting distraint for rent in case of illness, would have a most disastrous effect upon the poorer classes. It would mean either that landlords would insist upon obtaining their rents six months in advance, which in most cases they could not do, or else that they would charge an increased rent to cover them- selves against the risk of loss while their tenant was ill, How Mr. Lloyd George's official advisers could ever have permitted him to insert such a clause as this we are at a loss to understand.
Again, as we have insisted before, the Bill is cruelly unfair to women. Single women are compelled to pay during all the years they are earning a living and forfeit their payments if they marry. The Bill is also unfair to domestic servants and to their employers, for the servant cannot obtain any benefit except medical attendance unless her employer turns her out of the house. She would in any case under the existing custom obtain medical attendance at the expense of her employer, while her wages would be allowed to run on. It is also extremely difficult to ascertain what will be the position of casually employed domestic servants, such as charwomen. In many cases in small households a charwoman is employed only for one day, or perhaps half a clay, a week. Is the full weekly premium to be paid in her case by the single employer ? Passing to another range of difficulties, a point upon which little stress has yet been' laid, but of which more will certainly be heard, is the proposal to set up local health committees. For some reason Mr. Lloyd George seems to attach tremendous importance to these proposed new bodies. He will find that he will have to meet the resolute opposition of the county and municipal authorities of the country, who will not tamely stand. by and see themselves superseded by non-elective committees, com- posed of members of friendly societies, doctors, and other nominees of the Insurance Department. Quite apart from the legitimate amour-propre of the existing county and municipal authorities, the proposal to set up separate health committees ought to be rejected because it must necessarily involve an enormous overlapping of authority and a consequent waste of the ratepayers' money.
With regard to the friendly societies Mr. Lloyd Georgehas shown that he does not apparently understand his own Bill, for he has said more than once that the friendly societies will be strengthened by his scheme. But if the Bill be examined it will be seen, first of all, that every registered friendly society before it can come into the scheme must in effect go into liquidation and divert the funds now set aside for specific purposes to other purposes to be approved by the Registrar of Friendly Societies. This must involve an enormous amount of actuarial calculation, which will be very expensive and will also involve a quite needless in- terference with the arrangements voluntarily made by the members with the society. When all this has been done the friendly society will find itself no longer a self-govern- ing body, managing its own funds, but a mere outlying branch of some Government department, distributing money sent down to it from London according to rules laid down by Government officials.
Even worse is Mr. Lloyd George's treatment of the medical profession. Happily the members of that profes- sion, who do not, as a rule, take an active part in public affairs, are on this occasion making their voices heard. They see clearly that the Bill means for them complete destruction of their professional status. An enormous number of their paying patients are to be swept into this semi-charitable scheme, with the result that doctors, instead of earning their living as professional men by their own enterprise and attention to business, will become the paid hacks of the friendly society or of a local health committee. In response to the protest of the doctors against this degradation of their profession Mr. Lloyd George has nothing better to say than to sneer at this " wrangle in the sick-room." There is no wrangle in the sick-room. Of all the professions in the country there is none which gives so much gratuitous service to those who are in need ; but when proposals are made for altering the whole status of the medical profession, it is the bounden duty of doctors, not in their own interest only, but in the interest of their successors, and indeed of the whole community, to make a determined stand.
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