Procrastination or Paralysis Fifteen months ago the National Government withdrew
its new Unemployment Assistance Regulations because of the indignation they aroused. A year ago Mr. Ramsay MacDonald said that "good progress was being made" in framing new regulations. Eight months ;Ago Mr. Ernest Brown, the Minister of Labour, said that it was a very difficult problem and he did not expect to solve it before the spring. The spring is here ; summer. indeed, is more than it-coming in; and Mr. Brown and the Unemployment Assistance Board are wrestling with the problem still. Last week Mr. Baldwin com- plained that he could not be expected to remember about the Regulations ; on Tuesday Mr. Brown said they would- not be introduced before Whitsun. It is not a very illuminating answer to make nor a very creditable achievement after fifteen months' delay. It is perhaps too much to expect so inarticulate a Govern- ment to tell us precisely what its difficulty is. Ad- mittedly the problem, as the last Government learned to its cost, is difficult and intricate, and any errors max- involve considerable injustice and suffering. But the facts were all known from the start. A revised rule could as easily have been formulated in three months as in fifteen. And if the Minister of Labour and the Unemployment Assistance Board were at odds another three months would surely have been a generous allow- ance for the settlement of their differences. The delay is playing havoc with the reputation of a Government quite superfluously assiduous in amassing discredit.
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