MR. LLOYD GEORGE ON OLD-AGE PENSIONS.
mR. LLOYD GEORGE in his speech at Crediton claimed for himself the credit of the Old-Age Pensions Act. This is a little inconsiderate to his colleagues in the Cabinet. The Old-Age Pensions Act was a7Cabinet measure, and was introduced into the House of Commons by the Prime Minister, who made the Budget speech of that year, although Mr. Lloyd George had already become Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is quite true that Mr. Asquith made no financial provision for meeting the charge which he was imposing upon the country, and Mr. Lloyd George may therefore claim thast the credit of pro- viding the money belongs to him. Let us see what that claim amounts to. The revenue-yielding taxes in the Budget of 1909-10 are the Super-tax, the increased Death- duties, the increased duty on spirits, the License-duties, and the increased duty on tobacco. The credit for the Super-tax belongs to a Select Committee of the House of Commons over which Sir Charles Dilke presided. The in- crease in the Death-duties can hardly be called a stroke of financial genius, for after Sir William Harcourt had estab- lished those duties any tiro in finance could propose to increase them. Nor is there any originality in the increase of the Tobacco-duty. With regard to the Spirit-duty, on the other hand, credit must be given to Mr. Lloyd George for having the financial courage to propose a very large increase sufficient to yield an additional revenue even if accom- panied by decreased consumption. His own estimates of the financial results, like those of his critics, were necessarily vague ; but this particular feature of the Budget, we admit without the slightest hesitation, has justified itself both on financial and on temperance grounds. There is less information as yet available with regard to the License-duties. These may be yielding a considerable revenue, but they are on the present scale unfair to many individuals, and will probably necessitate a heavy financial readjustment between local and Imperial finance.
These, however, are not the features by which the Lloyd-Georgian Budget will be remembered in years to come. The typical feature of that Budget was the imposition of a new series of Land-taxes. While these were being debated Mr. Lloyd George more than once tried to put his opponents in a difficult argumentative position by rhetorically asking : "Will you refuse even a halfpenny to old-age pensions ? " Since those speeches were made many millions sterling have been paid out for old-age pensions. The gross revenue contributed up to date by the new Land-taxes is £50,000, and this sum has already been swallowed up, probably several times over, by the cost of the staff employed in collecting it. Therefore to suggest that the new Land-taxes are paying for old-age pensions is to overstep the limits which most politicians lay down for themselves even in their rhetorical moments.
As, however, Mr. Lloyd George now claims for himself the whole credit of the Old-Age Pensions Act, and speaks as if he were the actual donor of the money which brings happi- ness to so many poor homes, it is worth while to examine that measure a little more closely. The Old-Ago Pensions Bill was attacked in the House of Commons solely on the ground that it was non-contributory. Not a word was said by any of the opponents of the measure, and certainly not by the Spectator, against the principle of making better provision for old people. Mr. Lloyd George has no right to assume that he and his friends alone are conscious of the hardships of old age among the poor, and alone anxious to remove them. The whole con- troversy was as to the method to be pursued. The Spectator persistently advocated a contributory system of pensions, which would bring relief not only to persons who had passed the arbitrary age of seventy, but also to persons of any ago who, from whatever cause, were incapacitated from earning their living. We pointed out again and again that the German system of combining old-age and infirmity pensions had provided immediate relief for persons over seventy, while simul- taneously establishing a system of contributions which enabled relief also to be given to the infirm of any age. A: year later Mr. Lloyd George went to Germany to investigate the scheme which the Spectator had so strongly advocated, and when he came back this is what he said about it :—" It is a superb scheme. It is saving an incalculable amount of human misery to hundreds and thousands, and possibly millions, of people." He went on to say that the benefits payable under this scheme amounted to £40,000,000 a year, and that the cost to the taxpayer was only £3,000,000.
The cost to the British taxpayer of the admittedly inadequate scheme of the Liberal Government already exceeds £9,000,000 a year, and if Mr. Lloyd George's estimate of a million pensioners next year is realised, the cost will rise to something like £13,000,000 a year, or more than double the amount which Mr. Asquith laid down as the limit when explaining the scheme to the House of Common w Yet not only does this scheme fail to relieve a vast mass of human misery which ought to be relieved, but it furnishes money out of the public Treasury to persons who are in no need of relief at all, and it encourages a system of fraud which certainly no preacher in the City Temple ought to approve. Under the terms of the Act as interpreted by the Local Government Board a man with even £1,000 of capital can, if he chooses to invest it at a low rate of interest or leave it on deposit in a bank, obtain an old-age pension at the cost of his fellow-citizens. Is this also defended by Mr. Lloyd George ?
An even worse evil has lately been revealed. So carelessly was this measure prepared by the Cabinet, so ruthlessly was it forced through the House of Commons under the" guillo- tine," that it actually permits an old-age pensioner to live in the workhouse at the expense of the ratepayers and go out week by week to draw his pension and spend it on drink. At a recent meeting of the Brighton Guardians attention was called to this gross abuse, and it was stated that one man who had been in the workhouse for five weeks came out at the end of that period, applied for his pension, and received 25s. The same matter has been dis- cussed by the Claremorris Board of Guardians, who report that it has already become the practice for old men after obtaining their pensions to live in the workhouse and refuse to make any contribution towards the cost of their maintenance. Is this what Mr. Lloyd George calls removing the taint of pauperism ? He spoke of the pensioners, for whom he claims the full credit of pro- viding, as being "paying guests" in the homes of their children. Apparently they are not paying guests when they go to the workhouse.
It may be of course that Mr. Lloyd George thinks that it is a matter of indifference how public money is spent as long as the rich alone are taxed, for he was careful to argue in his reply to the Spectator that the taxes which he had imposed only fell upon the rich or fairly well-to-do. He seems to have forgotten that a large part of the new revenue comes from increased Customs and Excise duties to which the poor certainly contribute very largely. He also forgot to mention the taxes which be has retained. It is quite certain that if the Government had adopted the Spectator's policy of contributory pensions instead of non- contributory, it would have been possible for the Liberal Party to redeem their promise to abolish the Sugar-duty. That is a duty which is only felt by very poor people, and it is retained in order that money may be spent, not only in giving relief to persons who are in real need, but also in subsidising relatively well-to-do people, and persons who are deliberately defrauding the State.
Finally, we venture again to point out that a man who undertakes the task of denouncing the habits of the rich cannot with decency indulge in any of the luxuries he condemns. In the Middle Ages stern words in denuncia- tion of the rich man's way of life rang from many a pulpit and many a market cross, but the men who uttered them were men who went from hamlet to hamlet with scrip and wallet askinc, for nothing but food and shelter in return for the consolations of religion which they brought to the poor man's home. That was consistent. These men had nothing to gain but the consciousness of a duty dis- charged. A politician in Mr. Lloyd George's position by denouncing the few who are rich may gain the votes of the many who are poor, and thus lay himself open to the charge of maintaining those political conditions which enable him to command the enjoyment of such luXuries as he condemns.
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