THE PROBLEM OF PUBLIC ASSISTANCE. E ITIIER immediately or at the
end of the war the country will have to face the very serious problems created by the social reform legislation of the past ten years. The broad fact is that, whereas in previous genera- tions practically the whole of the assistance given out of public funds to poor persons was administered through one set of bodies—namely, the Poor Law authorities—there aro now at least half a dozen separate organizations engaged upon the different phases of this work. The subject has been well dealt with by Mr. Geoffrey Drage in letters to the Times, and has also been set forth in a somewhat more permanent form by Mr. W. A. Bailward, whose little book ou Some Recent Developments of Poor Law Relief * might well be studied at the present time by every one who is anxious to assist in economizing public funds.. Owing to the campaign carried on by Mr. Drage, the Government were at last persuaded to present to Par- liament a Return dealing with the total amount of direct " public beneficiary assistance " paid out of rates or tales. The Return includes expenditure upon (1) the relief of the poor ; (2) the Unemployed Workmen Act, 1905 ; (3) hospitals provided by local authorities other than Poor Law infirmaries ; (4) Education (Provision of Meals) Act, 1906; (5) medical inspection and treatment of school- children ; (6) other expenses of elementary and higher education; (7) Old-Ago Pensions for England and Wales, 1910-11. The figures before us are only carried down to 1910-11, and show that in the previous twenty years the expenditure in England and Wales upon direct beneficiary assistance had grown from £14,250,000 a year to £51,896,000. Since then there has been an enormous increase as the result of the National Insurance Act said of the growing costliness of Old-Age Pensions. Even if it were provable that all these forms of public assistance were in themselves justifiable as being ultimately beneficial to the nation, it would still be undesirable that they should overlap one another, thus involving unnecessary adminis- trative expenses, and in many cases dishonest duplication of payments. Of both evils Mr. Bailward's book gives numbers of instances. Take, for example, the question of maternity benefit under the National Insurance Act. This was one of the " boons " which earned for the author of the Act special .praise from many somewhat hasty enthusiasts. Yet it appears that in many cases women • Boyne Recent Developments of Poor Low Beref. By W. A. Bailward, London, P. 8. Xing and Son. [6d.] who are expecting confinement are admitted to the lying-in wards of the Poor Law Unions, and that, while they are there being nourished and medically cared for by the Poor Law Guardians at the expense of the rates, their husbands draw the maternity benefit and spend it at the public-house.
Exactly similar is the duplication of benefits in the case of Old-Age Pensions. This has all along been notorious to all practical administrators of Poor Law and other relief throughout the country. The original conception of the Old-Age Pensions Act was that it should shield the veterans of industry from the taint of pauperism. With this end in view, the Act as originally passed provided that the receipt of Poor Law relief should be a disqualification for an Old-Age Pension. But after a very short time this sentimental view of the Act was abandoned and the pauper disqualification was removed, with the result that old-age pensioners are now able to draw Poor Law relief as well as their pensions. The ordinary person would imagine that in such cases the Poor Law Guardians ought to be able to intercept the pension so as to repay themselves part of the cost of maintaining the pensioner, but it is not in this way that the mind of the politician or the mind of the permanent official works. It constantly happens that a pensioner will go into the workhouse and obtain free maintenance at the expense of the rates, and either allow his pension to accumulate or else assign it to some other person. In other eases the pensioner will get some other form of gratuitous relief, such as medical assistance, to supple- ment his pension. It may be that this supplementary allowance is on the merits of the case justifiable. But clearly the matter ought to be dealt with by one authority so as to avoid the danger of double relief being given whoa single relief would suffice, or when in some cases no relief at all would be justified.
The last phrase is intended to indicate a very common scandal—namely, the way in which persons who really have sufficient means of their own are able to obtain Old- Age Pensions because of the absence of any adequate supervision of the working of the Act. There is, indeed, reason to believe that the authorities administering these various kinds of public assistance not only fail to co-operate, but are frequently in deliberate conflict with one another. The explanation apparently is that every kind of organization, from a nation down to a Board of Guardians, acquires a collective conscience of its own and is jealous of other organizations doing similar work. The result as regards the problem with which we are now dealing is not merely an overlapping of work, and consequent waste of effort and waste of public money, but also mutually destructive work, so that the good effect which might be wrought by one particular phase of social reform is undone by some competing phase. For example, the Poor Law authorities may have come to the conclusion that a certain family, owing-to the hopeless drunkenness of the parents, ought to be removed to a workhouse, but the education authorities will meanwhile be supplying food to the children in school, thus enabling the family to resist the Poor Law authorities and to continue living in demoralizing squalor. In such a case as this the real interests of the children are sacrificed by a, measure— namely, the Education (Provision of Meals) Act—which was put forward with the idea of benefiting the children of the poor. The only effective way of dealing with the problem is to carry out the recommendation of the Poor Law Commission and combine all these various agencies for " public bone-, ficiary assistance" under one authority, which Lord George Hamilton's Commission recommended should be called the Public Assistance Authority. This authority was to be a statutory Committee of the County or County Borough Council, and would consequently be analogous to the local education authority. The adoption of this bold reform would render possible the abolition of the Poor Law Guar- dians, and of numberless other Committees that have boon brought into being in recent years to administer various phases of social reform legislation. How far such a reform could be carried out during the present national emergency is a matter which needs very careful considera- tion. In one respect big reforms are actually easier in times of national emergency than in times of peace, for the collective purpose of the nation is in the crisis of a, great war more firmly set, and therefore better able to overcome sectional and private vested interests. On the other hand, it is somewhat difficult to secure adequate con- sideration for any important new proposal at a time when public attention is absorbed in the movements of a great war. On the whole, the former consideration is in the present matter perhaps the more important. For although of necessity the public is engaged in watching the war, it also has begun to realize, that, if the war is to be success- fully waged, reform at home is as essential as efficiency in the field. Therefore, if the Government could be persuaded to initiate real reform on the lines indic tted in the Report of the Poor Law Commission, such reform could probably be effected more easily at the present moment than in future years. In any case, there are certain partial reforms which could be accomplished with comparative ease at the present time. In particular may be mentioned the amalgamation of the thirty-odd Poor Law 'Unions of London into one authority for the whole county. It has been pointed out again and again that this change would effect an enormous economy, not merely in administrative expenses, but also in workhouse accommodation and in the actual cost of Poor Law relief.
Another matter which is of extreme urgency, and which could certainly be carried through at the present time, is the transference of the control of Old-Age Pensions from the Treasury to the Local Government Board. Perhaps the worst feature of the finance of the last four or five years is the way in which the Treasury, which ought to.. be a supervising Department, has itself been made a spending Department. Under the head of Old-Age Pensions it now accounts for an expenditure of over £13,000,000 a year. The work of directing this expenditure properly belongs to the Local Government Board, and should be transferred to that Board without delay. The same consideration applies to the whole of the National Insurance organization. There is absolutely no reason why this should not also come under the Local Government Board; and when once these two huge outlets for public money are controlled by an experienced Department, which in turn is checked by the Treasury, there will be some prospect of an immediate economy combined with increased efficiency.
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