Part of Orders of the Day — Consolidated Fund (Appropriation) Bill. – in the House of Commons am ar 2 Awst 1922.
Mr Charles White
, Derbyshire Western
Surely if a law is not working satisfactorily, it is one of the functions of this House to point out where it is not working satisfactorily, with a view to having it remedied. When the hon. Member who has just sat down says that we should bring in an amending Act, he knows there is no possible chance of our doing anything of the kind. My complaint is not so much against the law as against the administration of the Acts which are now the law of the land. Although the hon. Member may have 188 parishes in his Division, I have got something like 350 square miles, I have no motor car, and I devote every hour of my Saturday and Sunday to interviewing people, especially pensioners, who are, as I consider, being subjected to injustice. I say without hesitation that one of the greatest calamities caused by the Act now in operation is the abolition of the local pensions committees. It may be I shall not have a great deal of support in this view, and the hon. Gentleman who spoke for the Pensions Ministry said this was a. saving of £300,000 a year. I say that saving is largely at the expense of the pensioners.
I do not mind what is said on the other side of the House as to theory. I know thousands of practical instances in Derbyshire and other parts of the country, and no Member of this House has worried the Pensions Ministry more than I have with regard to these particular matters. We had a remarkable speech from the hon. Member for Mossley (Mr. A. Hopkinson) who is a theorist, an idealist, and a visionary, and who knows nothing of the practical difficulties that have to be met among pensioners and ex-service men. I hope his speech will be well circulated in his Constituency. It is not the first time he has had something to say against ex-service men in this House. It is a fact that in many districts pensioners live many miles from pensions committees or pensions offices, and I know cases where they live from 12 to 20 miles distant from either. Consequently, the human touch is destroyed. How are these people to get into touch with the Ministry except by means of somebody who is sent down from the Ministry or from the area committee to inquire into the circumstances of the particular case. The pensions committees that have been abolished were very much better able to deal with these cases, and were very much better judges, because they had these men and women under constant supervision. This question is not confined by any means to any one party in the House. This question is too serious to make the ex-service man or woman who is a pensioner a stalking horse. On the whole, if you can get to the Minister of Pensions you get sympathetic consideration, but there are so many cases that do not come to him at all, that are decided—
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