CHAPTER 4: THE PLAN TAKES SHAPE A Poor Law Commission?

After Chamberlains initial presentation of his idea to the Kings Speech committee, it was remitted to another cabinet committee set up for this purpose, the Unemployment Insurance Committee. Two crucial questions were to divide the committee: whether the unemployed should be treated separately and differently from other recipients of public assistance, and whether this service could be provided by a commission not subject to the normal processes of parliamentary scrutiny and ministerial responsibility. At its first meeting on 20 December 1932, the committee had before it a more detailed outline of the proposal, prepared by the Ministry of Health but presented by Chamberlain himself, a paper by Betterton setting out his objections and another by Hilton Young replying to them. Chamberlains memorandum, dated 2 December, stressed three interrelated aspects of the proposal: centralisation, uniformity and protection from political pressure. It argued the case for central control both on the grounds that most of the cost must be met centrally and as the only means of ensuring uniformity of treatment, not only between areas but also between groups of applicants. There was, Chamberlain argued, no real difference between the circumstances of the receivers of transitional payments and many of those on public assistance, and ... no justification for difference in their treatment. What prevented their assimilation was the taint of the Poor Law. To avoid this, the functions to be performed by the commission would be restated, the Poor Law obligation to set the able-bodied to work being merged in the commissions general duty to promote the welfare of the unemployed. Apart from these cosmetic changes, however, the commission would administer the existing law of public assistance. Moreover, its biennial reports would be laid before parliament not by the Minister of Labour but by the Minister of Health - the Poor Law minister. It was to take over the functions of the local authorities in relation to both transitional payments and outdoor relief, leaving them with responsibility for institutional care. The commissions expenditure would be financed by a combination of exchequer grant and local authority contributions, avoiding the need to present annual estimates to the House of Commons; so the answer to the question Betterton had posed - was the commission to preside over the spending of 50-60 million while remaining outside parliamentary control ? - was, plainly, Yes. The members of the commission would be as far removed as possible from political pressure, being appointed for five years. Their salaries, being charged to the consolidated fund, would also not have to be voted annually by parliament.
1

Bettertons dissenting memorandum concentrated on two points: the handing over of a million or more unemployed people and their families to a Poor Law Commission, and the loss of parliamentary control. Of the commission itself, he wrote:

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Its duties and functions are to be derived almost wholly from reenactment of many Poor Law clauses, whether in the old form or in new language; its main duty will be to relieve and prevent destitution, a phrase which has a tradition and a background in our social history; it will also control the workhouses so far as they are needed for casuals and for disciplinary treatment for others. It will take over the Poor Law officials. It will, therefore, be represented as having the worst end of the Poor Law, the vagrants and the casuals but not the sick and the infirm, the relieving officers but not the elected representatives of the localities or the voluntary members who are co-opted. Despite the removal of parliamentary control, Betterton did not accept that the scheme would take unemployment out of politics. The House of Commons would find opportunities of debating the commissions shortcomings and the government would be placed in the embarrassing position of defending a body it cannot control.
2

In his weekly letter to his sisters, Chamberlain wrote: ... our Minister of Labour has come out in opposition to our Unemployment Relief scheme & has put up a very good case against it. ... I was at first rather disconcerted by his change of mind. But on the whole it is better to get this sort of criticism at the earliest possible moment, for it is bound to come some time and the sooner it comes the more time there is for working out the counter arguments. I am glad to say that the M/Health has not changed his mind and we are going to have a preliminary engagement on Tuesday.
3

Hilton Young, meanwhile, circulated his response to Bettertons criticisms. The implication of Bettertons memorandum, he argued, was that workers who had exhausted their insurance benefit entitlement were to be regarded as exceptional persons requiring separate treatment; and it was precisely this insistence on treating people as if they still had rights when those rights had expired that had been a main cause of the 1931 crisis.
4

Other members of the cabinet committee were divided. J.H. Thomas, one of the ex-Labour ministers who had followed MacDonald into the National government, assured the committee that Chamberlains scheme would be welcomed, particularly by the moderate element in the Labour Party which had been subjected to the grossest misrepresentations and persecution during the local government elections of the previous month. The Secretary of State for Scotland, Sir Godfrey Collins, on the other hand, joining Betterton in opposition, drew attention to the right of appeal to a sheriff under the Scottish Poor Law and the absence of any such right in Chamberlains proposals.
5

For the committees second meeting, a number of other papers were circulated, including Bettertons proposal for the PACs to continue administering relief to the unemployed, but under rules made by the Minister of Labour. There would be a strong Statutory Commission

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with wide powers of initiative and investigation, but so far as the ministers rule-making powers were concerned, the commissions role was to be purely consultative. Chamberlains reaction was scathing: He gathered that it was thought that this body would afford some kind of protection to the Minister, but clearly it would have no responsibility of any sort, the whole of which would remain with the Minister. The main criticisms of Bettertons proposal, however, centred on the role of the PACs - Chamberlain pointed to the increasing difficulty of finding men of the right calibre, experience and character, to take their part in local affairs - and Bettertons insistence on separating the unemployed from other recipients of relief. Unable to reach agreement, the committee decided that the issue of principle, for or against Chamberlains commission, should be referred to the cabinet.
6 7

Before the cabinet meeting on 25 January 1933, Chamberlain, according to his own account, took the trouble to find out ... what Betterton would do if the principle was decided against him. I ascertained that he would not resign and so informed the P.M. before we began!
8

Betterton, however, stood his ground and the cabinet was not prepared to make a decision without further information and reflection, particularly on the question of ministerial responsibility. This crucial issue was resolved two weeks later, on the basis of a proposal by the Ministry of Health designed to give the minister control over the regulations, but to make the procedure difficult so that the control would not commonly be exercised. The regulations drafted by the commission would be submitted to the minister, who would have the power to amend them, but any amendment would require an affirmative resolution of both houses of parliament. With the fundamental constitutional objection to Chamberlains scheme thus removed, the committee was asked to continue work on the scheme as a matter of urgency.
9 10 11 12

Chamberlains self-congratulation (After a somewhat difficult passage, he wrote, I have got my Statutory Commission into port) was again premature. Bettertons opposition was strengthened by a more detailed outline of the Bill circulated by the Ministry of Health in mid-March, which seemed to preserve or restore all the least acceptable features of the Poor Law. Eady summed up the Ministry of Labour view in uncompromising terms:
13

The more we examine the Ministry of Health Bill the more hopeless it appears to us politically and in practice. It is founded upon a complete misunderstanding of the nature and size of the problem. It is entirely Poor Law in its conception. It cannot be pretended that it is a Reformed Poor Law, for where it differs from the existing Poor Law it introduces greater harshness. It purports to repeal the Poor Law but continues the Poor Law tradition and extends it to cover four times as many people.
14

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Over the following weeks, Betterton mounted a sustained attack on the proposals, starting with a memorandum which listed five objectionable aspects: the Bill failed to honour the 1931 pledge that there would be no payments in kind, test work, loans or payment at the workhouse; the disregards of disability pensions and savings introduced by the Determination of Need Act in 1932 were no longer to be mandatory; in addition to the household means test, assistance was to be recoverable from the recipient or from liable relatives, wherever they might live; a new offence of refusal to undergo training was to be created with a maximum penalty of three months imprisonment; and, finally, there was no provision for appeals, apart from a proposal for an arbitral tribunal to decide disputes between the commission and the local authority as to which was responsible for the relief of an individual applicant .
15

The committee met four times between 27 March and 3 April 1933, and a number of changes were made to meet Bettertons criticisms, many of which were supported by other ministers. There was particular concern about the proposal to make assistance recoverable. Even under the Poor Law, outdoor relief to the able-bodied was not recoverable. The commission, Betterton complained, would become a gigantic debt collector. The proposal was dropped. It was agreed also that the statutory disregard of disability pensions should continue, and Young undertook to reconsider the proposed penal provisions. On the question of appeals, it was more difficult to reach agreement. Chamberlain suggested a right of appeal on questions of law, but not of fact or the exercise of discretion, and both Betterton and Young asked for time to consider this.
16

There did now seem to be some grounds for Chamberlains habitual optimism. In his weekend letter to his sister he wrote: Unemployment Insurance has been bowling along pretty well lately and I hope to get it through Cabinet on Wednesday and to make an announcement before Easter. The Min. of Labour still kicks but more feebly.
17

When the committee met to consider a revised Ministry of Health draft, however, Betterton was kicking as vigorously as ever. He objected to the inclusion in the matters to be covered by regulations of cases in which owing to the physical condition or character or mode of life of the applicant or the conditions or circumstances of his home assistance is to be granted in an institution, and it was agreed that the reference to character or mode of life should be omitted. He objected also to a suggestion that the treatment of capital should depend on whether it represented savings - an inquisition, he complained, not only into family means, but also into the origin of those means. On appeals, having had five days to mull over Chamberlains proposal, Betterton now rejected it, insisting that there must be a right of appeal on matters of discretion. Chamberlain was exasperated. To adopt this proposal, he said, would entirely destroy the independence of the Commission and

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make it impossible to secure that uniformity of practice throughout the country which was essential. The version of the scheme submitted to the cabinet that week, therefore, provided for appeals only on points of law.
18

The cabinet discussion, on Friday 7 April and the following Monday, followed familiar lines, with Betterton again stressing the Poor Law features of the scheme and Young commending it as a final stage in the break up of the Poor Law. Right or wrong, Bettertons dogged persistence had left him in a strong bargaining position. So long as he remained Minister of Labour, it was hardly conceivable that a plan to which he was totally opposed could be adopted. At Chamberlains suggestion, therefore, a new cabinet committee was set up, with himself once more in the chair, to produce an agreed scheme and decide which minister should be responsible for it. The committee included two ministers who had sided with Betterton: Walter Elliot, the Minister of Agriculture, and William Ormsby-Gore, the First Commissioner of Works.
19

Two days later, replying to a censure motion criticising the government for failing to make the burden of unemployment a national charge, Young announced that, before the end of the session, the government would introduce a Bill dealing on a national basis with the problem of assistance for those who are in need of assistance, including those who, having been insured against unemployment, are no longer so insured, with a consequential adjustment of the block grant paid to local authorities (the financial implications were to prove highly contentious, since it was not generally understood that the local authorities would be expected to bear something like their existing burden for a scheme over which they would have no control).
20

The government was now firmly committed to a centralised scheme covering, as a minimum, all the able-bodied unemployed. The cabinets failure to endorse the Ministry of Health scheme, the appointment of the new cabinet committee and the commitment to early action all strengthened Bettertons position, and he seized the opportunity, instructing his officials to produce a new scheme which (in Eadys words) in form and spirit ... should be made as like that of the Chancellor as we thought practicable for administration by a Board acting subject to the Minister of Labour in policy, and using the machinery of the Ministry. Neither Betterton nor Eady, the boards future chairman and secretary respectively, believed in it as a body worth creating in its own right. It was a tactical necessity, its main function being the negative one of protecting the minister from responsibility for decisions on individual cases. As a Ministry of Labour official wrote some months later, The idea of central control under some sort of statutory commission got hold of the politicians and we had to produce our Scheme in order to keep our finger in the pie at all. The essential difference between the Unemployment Assistance Board (the title adopted by the Ministry of Labour) and Chamberlains commission as originally conceived was that the board was to deal only
21 22

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with the unemployed, rather than taking over the whole of outdoor relief. The unemployed were to be removed from the Poor Law, but the Poor Law itself was to remain intact for another fifteen years.. The Ministry of Labour takes over The Ministry of Labours new proposals were ready by the end of April 1933 and the cabinet committee met to discuss them on 3 May. Apart from the crucial question of scope - the scheme was to apply to all able-bodied unemployed under 65 who normally work for their living and to nobody else - it differed from the Ministry of Health scheme mainly by providing for appeals on whether an applicant was in need, the amount payable and any conditions attached to it. It preserved in full the statutory provisions relating to the disregard of sick pay, disability pensions and savings. In other respects, however, the schemes were more remarkable for their similarity than for their differences. It certainly was not the Ministry of Labours intention to confer a legal right to assistance. To avoid doing so, at Eadys suggestion, the words assistance may be granted, rather than shall be granted were used. Eadys attitude to the boards welfare functions was frankly cynical. I think it is desirable at this stage to inflate the Commission, he wrote; but, he added, at a later stage I hope to deflate the part of the Commissions duty which relates to the provision of occupation.
23 24

In a neat reversal of roles, Young found himself in the position of trying to persuade his cabinet colleagues to reject a scheme which, whatever its defects, offered the best chance of fulfilling the commitment to action in that session of Parliament. The real objection to it, from the Ministry of Healths point of view, was that it would leave the local authorities with greatly reduced responsibilities but with the need to maintain their public assistance machinery intact and under constant pressure to match the generosity of the UAB. Young, supported by Chamberlain, concentrated his attack on the discriminatory implications of conferring a higher status, free from Poor Law taint, on the unemployed, while leaving the sick, infirm, disabled and elderly with the lower status of public assistance recipients. The case of the widowed mother, Young argued, relegated to the Poor Law at her time of greatest need, presented in its most acute form ... the penalisation of misfortune. As for the proposal for appeals, the main advantage of centralisation - the creation of national standards - would be lost, since the tribunals would be influenced by local traditions and political atmosphere.
25

To resolve the deadlock, Eady invited his opposite number from the Ministry of Health, Francis, to discuss the problem with himself and Reid. The meeting led to a new proposal which Young put in writing to Betterton. In a final attempt to unload the whole of outdoor relief onto the new board, he proposed that responsibility should be divided between the two ministries. Thus, in relation to the unemployed, the

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boards regulations would be laid before Parliament by the Minister of Labour, while the Minister of Health would have the same responsibility for regulations governing assistance to other groups. The proposal was ingenious, allowing discrimination in favour of the unemployed while taking the whole of outdoor relief away from the local authorities. The idea of dual ministerial responsibility was in fact to be adopted seven years later when the Assistance Board became responsible for the payment of supplementary pensions as well as unemployment assistance. In May 1933, however, Betterton regarded the two-headed scheme (as Eady dubbed it) as yet another device for embroiling the unemployed in the machinery of the Poor Law, administered by a board rather than by local authorities but otherwise intact. He responded to Youngs fuller written explanation of the scheme in a bad-tempered note complaining that it had been prepared without consultation with me, though it deals with several millions of people for whom I am responsible, with over 50,000,000 of expenditure for which I have to account to Parliament, and with the use of the machinery of the Employment Exchanges belonging to my Department.
26 27

It was not strictly true that there had been no consultation, since Francis had shown Eady a draft of the paper, but there is a curious conflict of evidence as to what then occurred. According to a note by Eady, it was clear from the draft that the board and its organisation, both centrally and locally, were to be indissolubly one. Instead of appeal tribunals, there would be some sort of appeal to Assistant Commissioners of whom there would be about twenty, with salaries of about 1,500 a year. This preposterous proposal, Eady wrote, is due to the necessity for absorbing into the Boards organisation the overpaid Public Assistance Officers of many of the big Local Authorities. He claimed to have told Francis that the Ministry of Labour could not possibly accept such a scheme. The Ministry of Health files, however, contain a totally different account by Francis of the same meeting:
28

I showed Mr Eady, who was seeing me on other business, a copy of my preliminary note of the re-organisation of the Commission and asked him what was wrong with it. Other business intervened and it would not be fair to say that Mr Eady was disinclined to discuss the paper, but he certainly neglected to take the opportunity of doing so.
29

Whichever version is correct, it is clear that the two-headed scheme stood no chance of acceptance by Betterton. The cabinet committee did not meet for two months, during which the Ministry of Labour proceeded with its own proposals and Chamberlain persuaded Young that there was no alternative to allowing a Ministry of Labour bill to go forward. That view was duly endorsed by the committee on 19 July and by the full cabinet the following week. Young recorded his dissent in a memorandum which reiterated the arguments against preferential treatment of the unemployed. Those against whom the preference would be exercised, he complained, would be mainly

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widows and orphans (and deserted women); the temporarily sick; the disabled (including ex-service men); the small own-employer (shopkeeper) on evil days; the aged over 65. ... These classes deserve no less well of society than the able-bodied. Indeed they deserve greater consideration, because the misfortunes are greater. ... Are we not missing a matchless opportunity to do a big thing by putting our system of assistance on a more humane and more reasonable basis? - an opportunity too of relieving local authorities of a burden, the burden of maintaining good standards of administration, that is becoming too heavy for them.
30

Chamberlain told the cabinet that, while agreeing with Young, he had accepted Bettertons scheme as a compromise; but if it proved a success, he thought it would be necessary to go further, on the lines of his original plan. Sadly for him, Chamberlain did not live to see the transfer in 1948 of the remaining outdoor relief functions of the local authorities to the National Assistance Board.
31

Penalties and appeals Some difficult questions remained to be answered about the Ministry of Labour scheme, including the treatment of those who had left a job voluntarily, been dismissed for misconduct or refused suitable employment, all of which were grounds for disqualification for unemployment insurance benefit. Eady at first favoured disqualifying them for unemployment assistance as well, but this would have involved the same rights of appeal and complex case law as in the insurance scheme. He suggested, therefore, that it should be left to the officer dealing with the case to decide whether some form of deterrent treatment was appropriate, although this meant importing into the scheme penalties of the kind that the Ministry of Labour had consistently criticised in the Ministry of Health scheme as evidence of its Poor Law philosophy: refusal of assistance, relief in kind and the power to require attendance at instructional centres or to offer institutional relief. In a revealing paragraph, Eady wrote: Some parts of the Poor Law stigma are healthy; they are largely traditional and the tradition will be broken by the new scheme. In their place there must be power for a sharpness of treatment where it is required. Unless those powers are given to the Commission there are risks of abuses, which though not numerous or expensive, would discredit the whole scheme.
32

The precise range of penal conditions varied from one draft of the bill to another. In the end there were four: payment of the allowance wholly or in part to another member of the household, payment in kind, attendance at a work centre and admission to the workhouse. Payment as a loan was excluded by reason of its slight applicability. The workhouse condition was included despite the Ministry of Healths
33

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objection that workhouses, as they now exist, are not generally suitable for use as penitentiaries. The parliamentary draughtsman was asked to avoid the term workhouse in the bill, but was apparently unable to find a satisfactory alternative (see the footnote on page 1/4). During the bills committee stage, the government offered to accept an amendment substituting Poor Law institution if the mover of an amendment removing the workhouse provision entirely would withdraw it, but that offer was refused and workhouse remained.
34 35 36

The inclusion of provisions of this kind reinforced the case for rights of appeal, but the proposed appeal tribunals were viewed with apprehension by both Treasury and Ministry of Health officials, despite Bettertons assurance that they were unlikely to go off the rails, the chairman being appointed by the minister and one of the other two members being a representative of the board. Various alternatives were considered, including the hearing of appeals by a single referee instead of a three-person tribunal, avoiding the need for a workpeoples representative. This was rejected on the grounds that, in the absence of a workers representative, it would be impossible to resist demands for appellants to be represented by their trade union or the NUWM (National Unemployed Workers Movement), and that it might be more difficult to control the idiosyncrasies of a single referee than of a tribunal whose members would include a representative of the board. Another proposal was that the tribunals should be limited to making recommendations, but neither Betterton nor Chamberlain liked the idea. Chamberlain, Eady reported,
37 38

thought that we should get the worst of both worlds. We should not be able to say that we had an independent tribunal and the tribunals would become irresponsible, leaving it to the Commission to clean up the mess. With these admirable sentiments I heartily agree.
39

The solution finally adopted, at Eadys suggestion, was that an appeal should be heard only if the chairman of the tribunal had given leave to appeal on the grounds that there were special circumstances not covered by the regulations. Thus amended, the appeal clause, Eady wrote, like Caesars wife, is all things to all men, and good Strohmenger feels that we have gone so far that he will recommend the Chancellor to agree - which Chamberlain duly did.
40

A draft of the bill incorporating these decisions was circulated at the end of July 1933. It met with disapproval from friend and foe alike. In their anxiety to avoid creating statutory rights and to protect the scheme from abuse, the officials had produced a bill which looked far too much like an illiberal re-enactment of the Poor Law. At the Ministry of Health, Francis remarked that it came as a shock after the objections consistently raised by the Ministry of Labour as to the application either of the Poor Law scheme or of a new scheme based on Poor Law principles to the relief of the unemployed. He wondered, indeed, whether the object of putting forward a draft permitting the application

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to the unemployed of methods fully as repressive as those practised by the Poor Law authorities today, or at any time since, say, 1922 might be so to repel Ministers, or at any rate the House of Commons, as to require the withdrawal of the present draft and the substitution of something which is to be appreciably milder in substance and may approach perilously near an admitted practice of work or maintenance.
41

Betterton was equally critical. In a note probably written while on holiday in August or early September, he wrote: The Public Assistance scheme as drawn seems to me to be wholly inacceptable and not one for which the Ministry of Labour can be responsible and makes the position of those now on transitional payments definitely worse than it is at present. I do not believe this is the intention of the Cabinet, and it is certainly not mine. The appropriate Minister for this scheme is the Minister of Health ... by no stretch of imagination can it be said that it approaches the problem as an industrial and not as a Poor Law problem - and any attempt to persuade the House that this is the intention is predoomed to failure. The bill seemed to him to fail on two main counts. First, it gave the board almost unlimited powers to impose deterrent and punitive conditions, with inadequate rights of appeal. Secondly, the constructive side of the boards work appeared in only one clause, empowering it to provide training and re-establishment centres; the other 13 are either administrative or penal. Clause 9, dealing with admission to the workhouse, was in Bettertons view more than enough to ensure the bills rejection. As for the board itself, why could it not be combined with the statutory commission which was to supervise the finances of unemployment insurance? A proposal to set up two new bodies, both apparently to be salaried, would at the outset expose the whole scheme to acute criticism and ridicule. It will be difficult enough to justify one commission and to attempt to justify two quite impossible.
42

To meet Bettertons criticisms, Eady undertook to reconstruct the bill, making it clear that the penal provisions were intended only for a limited class, and to examine a proposal by Betterton for grants to local authorities employing unemployed people on public works. It was agreed, too, that the question of a single commission would be considered, but nothing more was heard of it.
43

The changes made, to produce what was to be the final draft of the bill, were largely but not wholly cosmetic. Among the cosmetic changes, Eadys original intention of inflating the commission was implemented by a new sub-clause requiring the board to promote the welfare of those to whom the scheme applied and, in particular, to make provision for the improvement and re-establishment of their condition with a view to

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fitting them for regular employment; and the power to pay allowances to people on training courses was separated from the penal clauses of the bill.
44

The main change of substance in the redrafted bill was the extension of the circumstances in which leave to appeal could be granted to include cases where the assessment appeared not to be in accordance with the regulations, enabling the tribunals to hear appeals on questions of law, though without any higher tribunal to establish case law (as the umpire did in the unemployment insurance scheme) - a situation which was to continue until a right of appeal to the High Court from the decisions of supplementary benefit appeal tribunals was introduced in 1978.
45

Finally, a new clause proposed by Betterton was added, allowing the board to subsidise the employment of unemployed people by local authorities on public works. For up to three months, the board would contribute the amount it would otherwise have paid to the persons concerned if they had remained unemployed. Although the government was in principle firmly opposed to relief work, there was support among Ministry of Labour officials for a limited scheme of this kind, as a result of two projects carried out between 1930 and 1932 when more than a thousand men from the ministrys instructional centres worked for up to three months on the development of Whipsnade Zoo and the laying out of a sports ground for London University. Most of the men had subsequently found other work. The Ministry of Health, however, having taken a firm line against local authorities employing outdoor relief recipients on public works, strongly objected to the proposal. As a result, the cabinet committee agreed to it only in a fatally weakened form, the boards contribution being limited to the additional cost incurred by the local authority in employing labour recruited in this way. As this removed any financial incentive for local authorities to make use of the provision, it is not surprising that none did so (a similar provision was made in 1939 for subsidised employment of the boards applicants by the non-profit-making companies set up to construct evacuation camps; it was used, but on a small scale and only in Scotland ).
51 46 47 48

Betterton declared himself extremely pleased with the bill in its modified form. The cabinet committee proposed only one more amendment of substance to Part II (Part I of the bill contained the provisions relating to unemployment insurance), to make it clear that the penal clause was to be used only in what came to be known as cases of special difficulty not only drunkards, gamblers, etc., but the work shy class.
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The bill received cabinet approval on 6 November 1933 and was introduced in the House of Commons two days later, thus fulfilling - but only just - Youngs pledge that it would be introduced before the end of the parliamentary session. Chamberlain wrote to his sister that weekend: I rather thought our Unempt etc Bill would have a good reception but it has been better than I thought. My interviews with Press

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proprietors were supplemented by Betterton who saw the Editors and Lobby correspondents so the ground was well prepared, but the Bill has really won approval on merits. ... Our people in the House are very pleased and the Local Authorities though anxious to get the best possible financial terms are pleased to be relieved of the Means Test.
51

Betterton, too, had reason to be pleased with the outcome of his long struggle to keep the unemployed as a separate class outside the Poor Law and to create an administrative structure capable of use for more constructive purposes than merely handing out doles. At the Ministry of Health, feelings must have been more mixed. Young had lost the battle for the break-up of the Poor Law, but the transfer of the unemployed to the new board, for which another minister would be answerable, was a substantial consolation prize. In the light of subsequent events, it is important to stress that, at this stage, the new scheme was expected, at least by the Ministry of Labour, to put a substantial amount of additional money in the pockets of the unemployed - mainly those previously deterred from applying for relief under the Poor Law. The ministrys estimates included 5 million under the heading new applicants, accompanied by the following note: The Poor Law is a deterrent not merely for what it does, but for what by tradition it is commonly supposed to be. This tradition will be at an end, and it will be difficult to establish an administrative technique effective enough to replace that tradition.
52

Treasury officials doubted whether this extra 5 million would be needed, given that the existing cost of relief to the able-bodied under the Poor Law was only 6 million. With the benefit of hindsight it seems that they were right. It was only in April 1937 that unemployed people who would previously have had to apply for outdoor relief became eligible for assistance from the board, and there is no evidence of a flood of new applications resulting from the removal of the Poor Law taint.
53

So far as those receiving transitional payments were concerned, the ministrys estimate was that, if the board adopted standards similar to those of the Durham Commissioners, gains in some areas would be roughly balanced by losses in others, but additional costs estimated at 1.5 million a year would result from the boards freedom to make payments in excess of the unemployment benefit rates and to supplement benefit payments. These estimates were subject to a wide margin of uncertainty: an increase of a shilling a week per applicant would cost another 2.5 million, while concessions on the treatment of earnings or other resources could add several millions to the cost. Despite the uncertainties, however, nobody, either at the ministry or at the Treasury, expected the replacement of transitional payments by unemployment assistance to result, as it did initially, in a substantial net reduction in payments to the unemployed.
54

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Reinventing the dole: a history of the Unemployment Assistance Board 1934-1940 by Tony Lynes is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.

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