and with greatly increased cost for administration. One further result is that there is no sort of guarantee that we shall have the same kind of scheme in operation in any one of these sub-divisions of our nationalities that we have in another. Under the new provisions of the Bill the Insurance Commissioners in Ireland will be given a practically free hand to create almost a different system of insurance altogether from that which obtains in this country. ... I come now to the assertion in the Amendment that the Bill has been neither adequately discussed in this House nor fully explained to the country. I have only to enumerate the Clauses which were passed without discussion to show how ruthlessly our debates have been curtailed and how incomplete our work is as it stands at present. . . . In Part I thirty-two Clauses have been passed without a word of detailed discussion. Eighteen were passed in one night under the guillotine in Committee. As evidence of the haste with which these new Clauses were drawn, we may point to the fact that two of them were struck out of the Bill by the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself as soon as we came to the Report stage. . . It is not only in Committee that we have been denied the opportunity to discuss the Clauses of the Bill. What happened on Report? When we came to the Report stage the Bill was practically recast, but we have never had any hand in the discussion of it. Out of the first seventy-seven Clauses as passed through Committee the two Clauses to which I have already referred were struck out, and sixty-eight were amended, though not one of them was discussed. The Report stage of the Bill which suffered this treatment came to an end on Monday last, and we are now invited to read it a third time, after only one day's interval. I think it is absolutely impossible for anyone who has not - it is difficult enough for those who have — followed the debates on this Bill hour by hour, almost minute by minute, to say how closely this Bill resembles the Bill which was first introduced, or how widely it differs from it! . . . I have referred to the question of the division of the Irish, Scottish, and Welsh funds from the English funds. I have pointed out that that formed no part of the original scheme. It weakens the stability of the fund; it leads to administrative difficulties, as the trade unions will find. This alteration has found no favour with those who have looked at this Bill as a method of insurance and not as an indirect method of initiating a policy of Home Rule all round. People have spoken on the Committee stage, and people still speak in the country, as if the Bill we are discussing contained the whole scheme. It does not. The great mass of regulations are just as important. I am not sure they are not even more far-reaching than the provisions of the Bill itself, and we cannot judge fairly of the scheme as a whole until we see in print the regulations as well as the Bill itself. In the earlier part of what I said I invited the House to consider the whole meaning of the Amendment I am moving. We ask in that Amendment that the door should be kept open for further discussion, believing that further discussion would lead to further improvements to improvements that would be the outcome of matured thought, of sober reflection, and of quiet and considered judgment. . . On the night of the introduction of the scheme, when the whole House lay under the spell of the magic eloquence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer — I very well remember the effect it produced — I ventured to make a very short speech. I do not think it lasted five minutes, and I think its brevity was, perhaps, its chief merit, but in the course of what I said I laid down for my own guidance a distinct line of policy, which I, at any rate, intend to follow in regard to this Bill, and perhaps the House will allow me to quote a few words from what I said: This is not a scheme of charity; the right hon. Gentleman advanced it as a business proposition. If you advance it as a business proposition, and such proposition it undoubtedly is, it lies with you to justify the claim you make upon each constituent party in the tripartite partnership -- the workman, the employer, and the State. As you are able to justify the contribution that you invoke, so shall you receive the support of all classes of the community. Speaking, if I may, on behalf of my hon. Friends on this side of the House, I will say that believing as we do that you are animated by the sole desire to confer a lasting benefit upon all classes of the community, so we will aid you in the perfection of the details of the scheme with all the zeal and all the energy and all the good will we can give it. To the line of policy indicated in these few sentences we have adhered strictly and constantly. Discussion has not always been easy. The temptation to wander into the field of controversy and to enter into the joy of fight has not always been so easy to escape, and I am bound to say that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has occasionally strewn temptations in our path. On the whole, our action from the first has been clearly consistent. We have sought by all the means in our power to improve this Bill. . . I believe, with full and free discussion, with full and fair Amendments, this Bill could be made into a most potent instrument of good, touching as it does at every point the lives and the fortunes of the poorer members of our community, the men and women who have the least opportunity of striking a fair balance between its merits and defects which cry aloud for further consideration and further amendment, and it is in part that spirit and with that object that I beg to move the Amendment standing in my name. Extract 90 NATIONAL INSURANCE AND SELF-RELIANCE (Lord Robert Cecil, Commons, December 6, 1911) . LORD R. CECIL1: If you once make the State a partner in private enterprise, it means the absorption of that private enterprise by the State. I believe that to be a principle which scarcely requires to be defended. If you want to see it in full operation, you 1 Parliamentary Debates, Fifth Series, Commons, vol. 32, col. 1476-1477. have merely got to look at the history of the voluntary schools of this country. A partnership was created between the State and the voluntary schools in the matter of elementary education, and that principle was advanced in 1870. What has been its history since then? Every decade has seen a further advance of the State and a further retirement of the voluntary principle, until at the present time the State schools are all compulsory, all free, and practically they are absolutely under the control and management of the State. The voluntary principle has practically expired, and if the right hon. Gentlemen and their Friends had their way, they would give it its death blow. Therefore, anyone who considers the history of the voluntary schools under the legislation which began in 1870 will see what will inevitably happen to the friendly societies under the legislation which has now begun. More than that, the voluntary schools have been rightly or wrongly-kept alive by a strong religious sentiment. You have no such sentiment at all events not of that strength to keep alive friendly societies. Depend upon it, this Bill when it passes is the death warrant of the friendly societies of this country. For those reasons I am strongly opposed to a compulsory scheme. Finally and this is the one reason which moves me most of all— I regard it as a very dangerous precedent to liberty and independence in this country, and that, undoubtedly, however the Chancellor of the Exchequer may sneer at domestic servants, is the backbone of the agitation against this Bill. This is not a question of particular figures, or of particular discussions, or of argumentative leaflets, or whether this or that person pays. The backbone of the agitation against this Bill is that the people bitterly resent in this country being made to apply their own money for the benefits in a way they do not approve. It is defended by the German example; but that example is wholly irrelevant. The whole history of Germany is the history of the control of the individual by the State. Frederick William established an elaborate system of State control over the whole lives of everyone of his subjects. That has been the history of Germany, and that cannot be transplanted to this country without great injury to the institutions of this country. I have a fanatical belief in individual freedom. I believe it is a vital thing for this country, and I believe it is the cornerstone upon which our prosperity and our existence is built, and, for my part, I believe that the civic qualities of self-control, self-reliance, and / self-respect depend upon individual liberty and the freedom and independence of the people of this country. We all remember a great phrase of a great prelate, who said he would sooner see England free than England sober. It has been greatly misrepresented, but properly understood I agree with that proposition. I think it could be put more thoroughly by saying that you cannot have sobriety without freedom. The essence of the virtue of sobriety and all civic virtues is self-control and self-reliance, and you cannot have these without freedom. And it is because I believe that in its present form this Bill is a great danger to liberty, and was so regarded by the electors I had the honour of addressing during the three or four weeks of my election campaign, that I think it is vital it should be further considered, and that the country should have a further opportunity of expressing its opinion upon it and of saying whether it desires to have these German shackles put upon it, or whether it would not prefer to have a scheme founded upon the principle of liberty and independence. Extract 91 DEFECTS IN THE GOVERNMENT BILL (Mr. Bonar Law, Commons, December 6, 1911) MR. BONAR LAW1: . . Whatever may be the opinion of the House of Commons, I am perfectly certain of this, that threefourths, and I believe nine-tenths, of the people of this country 1 Parliamentary Debates, Commons, Fifth Series, vol. 32, col. 1504 sqq. |