(iii.) The Principle of Universal Provision and a Destitution Authority
When we come to the third of the "Principles of 1907," that of Universal Provision, we see at once that this is inherently inconsistent with the very nature of a Destitution Authority. It is of the essence of a Destitution Authority whatever its functions and whatever its designation, that it should confine its ministrations to a particular section of the community, namely those who are destitute. But with regard to one subject after another, such as primary education or sanitation, or the ordinary matters of municipal government, the community has come to the conclusion that it is in the public interest that these services should be rendered to all who need or claim them, whatever their affluence. Thus, whenever it is decided to apply the Principle of Universal Provision to any public service, either free of any charge or upon payment of a stated price or contribution, this public service necessarily falls to some Public Authority other than that administering the Poor Law. And the further consequence arises that at once we get, in respect of that particular service, an overlapping of functions and duplication of work. The Destitution Authority is bound to provide everything requisite (including the service in question) for its destitute clients. The other Public Authority is bound to supply the service in question to all who need it (including those who are destitute). This overlapping and duplication has, as we have elsewhere indicated, already gone very far. The Local Education Authorities are now providing for children, irrespective of their affluence, not only primary, secondary, and university education, but also, in many tens of thousands of cases, medical inspection and treatment, meals at school, and even complete board, lodging, and clothing. The Local Health Authorities are now providing for the sick, irrespective of their affluence, not only sanitary inspection and control, but also medical diagnosis and treatment, nursing, and (in 700 municipal hospitals) even maintenance. The Local Lunacy Authorities are now providing for all grades of the mentally defective, irrespective of their affluence, not only control, but also ameliorative treatment and maintenance. The Local Pension Authorities are now providing for all persons over seventy who do not possess more than twelve shillings a week of income, irrespective of whether or not they are destitute, regular pensions from national funds. The Local Unemployment Authorities (the Distress Committees) are providing for all men who are unemployed, quite irrespective of their affluence, various costly services, part of which are now in process of being transferred to a National Authority (the National Labour Exchange). It is not possible to stop this overlap and duplication by establishing, as the Majority Report vainly desiderates, in every district "one Authority and only one Authority" for all forms of public assistance, for this would be, as we see, to merge in the Poor Law all the services of Local Government, and to extend the "stigma of pauperism" to the entire community. Indeed, the adoption of the Principle of Universal Provision has already gone so far, and the services of the separate Public Authorities are already so all-embracing, that there is no section of the pauper host for which they do not nowadays provide. Destitute children are already being maintained by the Local Education Authorities, destitute sick by the Local Health Authorities, destitute mentally defective by the Local Lunacy Authorities, destitute aged by the Local Pension Authorities, and destitute able-bodied by the Local Unemployment Authorities—actually in greater numbers, in the aggregate, than those still under the Poor Law. There are no paupers who do not belong to one or other of these five sections. Hence the partial adoption by the community of this Principle of Universal Provision has rendered unnecessary the retention of any Destitution Authority. Its work is being done elsewhere.
We must remember that the Principle of Universal Provision in no way implies or involves, either the gratuitousness of the service or the charging of any uniform fee. The enforcement by the Local Health Authority of a National Minimum of sanitation and water-supply for each dwelling-house, does not mean that these things are necessarily provided by the Local Health Authority itself, or free of charge. Most of the service is ensured by an enforcement upon the owners and occupiers of dwelling-houses of the fulfilment of their personal obligations. The provision by the Local Education Authority of educational facilities for all who claimed them was long accompanied by a universal charging of fees, and is, above the primary grade, still usually made a matter of charge. The Local Lunacy Authorities insist on payment being made in respect of all their patients whose settlements they can trace, recovering the full cost (apart from the Government Grant) either from the patient's own estate, or from his relations, or from the Union to which he belongs. Hence we see that the adoption of the Principle of Universal Provision does not imply or involve the gratuitousness of the service, or any diminution of the number or kinds of cases in which, under the present law and practice, payment is enforced on the individual or his relations. A transfer to the several Preventive Authorities (the Education Authority, the Health Authority, the Lunacy Authority, and the Unemployment Authority) of the various services now combined under the Board of Guardians, could, in fact, hardly fail to lead to a more systematic consideration and a far stricter enforcement of the duty of repaying the cost of the treatment than the present slipshod and logically inconsistent arrangements. What particular services should be charged for to the recipients as such, and which to the ratepayers as a whole; in what proportion the cost should be shared between the patient, the Local Authority, and the National Government; and at what rate and under what conditions any such charges should be recovered by legal process in particular cases, are all of them questions which should, in our view, be authoritatively determined by Parliament, in a clear and consistent code relating to Charge and Recovery of Cost.
CHAPTER VII
THE MINORITY REPORT OF THE ROYAL COMMISSION OF 1905-1909
We have described how the Majority Report of the Royal Commission professedly accepts the "Principles of 1907," but attempts to graft them upon a new Destitution Authority, and then inevitably finds itself compelled—seeing that these principles are incompatible with the very nature of a Destitution Authority—to revert, in reality, to the "Principles of 1834." The Minority Report on the other hand, carries the "Principles of 1907" to their logical conclusion; and at the same time discovers to us the unifying principle on which they have been unconsciously based, and by which alone their possible costliness can be limited and justified. Thus the Minority Report finds, at the stage to which English Local Government has now attained, absolutely no need for a Poor Law Authority, or for any policy of "relieving" destitution on any principles whatsoever. It finds the other Public Authorities already dealing, on the Principles of Curative Treatment, Compulsion, and Universal Provision, and as a part of their normal functions in connection with the population at large, with all the different sections of the pauper host; the Local Education Authority providing for many destitute children of school age; the Local Health Authority for many destitute infants, and sick and infirm persons; the Local Lunacy Authority for actually a majority of the destitute mentally defective; the Local Pension Authority for hundreds of thousands of destitute aged; and the Local Unemployment Authority, now to be reinforced by a National Unemployment Authority, for innumerable destitute able-bodied. Thus, as already stated, there are to-day actually more destitute persons being maintained at the public expense outside the Poor Law than inside its scope. What seems clearly inevitable is the continuation of this evolution, and the transfer to these several Public Authorities of the remainder of each section of the destitute for whom the Board of Guardians is still providing. Those children of school age who are still being looked after by the Poor Law Authority will be increasingly entrusted to the Local Education Authority; those sick persons who are still included among the paupers will more and more be merged in those already under treatment by the Local Health Authority; those mentally defective and feeble-minded who still cumber the workhouses will presently be handed over to the Lunacy Authorities; the remnant of the healthy aged who are still classed as paupers will inevitably be dealt with among the much larger number already under the care of the Local Pension Committee; whilst those able-bodied persons who are being relieved as vagrants or paupers, together with the "Unemployed" now on the registers of the Distress Committees, will come under the supervision and control of the new National Authority for the able-bodied, of which the beginning is seen in the Labour Exchanges Act of 1909. This, we suggest, is plainly the lesson of the day.
The gist of the Minority Report so far, at any rate, as the non-able-bodied are concerned may be put even more shortly. The Poor Law and the Poor Law Authorities—necessary at an earlier stage of Local Government, when destitution would otherwise have gone undealt with—can now simply be merged in the ordinary functions of municipal and county administration Only in this way can we put an end to the costly and extravagant overlapping that now exists between the Poor Law Authority, on the one hand, and all the other Authorities on the other.