The following special regulations were in force at the end of 1847:—
Nottingham.—The Out-relief Rules contained in the early Regulations Order were in special terms. A subsequent Order suspended certain of those rules, and permitted outdoor relief to able-bodied paupers, to "be given, as far as possible, in return for piecework."
St. Pancras.—The rules directed that "in the case of any able-bodied persons the guardians may, until accommodation can be obtained for the reception of such persons in the workhouse, give outdoor relief, one-half of which, at least, shall be in kind; but such relief shall only be given in return for labour at task work."
APPENDIX B[864]
EXTRACT FROM THE MINORITY REPORT FOR SCOTLAND, GIVING THE REASONS IN FAVOUR OF THE COMPLETE SUPERSESSION OF THE POOR LAW
We realise that the foregoing recommendations amount to the complete supersession of the Poor Law, and, indeed, to its abolition. In its stead, we propose merely an adequate enlargement of the work already undertaken by the various existing public authorities for the prevention of destitution—for the prevention of the destitution due to neglected childhood by the Local Education Authority; for the prevention of the destitution due to preventable sickness, neglected infancy, or uncared-for infirmity by the Local Health Authority; for the prevention of the destitution due to mental defectiveness by the Local Lunacy Authority; for the prevention of the destitution of Old Age by the Local Pension Authority; and for the prevention of the destitution due to unemployment by the new National Authority of which the beginning is seen in the Labour Exchanges Act of 1909. We recommend, in fact, that the community should cease to maintain a special organ for the mere relief of destitution, however caused, and should make such relief as must be given merely incidental to the deliberate prevention of destitution, to which it has, by the creation of public authorities dealing with the several causes of destitution, already set its hand. We now proceed to summarise the main reasons for so radical a change of attitude towards the problem of poverty, and incidentally to answer the more important objections that have been made to it.
The Present Overlap and Duplication of Services in Respect of all Sections of the Destitute
The first reason for dispensing with any special Authority for the relief of destitution as such is a practical one. The work of the Poor Law Authority has to-day been largely superseded, in every branch of its duties, by the activities of the newer forms of Local Government. We have already described, in our proposal for the institution of a Common Register of Public Assistance, and the appointment of a Registrar, the beginnings in Scotland of the same costly overlap of services and duplication of work which have, in England, already reached extravagant proportions. Thus, whereas in 1845, and for some years afterwards, all the public assistance afforded to the sick poor was included in the Poor Law administration, there has gradually been built up, out of the rates, a second medical service, the Public Health department of the County or Burgh. This Public Health Department—in the Highlands, in the Hebrides, and in some of the rural districts still only rudimentary—has, in the large towns, already its own series of hospitals in which the sick poor are maintained as well as treated, entirely free of charge, yet without being paupers. To the long list of diseases already treated in these municipal hospitals, there has now been added phthisis, an illness which accounts for a large proportion of the sick at present dealt with by the Poor Law Authorities. With regard to the children, we see, more or less competing with the Poor Law for their care, on the one hand the Industrial Schools so largely maintained out of the rates and taxes, and on the other the School Boards with the new powers conferred on them by the Education (Scotland) Act of 1908 in connection with the provision of meals and medical inspection. With regard to the aged, we have since 1908 in every County and Burgh a Local Pension Committee awarding domiciliary pensions to no fewer than 70,000 persons over 70, or more than treble the number of aged persons maintained by the Parish Councils as Poor Law Authorities, many, indeed, having been saved from the pauper roll. The removal of the pauper disqualification for a national pension, which has been definitely announced as a subject for legislation in 1910, will make the overlap still more remarkable. With regard to all the persons certifiable as of unsound mind we have the District Boards of Lunacy providing asylums for some, whilst the Parish Councils still deal with others in the Poorhouses, as they do with the uncertified imbeciles, epileptics, and feeble-minded. Finally, with regard to the able-bodied men in distress, for whom the Scottish Poor Law professes not to provide (but nevertheless, as we see, in practice does so as much as the English Poor Law), we find growing up in a score of towns, comprising half the population of Scotland, an organised system of public assistance of one kind or another, under the Distress Committees established by the Unemployed Workmen Act of 1905. We see, in town after town, the vagrants, for whom the Parish Council does not provide, relieved in one way or another by the Police. Thus, there is not one section of the host of persons in Scotland who are without the necessaries of life, of whom the Parish Council, as the Poor Law Authority, is to-day left in undisturbed possession. For the care of the children, the sick, the mentally defective, the aged, and the able-bodied unemployed, Parliament has set up, in Scotland as in England, specialised public authorities which deal with the poor, not on account of their destitution, but in respect of the cause or character of their need.
Fortunately, the overlap and confusion caused by these rival services and competing Local Authorities have in Scotland not yet gone far. It is still possible to prevent a waste of expenditure and a confusion of functions that will certainly increase if the growing overlap is not stopped. To us there seems to be but two lines of reform. We may, on the one hand, ask Parliament to arrest the ever-increasing activities of the Local Health Authorities, stop the provision of more isolation hospitals, check the Health Visitors and the crusade against infantile mortality, rescind the recent order of the Local Government Board annexing to their sphere the whole range of tuberculosis, and remit all the sick poor once more to the Parish Council and its Poorhouse. We may propose to repeal the Unemployed Workmen Act and the Old Age Pensions Act, and thrust back the unemployed workmen and the aged into the Poor Law. We may recommend the withdrawal of the new powers given to the School Boards in connection with medical inspection and school meals for hungry children. We may, in fact, propose to revert to the position in 1845, when there was everywhere one Local Authority, and one Local Authority only, to give public assistance to the necessitous poor. We do not think such a course either desirable or politically practicable. We do not believe that any Minister of the Crown will have the hardihood to propose it; we do not believe that Scottish public opinion will tolerate it; we do not believe that any House of Commons will agree to it.