CHAPTER 11: POLITICAL INTERVENTION Oliver Stanley asks for more On the day the board reached agreement

on the regulations, 16 October 1934, a provisional draft was sent to the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Health and the Treasury, leaving time, it was hoped, for the proposals to receive cabinet approval in time for their formal submission to Oliver Stanley by 28 October, as required by the Act. The Treasury, well briefed by Strohmenger, was satisfied that the board had carried out its task with due regard for the public purse: the total amount paid to the transitional payments class was to remain at about its existing level, even if some increase to the public assistance class was inevitable. The Ministry of Health and the Scottish Office were also at first disposed to accept the draft as it stood, but Stanley was not. The idea of obtaining cabinet approval before the regulations were formally submitted to the Minister of Labour was therefore abandoned. The 28 October deadline being a Sunday, the draft was submitted on Friday 26 October.
1 2

On the same day, Stanley circulated a memorandum setting out his objections: in particular, the fact - applauded by the Treasury - that the scale rates for a couple (23s.) and for a family with one child under five (26s.) were below the unemployment benefit rates (26s. and 28s.), and the failure of the earnings rule to distinguish between members of the household on the basis of their relationship to the applicant. He also commented on the absence of any provision for dignity money to ensure that an unemployed man was not left wholly dependent on his childrens earnings.
3

Strohmenger and the Treasury were considerably alarmed. Chamberlain was warned by his officials (the words were Strohmengers) that, if the changes Stanley wanted were not merely a matter of presentation but involved raising the level of the allowances, he was asking for something like the destruction of the Boards work. Not only would the cost be increased but the balance of the scale, designed to avoid too frequent use of the wage stop, would be badly upset. The earnings rules were generous and represented an agreed plan which composes divergent views; the board could hardly be asked to reconsider them. As for dignity money, a rule that an unemployed parent should automatically get an allowance, however small, would be both illegal and inconsistent with the de minimis rule (that an applicant was to be deemed in need of assistance only if his resources fell substantially short of his needs).
4

The draft was presented to the cabinet the following week but could not be approved until Stanleys anxieties had been investigated and, if possible, allayed. A cabinet committee was set up for this purpose but did not meet until two weeks later. Meanwhile negotiations proceeded between officials of the Ministry of Labour, the board and the Treasury. The board could justifiably have reminded the Minister that, if he wished to amend the draft, he was required by the Act to lay it before
5

11/1

parliament with a statement of his proposed amendments. It would, however, have been extremely embarrassing for the government if, after all that had been said about the boards independence, its first draft regulations had been publicly rejected by the minister. From the boards point of view, not only would its competence have been thrown in doubt but it would have been accused of wanting to treat the unemployed so harshly that the minister had been compelled to intervene. From a practical viewpoint, if changes had to be made, it was better that they should be worked out by the boards officials, in full knowledge of their implications, than by the Ministry of Labour. It could be argued, moreover, that the procedure laid down in the Act was intended only to resolve a deadlock between the board and the minister and that it was pointless to involve parliament in an argument that could be settled amicably. Nevertheless, by agreeing to dispense with the safeguards provided by the Act, the board accepted its subordinate role, which was to be confirmed by subsequent events. The overall effect of the changes proposed by the board in response to Stanleys criticisms was relatively small. The main alteration in the scale was an increase from 23s. to 24s. for a married couple, with a minimum allowance of 4s. for an only child (the normal rates were 3s. for a child under 5 and 3s.6d. for a child aged 5-7), raising the total scale rates for a one-child family to at least the unemployment benefit rate of 28s. These improvements, however, were to be balanced by a series of other changes, including much more complicated versions of the supercut and the rent rule. In general, families with up to three young children would have gained at the expense of childless couples and larger families. The changes proposed in the earnings rule, similarly, combined more generous treatment for some members of the household with less generous treatment for others. Applicants parents were to be treated much less generously, getting the same allowance for personal requirements as the applicant and the applicants wife or husband (5s. a week or half their earnings, whichever was less), instead of the more generous allowance applicable to more distant relatives. No change was proposed in the amount of earnings that sons, daughters, brothers and sisters would be allowed to keep for personal requirements (a third of the first 20s. and a quarter above that level), but other members of the household (mainly brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law) were to be allowed a third of their total earnings. Finally, for other income not covered by the statutory disregards, instead of a reasonable amount being allowed for personal requirements, which Stanley regarded as too vague, the one-third rule explained in chapter 10 was proposed.
6

Stanley accepted these proposals, which were endorsed by the board on 12 November, the secretary being authorised to substitute the final draft of the regulations for the one previously communicated to the ministry. Some members of the board expressed apprehension lest unemployment insurance should suffer in competition with
11/2

unemployment assistance, but most of them were probably not displeased by the alterations that had been forced on them - especially the discrimination between close and more distant relatives in the earnings rules. They must, however, have felt some anxiety about the way in which political considerations were already undermining their independence.
7

Placating the Scots Although the boards amended draft had Stanleys blessing, the most serious difficulties still lay ahead. When the cabinet committee met on 13 November, Stanley suggested that the regulations could be published the following week and debated in the Commons the week after. There would, he said, be cuts in payments to the unemployed in South Wales where the means test had not been enforced, balanced by increases in areas of strict administration such as Newcastle, while Glasgow would get about the same as before or slightly more. He stressed the importance of discretion in enabling the board to modify the rules, make extra weekly payments for exceptional circumstances and meet non-recurring needs by lump-sum payments. When the committee reconvened later that day, however, the Secretary of State for Scotland, Sir Godfrey Collins, caused consternation by producing figures predicting substantial cuts in Glasgow, where the administration of transitional payments had not been extravagant. This led to the suggestion that, instead of sudden large-scale reductions, the cuts resulting from the boards scale should take place gradually.
8 9

The idea of a gradual transition had, in fact, already been rejected by the board. Eady had pointed out that there would in any case be a period of eight weeks during which transitional payment awards would gradually expire and be replaced by allowances calculated under the regulations. There was no legal power to delay things further and, in any event, in Eadys view, there was everything to be gained by enforcing the regulations from the start. That was what the Durham commissioners had done and, after an initial period of organised demonstrations, the situation in the county was now one of greater quiet than exists in any other large area which is under the Means Test. The boards response to the cabinet committee was that the cuts would be mainly due to the action of local authorities in disregarding household earnings, which the board could not legally perpetuate; at most, it could make small discretionary adjustments for a limited period.
10 11

The question of gradual implementation, however, was quickly overtaken by doubts as to whether the regulations as they stood ought to be implemented at all. When the committee met again on 15 November, Stanley announced that he had been much disquieted by the further inquiries he had made and wished to withdraw his recommendation that the regulations should be approved in their amended form. He blamed the boards estimates, which had failed to take sufficient account of variations in rent levels. In Glasgow, for
11/3

example, the board had estimated a net reduction of 2 /2 per cent from the existing level of transitional payments, which would be cancelled out by the changes they were proposing; but that estimate could not be reconciled with the information now available about the low level of rents in Glasgow, which would lead to large numbers of cuts under the rent rule.
1

Stanleys reaction to the realization that he had nearly led his colleagues into a disastrous course of action was to urge extreme caution. It would be unsafe, he now argued, to base any judgment on the boards sample of cases from only eleven districts. An inquiry covering the whole country was needed. This would take at least a month, followed by further consultation with the board. The draft regulations could not be laid before parliament until after Christmas and the first appointed day would have to be postponed from 7 January, probably to the beginning of March. The committee agreed that further inquiry was needed and that Chamberlain should consider the financial implications of a postponement. Not the least curious aspect of these events was the role played by a member of the board, Matthew Reynard, who, as public assistance officer for Glasgow, had supplied the details of Glasgow rents which led Stanley to withdraw his support of the regulations. Reynard could hardly have refused a request for such information. He might, however, have been expected to supply it to the boards headquarters in the first instance. There is no evidence that he did so. Once again the question arose whether the board could be asked to make further changes in the draft regulations without the minister laying before parliament, in accordance with the Act, the original draft, the amendments, the reasons for them and the boards comments. Stanley told the cabinet committee that, according to the advice he had received, the board could legally submit draft regulations in addition to or in substitution for those already submitted, though there was a risk that the government might be compelled to produce the original draft, which could not fail to be embarrassing to the Board. Chamberlain agreed that the procedure laid down in the Act was intended to be used when the board and the minister were in disagreement. The present situation was entirely different: new information had made it necessary to re-examine a draft which the board had produced under great pressure.
12

The boards officials had themselves decided that one further amendment was needed, to mitigate the effects of the supercut in cases where there were also reductions for low rent. The board was asked to agree to a simpler and less stringent version of the supercut: a 1s. deduction for each member of the household in excess of five. Strohmenger reported to Chamberlain on 23 November that they had reluctantly agreed; but, he added, I am quite clear that if they are asked to go any further they will offer strenuous opposition and any chance of adhering to the Appointed Days will have gone.
13

11/4

Stanley tried once more to persuade the cabinet committee to accept the regulations thus amended. The latest estimates, he told the committee, showed a 4 /2 million increase over the annual cost of transitional payments (the estimate given by Chamberlain at the following meeting was 3-3 /2 million). But the committee now had the results of a more detailed inquiry into the effects of the rent rule, showing that very large numbers of applicants were paying rents below the levels included in the scale rates and would have their allowances reduced. Stanley reminded them that reductions under the rent rule might be compensated by gains in other directions; for example, from the childrens scale rates. But the committee, he insisted, must face the fact that uniformity of treatment throughout the country would mean many losers, even if a larger number gained. To meet the problem of the low-rented areas by raising the scale would mean an all-round addition of as much as 2s.6d., which was impossible to contemplate, and ... extravagant from the point of view of almost all serious social enquirers.
1 1

The committee was not convinced. Thomas complained that the poorest people in the depressed areas would suffer most. Walter Elliot, the Minister of Agriculture and MP for Glasgow (Kelvingrove), asked whether it was right to impose cuts on people with low rents who were already suffering from highly unsatisfactory housing and sanitary conditions. He had discussed the problem with Reynard who had offered a new suggestion, giving the impression that it would commend itself to the board (once again, there is no evidence that other members or officials of the board were aware of Reynards initiative). The broad effect of Reynards proposal would have been to cancel low rent reductions of up to 2s.6d. for childless couples and one-child families; but Stanley objected that it would be difficult to defend paying the same allowances to households whose rents differed by as much as 2s.6d. and that in rural areas it would bring the boards payments up to the level of agricultural wages. Besides, he warned, it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get any major alteration agreed by the board by the end of the week, failing which the appointed day would have to be postponed and the disagreement with the board would become public knowledge. Despite these warnings, the committee refused to let the draft go forward unamended. By the end of the meeting, four ministers, including Stanley himself, had put forward different proposals for the treatment of low rents. It was finally agreed that he and Chamberlain should discuss the problem with Betterton.
14

As well as the meeting with Betterton, Stanley also attended a meeting of the board, though his presence is not recorded in the minutes which give a brief and cryptic account of what must have been a difficult meeting. The outcome was the acceptance by the board of a proposal by Strohmenger, based on Reynards idea: that the board should have a discretionary power to waive up to 1s.6d. of any low rent deduction, but only for the purpose of preventing actual cuts in income for those previously receiving transitional payments. New applicants would not benefit. The effect, combined with previous amendments, was to make
11/5

the rent rule almost incomprehensible. The original intention had been to treat a quarter of the scale rates as being for rent (the basic rent allowance). The package of amendments already agreed with Stanley included an increase of 1s.6d. in the basic rent allowance for childless couples (equivalent to a cut of 1s.6d. in the scale rate) with smaller increases for one-child families. The further amendment now agreed meant that in many cases, but not all, the 1s.6d. cut would be cancelled. Since the board had already decided in principle to waive small deductions for low rent, the inclusion in the regulations of a specific power to do so was not a major concession, but it proved sufficient to satisfy the cabinet committee, with Chamberlain reserving his position on the question of cost. At the cabinet meeting on 30 November, two days later, he put the net gain to transitional payments recipients at about 4 million and the total cost of the regulations to the exchequer, including the transfer of public assistance cases from the local authorities, at 8 /2 million. Nevertheless, he said, he did not feel justified in opposing the concessions, and the cabinet at last gave its approval.
15
1

In spite of the net cost, the cabinet was left in no doubt that the regulations would cause widespread cuts. Most of the losers, Stanley explained, would be single persons and childless couples, but the rent rule, even in its amended form, would result in reductions in low-rented areas. Thomas warned of the grave political implications: cities like Glasgow, practically the whole of the mining areas and some of the Midlands industrial towns would suffer reductions. It was agreed that, in presenting the regulations to parliament and to the public, positive features such as the increased allowances for children and uniformity of treatment must be stressed.
16

The draft regulations were laid before parliament on 11 December 1934, debated in the Commons on 17-19 December and in the Lords on 20 December, and came into operation as planned on the first appointed day, 7 January 1935. For Chamberlain, the cabinets approval of the regulations represented the successful completion of one more stage in the launching of the scheme he had conceived two years earlier. He wrote to his sisters: It is extraordinary how many things seem to fall to the C. of E. these days. I found the other day that I was Chairman of 4 Cabinet Committees besides being a member of several more. One of the most troublesome and harassing has been that concerned with the regulations of the U.A.B. When they were presented to the Minister of Labour he said he could not accept them and looking back I think he was right and that if we had made ourselves responsible for the scale the Board produced we should have been overwhelmed by the criticism. But it was one thing to say This wont do and quite another to find a satisfactory alternative. The critics on my Committee wouldnt quite face up to saying Let us make ourselves safe by seeing that nobody is any
11/6

worse off than before, and let the Treasury pay the bill. That would have been too crude, but yet that is precisely what all their arguments logically led to. I had to have meeting after meeting racking my brains to find some middle course and find it quickly too. It was fortunate that Sir E. Strohmenger the deputy Chairman of the Board was at the Treasury and the Ministry of Health with me. He is accustomed to work with me and in the end he was able to make a suggestion which I could accept and which went far enough to meet the critics to shame them into silence. I believe they are still frightened but it seems to me that if the nettle is grasped boldly there is now nothing to fear.
17

For once, Chamberlain was wrong. Parliament misled Whatever the merits or demerits of the regulations, the way they had been modified in response to ministerial pressure was far removed from the procedure laid down in the Act. Neither the government nor the board wanted this to become public knowledge. Members of Parliament were bound to ask why it had taken so long to bring the draft before the House, and ministers could not refuse to answer. They resorted to a series of half-truths which amounted to a concerted effort to mislead parliament and the public. Opening the Commons debate on the regulations, on 17 December, Stanley skated over very thin ice when, after explaining the procedure by which the Act allowed him to amend the boards draft, he added: In this case all that machinery is unnecessary because the draft regulations as submitted to me for my approval are the regulations which I now submit to the House for its acceptance. Dingle Foot posed the obvious question: if the regulations were in the hands of the minister on 28 October, as the Act required, and he had not amended them, why had he sat on them for at least six weeks, giving the House only six days to consider them before the debate? One of the Clydeside ILP members, McGovern, speculated at a more personal level:
19

18

What was the difficulty about the regulations? Were there differences in the Cabinet about them, some Members wanting to pay more and others to pay less? Where did the Prime Minister stand, that man of humanity ...? Was there any difficulty in regard to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the business Shylock of the Cabinet?
20

The Solicitor-General, Sir Donald Somervell, sought to make a virtue of the delay: deciding whether to accept the draft as it stood or to amend it had involved the minister in the most careful consideration of the effects in all parts of the country and nobody could complain of the time he had spent on this. Neither Stanley nor Somervell actually lied to the House. Neither claimed that the draft laid before parliament was
21

11/7

identical with the one received by the minister at the end of October, but both did their best to give that impression. The question was to be raised again, in a much more hostile atmosphere, immediately before the standstill debate on 5 February 1935. Prompted by rumours that a less generous draft had been substituted for the boards original one, Lawson asked Stanley whether the regulations submitted to parliament were identical with the original draft and, if not, what alterations were made and on whose initiative. Stanley replied that the board had found the task of preparing the regulations within four months a difficult one. While they had complied with the Act by submitting a draft on 26 October, they had found on further examination that it was incomplete in certain respects and required amendment, the effect of the amendments being to increase the allowances payable. The original draft, he claimed, had been withdrawn before he had had time to consider it and he denied that the Act required him to lay it before the House.
22

On this occasion, Stanley was plainly lying. The draft regulations had been withdrawn as a direct result of Stanleys objections. A revised draft had been presented to the cabinet committee on 13 November. Ten days later, the board had reluctantly agreed to further changes. Another two weeks later, under further ministerial pressure, they agreed to yet another amendment. To pretend that these changes were merely the result of the original draft being incomplete was a grotesque misrepresentation. In the debate which followed, Sir Herbert Samuel asked whether the regulations were legally valid. If the board had been unable to complete its work in the four months allowed by the Act and had therefore presented dummy regulations which had to be amended subsequently, the only legal course, Samuel argued, would have been to ask the Minister to make the necessary amendments. Both the original and the amended drafts would then have been laid before parliament. Hudsons reply, which he admitted had been drafted by the Solicitor-General, repeated Stanleys falsehood: that there was no question of his disagreeing with the boards draft, which had been withdrawn while he was still considering it.
23

The Commons debate on the regulations The three days of debate on the regulations in the House of Commons produced much criticism but little outright condemnation. The time given to discuss them, The Times declared, appeared too long only because the regulations themselves proved far more satisfactory than the House of Commons anticipated when it instructed the Board to prepare them. ... they emerge from the debate quite unshaken by even the most fantastic hypothesis which the critics have been able to imagine.
24

The relatively favourable reception of the regulations was due in part to the belief that an extra 3 million was to be spent on the transitional payments class alone. In part, also, it was due to a deliberate effort to play down the threatened cuts. The press notice issued by the Ministry
11/8

of Labour on the publication of the regulations stressed the adequacy of the scale in relation to expert opinion on food and other needs, while the rent rule was presented as a great advance on anything known at present ... calculated enormously to alleviate the difficulties of persons living in higher rented houses, with no mention of the deductions to be made for low rents.
25

Presenting the regulations to the House of Commons, Stanley similarly concentrated on those aspects likely to increase applicants incomes. He pointed out that the extra 3 million a year for the transitional payments class was additional to the 3-4 million they had gained from the restoration of the 10 per cent cut in benefits. He admitted that there would be losers, but this was the price to be paid for uniformity between different areas.
26

Most of the members who spoke showed little awareness of the implications for their constituents - which was hardly surprising, since they had had less than a week to make the necessary inquiries. Dingle Foot, however, complained that a married man in Dundee, paying rent of 4s. a week, would lose 2s. on the scale rate (24s. compared with the 26s. he was getting under the transitional payments scheme) and another 3s.6d. under the rent rule. He quoted other cases where the household included earning members: a family with three earners, where the unemployed man was getting 13s.9d. transitional payments but would get nothing under the boards regulations, and a man whose wife was earning 25s. a week and whose allowance would be cut from 13s. to 4s. Sir Robert Aske, the member for Newcastle East and a supporter of the government, observed that, although the boards scale compared favourably with the niggardly policies of the Newcastle PAC, here too the married couple rate of 24s. combined with reductions for low rents would result in substantial cuts. The proposed treatment of earnings of distant relatives or non-relatives, he added, was perfectly preposterous. The presence in the household of a wifes uncle earning 40s. a week, for example, would result in a reduction of about 20s. in the applicants allowance. Aneurin Bevan criticised the 10s. scale rate for a single man living as a member of a household and quoted the Monmouthshire public assistance officers estimate that the regulations would take between 200,000 and 250,000 a year from transitional payments recipients in the county.
27 28 29

A good deal was said about the boards discretionary powers and the need for information on the ways in which they were to be exercised. The aspect of discretion which aroused most concern was the power not only to increase weekly allowances where there were special circumstances but also to reduce them. Stanley had referred to the use of this power to take account of the circumstances of rural areas, but Aske pointed out that it could be used in a much wider range of cases: Supposing the insurance[sic] officer or the appeal tribunal says to a man, You were drunk last week or We find you have been betting recently. Are those special circumstances? ... Supposing

11/9

they say, We consider you have not been genuinely seeking work lately. Is that a special circumstance?
30

A Conservative member, Oliver Simmonds, described the power to reduce allowances in special circumstances as the sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of every applicant.
31

The question of negative discretion arose also in connection with the de minimis rule, under which no allowance was to be paid unless the gap between needs and resources was substantial when considered in relation to all the circumstances of the case. Greenwood, Foot and Aske all asked how the board would define substantial under what Foot described as this very dangerous discretion. The correct answer was that the minimum allowance that the board proposed to pay was 1s. a week for an applicant living alone and 2s. for a member of a household, or 3s. if the scale rates for the household exceeded 30s. To announce these figures in the debate, however, would have been asking for trouble. When the Solicitor-General rose to reply, all he would say was that substantial meant substantial in relation to the sums with which we are dealing here and the needs of those with whom we are dealing.
32 33

At one point the debate descended into farce. After complaints that the House could not amend the regulations but could only accept or reject them as a whole, a Labour member, Tom Smith, drew attention to a misprint, the word than having been printed as that. The debate was adjourned while a clean copy of the regulations was obtained. The opposition made the most of the governments embarrassment, Sir Stafford Cripps asking whether the 10s. scale rate might be a misprint for 20s.
34

The debate was wound up by Hudson, the parliamentary secretary, in a speech which showed some understanding of the reality behind the fine words with which the regulations had been introduced: The British working man has a great pride, but he knows that when receiving unemployment benefit he is receiving that for which he has paid and to which he has an inalienable right. We have removed the stigma of the Poor Law from Part II [of the Act], but we might just as well realise that the allowances paid under Part II come directly out of the Exchequer in return for no previous contribution, and partake of the nature of a discretionary grant. I believe that the British working man would sooner be independent, would sooner retain his initiative and responsibility, and would sooner have something for which he has paid, even though it might be lower than something that he can get as a mere pensioner of the State.
35

Taken as a whole, however, the debate, despite its length, did little to prepare the government, the board or the country for the furore that was to follow. Publication of the boards instructions
11/10

Under the regulations, the treatment of individual cases was to depend to a considerable extent on the exercise of discretion. To ensure reasonable consistency in decision-making, the board would have to issue instructions and guidance to its officers on a wide range of questions. When the draft regulations were laid before parliament, the initial instructions had already been drafted and a copy sent to the Ministry of Labour. Although, in principle, they were an internal document not intended for publication, Stanley believed that, sooner or later, he would be obliged to make them available to the House of Commons. He expressed this view in a letter to Betterton a few days before the Commons debate on the regulations.
36

The board was strongly opposed to publication, as Eady explained in a letter to the ministry. The instructions, he wrote, would be open to misinterpretation. Within the organisation they would be amplified in discussion with staff, but MPs would have only the written text. If the initial instructions were made available to them, subsequent instructions on controversial subjects such as the treatment of cases of special difficulty (the penal provisions of the Act) would also have to be made available. A possible solution which Betterton had discussed with Stanley was the publication of parts of the instructions (for example, those dealing with the treatment of resources such as old age pensions, school meals and educational grants), suitably edited, in a White Paper. This, Eady argued, could be embarrassing if the instructions subsequently had to be amended. He suggested as an alternative that the minister might be shown the main instructions and given an opportunity to comment on them before they were issued, so that, if challenged, he could say he had satisfied himself as to the boards policy, at the same time affirming its independence in matters of dayto-day administration: Unless we can establish some such position there is, I think, a real danger of each detail of the Boards administration being subject to parliamentary intervention with a responsibility on the Minister for which the Act does not provide and which the Minister would not be in a position to discharge.
37

Betterton, however, agreed with Stanley that it would be impossible to maintain a total refusal to publish. He suggested, therefore, that Stanley should announce that information on the main questions covered by the instructions would be made available in a White Paper or placed in the library of the House of Commons: I think you would without difficulty get away with a proposal of this kind and both you and I would avoid the inevitable and very serious embarrassment of creating a precedent for the laying of instructions - whenever issued and of whatever kind - I feel that nothing would be worse than to appear to yield to pressure and I would, therefore, offer the white paper at once as an indication to the House that you are anxious to meet their legitimate request

11/11

and to allay anxieties which they may feel if they are left in the dark.
38

Stanley accepted this proposal although, he wrote to Betterton, I still think that we may be driven eventually to agree to lay the actual instructions. Opening the debate on the regulations, he announced that he was considering whether information on the use of the boards discretionary powers should be provided in a White Paper or a paper placed in the library, which could be brought up to date as changes were made by the board. The suggestion that future changes in the boards policies should also be promulgated in this way went considerably beyond Bettertons proposal and may have caused some alarm among the boards officials. From the point of view of the House of Commons, however, a White Paper was not the same as publication of the instructions themselves. Greenwood complained that there would be secret circular within secret circular telling the boards officers how to deal with individual cases. Graham White, on the last day of the debate, urged that the boards policies should be embodied in regulations rather than in secret instructions which would be subject to the risk of leakage and cause misunderstanding, misconstruction, suspicion and general dissatisfaction. His plea evoked no response and the White Paper was duly issued at the end of January. Stanleys suggestion that subsequent changes should also be published was not adopted, however, and the secret instructions issued by the board and its successors were to remain a source of discontent for many years to come.
39 40 41 42

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.

11/12