9

H.—39

necessities. A declaration is made in respect of this earning, inquiries are instituted, and probably in June or July the economic pension, which by now has come to be looked upon as part of the household income, is reduced until this £4 is repaid to the State. This repayment then comes out of the fund for current necessities of life, and the man and his wife wonder if he would not be better off if he did not look for temporary work. May we take now the case of work which lasts somewhat longer —work as to which it may be doubtful whether it is to be described as temporary or semipermanent. The pensioner " declares " his employment, and inquiries begin to be made by police officers, and we may assume that these inquiries are tactfully made ; nevertheless, as a general rule they have an unsettling and probably irritating effect on the employer, and, coupled with the fear of the end of the employment, they tend to create a state of mind in which the pensioner is less fitted to do good work. We are satisfied that in many such cases the procedure is the cause of the work ceasing. Even where men have earned a small wage during a period of vocational training, the inquiries have been made, and the amount of this wage deducted from the amount of economic pension. The sense of grievance and of interference enters into the pensioner's mind in his relation to his work, and the effect is often harmful. We wish now to refer to (b), the case of the pensioner who, assessed as, say, 30 per cent, disability, is sent into hospital for treatment whilst granted the economic pension, and to assume that neurasthenia is an ingredient in his trouble. Many such cases were cited to us. After a period he is discharged as convalescent, and immediately his increased pension is stopped and he reverts to the amount of pension that preceded the qualification arising out of his illness. It may be that this reduction or cessation is temporary only, for the Pensions Board in its task of assessing the physical disability and economic factors gets the best medical evidence and reassesses the pensioner's qualification for pension ; but the intervening period may be one of four weeks. This, for a neurasthenic patient, is bound to be a period of considerable suspense. When we consider this cycle of operations applied to the life of a returned soldier with dependants, and one who, temporarily at least, has the mind and outlook of the convalescent, we may well believe, as we were assured by many witnesses, that the effect is most detrimental, and produces a state of mind in which satisfactory work is impossible and complete convalescence is hindered. As more than one witness put it, " The pension is quickly reduced or ceased, but it is apt to take a longer time to have it reinstated." These two typical cases exemplify fairly well most of the objections urged to us against the present working of the system, and we are of opinion that most of the objections are well founded. It was established to our satisfaction that in many cases the procedure we have described in relation to the grant and withdrawal of the economic pension tends to destroy the initiative of the men and their incentive to accept work. Cases were quoted to us, illustrated by the actual figures, in which a man with a family, having undertaken work, finds that even though he is earning quite an appreciable amount in wages, he will be only about, say, ss. better off than if he were idle and on the pension. We are quite aware that to a normally-minded man there should, even on such figures, be only one choice —namely, for work, self-respect, and the extra ss. The problem, however, exists in relation to a discouraged man, a man with, at least, the temporary self-pity of the convalescent, a man who may feel that the employment which he has taken* under spur of necessity is uncongenial and he feels, firstly, that he may not much longer be able to stand up to it, or, secondly, that it will not be available to him for long. This brings about a .state of mind in which the increased self-respect due to work can find no place ; and most if not all of the medical witnesses who have been before us stressed the point that worry about employment and the fear of unemployment is almost as bad in its effect on the mentality of the man as actual unemployment. Taking all these factors into account, we think that the evidence justifies the statement made by many witnesses that as at present administered the economic pension tends in many cases to become a premium on idleness and does not encourage the taking-up of work.

2—H. 39.