(then) ever present risk of a naval arms race, while the system of naval officer recruitment was reformed to make it less difficult for working-class sailors to secure promotion from the ranks. George Lansbury, the First Commissioner of Works, sponsored a "Brighter Britain" campaign and introduced a number of facilities in London parks such as mixed bathing, boating ponds, and swings and sandpits for children. A number of other initiatives were undertaken by the Office of Works during Labour's time in office, including extensions in the amenities of the Parks and Palaces under its charge, and the spending of thousands of pounds on various improvements for the preservation of memorials across the country, as characterised by the restoration of a castle at Porchester near Portsmouth. In Scotland, various welfare initiatives were carried out by the Scottish Office. Medical services in the Highlands and Islands were extended and stabilised, while limits imposed by a previous Conservative administration on the scale of Poor Law relief were scrapped, along with a system of offering the Poor House "as test for able-bodied men who have been out of work for a long period." The Second Labour Government's achievements in social policy were, however, overshadowed by the government's failure to tackle the effects of the Great Depression, which left mass unemployment in its wake. Spending on public works was accelerated, although this proved to be inadequate in dealing with the problem. By January 1930, 1.5 million people were out of work, a number which reached almost 2 million by June, and by December it topped 2.5 million. The Lord Privy Seal J. H. Thomas, who was put in charge of the problem of unemployment, was unable to offer a solution, while Margaret Bondfield also failed to come up with an imaginative response. Other members of the cabinet, however, put forward their own proposals for dealing with the Depression. George Lansbury proposed land reclamation in Great Britain, a colonising scheme in Western Australia, and pensions for people at the age of sixty, while Tom Johnston pushed for national relief schemes such as the construction of a road round Loch Lomond (Johnston was successful in getting a coach road from Aberfoyle to the Trossachs rebuilt). These and similar schemes, however, failed in the Unemployment Committee (a group composed of Thomas and his assistants Johnston, Lansbury, and Oswald Mosley to develop a solution to the unemployment problem), where