Orders of the Day — Contributory Pensions Bill.

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am ar 15 Gorffennaf 1925.

Danfonwch hysbysiad imi am ddadleuon fel hyn

Photo of Sir Douglas Hogg Sir Douglas Hogg , St Marylebone

I am much obliged to the hon. Gentleman for reminding me that I omitted to give him the figures. The figures are in the actuary's report in column 4 of Table III on page 14. The widows who are contributory pensioners-those are the people who come in-are 10,000 in the first year, and the number goes on increasing, of course, until in 1965 it reaches a, very large number, namely, 1,305,000, which is the biggest figure that appears in the Table. The figure would obviously increase year by year. It is only, as the hon. Member will realise, the contributory cases that we have to take here, because the non-contributory ones are exempted by the proviso in the Clause. Then the hon. Gentleman put it to me that there was really an objection to the payment of contributions, first of all because it was a charge on industry. He will forgive me for saying that that is a little changing the ground. The hon. Member for West-houghton (Mr. R. Davies) attacked me on the ground that we were not charging those contributions. He said that that was very wrong, because the effect would be to tempt employers to employ these people. I answered him by saying that that was a mistake, because we were charging contributions, and the next hon. Member gets up and says that that is very wrong because a charge is being imposed