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

The hon. Member will forgive me if I grossly misunderstood him. I think he finished up by saying that the very least we could do was to refund to these people the full amount they paid in. That was the least we could do. How much more we could do I am not clear. What I want to point out to the Committee is that no insurance scheme in the world was ever run on that basis. It is the essence of insurance that people are insured on an uncertain risk which will fall in varying degrees of intensity upon different persons who enter into the scheme. Some will get more out than they put in and some will put more in than they get out. Take an extreme case. Supposing one insures against accidents and sickness all one's life and then lives to a healthy old age and then dies. You have been paying in every week for it, may be, for many years to cover a risk which never happens, and the result is that you get nothing for all the money you have paid in. But it is a complete fallacy to suppose that you do not get the value of your contributions. The value is that you are covered against that particular risk. So it is when people pay in to the Unemployment Insurance Fund. This Clause merely provides that when people reach the age of 65 and become by virtue of this Bill entitled to a pension of 10s. a week, they shall from that date cease to have to pay any contributions to the Unemployment Insurance Fund and cease, of course, equally to have any right to claim unemployment benefit. In my submission there is nothing unfair or harsh or unkind or unreasonable in that proposal.

It is, of course, an essential part of the financial scheme of the Bill, because although the employé cease at 65 to pay in any contributions to the unemployment fund and although it is true that the employer's contribution ceases to be paid to the unemployment insurance fund, the employer continues to pay the equivalent, the same amount as he did before, only that the amount goes to the credit of the widows' and orphans' pensions fund and so enables that fund to be kept up. With equal logic the hon. Member might have protested against the proposal that, after 65 sickness and disablement benefit should cease, and, indeed, there was an Amendment which has not been moved which proposed to continue both. That was worked out actuarially, and I am told by the Actuary that the pension benefits which are given to these people between 65 and 70 are worth 3½ times as much as both sickness and unemployment benefit put together, so that the Committee can see how unkind and harsh we are in conferring this benefit. I am told, further, that if the full proposal had been made that this Clause be omitted and sickness and unemployment benefits were to go on just as before, in addition to old age pensions, it would involve an additional increase in contribution of 2d. a week for every man, and 1d. a week for every woman. I do not suppose anybody seriously proposes that that additional burden should be laid on the scheme. I hope that explanation will satisfy those who are really anxious to be satisfied, that this proposal is neither unjust, unreasonable, nor unfair.