Mr Arthur Tiley: I am disappointed that the Bill should mean that, because once again we shall be creating a further anomaly when two widows living alongside each other and in similar circumstances will be in receipt of different benefits. There will not be many such cases, but it is a pity not to bring in everybody who is insurably employed on the appointed day. This week I had a letter from a widow who said...
Mr Arthur Tiley: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance why the plans for half-pay on retirement and a minimum income guarantee have now been postponed.
Mr Arthur Tiley: In view of the fact that I do not know what that Answer was, may I ask the right hon. Lady whether it would not be fairer to make a statement about the delay, because during the General Election the whole country was advised that these two schemes were costed and ready to be implemented? More than that, in view of the fact that a year ago, when hon. Members opposite filibustered the Private...
Mr Arthur Tiley: The £3 a week is purely in relation to industrial disablement?
Mr Arthur Tiley: For some years I have sat on the back benches on both sides of the House, in all their nakedness, looking down at my colleagues and opponents who have had the privilege of speaking from the Dispatch Box. I have always envied them, as I felt that they had something on which to lean and look composed, no matter how they were feeling, and somewhere to put their notes. But, standing here for the...
Mr Arthur Tiley: I take the right hon. Lady's point, but we have now arrived at a position, with the improvement made some months ago, when the anomalies could be cleared up without a great deal more consideration. In my view, it could have been dealt with now in one Bill and this injustice removed. I come now to the second benefit, that for unemployment. As my hon. Friend the Member for Somerset, North...
Mr Arthur Tiley: Having spent the whole of my youth in a textile area of Bradford and having seen my friends' fathers out of work for weeks and months, I do not need many lessons about the cancer of unemployment. It is the one thing which I shall never forget all my life. As my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Kilfedder) said, we have missed the chance of including a supplement in the Bill for...
Mr Arthur Tiley: I am enjoying it myself. I have sat here all day, so why should I not? Surely the moment has come when we should look again at the problem of the difference between industrial accident and industrial disease and the different benefits payable for ordinary sickness and accident. There is such a narrow margin. I cannot see the difference between benefits for a man who breaks a leg when he is...
Mr Arthur Tiley: I will come to that later. I began by saying how appalling the financial arrangements were. I assure the right hon. Lady that I will deal with this matter later. Other matters need clearing up. For example, is it absolutely certain that those who are contracted out and are now called upon to pay ½ per cent. of their wages, plus the ½ per cent. from their employers, will begin to have...
Mr Arthur Tiley: I am trying my best, in these final few minutes, to bring some common sense into this area of social service. It is no good any one of us pretending that these benefits have not to be paid for. Of course I support them, but I have never advocated pensions increases in this House without saying, at the same time, that they have to be paid for. In our debates here we are surrounded, oddly...
Mr Arthur Tiley: We have always supported those increases in pensions and we have always supported the increased contributions that were necessary. Every time we increased pensions in the 13 years of our rule we never failed to make people realise that these things have to be paid for. Oddly enough, on the front page of "National Superannuation", the middle paragraph, these words or something like them...
Mr Arthur Tiley: The Government have no money at all. They only have the earnings from industry. It does not matter whether it is the employers' portion or the taxpayers' portion. It all comes from the efforts of the people.
Mr Arthur Tiley: The right hon. Lady is quite wrong. The additional contributions paid for the increased pensions, and the figures are there in black and white to prove it. The odd thing was that in our period of government we never shrank from imposing higher costs on those who were working to pay for the extra pensions. It does a great disservice to do as the right hon. Lady did in her broadcast and pretend...
Mr Arthur Tiley: Would not it be a good idea if, now that these contributions are growing, and have done under both Governments, and that what we are paying at 18 is entirely irrelevant to the situation at 65, we could arrive at some formal amount to achieve membership without the amount being subject to these various increases?
Mr Arthur Tiley: Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that the legislation enacted a year ago with regard to widows—which we all welcome—has made the position more unfair as it affects widows generally and that there is now a greater need for a speedy review of their position?
Mr Arthur Tiley: Will the Minister tell his hon. Friend that British insurance companies have a reputation throughout the world for the manner in which they carry out business, and that this is why we do the most insurance business in the world?
Mr Arthur Tiley: rose—
Mr Arthur Tiley: This is one of the things which upsets some of us who are abolitionists. A man may get out of prison, not after having served a long sentence but through having escaped because of laxity in the prison. He may not have had the deterrent of long imprisonment. This is one of the disturbing factors which confuse some of us.
Mr Arthur Tiley: It is a great privilege for me to follow the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) and I wish that I could face my electors with the same confidence that he faces his, because a few months ago he made the wittiest remark about the electorate that I have heard in this House when he told us that in Easington they do not count the votes, they weigh them. He has the...
Mr Arthur Tiley: In answer to the hon. Member for West Ham, North, I might say that some of my constituents are wondering what I have done wrong. It is very difficult for me to persuade them, as a mere back bencher, that I am indispensable to the House of Commons. We had on that panel Lord Rhodes, Lord Oakshott, Lord Wade-to-be, Lord Champion and Lord Tweedsmuir, along with Mr. Oliver, now retired, the former...
