WIDOWS' PENSIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 260, 2 November 1929, Page 9

WIDOWS' PENSIONS.

New Bill Will Bring Benefit To 500,000.

A FIRST INSTALMENT.

(United P.A.—Electric Telegraph-Copyright) LONDON, November 1. In- the House o£ Commons yesterday the Minister of Health, Mr. Arthur Greenwood, in moving the second reading of the Widows and Orphans' Old Age Contributory Pensions Bill, said it was merely an instalment of a larger policy.

A Cabinet Committee was surveying the whole complex problem. The present bill, if passed, would remove several hardships, and would provide pensions for altogether 500,000 widows. Mr. Neville Chamberlain, the former Minister of Health, had, said Mr. Greenwood, attacked the measure because he said it would cost £8,000,000 a year. But if the House had been asked for £8,000,000 for battleships the Conservatives would have given-it. Mr. Neville Chamberlain said that during' the election Mr. Arthur Henderson, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, had promised pensions to every widow in the land, and an increase in the old age pensions to £1 a week, although he must have known that his promise could not be kept, The members of the Labour party were beginning to think about finance, but when they came to raise money they would learn that there was no bottomless pit about

finance. Captain D. W. Gunston (Con., Thornbury) said this was not a Pensions Bill, but was a shower of gold from the State. He did not see why spinsters should not share in the shower of gold. Sir Kingsley Wood (Con., West Woolwich) said the bill was a betrayal of all the election pledges given by the Labour party. It was a most unjust measure. Miss Susan Lawrence, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health, in summing up on behalf of the Government, said no one had any right to expect that this • bill would carry out all the Labour party's pledges." It was merely an -instalment. But it doubled the number of widows' pensions. The bill was read, a second time without a division.