THE SUPER. SCENES -8 It took longer in U.K.

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33276, 13 July 1973, Page 16

THE SUPER. SCENES -8 It took longer in U.K.

(By

E. V. SALE,

in London)

It took as long in years to prepare the new British retirement pensions scheme as it is proposed to devote in months to preparing the New Zealand Superannuation Bill. British observers are somewhat staggered that the New Zealand legislation is due within about eight months from the time when serious preparation could start after the change of Government. Six years of extensive research and thought had gone into a revision of the British pensions proposals before the Conservatives came to office in 1970. A Labour bill needed little more than the Royal Assent to become law when the Government changed. The departmental commit'tee which had done all the tackground work (it numbered about 100 at its peak) had all the facts assembled and the options worked out

'for the Conservative version' —and many of the Labour! proposals are in the new bill, ! changed only in emphasis. | However, first came theWhite Paper of 40 pages in 11971 (regarded as a speedy bit of work), followed not until a year later by the bill in which the clauses and schedules occupy about 100; pages, plus explanatory notes of 25 pages. Much of the machinery for administering the pensions system will come out later in regulations — all of this for a scheme which a British economics writer (surely in reference to what might have been) has hailed as divinely simple. British civil servants concede that if they had been provided with a simple base ion which to work like the ;New Zealand universal superannuation their task would (have been a lot easier, although not as quick as it. .appears it will be in New Zealand. ' But the British scheme is !due to come into effect about ! two years after it becomes i

law. The New Zealand proposals are to be phased in more slowly than that. It is felt in London that this delay will be needed.