UNEMPLOYMENT

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 73, 19 December 1929, Page 11

UNEMPLOYMENT

BRITISH INSURANCE FUND AMENDING BILL PASSED BY COMMONS ADDITIONAL BURDEN ON EXCHEQUER (British Official Wireless.) (Rec. December 18, 5.5 p.m.) Rugby, December 17. The third reading of the Unemployment Bill, which revises the machinery of the Unemployment Insurance Scheme, increases the amount of unemployment benefit payable to young persons out of work, and brings juveniles within the scope of the scheme, was passed in the House of Commons last night. The chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Philip Snowden, referred to the finances of the insurance fund, to restore the solvency of which was one of the aims of the Bill. The debt on that fund had grown from £5,000,000 to £37,000,000 in a little over five years. But for the Act of two years ago, reducing the contributions to the fund, the debt would have fallen to £20,000,000. The Government was faced with the alternatives of increased borrowing powers for the fund or the raising of the contributions or the handing to the Exchequer of the responsibility for keeping the fund solvent. They had decided on the last-named. The financial proposals in the Bill were very complicated. They would add £14,000,000 to the Exchequer contribution to the fund. The increased benefits to young persons were a very small additional annual cost to the funds of the scheme—about £370,000. The Increased rates for dependants would cost about £1,750,000. But the altered conditions regarding the finance of the fund were responsible for the main financial burden. Referring to the much-discussed clause amending the conditions on which benefit is paid to unemployed “genuinely seeking work,” Mr. Snowden said there were three classes of working people. The vast majority, 99 per cent., and perhaps more, were honest, straightforward men, who felt the humiliation of being out of work, and who strained every nerve to get work. There was another class who might be called inefficients, who wanted work, but experienced the greatest difficulty in getting it, and there was a negligible class who perhaps preferred to live in State-endowed idleness rather than to earn their living by working. It was much better that one in a thousand should get the benefit, though he did not deserve it, rather than that 999 who deserved it should not get it.