The Burden of the British "Dole"

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 286, 29 August 1931, Page 20

The Burden of the British "Dole"

T HE British Insurance Fund (says “The Times,” .of London) has ■ a debt of £80,000,000, and the indebtedness Is growing at the rate Of £1,000,000 a week. Local authorities have borrowed £6,000,000 to meet payments of relief. “At the present rate unemployment benefit is costing £120,000,000 a year and relief £4,000,000; and this £124,000,000 is going to recipients who, with their dependants, probably represent as many as one-fifth of the whole population. “More than 60 per cent, of the cost of benefit is not covered by contributions, so that what is in reality relief Is being paid in the form of benefit /demandable as a legal right without any of the conditions which should attach to the distribution of public money outside an insurance scheme.’ Thirty contributions within the prece'ding two years is the qualification for

‘ordinary’ benefit, and a man with a wife and three children who has paid 17/6 in premiums may draw up to £B3/4/- a year for a. year and a-half, and indeed may thereafter continue to receive the same amount indefinitely- as ‘transitional’benefit ; ./ *' / .:/■'■ ;".../• “Six social services are providing, at a rough estimate, weekly cash payments amounting to £4,263,000 to 6,185,000 direct recipients, find that sum is equal to one-seventh of the nation’s weekly wage bill. Only eighteen per cent is directly contributed by the workers themselves. Taking account of the extent to which recipients change" each week the Confederation is of opinion that as many as one-third of the entire population participate In these cash benelits. “The total sum spent on social services since the war exceeds £4,000,000,000, or more than half the amount of the national debt.”