AGE AND HARDSHIP

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 115, 18 May 1938, Page 10

AGE AND HARDSHIP

If the social'security benefit proposals of the Government were rigid and incapable of amendment, nothing would be gained by the Parliamentary Committee proceedings, or by the report (or reports) that will presently emerge therefrom. By setting up the Committee the Government" invites suggestions; and it is noteworthy that an amendment is already suggested by the Minister o{ Finance, who, in his address on Monday night, said: "It is 1 proposed to make special provision for married couples where one only is qualified for pension—and is ndt able to carry on at full-time work." A husband who Teaches the pensionable age of sixty, and who has a wife younger than* he N is, may have become more or less unfit for work, yet the prospect of living on a pension (his own) of £1 10s a week, with a wife not pensionable, may be unattractive or' impossible. The special jproyision indicated jbj/; .Mr.

Nash takes the form of allowing such a husband and wife something more than £1 10s and something less than £3 (pensions as for both). "It is unlikely," says the Minister, "that the proposals will cover full pension for both, but some provision will be made to avoid any hardship," Can this, spirit of reasonableness be extended to cover the general hardship whereby people who have provided themselves with a superannuation benefit by thrift—thrift exercised either through an organised superannuation fund or through private saving and investment —are to be taxed to provide superannuation benefit in which they will not share? A man or woman who has, by such thrift provision, accumulated just enough to superannuate him or her, has thus accumulated just enough to deprive him or. her of hope of benefit from tb.6 superannuation section of the social security proposals. This is a hardship individually. It is also a bad principle collectively, fo"r it discourages thrift. To the man or woman who is just, able, by thrift, to make some provision in order to kdep his or her head above water, in old age, is now offered the prospect of direct taxation to the extent of Is in the £ —which is to meet about eight millions of the eighteen millions involved by the whole scheme —and of taxation (direct or indirect) through the Consolidated Fund, which is to meet the other ten millions required. That means that struggling people who are offered no charice whatever of superannuation benefit are directly taxed by the shilling in the £, and will probably j be again directly taxed to provide the Consolidated Fund's heavy addi-. tional contribution. Mr. Nash talks of personal hardship. Is not this penalisation of thrift a personal hardship also? : .