SECURITY PLAN

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 145, 22 June 1938, Page 12

SECURITY PLAN

EXTENDED BENEFITS

MAXIMUM OF £300 TO

BE ALLOWED

THE PUBLIC SERVICE

Public servants and others whose retiring allowances do not exceed £300 a year are all to benefit under the Government's superannuation scheme, which will be introduced into Parliament in its legislative form early in the corning session. This enlargement of the original scheme was explained today by the Prime Minister (the Rt. Hon. M. J. Savage), who said that there would not be a great number of public ser« vants or others not drawing some* thing under the scheme. No details could be given at the present stage, said Mr. Savage, but it was intended to make further payments additional to those under the original proposals, which fixed the maximum allowance at £208 a year. The extension of the scheme would give something to everyone in the Public Service or elsewhere who retired on superannuation up to a fraction over £300. The details had not yet been completed but the payments additional to the original proposals would be graded. For instance, a man on £220 retiring allowance would get more than a man on the £275 mark, and the latter would get more than a man on £300. The payments would taper off. Mr. Savage described as stupid and unjust the fact that persons who had joined the Public Service after December 24, 1909, could not dravr more than £300 a year from the superannuation funds of the service, regardless of the salaries they had been receiving before their retirement. When the Bill was drafted it would provide something for the great bulk of public servants and anybody else whose income did not exceed £300 on retirement. There was nothing to stop persons from drawing a retiring allowance from, - say, a local body or insurance company fund, and drawing as well the additional payment from the Stata fund to make a total up to £300 a year. "The idea is that we have to mak« the thing universal as rapidly as possible, and in the meantime to give the greater lift to those on smaller incomes," said Mr. Savage. "That is really what is wrong with the world today, small incomes."