UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFIT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 82, 5 March 1938, Page 9

UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFIT.

INSURANCE RATES INCREASE. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY', March 3. Increases in the rates of unemployment insurance benefit and other concessions to contributors were announced by the Minister of Labour (Mr Ernest Brown) in tho House of Commons to-day. He said the report of the unemployment. insurance statutory committee upon the financial condition of the unemployment fund recommended, as regards the general account, that there should ho an increase from 9s to 10s in the weekly rate of benefit in respect to wives and other adult dependants and an increase in the maximum period of benefit to which contributors with good insurance records were entitled.

As regards the agricultural account, the committee recommended that the waiting period should be reduced from six to three days, th.at the joint weekly rate of contributions in respect of contributors 18 years old and lipward should be reduced by )d for each party and that the weekly rate of benefit for young men from 18 to 21 years should bo raised from 10s Gd to 12s Gd. The condition requiring 10 contributors as requalification for benefit should bo abolished except when the applicant had drawn the maximum of 300 davs’ benefit in the year. Mr Brown added that he proposed, subject to Pa-rliamentarv approval, to give effect to these recommendations. BIG BALANCE. COMMITTEE’S PRUDENT POLICY. (British Official W'ireless.) Received March 5, 11.10 a.m. RUGBY, March 4. Tlie report of the Unemployment Statutory Committee, whose function it is to watch over the insurance fund, shows in 1937 that the income of the general fund exceeded expenditure by .401.726, making a balance of £38,977.220 brought forward from the preceding year and a net balance of £60,379 006 ‘ The Committee is following the prudent policy of building a fund against the increased demands in another phase of the trade cycle, and therefore, only £7.410.000 has been taken by the committee to finance the recommended concessions in benefit rates, and other ways which the Minister of Labour has announced.