Observations

Northern Advocate, 17 December 1938, Page 1 (Supplement)

Observations

rpHE newspapers have contained

several references to New Zealand’s Social Security legislation this week. This fact makes interesting the efforts which Britain has made in the direction of giving the people social security. The movement is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary this year. JT was in 1908 Britain began by guaranteeing a small-needs pension to all people, at the age of 70. That was under the leadership of Liberal Ministers like Mr Asquith and Mr Lloyd George. Since then, not a yeap has passed, save the years of the World War, without some expansion or amendment of British modern social services. • * fJHIS year, 1938, has seen the widening of the range of unemployment insurance to cover another 170,000 wage-earners and the extension of Britosh national pension's insurance, on a voluntary basis, to 2,000,»000 professional and other persons, of small incomes, who were previously excluded from the State contributory pensions. JN an article which I read the other day, Sir Ronald Davison says that Britain has definitely become insur-ance-minded since those stirring days in 1912 when Mr Lloyd George launched the first compulsory insurances against sickness and unemployment.

WHAT an uproar this legislation caused! Yet to-day the whole of the “working classes,” including agricultural workers, are compulsorily covered by national insurances against the risks of sickness, unemployment, old age and widowhood. For 17,000,000

by “The Man on the Look-Out”

wage-earners no.t exceeding £5 a week the deduction of contributions from their wages has become second nature. The total cost to the country amounts to £180,000,000 a 'year, about half of which is borne by the Government and half by the weekly contributions of workers and their employers. Unemployment insurance is still the most expensive of the three insurances, in spite of fairly normal employment conditions. T° -DAY, taking all three insurances together, a worker ' earning £l2 a month pays for his “stamps,” just under 3 per cent, of his wages. His employer pays about the same. But the rates are fixed and do not vary with earnings. Thus a man earning £4O a month would pay \l per cent., while a young man getting a low wage of, say, £7 /10 a month would have to pay nearly 6 per cent. A MAN can draw something like 16/a week in statutory benefit from the third day of illness up to a time limit of six months, and then he can go on to a lower rate for as long as his disability lasts. His panel doctor gives him free medical care for the whole period. JJEALTH Insurance does not yet extend to cover hospital service, major operations or nursing. To cover themselves against these extra risks, several'millions of people pan extra voluntary contribution to private insurance societies. Some millions can also draw extra cash benefits from these societies. There are no dependents’ allowances in National Health Insurance.

W HEN an insured man suffers involuntary unemployment, he signs on at his local Employment Exchange and draws his weekly benefit for six months, if he is out of work so long. Steady contributors, who have had a long run of unemployment, can draw benefit up to a maximum of 12 months. J>ATES of benefit have been altered repeatedly during the last 10 years. At present they are rather higher than they have ever been. A single man gets about £1 a week; a married man with a wife and three children, gets over £2/5 a week. A man with several children not infrequently draws a bigger income* from unemployment benefit than he usually earned in a week of low-paid employment. pENSION benefits begin at 65 for the insured person who has a reasonable minimum of premiums to his credit. The payment is at a flat rate of under 10/- a week during survival, but here again the married man gets double benefits. When his wife reaches 65 she also is entitled to 10/- a week by virtue of her husband’s insurance. Widows at any age, draw the same rate, so long as they remain widows, and there are allowances added for each dependent child. rpHE trouble about British pensions insurance is that the payments are too small for those who, at 65 or 70, find themselves with no other resources. At the same time, nearly 500,000 elderly people draw, their pension though they are earning good wages. For them the pension is really superfluous until they retire.