BRITISH UNEMPLOYMENT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21467, 15 April 1933, Page 8

BRITISH UNEMPLOYMENT

Further legislation to alter and extend the system of unemployment relief is foreshadowed officially on behalf of the British Government. From the terms of a London message it is evident that recommendations submitted by the Boyal Commission on Unemployment Insurance, which produced its final report toward the end of last year, are to be given effect. The new scheme deals with what the commission called unemployment assistance, that is, relief for those workers who have not been covered by the insurance scheme or those who have exhausted the benefits to which they were entitled by reason of their insurance contributions while in employment. People so situated have not hitherto gone without relief. Their needs have been covered by what has been known as transitional benefit, the cost of which to the Exchequer for the current year, if no change were made, has been estimated as £55,500,000. The "assistance" proposal was not represented by the commission as likely to be cheap. It laid great emphasis on the provision of occupation and training for the unemployed. On this point it said "no solution of the problem of occupation and training is possible unless the community is willing to spend a good deal of money on this service. For our part we think that expenditure on occupational training for the unemployed is well worth while —that it is indeed an essential part of the provision for unemployed workers.' The report was emphatic that in the administration of the new service the assistance of local authorities should be utilised in order to avoid setting up expensive new machinery. It also proposed that local authorities should bear a proportion of the cost, this view being summed up in the two sentences: "The local authorities must have a financial interest in their decisions. The continuance of the present system under which they make assessments in which they have no financial interest sit all cannot be contemplated." That view has, however, been rejected, the Government accepting financial responsibility for assisting all ablebodied unemployed. Otherwise the advice of the commission seems to have been faithfully followed in shaping the legislation soon to appear.