Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, MONDAY, MAY 23, 1927. UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16347, 23 May 1927, Page 6

Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, MONDAY, MAY 23, 1927. UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE

The dole is to disappear from the economic system of Great Britain as one of the results of the Blaiicsburgh Committee 's report recently presented to Parliament, and the shadow of reproach it has east on a large number of British unemployed is to disappear with it. After more than a year’s investigation the Blauesburgh Committee reported that stories of the abuse of the dole had no serious basis in fact. Of 11,750,000 persons insured against unemployment in Britain only 1904 were prosecuted in 1925 for suspected frauds. The passing of the dole, which is now in immediate prospect, will leave the institution an unloved memory, but relatively unstained. Unemployed insurance will remain. Lord Blanesburgh’s Committee recommends codifying -the mass of legislation that has enabled the insurance scheme to cope with the emergency presented by the swollen proportions of post-war unemployment. The dole is the most widely known of the emergency provisions but it. is by no means the most important feature of the nation’s provision for help in times of unemployment. Of the I, unemployed iif Britain who have been drawing insurance benefits, about two-thirds have been drawing uncovenanted benefit as distinct from covenanted benefit, and have, therefore, been properly on ,thc dole. llow much has boon paid out to them in doles it is difficult to say. The only way to got at an approximate answer is to examine the unemployment insurance scheme and its balance sheet, The scheme applies only to employees over 26 years of ago whose earnings when working are under £250 a year and who are engaged in trades in •which employment fluctuates. It.does not apply to such trades as agriculture, domestic service, railroads and other public utility services in which employment is steady tho year round. In the case of a man the employer contributes 8d a week, the employee himself 7d, and the State Bd, making a total of Is lid. In the case of a woman tho contributions are 7d, fid and fid, total Is 7d. The unemployment allowance for a man is IBs a week and for a woman 15s, with special allowances for children and women not engaged in industry. Tho insurance fund has been payiug out a maximum of about £fifi,(H)o,(Klo a year in benefits since the war. Of this amount £25,000,000 has been supplied by the Government —£11,000,000 as its regular contribution to the fund and the remaining £14,000,001) as an emergency contribution, borrowed from the Exchequer on the security of future contributions. The balance of £41,000,000 has consisted of the regular contributions of employers and work-people in the insured trades in the proportion of about half and half, so that British labor itself has been paying about £20,000,000 a year for the maintenance of its unemployed. These sums do not, of course, represent the total financial cost of unemployment to the country, but they do represent the largest part of it. Tho various boards of guardians have been supplying local relief to the extent of about £8,000,000 a year additional, and local employment schemes have added approximately £6,000,000 more. The actual amounts have varied from year to year with tho fluctuations of employment in the insured trades; for the current year they should bo considerably smaller, the percentage of unemployment in the insured trades having now dropped to 11. The figures do not give us the cost of the dole proper, but the £14,000,000 which the insurance fund had to borrow from tho Exchequer in it? worst year gives an idea of the huge debt that the dole has piled upon the fund. The debt was reduced by April of last, year to £7,100,000, but the coal striko trebled it. In' December it stood at more than £21,000,000. The committee recommends slight changes in the scale of payments and benefits, with a new and temporary additional payment, of not more than one penny per person insured, for the purpose of clearing up the debt. The additional payment is expected to yield £5,(500,000 a year, so that the debt may be cleared in about four years. The committee has also revised the time over which benefits are to be normally payable, extending it- from fifteen weeks in the year to thirteen weeks in the half-year, claims for the payment of benefits beyond the thirteen weeks to bo ' reviewed by special authorities beforo being allowed. The committee also recommends the holding of an actuarial enquiry every five years in Order to keep the insurance scheme on a sound basis hereafter. For the present it suggests a permanent (i per cent, of unemployment in the insured trades as tho figure on which the scheme should be based in the future, The Government has already indicated its readiness to enact tho report, and the famous dole is therefore to disappear from the British scene as soon as the Government's Bill has been put through Parliament. New Zealand has led the world in a good deal of its social legislation, blit in the matter of unemployed insurance it has something to learn from , the Old Country, for undoubtedly the , system in force at Home has saved the nation vast expenditure and the people untold suffering. Few «cono*

mists in Britain could be found who would support the abandonment of compulsory unemployment insurance. Wo are not subject, in this country to industrial disturbances on anything like the same scale that they have at Home, but we have our occasional periods of slackness and depression, and it would be a wise forethought, conducive to national thrift and saving many people from distressful anxiety, if not actual want, ,to have a contributory system of insurance that would provide for old age, incapacity, and the proverbial rainy day.