UNEMPLOYED INSURANCE

Taranaki Daily News, 19 December 1929, Page 13

UNEMPLOYED INSURANCE

RESTORATION OF THE FUNDS DEBT OF THIRTY-SEVEN MILLIONS COST OF LABOUR’S PROPOSALS. British Official Wireless. Rec. 5.5 p.m. Rugby, Dec. 17. Mr. Philip Snowden, Chancellor of the .Exchequer, who moved the third reading of the Unemployment Bill in the House of Commons to-day, referred to the'finances of the insurance fund, to restore the solvency of which was one of the aims of the Bill. The debt on the fund had grown from £5,000,000 to £37,000,000 in a little over five years, said Mr. Snowden. But for the Act of two years ago reducing contributions to the fund,: the debt would have fallen to £20,000,000. The Government was faced with the alternatives of increased borrowing powers for the fund, the raising of contributions, or handing to the Exchequer the responsibility for keeping the fund solvent. It had decided on the lastnamed course. The financial proposals in the Bill were very complicated. They would add £14,000,000 to the Exchequer contribution to the fund. The increased benefits to young persons were very small. The additional annual cost to the funds of the scheme would be £370,000. The increased rates for dependents would cost about £1,750,000, but the altered conditions regarding the finance of the fund were responsible for the main financial burden.

Referring, to the much discussed 0 clause amending the conditions on which the benefit io paid to unemployed persons “genuinely seeking work,” Mr. Snowden said there were three classes of working people. The vast majority, 09 per cent, and perhaps more, were honest, straight-forward men who felt humiliation at being out of /work and who strained every nerve to get work. There was another class who might be called “inefficients,” who wanted work but experienced the greatest difficulty in getting it, and there was the negligible class who peThaps preferred to live in State-endowed idleness rather than earn their living by working. It was much better that one in a thousand should get the benefit, though he did not deserve it, rather than that 099 .who deserved it should not get it.