Old Age Pensions.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 5, 29 July 1908, Page 11

Old Age Pensions.

ANOMALIES IN THE ENGLISH BILL. Mr. Asquith’s Old Age Pension Bill was published this week, and surprised everyone by its brevity. It also occasioned keen disappointment in many quarters. The I-abour party’s spokesmen declare that the bill falls short of the Prime Minister’s promises, meagre as they were. Mr. George Barnes, vice-chairman of the Labour party, who is a recognised authority ou old age pension echemes, says the bill is “the culminating point in a series of disillusionments which date from the end of 1905.” It will produce many cases of hardship. For example, the applicant who has been in receipt of relief from the parish at any time since the beginning of the present year is disqualified for a pension. Such person may be 80 years of age, and never had parish relief before. There are, of course, hundreds of eases of this sort. Some of them have written to Mr. Barnes, among the number being a man who is 82 years of age, had lived a hard and laborious life, and sustained himself and family without any help from the Poor Law till last January. Yet he will be debarred, although he will not have been an “actual pauper,” to quote the Prime Minister’s words, since eleven months prior to the scheme coming into operation next January. Again, it is enacted that the applicant is to be barred “who has been brought into a position of applying for a pension through his own wilful act or misbehaviour,” or who has “habitually refrained from working.” Observe the form of words “brought into a position to apply for a pension.” The clear implication is that the applicant is in a state of degradation, of which the last and most convincing proof is “to apply for a pension.” Observe, also, that there is no time-limit in regard to misbehaviour or reluctance to work. The pension authority may roam away “back on the past” without any restraint. “It is,” declares Mr. Barnes, “an intolerable condition, especially when it is considered that the authority for making or unmaking pensioners is to be one set up by Town or other Councils, and will probably consist of the rigidly righteous prudes of the churches or the Taul Frys of the Charity Organisation Society. The bill must be amended, or the best of the old and poor will not get their pensions, for the simple reason that they will not degrade themselves by applying for them.” The pension is to be reduced in certain events. The Premier said that would occur in the case of old married couples. The bill, however, provides that “where any persons arc living together in the same house, and any two of them are entitled to pensions, the pension shall in each ease be at the rate of 3/9 per week.” That appears to some of Mr. Asquith's critics to be monstrous and absurd. Another astonishing clause runs thus: —ln calculating the means of a person being one of two or moro persons living together in ine same house, the means shall not be taken to be a lass amount than the total imans of those persons divided by tfio number of those parsons. This means that a son earning a guinea or more a week who is living with and keeping his mother will have to go on keeping her without assistance of an oldage pension, because twenty-one shillings divided by two gives ten-and-sixpenee for each person, and no person in receipt of more than ten shillings a week is eligible for a pension. It means also that a father or mother of seventy, kept by a daughter earning a guinea a week, will be ineligible. That n sister of seventy, who may be sheltered by a brother earning a guinea a week, will be ineligible. That a brother of seventy who may be kept from the workhouse by a sister earning a guinea a week will bo ineligible. That a father and mother, both of seventy, who may be kept by a son or a daughter earning £1 12/ or more a week will be ineligible. In estimating income the pensioner has to bring into account “the yearly value of any benefit or privilege enjoyed,” and this on the face of it would include anything paid by bis grown-up children under statutory obligation to keep him out of the workhouse. If the State takes into account the benefit it should not disregard the burden. Mr. Asquith appears to be unrepentant on the anomaly of a man with 10/ a week being granted r. pension of 5/ and his neighbour with 10/1 a week getting nothing. In this way a possible saving of a few extra pounds may be penalised

by a loss of income of nearly 50 pdf cent. The New Zealand Act luu sixty -eight sections, that of New South Wales fiftytwo, and the Victorian thirty-sevea, while a dozen suffices Mr. Asquith. But it must be noted that whereas the Colonia] Acts all set up all the necessary machinery in themselves, that of the Government prescribes a set of regulations to be made by the Treasury, in conjunction with the Local Government Board. It is thus probable that those who administer the English Act may have quite as ninny rules and dirrotions to follow as the Colonie! officials, or perhaps more.