I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time.
The Blind Persons Act of 1920 provided for the payment of pensions to blind persons on attaining the age of 50. This age qualification was reduced to 30 by Section 6 of the Old Age Pensions Act of 1932. The 1920 Act, in addition to providing for the payment of pensions to blind persons, also made it compulsory on local authorities to arrange for the welfare of all blind persons ordinarily resident within their respective areas. The arrangements, which are known as the blind welfare schemes, mainly took the form of monetary allowances to necessitous and unemployable blind persons living in their own homes. In a minority of cases the allowance is paid by way of augmentation of the wages paid by the authorities of a blind institution to blind persons who perform certain kinds of work in the institution and who live at home. In every case the allowance is increased if the recipient, as frequently happens, has dependent children. As the law stands at present, all such allowances must be taken into account in full in calculating the means of a claimant for a pension even though a portion may be intended for the maintenance of his dependent children. The effect is that the welfare schemes cannot be fully utilised for the benefit of blind persons because the amount of pension is reduced in consequence of the children's allowances. Furthermore, there is an undesirable inequality in the treatment of claimants for pension who have children as compared with those who have not children. The Bill proposes to remedy this matter by providing for the exclusion in the calculation of means of any allowances paid by a local authority under a blind welfare scheme in respect of the dependent child or children.