I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time.
The House has just passed the Social Welfare (Amendment) Bill, 1960. which provides for the introduction of contributory old age pensions, substantially increased rates of disability benefit, unemployment benefit, maternity allowance, widows contributory pensions and orphans contributory allowance and other valuable concessions to recipients of these social welfare benefits who have more than two children.
This measure is mainly concerned with those in receipt of assistance payments of one kind or another, though it does deal with certain other matters as well. Its main purpose is to give effect to the decision of the Government as announced by the Minister for Finance in his Budget Statement on 27th April last, to increase certain social assistance payments from 1st August next. In addition to the increases then announced it also gives a number of other concessions to recipients of social assistance. I shall explain these and other provisions later.
In the first place the Bill, giving effect to the increases announced in the Budget, provides for additional payments of 1/- per week in respect of all old age pensions, and blind pensions. Rates of unemployment assistance are also being increased by 1/- a week for applicants themselves, 1/- a week for adult dependants, and 1/- a week for each child dependant. The extra shilling will be paid for every dependent child and not only for the first two qualified children to whom payments are confined at present.
Thanks to these proposals a man with a wife and two children will qualify for an increase of 4/- a week while a man with a wife and six children, who at present receives the same amount as a man with a wife and two children, will now receive an increase of 8/- a week. For widows with non-contributory pensions the Bill grants an increase of 1/- a week for the widow herself, plus an increase of 1/- for first and second qualified children of a widow. Widows with three or more children will receive an additional 3/6 for each child in excess of two. Thus, a widow with four children will receive a weekly increase of 10/-. Orphans non-contributory pensions are also being raised by approximately 50 per cent. All the increases mentioned will come into effect from the 1st August next.
The Bill furthermore proposes to make a number of other important changes in the law, in favour of recipients of old age pensions, widows pensions and unemployment assistance. One of these, Section 6, affects old age pensioners who go to live in Northern Ireland. As the law stands, payment of their old age pensions must be suspended when they cross the Border and they cannot have their pensions restored unless they come back here. Neither can they qualify for assistance under Northern Ireland legislation until they have lived there for at least five years.
This Bill will make it possible for such people, provided, of course, they continue to qualify otherwise, to get their pensions in the North for five years, or until they are granted an old age pension or national assistance under Northern Ireland legislation. This pension would of course be paid directly to the pensioner whether he is living in his own dwelling or in a home for the aged and infirm.
As an explanatory memorandum setting out in some detail the other provisions in the Bill has been circulated to Deputies it will only be necessary for me to mention some of the more important additional provisions. The Bill also provides in Section 25 for the repeal of a long-standing disqualification for old age pension, one dating back, in fact, to the original Old Age Pensions Act, 1908. I refer to the provision in that Act whereby a person who is detained in a mental hospital is debarred from receiving old age pension.
The effect of repeal of Section 3 (1) (c) of the 1908 Act, provided for in this Bill, is that such persons will be no longer ineligible for old age pensions, as they have been up to this. Nothing would please me better than the knowledge that all those who will be affected by this change in the law would be able personally to enjoy the full benefits, but I have no need to remind the House that many of these unfortunate people would not be capable of managing an income or deriving any personal benefit from the pension at all.
It is necessary to provide, therefore, for the appropriation of the pension, by the authority responsible for the maintenance of the pensioner in such cases, as a contribution towards his maintenance and upkeep. This of course will have an appreciable effect on the demands which the mental hospitals will make on the various health authorities. Those who would be capable of deriving some benefit from the pension, however, will be able to obtain, at the discretion of the Resident Medical Superintendent, up to ten shillings a week, towards such things as extra comforts. I think there will be general agreement that we must leave it to the discretion of the R.M.S. to decide the matter in these cases. The opportunity is being taken in this Bill to repeal subsection 3 of Section 3 of the Old Age Pensions Act, 1908. This subsection, which is in effect a dead letter, empowers a court to disqualify a convicted person over the age of sixty and liable to have a detention order made against him under the Inebriates Act, 1898, from receiving old age pension for a period of up to ten years.
When the matter was raised in this House some years ago the Minister then in office stated that the subsection would be repealed at the first opportunity. This is being done now by Section 25 of this Bill.
A number of important concessions in relation to the assessment of means are also being made. Section 13, for example, makes a change in favour of widowed working mothers, who are claiming or receiving non-contributory pensions. Earnings of a widow from insurable or excepted employment, under the First Schedule to the Social Welfare Act, 1952, up to a limit of £39 per annum for each qualified child of the widow, may, when this provision becomes law, be disregarded when assessing her means.
Other concessions affecting the assessment of means concern those in receipt of allowances or pensions under the Army Pensions Acts and pensions under the Military Service Pensions Acts are conceded by Section 10. They also apply to those in receipt of Connaught Rangers pensions. Under the Social Welfare Act, 1952, the first £80 of each of the first two types of pension which I have mentioned are already disregarded in calculating means for old age and widows pension purposes. The present Bill proposes to extend the disregard to those claiming or receiving unemployment assistance, and, in addition, to apply the disregard of Connaught Rangers pensions for all purposes.
In calculating means for old age pension and widows pension purposes, the maintenance allowances payable to disabled persons under Section 50 of the Health Act, 1953, are legally assessable. The present Bill provides in Section 13 for the disregard of these allowances and proposes to put them on the same footing as the allowance, of a somewhat similar nature, payable under Section 44 of the Health Act, 1947. This is being done by adding them to the relevant portion of the Seventh Schedule to the Social Welfare Act, 1952, and thus excluding them from reckoning as means in old age and widows pension cases.
Another concession provided for in the Bill is one favouring old age pensioners who are also receiving a small statutory pension from some other source. It sometimes happens in this type of case under the existing legislation that a small increase in the other pension can bring about a much greater decrease in the old age pension, the net result being that the pensioner's total income is actually reduced. This is the sort of hardship which we should try to avoid, if possible, and the necessary provision for doing so is made in Section 9 of the Bill.
The provision in Section 11 of the Bill is intended to benefit people who have endured a long spell of unemployment. Deputies will, no doubt, be aware that a person making a claim for either unemployment benefit or unemployment assistance is required to serve what is known as a three days waiting period before he can receive the benefit, or assistance, whichever he may be seeking. During that period of three days he cannot receive either benefit or assistance. If he remains unemployed long enough to exhaust his title to unemployment benefit and then looks for unemployment assistance he is required, as the law is at present, to serve a further three waiting days, during which he can get neither benefit nor assistance. There can be little doubt that this latter requirement is a definite hardship on people who have the misfortune to be unemployed for a long period. The section to which I have referred will abolish this waiting period.
One of the contribution conditions for maternity allowances is that not less than 26 employment contributions have been paid before the relevant time—that is the date of commencement of the sixth week before the end of the expected week of confinement. If the contributions due in respect of insurable employment before that time have not been paid, the insured woman cannot receive any maternity allowance, even though the contributions may have been paid within a short time after the relevant time. The amendment which is being made by Section 15 of this Bill will enable the allowance to be paid in future from the date the contributions are paid.
I am also taking the opportunity in Section 14 of the Bill to clarify the law on one or two points relating to the insurable classes, about which some doubts have arisen as a result of recent court decisions. The amendments concern some classes of civil servants and student and trainee nurses and midwives.
Civil servants of the State, as distinct from civil servants of the Government, and certain student and trainee nurses and midwives are being added to the employments scheduled as insurable under the Social Welfare Acts.