Senators will have seen the explanatory memorandum which was circulated with this Bill and which sets out its provisions in some detail. I propose therefore to make no more than a brief reference to those provisions which need some additional explanation.
In the first place, the Bill gives effect to the increases announced in the Budget. It 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 dependant child and not only for the first two qualified children to whom payments are confined at present.
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 qualify for 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 the first and second qualified children. Widows with three or more children will receive an additional 3/6d. 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 on 1st August next.
The Bill makes a number of other important changes in the law relating to old age pensions, widows' pensions and unemployment assistance. One of these. Section 6, affects old age pensioners who go to live in Northern Ireland. At present payment of their old age pensions must be suspended when they cross the Border. They cannot have their pensions restored unless they come back here and they cannot qualify for assistance under Northern Ireland legislation until they have lived there for at least five years.
This Bill will allow such people, provided, of course, they continue to satisfy the other conditions, 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. Pensioners who have already gone there and who have been less than five years in the North, will be able to have their pensions restored to them, if they have not already got a pension or assistance in the North.
I am also repealing the provision in the Old Age Pensions Acts whereby a person who is detained in a Mental Hospital is debarred from receiving old age pension. The effect of the repeal is that such persons will be no longer ineligible for old age pension, as they have been up to this. It is necessary to provide at the same time, however, 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, however, will be able to obtain, at the discretion of the Resident Medical Superintendent, up to 10/- a week towards such things as extra comforts.
The period within which payment of an old age pension may be obtained is being altered. Under the law as it stands, pension orders which are not cashed within three months go out of date. Many old people are unaware of this fact and sometimes fail to cash their orders before the three months have expired. If payment has to be refused in this type of case it can often lead to definite hardship. The Bill gives the Minister power, therefore, to extend the time within which payment on account of an old age pension may be made, up to six months, which is the period already in operation for widows' pensions and for children's allowances.
Subsection (3) of Section 3 of the Old Age Pensions Act 1908 is being repealed. This subsection, which does not seem ever to have operated, empowers a court to disqualify a convicted person over the age of 60 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.
Section 13 of the Bill 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 for each qualified child of the widow, may, when this provision becomes law, be disregarded when assessing her means.
Some other concessions affecting the assessment of means concern those in receipt of allowances or pensions under the Army Pensions Acts and Military Service Pensions Acts. These are dealt with in 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 is already disregarded in calculating means for old age and widows' pension purposes. The present Bill will extend this disregard to those claiming or receiving unemployment assistance, and, in addition, will apply the disregard of Connaught Rangers' pensions for all purposes.
Section 13 also provides for the disregard of the maintenance allowances payable to disabled persons under Section 50 of the Health Act, 1953, and puts them on the same footing as the allowances 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 enabling them to be excluded from reckoning as means in old age and widows' pension cases.
Old age pensioners who are also receiving a statutory pension from some other source will benefit from Section 9. It sometimes happens under existing legislation that a small increase in another pension being received by an old age pensioner can cause a much greater decrease in the old age pension, the net result being that the pensioner's total income is actually reduced. The necessary provision to avoid this is made in Section 9.
Section 11 of the Bill is intended to benefit people who have endured a long spell of unemployment and relates to what is known as the three days waiting period which an unemployed person must serve before he can receive the benefit or assistance he is 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 must, as the law stands, serve a further three waiting days, during which he can get neither benefit nor assistance. This latter requirement is a definite hardship on people who have the misfortune to be unemployed for a long period and 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 date—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 date 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 such allowances to be paid in future from the date on which the contributions are paid.
The Bill contains some provisions designed 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, for instance, a solicitor employed in the State Solicitor's office, 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.
Every year large sums of money are lost to the State as a result of fraudulent claims to old age pensions and false statements regarding means. Accordingly, the Bill includes some provisions, Sections 16 to 22 inclusive, which aim to reduce, as much as possible, irregular payments of old age pensions. The provisions in question are intended to deter people from making fraudulent claims, and giving false information, in order to get pensions to which they are not entitled. Where people have succeeded in getting such pension money in these circumstances, the Bill will facilitate recovery of the money from them or from their personal representatives. With a few exceptions the provisions and penalties are not new, but are to be found already in operation in relation to other social welfare services. In some respects the old age pensions code differs from other social welfare services, and differs to the disadvantage of the State, that is, of the taxpayer, where proceedings for the recovery of money overpaid are concerned. The amendments which this Bill proposes to the law will bring the old age pension code into line with the other services in that respect. Among the new provisions is the requirement obliging the personal representative of a deceased pensioner, before distributing an estate, to give not less than three months' notice in writing of his intention to distribute the assets and making him financially liable if he fails to do so. Another is the establishment of a legal presumption that once a pension is proved to have been awarded and payment made during any period, the pensioner shall be deemed, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, to have received payment from the date of the award. These provisions will be reinforced by Section 17 which authorises the suspension of pension where a pensioner refuses or fails to furnish information or produce books or documents, reasonably required to establish his continued entitlement to pension and by new provisions requiring the personal representative of a deceased pensioner, under penalty, to furnish similar information regarding the pensioner.
The amendment being made by Section 12 of the Bill arises out of the need to adjust, on a legal basis, a claim in respect of overpayment by a local authority of its contribution towards the cost of unemployment assistance in its area under Section 26 of the Unemployment Assistance Act, 1933. Under that Act local authorities in areas where the higher rates of unemployment assistance are payable are required to pay to the Minister in each financial year as a contribution to the cost of Unemployment Assistance certain sums levied on the rateable valuation of their areas. For the purpose of determining the rateable valuations certificates are obtained annually from the Commissioner of Valuation. Under the existing law the Commissioner has no power to amend any certificates furnished by him or to issue a revised certificate. Previously, the Commissioner had included the valuation of certain small dwellings in the certificates furnished by him. The local authorities concerned held that this was wrong and their view was upheld by legal opinion.
Since legal opinion was obtained to the effect that the relevant legislation did not give the Commissioner power to amend his certificates the over-payments were adjusted by allowing the local authorities concerned credit in subsequent years in respect of the amounts over-contributed. Both the Comptroller and Auditor-General and the Public Accounts Committee, however, considered this procedure and concluded that it was unsatisfactory and the Committee expressed the view that amending legislation should be introduced when the opportunity offered. It happens that further application for a refund of amounts erroneously contributed by a local authority in respect of the valuation of small dwellings was recently received, and the present amendment will enable the Commissioner of Valuation to issue a revised certificate as to rateable value where the facts so warrant and thus enable this and any other cases which may arise to be dealt with on a legal basis.
Roughly a quarter of a million people including old and blind persons, widows and their dependent children, the unemployed and their dependants, stand to benefit by this Bill. On the basis of present numbers, the cost in a full year of the increases announced in the Budget Statement and provided for in this Bill is estimated at approximately £657,000. Other increases and concessions will amount to £212,000 in a full year. The figures I have quoted add up to a yearly total, of £869,000 which of course is additional to the £21,354,000 originally framed as the Estimate for Social Assistance requirements for the current year.
I should, perhaps, give a word or two of explanation in connection with the cost of the proposal regarding payment of old age pensions in respect of persons detained in mental hospitals. This will, it is estimated, add about £153,000 to the cost of old age pensions. The Exchequer provides 50 per cent. of the cost of mental hospital services and if the pension were being fully appropriated in all cases the net cost to the Exchequer of this repeal would consequently be only half the figure I gave, that is, £76,500.
Since it is being provided that up to 10/- a week may be obtained by the patient, if he is fit to make use of it, the net cost to the Exchequer of repealing this particular disqualification will be substantially more than £76,500. In fact, it may be over £100,000, depending on the extent, which there is no means of estimating, to which patients will he found able to avail themselves of the provision enabling them to get up to 10/- of the pension for their own use. However, the repeal is a long overdue reform which I am happy to be able to provide for in this Bill.
