§ As regards the amount of the pension, it has been generally agreed in this country that 5s. a week, or £13 a year, should be the sum. Let me assume that the maximum of—13 a year—and I prefer to speak of it as so much a year instead of so much a week—was to be awarded in all cases, and to make no allowance, as you must do, for the differential treatment of married couples. The annual cost of providing pensions for the total number of pensionables—and I hope I shall be forgiven for that barbarous word—would work out as follows. For persons over sixty-five the cost would be £12,180,000; and for persons over seventy the cost would be £7,440,000. To both these figures you must add the cost of administration, estimated by Sir Edward Hamilton's Committee at 3 per cent.; 471 and the experience of New Zealand shows that that is a very outside figure. On the other hand, there are certain heads of deduction which ought to be taken into account in forming the estimate of cost. In the first place, it is reasonable to suppose that, through ignorance, inadvertence, and other causes, a substantial proportion of persons legally entitled to pensions would not claim or receive them. In the next place, married couples ought, when living together, to be pensioned at a lower rate than single people. The number of husbands and wives so living together over sixty-five years of age and upwards, form about 26 per cent. of the total population at that age in any year; that is, roughly speaking, about a quarter, not more, of the total number of pensioners will receive not more than 3s. 9d. instead of 5s. per head, or £9 15s. instead of £13 a year. Then, of course, there is another very important consideration. There must clearly be provision for the forfeiture or suspension of the pensions if they are shown to have been obtained by fraudulent misstatements, or if the pensioner is subsequently convicted of serious offences.
§ Now I will bring these various considerations to a head in a moment. We think, first of all, the financial situation admits of a substantial first step being now taken. We think next that the social and economic conditions of the United Kingdom are so different from those in other countries, like Denmark, New Zealand, and so on, in which alone any relevant experience has been obtained, that we ought in the first instance to proceed with great caution upon lines which may admit of subsequent development; and we think, further, that the experimental effort which we are about to make should be one of which, as far as it goes, we should from the first be able to foresee—I do not say with precision, but with reasonable accuracy—the ultimate cost, and thus avoid committing Parliament to a mortgage of indefinite amount upon the future resources of the country. The proposals that we make having regard to these various considerations are as follows: First, the income limit, apart from pension, should be fixed at £26 a year, 472 subject to reduction in the case of married couple living together from £52 to £39 per year. I say a year because, as many of these old people are in more or less casual employment, now with a job and now without one, it is very much better to take the whole income for the preceding year than the weekly income from time to time. Secondly, we think that the age limit, having regard to the figures which I quoted to the House a short time ago, at which a pension should accrue, should, in the first instance at any rate, and for the purpose of our present proposal, be fixed at seventy. Thirdly, there is no substantial difference of opinion, I believe, as to the amount of the pension, which should be £13 a year and in the case of married couples living together £9 15s. per head. Fourthly, we think that stringent conditions should be provided—and by stringent I mean effective—for forfeiture or suspension, following in the main those which prevail in New Zealand. A much more difficult question, and one as to which I am bound to confess that my own opinion and that of many of my colleagues in considering this matter has fluctuated, is whether or not we are to follow the example of New Zealand and Denmark and adopt a sliding scale, and proportion the amount of the pension given to the means of the pensioner—that is to say, if a man has only 2s. a week, give him 5s.; and if he has 10s., give him only 1s. We have come to the conclusion, on the whole, to do nothing of the kind. I quite agree there is an apparent paradox in a man with 10s. getting the same pension as one who has nothing at all, but as the sums with which we are dealing are relatively so small, we are inclined to the conclusion that it is not desirable to introduce any sliding scale, and that we should have a fixed pension of 5s. for everybody who satisfies the prescribed conditions. Then, further, to make clear what I have already stated about the status of the candidates, we think that all persons should be disqualified who have within, say, five years of their application been convicted of serious crime or of such offences as desertion, habitual vagrancy, and so on.
473§ MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN (Worcestershire, E.)here asked a question which did not reach the Gallery.
§ MR. ASQUITHWe intend to take property into account—if the right hon. Gentleman asks me the precise figure, I cannot give it to him at this moment—as they do in New Zealand.