§ 47. Mr. KELLYasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what would be the total annual cost of a scheme of old age pensions for all employed persons with an income of less than £500 a year to operate at 60 years of age at the rate of £1 per week for the recipient and £1 per week for the recipient's wife?
Mr. CHAMBERLAINThe hon. Member will realise that calculations of this sort, of which there may be innumerable variants, involve very considerable labour. He will find very full information on the subject in the speech of the then Financial Secretary on 21st February, 1934, and perhaps he will be good enough to consider whether the figures there given, showing a net cost of £207,000,000 a year for a scheme on the general lines of that suggested in his question though with rather different assumptions, do not really give him in general the information he requires.