OLD AGE PENSIONS (Hansard, 9 February 1944)

HC Deb 09 February 1944 vol 396 cc1864-72 1864

§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Captain McEwen.]

§ Mr. Tinker (Leigh)
I want to draw attention to a matter concerning the supplementary pensions paid to old age pensioners. The present condition is causing great uneasiness to these people, and grave concern, because they do not understand the position in which they are now placed. Hon. Members will be aware that on 9th December, in this Chamber, we decided to make certain provisions for the old age pensioners which were certainly an improvement on existing conditions. An Amendment was put forward by the Minister that an aged couple living together could claim 35s. per week clear of rent, and one person living alone could claim £1 a week clear of rent. After long debate this was accepted, and most of us thought that a payment to these people would take place as from 17th January. I addressed a meeting at Atherton where there was a crowded audience of old age pensioners and I defended the Government's offer, which I thought was a decent one in the circumstances. We had not been able to secure all we wanted but it certainly was an advance on the present position. I said that everybody would get payment from the following Monday, 17th January. Judge of my surprise when a member of the audience said I was not quite correct, that he had been to the Assistance Board to make an appeal and had been told by the officer there that only those whose cases could be reassessed in time would get the payments and those who did not get assessed in the first week or so would not get any retrospective payment. I denied that and said the Assistance Board were wrong, because Parliament meant everybody to get it, even though it might take some little time to re-assess all cases. I followed that up by a Question to the Minister of Health and he made the following reply: 1865 While precise information is not available it is estimated that about 100,000 determinations will have been reviewed in respect of week commencing 17th January. In rather more than 90 per cent. of such cases the review will result in some increase in the supplementary pension. The work of reviewing existing cases, which number over 1,250,000, will, it is expected, be completed by the end of March. Where the new Regulations result in an increase, the increase will not take effect retrospectively but as from the date of reassessment."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 27th January, 1944; cols. 858–9, Vol. 396.] That was a statement which rather staggered the House. One hundred thousand cases means that about eight per cent. of the 1,250,000 will receive payments on the first day. This can go on until 29th April, which means that in the following 14 weeks there will be gradual payment to the other people and that those who come last will get nothing at all for the back period. I do not think there is any Member of the House who realised the position when we agreed to the Regulations, and I think we ought to re-examine the matter in the light of the impression which has been made on the old age pensioners. If half-a-dozen people go in for reassessment and three get paid on exactly the same basis while the remaining three have to wait a fortnight, three weeks or a month before they can be reassessed, they cannot understand why this should be so. It is unfair that Mrs. or Mr. Jones can get payment on the first day and that Mrs. Marsh cannot get payment until, say, three weeks afterwards, although her case is exactly similar. Surely it is not beyond the wit of this Parliament to try and do justice to these aged people. I wrote to the secretary of the branch in my division and asked him what had happened there, and he replied: We have hundreds of people waiting to have their cases reviewed and at the rate they are being dealt with it will be well into March before they are cleared up. We do not blame the office staff of the Board, as they are doing all they can to get through them, but the old age pensioners do not understand why they cannot have arrears from 17th January as the delay is not due to them. We hope Parliament will put this matter right. The old age pensioners have accepted the position for the time being but they cannot understand why a body of intelligent men, as we claim to be—and I think we are entitled to that—cannot put this matter right. Maybe half a crown or 3s. to a family does not seem much, but it is a lot to them and only a small 1866 amount for the State. The Minister said it would mean 1s. 9½d. per week for every individual who was getting a supplementary pension. Taking that figure as correct, are we to say that we shall deprive the old age pensioners of this amount simply because there is not sufficient staff to review the cases in time? If we have made a mistake and have overlooked some point in the Regulation—and I confess I did not know about it—is it too late to say, "It is unfair to take advantage of old age pensioners in a matter like this when the fault is not theirs."? That is the appeal that I make to the House of Commons. In such a matter as this, which is of vital importance to old age pensioners, when we discover a mistake that we have made is it out of reason to seek a means by which we can remedy it? If we made a gesture of that kind I believe old age pensioners would welcome it and say, "After all, they have looked into our grievance and tried to make it right." In equity and fair play to this great body of people, who cannot protect themselves and depend on us to do it, is it too much to ask Parliament to try and put this matter right? We have a new Minister of Health. I do not blame him. It may have happened in the past. But I appeal to him to make a gesture of good will to these people and to take steps to remedy a grievance which we ought not to tolerate.

§ Mr. Tom Brown (Ince)
My experience in my constituency is similar to that of my hon. Friend and I want to support the plea that he has made. I am assuming that the Minister will tell us that it is administratively impossible to put into operation what we are asking for. He will tell us that there are several difficuties in the way. Whatever administrative difficulties may be, they are nothing compared with the economic difficulties now being experienced by old age pensioners. The right hon. Gentleman may also tell us that it has not been the practice to make retrospective payments, but there are two Measures under which retrospective payments have been agreed upon. An Act was passed amending Section 1 of the Widows, Old Age and Orphans (Contributions Pensions Act), 1929. It was passed on 11th June, 1931, and was made retrospective in its application to all cases coming under the Act to 2nd June, 1930, a period of 18 months. The last Act of 1867 Parliament dealing with social services was the Workmen's Compensation Act, 1943, which became operative on 29th November of that year. All the cases under review and reassessment are assured that, when the amount they are entitled to has been determined, they will receive payment back to 29th November, 1943. There are a large number of compensation cases in the mining areas which have not yet been settled but they have the assurance that, when they are settled, they will receive payment as from 29th November.
We are pleading on behalf of men and women who have borne the heat and burden of the day and who, by their sacrifice and devotion to duty in their earlier life, made this country what it is to-day. They are now travelling towards the Western shore of life, and in my opinion they are entitled to all the help the State can give them for the service they have rendered in their day and generation. Surely our request cannot by any stretch of imagination be called unreasonable. On every Sitting Day this House opens its proceedings with prayer, and rightly so. That ceremony is sacred to me. The Speaker's Chaplain stands at that Box, and, with great reverence and sincerity, utters the prayer, "Give us this day our daily bread." That prayer is a "sincere desire" of us all, whether Uttered or unexpressed; The motion of a hidden fire That trembles in the breast of each one of us. My mind then begins to dwell on the action of the Department which, by its narrow and parsimonious outlook, prevents that prayer from being answered and fulfilled. It keeps back from those who are entitled to a few extra coppers a week the wherewithal to pay for the daily bread for which we pray.
Surely the Minister cannot justify the action he is taking in withholding the concession of retrospective payments. I invite him to look at some of the old philosophies. He could dig deeply into the philosophies of Aristotle, Socrates, Emerson and Plato and find that all of them exhort the nations and the peoples to look after the aged and infirm. A nation only finds its soul when it begins to look after those who are in need of help, particularly the old people. May I remind the Minister of another philosophy of which I constantly remind myself as I journey along the pathway of life?
1868 We shall pass this way but once. Any good thing that we can do, or any kindness that we can bestow upon any human being, let us not neglect it or defer it, for we shall not pass this way again. The Minister has a splendid opportunity to put into practical effect that profound philosophy, and I hope he will do so, for the old people are entitled to all the goodness and kindness which the State can bestow upon them. Let me express the hope that before the Minister replies he will get a vision of Agrippa, who, when the great Apostle stood before him trying to persuade him to do the right and just thing, replied, "Almost thou hast persuaded me." I hope that the Minister will go one better and say that we have persuaded him, and that he will grant the concession and agree to the payments to the old age pensioners being made retrospective to 17th January, 1944.

§ Mr. Lipson (Cheltenham)
My hon. Friend the member for Leigh (Mr. Tinker) has done a useful service in drawing attention to this matter. It is obvious that what he is asking the Minister to do is what Parliament intended. When we bring in a reform which affects a number of people, all should be treated alike. That is all we are asking. I cannot understand the difficulty about restrospective payment when the fact that it has to be made retrospective is simply due to the fact that the officers have not had sufficient time to decide all the cases. I often find that when I bring a case to my right hon. Friend's Department or the Minister of Pensions and I am able to persuade the Minister to agree that a person should get a pension, it is made retrospective to the time when the person was originally entitled to it. I have another word to say to my right hon. Friend, whose appointment to office I welcomed. I say this: if he wants to make a success of his office, as I hope and am sure he will, let him not try to defend the impossible. Do not say that what obviously ought to be done, cannot be done because of administrative difficulties. If he will act upon that advice, I shall be most grateful.

§ The Minister of Health (Mr. Willink)
I am grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Leigh (Mr. Tinker) and Ince (Mr. T. Brown) for raising this point. I feel that I might to some extent have been to blame when I commended these Regulations to the House on 9th December. I was quite short about it, because I felt 1869 that the Regulations themselves and the accompanying Memorandum made this point we are discussing now absolutely clear. Though I make no complaint, I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh did not really mean that the House of Commons had been misled.

§ Mr. Tinker
Not in that sense.

§ Mr. Willink
In the sense of a grievance. In point of fact, if any Member will look at paragraph 2 of the Regulations or at paragraphs 38 and 39 of the Explanatory Memorandum, he will find that the position is in fact made absolutely clear. Perhaps it is clearest of all in the Explanatory Memorandum, where it is stated: Existing assessments will continue until the cases can be re-assessed under the new Regulations. There are a few exceptions, where provision is made that if the reassessment was made earlier and would result under these Regulations in a reduction, there should be no reduction. The change with regard to the winter allowance, combined with the new treatment of rent, would make a reduction in a few exceptional cases and it was therefore said that there should be no reassessment until 29th April, when the winter allowances would cease. It would be wrong to say that the House of Commons was misled.
The only reason why I said nothing about this way of doing things is that it is precisely similar to what has been done on two previous occasions, and approved by the House. These Regulations are not essentially mine; they are put forward by the Assistance Board. I have to commend them to the House. They are there for the House to criticise. I do not want to take this sort of point, but I want, on the technical and administrative side, to say something on a point which I do not think is quite fully understood, and also to say something on the question of principle. First of all, everybody knows that this is a very big job. We have all heard that, but it might be put a little more expressively if I say that the work of reassessing over 1,250,000 cases involves the preparation of something like 20,000,000 orders. This will involve writing to over 700,000 pensioners. The speed with which this is done is most admirable. I would reassure the House on one point in regard to the time taken and I can give this assurance, that in no case will an increase be 1870 postponed beyond the pension pay day in the week beginning 20th March. It is not a question of the end of April.
In what sort of order is the reassessment done? Right through the whole field of supplementary pensions there has to be a periodical review, and people therefore take their turn. People in identical circumstances get reviewed one later than another. There is no favouritism in regard to this type of review. Cases are now being reassessed in substantially the same order as they are reassessed in the normal course, only speeded up. I do not think there can be any doubt that the size of the job is really very great and is most effectively handled by the officers of the Assistance Board.
Now as to the question of principle. There is, of course, an entirely different position in the field of contributory schemes where the payments are in the nature of contractual payments. Where some change in a scheme of that sort is made of course the payments all have to be made as from the same day and these are the sort of cases to which the hon. Member for Ince referred. This has been done on a number of occasions, but it must be remembered that the supplementary pensions scheme is not a scheme based on contributions. Nor is it a payment which is based on a means test like the non-contributory old age pensions. It is a payment based on needs, and you cannot meet needs retrospectively. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] What you can do is to meet accumulated needs if they arise. Let me make my point clear, because the suggestion is that the House has been led, through not reading the Regulations or the Memorandum, to accept something that it has twice accepted before without really being willing to do so. Is that really the case? Suggestions on this point have been made on other occasions, and as recently as June last the hon. Member for Ince, in the Committee stage of the Pensions and Determination of Needs Bill, moved an Amendment in these terms: Provided that the further determination may include such sum as is calculated to meet any accumulated need. He will no doubt remember that he moved that Amendment and withdrew it. With the principle of that Amendment am in sympathy. What is more, I think I may considerably help the House if I tell them what in fact occurs in this 1871 regard—which is on the lines desired by my hon. Friend when he moved his Amendment eight months ago. I am prepared to tell the House that what is in fact, done to-day, is that any pensioner who says that needs have arisen during the period of re-assessment and that he has not been able to meet them but has postponed meeting them so that they have accumulated—then he can ask to have his case specially dealt with, and it will be met. So that what my hon. Friend was asking for eight months ago is in fact the practice of the Board. But to attempt in this particular case to say that you can meet in March a need which hypothetically arose in January is really in conflict——

§ Mr. T. Brown
But the need was there on 17th January yet it is not met until April. It is still there all the time.

§ Mr. Willink
No more so than in other cases, subject in the ordinary way to a periodical review which cannot be applied to all cases at the same time. It is a matter in which you must take the rough with the smooth. The Assistance Board do their very best to do this review speedily and equitably.

§ Mr. Mathers (Linlithgow)
Have they instructions to work overtime? I know that many of them are doing it voluntarily.

§ Mr. Willink
Their actual terms of service are no concern of mine. I do not 1872 know what their terms of service are, but to invoke the principle that these are payments to meet need and to say, as hon. Members have in effect said, that those concerned are entitled to them and to treat them as contractual payments is really beside the mark. As my hon. Friend said, the House has twice, even three times, with full information on these provisions before them, accepted the proposals which have been made with the good points as well as the points which have caused them some doubt.
I agree that at first sight it may appear that there ought to be a further smoothing out of these cases but these new regulations have provided great advantages in many directions. Reductions have been entirely avoided. If hon. Members of the House had really perused either the Regulations or the Explanatory Memorandum they would have seen that this point was made abundantly clear. I think they should accept the responsibility for what they did on 9th December. There is the further difficulty that I am advised that there is very considerable doubt whether arrears irrespective of need can legally be paid by the Board.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards (Caerphilly)
What about the war service grants? They were made retrospective. Why cannot that be done in this case?

§ It being the hour appointed for the Adjournment of the House, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question Put, pursuant to the Standing Order.