§ 28. Mr. Ridsdaleasked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance whether, in the case of resorts and other places where seasonal work is only available for short periods, he will allow the earnings disregard for retirement pensioners to be assessed on an annual rate against annual earnings rather than on a weekly basis.
§ Mr. Boyd-CarpenterI would refer my hon. Friend to the reply which my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary gave on 4th June to my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone (Sir A. Bossom).
§ Mr. RidsdaleIs my right hon. Friend aware that a retirement pensioner in London can earn up to £156 a year, bearing in mind that his work is spread over a year, without losing his pension, but that a retirement pensioner in a seasonal area where work is available for only a quarter of the year can earn only up to £39 a year without reduction of pension? Is it not high time that justice was done to retirement pensioners in seasonal areas and that this long-overdue reform was introduced?
§ Mr. Boyd-CarpenterI realise that this is a problem in certain coastal areas, but my hon. Friend will be aware that the whole matter was gone into very fully by the National Insurance Advisory Committee as recently as 1956 and that it rejected any idea of averaging-out, such as my hon. Friend suggests, on the ground, among other things, that the effect of it could well be that in a number of weeks a pensioner might be without either earnings or pension.