HC Deb 16 April 1962 vol 658 cc8-9
8. Mr. Lipton

asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance how many copies of the official pamphlet entitled Everybody's Guide to National Insurance, dated April 1961, were printed; how many have been sold; and when a new edition will be issued.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

One hundred and seventy-five thousand copies of this edition have been printed, and approximately 106,000 have been sold. I have no plans at present for a new edition.

Mr. Lipton

Is it correct to assume that the Minister wants as many people as possible to live long enough to draw their retirement pensions? If so, will he remove from the front cover of the next issue the two smoking characters, one of whom is a teenager with a cigarette in his mouth, and add something about lung cancer and smoking?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

Anticipating that supplementary question, I counted the figures on the rather amusing front of the document. It is true, as the hon. Gentleman says, that two figures appear to be smoking, but 17 are not; and I do not think that the two who are smoking constitute any real example or inducement to others to smoke. One looks like a rather bumptious adolescent. and the other looks remarkably like a rather elderly Left-wing intellectual.