§ Death grant shall be payable under section 39 of the National Insurance Act 1946 in respect of any person who at the time of his death is severely mentally handicapped and has been so since childhood, notwithstanding that at the time of his death he was over the age of nineteen years.—[Mr. Dean.]
§ Brought up, and read the First time.
§ Mr. DeanI beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.
This Clause deals with a small but important and rather technical point. The main object is to ask the Government what progress they have made in finding a solution to the problem. The question has been discussed on a number of occasions, as the Committee will recall, and a similar proposal to this was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) during the Committee stage of the National Insurance Bill, on 3rd December, 1964.
On that occasion, in reply to the debate, the Joint Parliamentary Secretary said:
…we have examined this problem very carefully indeed, and we have found, as the previous Government did, that it is a difficult one to solve…We want to find a solution—make no mistake about that—and we are determined to find one if it is at all possible. We want to assure the Committee that we shall embark upon a detailed study of this matter. This will not be brought within the ambit of the major review. It will be an independent study into this problem."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 3rd December, 1964; Vol. 703, c. 854.]At long last we are discussing a point which does not depend upon the famous long-term review. We are discussing one which depends on an entirely independent review; so let us hope that on this occasion the right hon. Lady or the Joint Parliamentary Secretary will be able to 1586 tell us that they have reached a satisfactory conclusion.The object of the Clause is to enable death grant to be payable in respect of someone who has been severely mentally handicapped since childhood and is not now covered for death grant.
If I understand the rather difficult technical point correctly, the present position is that if a severely mentally handicapped child has a parent living and dies before the age of 19, there is usually no problem, because he or she is covered for death grant on the parent's insurance. The problem largely arises when the person concerned is over the age of 19. He or she has almost certainly not paid insurance contributions, and cannot qualify for death grant on his or her own contribution record.
It may be said that it is a case for the National Assistance Board to deal with, because the chances are that a severely handicapped person in that category would be in receipt of National Assistance. But the law appears to be that there is no power within the National Assistance Act to make a grant towards funeral expenses, except through a living person who is receiving National Assistance. If the parent is on National Assistance, a payment towards the funeral expenses can be made, but not otherwise.
If I have understood the position correctly, it appears that at the moment there is no solution in these cases either through National Insurance or through National Assistance. I recognise that it is very much easier to state the problem than it is to find the solution. I recognise that it is a very complicated matter. First, how does one define "severely mentally handicapped"? Secondly, ought one not 1587 to include the physically handicapped as well? I recognise that there are those complications and that there are wider implications if one is to deal with such cases more satisfactorily than purely on the very narrow point which the Clause selects.
It is generally agreed that the problem exists. It may be small, but it is an important gap in our social security arrangements. I hope that the Government will be able to tell us today that they have had the independent inquiry and have been able to find a satisfactory solution. The drafting of our Clause may not be satisfactory, but if the Government are able to say that they have a solution and can offer an alternative, that will be satisfactory from our point of view.
§ The Joint Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (Mr. Norman Pentland)The hon. Member for Somerset, North (Mr. Dean) has referred quite properly to the undertaking that I gave to the hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) during the course of the Committee stage of the National Insurance Bill on 3rd December, 1964. I can assure the hon. Gentleman and all hon. Members of the Committee that, following my undertaking to the hon. Lady, we have spent a good deal of time giving sympathetic thought once again to how we can find a formula to overcome this very difficult problem.
We have tried to find ways and means of making provision for the payment of a death grant upon the death of permanently handicapped people, not only the mentally handicapped, but also the physically handicapped who are not referred to in the Clause.
I want to make it clear to the Committee that the problem that faces us about the death grant for the disabled person is not, on the narrow front, primarily one of expense at all, because there are estimated to be only about 3,000 deaths every year of that kind. Let me clear that away once and for all. The essential difficulty that we have to face is that of doing what the Opposition suggest under the existing scheme without it bringing considerable wider changes in its train.
1588 One possible solution which has been examined by us is the replacement of the existing contribution conditions for death grant by a provision under which the grant could be paid provided that the deceased was an insured person. As the Committee will be aware, people who are resident in Great Britain and over school leaving age are insured persons, irrespective of whether they pay contributions; so this would mean paying the grant where no contributions had been paid at all. It would mean that such a proposition would go much wider than the Clause and would make the grant available to everyone.
To make such a change would involve a fundamental departure from the general principle for National Insurance benefits. As the hon. Member will probably know, their payment depends on the satisfaction of contribution conditions.
6.0 p.m.
We must face the fact that once that principle was abandoned, and it was accepted that benefits could be paid without contributions, we should be taking a far-reaching step, the implications of which would extend far beyond the narrow point of death grant. The Government take the view that it would not be right to embark on such a step to meet this problem without being sure that the wider repercussions could be resisted.
Another difficulty is that it would seem odd to provide insurance cover for these permanently handicapped people only in respect of death grant. This could open up the whole question of the way in which the National Insurance Scheme provides for people in such a position, and this again is an issue which the Government believe should be considered on its merits, and not as an incidental result of a change in one particular sector of the field.
I regret that the various possible courses which we have considered, even when looked at with the greatest sympathy and wish to help, are seen not to provide a solution to the problem at the present time. But we have not given up the ghost in our endeavours to solve it. It is a problem for which everyone in this Committee, regardless of which side he is on, has the deepest sympathy, and we are still trying to find 1589 ways and means, outside the review, of doing something about it.
It is possible that the review could lead to more fundamental changes which would enable the matter to be dealt with in a more logical and comprehensive fashion, but we do not know that yet. It could, for example, be dealt with by a more general arrangement for the provision of benefits for persons disabled from childhood.
As I have said, the cost of the Clause itself, ignoring the repercussions which could flow from it, would not be large. I repeat that it is not a question of cost. It could cost up to £50,000 a year for mentally handicapped persons only, and about £75,000 a year if physically handicapped people were included, as they clearly would have to be.
I stress that we regard this problem with the deepest possible sympathy. We want to try to find a solution to it, but, after looking at all the possibilities, we still have not found a way through the technical and other complications which arise. Nevertheless, I ask the Opposition to withdraw the Clause, on the understanding that we are still doing everything possible to try to find a solution to a very difficult question.
§ Mr. DeanI am obliged to the hon. Gentleman for that helpful explanation. I appreciate the difficulties of trying to find a solution to this problem. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the problems which arise in trying to solve this problem through National Insurance, and said that the review was considering all these matters, but he did not say anything about the possibility of solving the problem through National Assistance. Can he explain a little more what difficulties exist there? It appears to me that it may be easier, at any rate for the time being, to relax the National Assistance arrangements so that most of these cases, at any rate in the interim, can be covered.
§ Mr. PentlandThe question of dealing with this problem through National Assistance has been urged from time to time, and I think I am right in saying that the previous Government applied their minds to this approach. It is said that as the National Assistance grant is paid to handicapped people during their lifetime, in appropriate cases the National Assistance 1590 Board should be willing to use its discretionary powers to make a payment in the form of grant on the death of these people. Any such change would require an Amendment to the National Assistance Act itself, and could not be done in this Bill.
The field to be covered by the Board—and this is another consideration—might be difficult to define or de-limit. Indeed, there may be pressure for the Board to meet funeral expenses in all cases where the National Insurance death grant was not payable and there were no other, or sufficient, assets in the deceased's estate. We have examined this possibility, but we still think it does not meet the problem about which we are all concerned, and once again I ask the hon. Gentleman to bear in mind that we are determined to try to solve the problem.
§ Mr. DeanI am obliged to the hon. Gentleman for that additional information, and in view of his explanation I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.
§ Motion and Clause, by leave, withdrawn.