NATIONAL INSURANCE (GRADUATED CONTRIBUTIONS) (Hansard, 5 July 1966)

§ Mr. W. R. van Straubenzee (Wokingham)
I beg to move, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the National Insurance (Assessment of Graduated Contributions) Amendment Regulations 1966 (S.I., 1966, No. 549), dated 9th May 1966, a copy of which was laid before this House on 16th May, be annulled. We cannot provide for your edification, Mr. Deputy Speaker, between the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance and myself, the same kind of delightful pantomime to which we have listened for three-quarters of an hour, but we will do our best.
I shall take a moment for introduction of this matter because of what must occur at ten o'clock. In accordance with our normal practice on this side of the House, we always study very closely any Statutory Instrument emanating from the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance, as I am sure the Parliamentary Secretary appreciates. We are very much obliged to him for being present tonight to deal with this one, which is a matter of detail, but none the less of important detail.
The first question which I shall be obliged if he can deal with is a small matter of detail. I ask that he should clarify the date on which these Regulations will come into force. This, as he will know, is dealt with by the first paragraph of the Instrument, which, in turn, refers back to Clause 14 of the National Insurance Act, 1966, which, as it were, is the father Act of this Statutory Instrument. It does not seem absolutely clear as a result of Clause 14(4) on what date the Regulations will come into force. One would not expect the Act to specify an individual date and it seems quite clear from the parent Act that it is impossible for different dates to be selected for different parts of the Act and different Statutory Instruments under the Act.
To deal with a small point of detail, could the hon. Gentleman say the date on which his right hon. Friend expects these Regulations to come into effect?
384 The principal complaint that we raise by way of the Prayer is that this is one more example of amendment piling upon amendment piling upon amendment. This makes life extraordinarily difficult for those who have the task of interpreting these Regulations, or advising upon them. Anybody who has to go through these matters, which are important, starts with the substantial Statutory Instrument No. 921 of 1960, the National Insurance (Assessment of Graduated Contributions) Regulations 1960. That is the parent Statutory Instrument.
He then finds that a first, comparatively modest, amendment was made in 1962. It refers only to holiday payments, but it nevertheless amends the first Statutory Instrument from which this all flows. He must then go to a second, and much more complicated amendment, the National Insurance (Consequential Provisions) Regulations, 1963. I am sure that the Parliamentary Secretary has read all these Statutory Instruments carefully. The difficulty of the 1963 Statutory Instrument is that it makes a number of detailed amendments not only to that to which I have referred, but to others, so that one has to go through it very carefully to see whether it makes reference to the parent Instrument of 1960.
I have only to pile the books on the Dispatch Box, hiding myself virtually from the Parliamentary Secretary, to illustrate my point. On top of that pile, we are now adding these Regulations.
The Parliamentary Secretary may reply that I have only to look at Schedules 1 and 2 to find set out in neat new column form the figures that I require for the amounts of the payments and contributions. He may well be tempted to reply to me in that way, but, if he does, I shall beg him to cast his eye back through the previous Statutory Instruments, to which I have just referred. He will find that the amendments are far wider than merely the columns of figures, and anybody seeking to advise upon these matters will be wise to go through four different Instruments.
That is the main point of my complaint tonight. In principle, we are not trying to hold up the coming into operation of the new Regulations, but will 385 the hon. Gentleman, as a result of tonight's discussion, make representations in his Department? I realise only too well that this is largely a technical matter upon which any Minister must largely act upon advice. Will the hon. Gentleman at least say that in future, when new Regulations of this kind, which affect large numbers of people in a very human way, are to come into force, it is desirable, where there are many amendments, to bring them forward together in one new, clean document? That would be of great assistance to those who have to deal with these matters.
It is not too much to ask, and it would be no bad thing if both the Minister and those who advise him appreciated that we on this side keep a close eye on these matters and wish to make that representation to him. I have deliberately taken very little time on the matter. It is not one of life and death urgency, like our last discussion was, but it is a human and important point on which we hope to have a reply.

§ The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (Mr. Norman Pentland)
The first question raised by the hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. van Straubenzee) was about the date on which the Regulations come into operation. This will be the date on which Section 1 of the 1966 Act comes into operation. The link is inevitable, because Section 1 is the provision introducing the new graduated contribution rates and the new ranges of weekly earnings on which contributions are to be charged. Clearly, we must bring into force, at the same time, the contribution tables giving effect to these rates and the ranges of earnings on which contributions are to be charged in the case of those paid otherwise than weekly.
At the time the Regulations were made, the date of the coming into operation of Section 1 had not been finally determined, for obvious reasons which the hon. Gentleman will understand. It was, therefore, not possible to specify the date in the Regulations but it has since been fixed as 5th October, 1966, in a separate Instrument. That Instrument is known as the National Insurance 386 Act 1966 (Commencement) (No. 2) Order, 1966.
The Government are anxious to bring into force as soon as possible the new earnings related supplement to unemployment and sickness benefits and widows' allowance. They will commence in the first week of October, and we must introduce the new contributions to meet the cost of them at the same time. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that, also.
The Regulations were made at the beginning of May to give employers as much notice as possible of the contribution changes, and I assure the House that considerable publicity has already been given, and will continue to be given, to the changes which we are making. In particular, all employers with contracted-out employees who will now have to commence paying graduated contributions for them for the first time were sent a memorandum explaining the new provisions at the time of the making of the Regulations. They will not, of course, be unfamiliar with the graduated contributions as the vast majority of employers have employees who are not contracted out of the graduated pension scheme.
The other matter to which the hon. Gentleman attached great importance was his criticism of the Regulations because they amend Regulations already amended. I do not feel that there is much in this point. As he said, the parent Regulations were made in 1960, when graduated contributions were first introduced by the previous Administration. Then they were amended in 1962 in relation to the treatment of holiday pay, but this amendment did not affect the provisions now under consideration.
There have been only two sets of amendments to these provisions—those made in 1963 to give effect to the increased contributions introduced in that year and the present ones occasioned by the further increase in contributions. Therefore, the present amendments are practically self-contained. Except for the minor consequential amendment in Regulation 3(2), they merely substitute a new Regulation about the amounts on which graduated contributions are to be charged in the case of those remunerated otherwise than weekly, and new contribution tables for the existing ones.
387 This type of straightforward amendment is common form in Regulations concerned with rates of contribution or benefit and should not give rise to much difficulty. In any event, employers will have the assistance of a revised edition of the "Employer's Guide to Graduated National Insurance Contributions" and copies of the new sets of contribution tables will be distributed by the Ministry. Therefore, in general, employers will not have to work things out from the Regulations alone. So the hon. Gentleman can dispel any fears he has in that regard.
For those who need to have recourse to the Regulations, however, the existing Regulations, as amended in 1962 and 1963, are available in convenient form in the consolidated edition of "The Law Relating to Family Allowances and National Insurance", published by Her Majesty's Stationery Office and stocked, I imagine, by most public reference and legal libraries. I again assure the hon. Gentleman that it will be amended to take account of these new Regulations in the very near future.
As the hon. Gentleman has said, these Regulations are highly complicated and very technical. I have taken note of what he has said with regard to the 388 information which has to be passed on to my Department, but I trust that he is happy with the explanation, brief though it has been, and the assurance I have given him on the specific points he has raised.

§ Mr. van Straubenzee
With your leave, Mr. Deputy Speaker, may I say that I am obliged for the very helpful way in which the Joint Parliamentary Secretary has dealt with this matter. The hon. Gentleman is always helpful. It was I who pointed out that the first amending Regulations do not affect these Regulations, but this illustrates the point I was seeking to make about the difficulty of this matter. One has to ensure that they do not affect the Regulations, because they are referred to in this Statutory Instrument. Obviously, common prudence dictates that one ensures that they do not affect these Regulations.
However, I take the hon. Gentleman's point. It was very helpful to have brought out the point about consolidated Regulations being available in a different form. In view of the assurance that the hon. Gentleman has given the House, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.