HC Deb 26 July 1966 vol 732 cc1676-7

Lords Amendment: In page 21, line 9, at end insert: (3) Where the person claiming or in receipt of benefit is entitled to such other payments as may be specified for the purposes of this paragraph by regulations made by the Minister, the preceding provisions of this paragraph shall, in such circumstances as may be specified in the regulations, have effect as if sub-paragraph (1) were omitted and for the references in sub-paragraph (2) to the amount of any benefit there were substituted references to the aggregate of that amount and of the amount of the payments so specified.

Miss Herbison

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment.

The effect of the Amendment is that where a person is entitled both to noncontributory benefit and some other payment specified by the Minister, regulations may provide that it is the aggregate of the two payments which is to be rounded to the nearest Is. and not simply the non-contributory benefit itself.

Where this rule is applied, paragraph 2(1) of the Schedule, which prescribes that the minimum payment is to be 2s., will not now apply. This is simply because the situation in which the total of non-contributory benefit and another payment amounted to less than 2s. could not arise. The Amendment is necessary to meet the situation that will arise where a combined payment is made of non-contributory benefit and some other benefit, for example, in the immediate future, unemployment benefit.

Unless the total of the two payments is rounded, the situation could arise in which, solely on account of a change in the rate of unemployment benefit and where there had been no change in the individual's circumstances, his total payment from the two benefits went up or down by sixpence. This would be an unsatisfactory state of affairs, and the Amendment gets rid of that.

Miss Mervyn Pike (Melton)

These are small technical Amendments, but we welcome them, particularly this one. It goes some way towards meeting the point we raised in Committee. We have not been able to have any of our Amendments accepted, but we welcome this small step forward towards what we wanted.

Question put and agreed to. [Special Entry.]