HC Deb 04 March 1968 vol 760 cc24-5
49. Mr. Costain

asked the Minister of Social Security when she will publish the Report of the National Insurance Advisory Committee on Premature Retirement.

Mrs. Hart

As the hon. Member will be aware, the Report has now been published, and I have indicated my broad acceptance of its recommendations.

Mr. Costain

Is the right hon. Lady aware that this Report is dated 29th January, over a month ago? Is she being fair to the House by publishing it at a time when we will have no opportunity of tabling oral Questions to her in the hope of getting them answered before Easter?

Mrs. Hart

No, Sir; the hon. Gentleman is being unfair because I told the House that I had received the Report a day or two after I had received it, and made it clear that it would be printed and published as soon as possible. That process has just been gone through. It has been published and it is now available to hon. Members.

Lord Balniel

Will we have an opportunity to debate the Report? In accepting the Report the right hon. Lady has, of course, breached the contributory principle. Will she say how she is able to do that in this respect, yet base her whole argument against giving very elderly people pensions on that principle?

Mrs. Hart

I have not breached this principle in this respect. There are other aspects of unemployment benefit in which the same principle applies. To answer the noble Lord's question about a debate, he must address that inquiry to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. I will be engaged on the task of preparing regulations which will come before Parliament for approval at the appropriate time.

Mr. Hugh D. Brown

As my right hon. Friend seems to be willing to accept the principle that additional income should influence the standard rate of benefit that is payable, may I ask whether the is aware that this can make sense to some of my hon. Friends only provided it is seen in the context of a wider scheme, about which we as yet know nothing?

Mrs. Hart

My hon. Friend is forgetting that already, under an earnings rule, adjustments are made to other benefits if there has been, or even if there has not been, genuine retirement from work. We are concerned, on the one hand, with the conditions on which the unemployment benefit is paid—which assumes that the man is genuinely on the market for employment—and, on the other, we are concerned with the question of whether or not the man has genuinely retired. I have not the slightest intention of regarding this as in any way infringing any of the principles about which I have been clear in remarks to the House.