HC Deb 09 July 1969 vol 786 cc1537-46

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Dr. Miller.]

12.43 a.m.

Mr. Edwin Wainwright (Dearne Valley)

I never realised when I first raised this case with the Ministry that I should have to take it as far as I have to take it now.

Miss Margaret Neville came to this country from Eire in 1935. She was desirous of becoming a nurse. She went to St. Thomas's Hospital, in London, and trained and qualified for that profession. She was a very patriotic member of the community. When war was declared, she felt it her duty to join up to support this country. On 6th September. 1939, she joined the Royal Navy Nursing Service, and she served in several war hospitals in the United Kingdom, carrying out her duties with efficiency and courage on behalf of this country.

In 1942, Miss Neville was sent abroad and served in a hospital in Alexandria, Egypt. She stayed there for two years, under great stress, as one would expect of anyone serving in the Royal Navy Nursing Service at that time. On her return to the United Kingdom, in 1944, she was sent to the Royal Navy Hospital in Londonderry, and she was discharged in February, 1946. In December, 1946, she went back to Eire, to nurse her sick parents. They were rather elderly and needed someone to look after them. Her mother was a registered blind person.

While Miss Neville was there looking after her parents she contracted lung disease and also suffered from anaemia. These illnesses could have been caused, and probably must have been caused, by her war service. But she did not trouble to claim benefits while she was living in Eire.

In 1957, Miss Neville returned to this country, bringing her mother with her. Unfortunately, her father had died. By this time she had fully recovered. Immediately on coming here she began work at the surgery of a Dr. Robinson, at Wath-upon-Dearne, in my constituency. Her brother, who is a doctor, was a member of the group.

Miss Neville's knowledge of the National Insurance Act was very limited. It could be said that she knew nothing about paying contributions and receiving benefits. The only thing she realised about paying contributions was that some money must have been deducted from her weekly or monthly salary as she was working as a nurse and in the doctor's surgery. She was so ignorant about what should be done in the matter of this kind that it was not until she received the advice of her employer, Dr. Robinson, that she went to the Barnsley office of the Ministry of National Insurance. She went twice, and on her second visit she was asked by the clerk if she was the Miss Neville who had been trained as a nurse at St. Thomas's Hospital. London, and had later served in the Royal Navy.

Of course, her answer was "Yes", but the clerk never informed her that she had a gap in her contributions and that she was entitled to pay the arrears. It was obvious that the office had obtained details of her career, but it failed in its duty to notify her about paying the arrears of contributions. Why did not the clerk tell her? Why did not the office pass on the information? Was it because they were failing in their duty? Or were they really taking it for granted that Miss Neville knew about the payment of arrears being allowed?

Surely this shows that it is a fallacy for the Ministry to make a statement that wherever possible it advised people on these matters. During the whole of the period in which I have discussed this matter with it, the Ministry has not yet proved to me that it has any system for passing information to people who have arrears of contributions and notifying them that they have six years in which to pay them.

My hon. Friend knows that in the 1940s and 1950s and today nurses were not and are not interested in what benefits are paid out in national insurance and social security, but in their work, to which they are totally dedicated. Miss Neville is of that kind. She is a dedicated nurse. She never questioned whether she should support the nation when war was declared. She volunteered to serve the country, of which she had been a resident for four years. One must not forget, of course, that when she joined up millions of other people did at the same time.

I failed to get satisfaction from the Ministry on this case. My hon. Friend was sympathetic and made arrangements for me to meet representatives of the Ministry, for which I was grateful. But the hand of bureaucracy could not be moved and although I pleaded with them on behalf of Miss Neville I failed to move them. They would not agree that the arrears could be paid.

I then went to the Parliamentary Commissioner and thought that I had moved things in getting that far. But there is a statement in his report which is disturbing. He says that some arrears had been paid. Obviously, the record must have been supplied to him by the Ministry, but that information was never given to me when I met the representatives of the Ministry and at no time has my hon. Friend given it to me.

Miss Neville refutes the statement that she was ever asked to pay arrears, or that she paid. She says that had she known she could pay any arrears, she would have done so. When did she arrive at the knowledge that she could pay arrears? She happened to be in York at the home of a niece when discussion arose about the payment of arrears. The niece said that Ministry officials had visited her home to inform her that she could pay the arrears which she owed for one year. That was in 1967 and shortly afterwards the case came to me.

So, for all this length of time, the Ministry failed to notify my constituent that such arrears could be paid. I want to know whether information was given to the Parliamentary Commissioner which was not given to me—I believe that it must have been—because if it was given to him, it should have been given to me during the discussions which took place.

Today, I put a Question on this issue: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services, if he will give details of the time limits under his regulations within which arrears of contributions, due to a person being out of work for any length of time, must be paid before the weekly amount of pension will be of a lesser rate; and if he will make a statement. In his Answer, my hon. Friend said: In certain circumstances contributions paid after these dates may be treated as having been paid on the due date, if the failure to pay at the proper time was due to ignorance or error on the part of the insured person which was not due to any failure on his part to exercise due care and diligence. These time limits are necessary to protect the National Insurance Fund and we have no flans to vary them. This was ignorance on the part of my constituent. She could easily have afforded to pay the arrears at any time on her return to this country.

I have little sympathy with those who fail to pay when they have the opportunity to pay and know that they have to do so, although we must not forget that even some of those may be on low wages and not able to afford the extra required. But when a person is not made aware of the position and the Ministry has no clear method for giving the information, she must be allowed to pay arrears.

I have been shocked by the attitude of my right hon. and hon. Friends on this issue. I have received many letters of complaint about the Ministry's attitude. The Ministry issues only one pamphlet to notify people that they may pay arrears. Presumably, it is a reprint, but the pamphlet is dated January, 1969—it is pamphlet N.I. 38. Paragraph 8 deals with time limits for payments of contributions.

How many contributors go to the National Insurance office—the Social Security Office—it has changed its name many times and is now the Ministry of Health and Social Services office—to ask about the rules and regulations? It all depends on the clerks at the desk. When my constituent went to the Barnsley office in 1957 to obtain her new insurance card, the clerks did not give her the necessary information. If they had done so, she would have paid off the arrears. It now seems that she will be penalised because someone at the Barnsley office did not do his duty. The Ministry does not put out sufficient publicity to ensure that people qualify for their pensions by paying off arrears within six years of their being due.

I am shocked and disgusted by this case. Here is a young woman who came from Ireland and who trained to be a nurse in this country. Within four years of arriving here she joined up. Her illness must have been due to her service abroad. She did not trouble to claim sickness benefits, and no one from the Ministry even asked her to supply evidence of her sickness. She was then told that it was her fault and that she should have known that she could pay her arrears and claim benefits. If I had got on to this case earlier, this constituent might have been able to claim a pension because of her sickness, which must have been contributed to by war service.

I ask my hon. Friend to consider this case again, even at this late stage, and grant Miss Neville permission to pay her arrears of contribution.

1.1 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Department of Health and Social Security (Mr. Norman Pentland)

I have listened carefully to everything said by my hon. Friend the Member for Dearne Valley (Mr. Edwin Wainwright) and I fully appreciate the care and attention to detail with which he has presented the case seeking a favourable outcome for his constituent, Miss Neville. I also pay tribute to his diligence on behalf of his constituent. I know from experience that he has pursued every avenue open to him on this case.

However, despite everything that he has said tonight about my Department, I can assure him that everyone who has handled this case in my Department has for his or her part begun by wanting to help Miss Neville, particularly in view of her war service in the Queen Alexandra Royal Naval Nursing Service and the circumstances in which she had to abandon her nursing in England to go back home to the Irish Republic to look after her parents. We have all tried to bend the rules in her favour, but we have been forced to admit that we can do nothing to help her.

Let me briefly trace the course of events and explain why it is we reached this conclusion. When the new scheme of national insurance began in 1948, Miss Neville was at home in the Irish Republic and we heard nothing from her until November 1959, when she registered for the first time under the scheme of national insurance. Now, that was more than 11 years after the start of the scheme. If she had written to us in 1948, we could have told her that she had the right to pay voluntary contributions from the Irish Republic, even if she intended to spend the rest of her life in that country, and we could also have told her that later on she would have the right to draw her retirement pension there. At that time, in 1948, we were sending out many thousands of letters and leaflets all over the world in reply to questions about the new scheme. But Miss Neville did not write to us, so we could not tell her about her position.

When she did come to our Barnsley local office, in 1959, it was too late for her to pay arrears for the whole of the 11 years she had missed. But she could still have paid arrears for the last six contribution years. In fact, she did not offer to pay arrears until 1967. It was then too late. The six years' time limit had expired. It is true that there is power to extend that time limit, but my right hon. Friend the former Minister of Social Security, now Paymaster-General, could find no ground for extending it, although we searched the papers diligently when my hon. Friend brought the case to our notice.

We discussed the case at great length, but, in the end, we felt bound to tell my hon. Friend that nothing could be done. He then submitted Miss Neville's complaint to the Parliamentary Commissioner, and the Commissioner, after making a thorough investigation of the case, reported that the gap in Miss Neville's record of contributions could not be attributed to maladministration by our Ministry.

Our records do not tell us everything that was said when Miss Neville visited our Barnsley local office in 1959, but they do show that the local office dealt intelligently and sympathetically with her case. It took the trouble to have a search made in the records of the old scheme of contributory pensions so as to link up her insurance under that scheme with her record under the new scheme of national insurance. Here, I should like to clear up a point on which there has been some doubt. Miss Neville still had the impression, even in 1967, that this linking of insurance had reduced her pension rights. Quite the contrary. Actually, it helped her. It will enable her, if she maintains a good record of contributions till she reaches 60. to have a yearly average of 37 contributions rather than a yearly average of 32.

That aside, I think that the main point made by my hon. Friend is that our Barnsley local office failed to tell Miss Neville about the gap in her record of contributions and about her right to pay arrears of contributions for at least part of the time she had spent in the Irish Republic. On this, I should say that our local offices are instructed to warn insured persons about the effects of any gap in their record of contributions and to tell them about their rights to pay arrears of voluntary contributions for any time they have been abroad.

In Miss Neville's case, the Barnsley local office, when she went there in 1959, may not have stressed these points with sufficient vigour, because at that time—and I must make this plain—so far from being willing to pay voluntary contributions for the years she had spent in the Irish Republic, she was unable or unwilling to pay all the contributions she was liable to pay for the time between her return to England in 1957 or 1958 and her first visit to the Barnsley local office in November, 1959.

It is important, when looking at Miss Neville's case, to appreciate that it is not unique. Every year about 200,000 people go abroad for a substantial period of years rather than months, and the majority of these pay no voluntary contributions for the time they are abroad.

Mr. Edwin Wainwright

My hon. Friend keeps mentioning November, 1959. Miss Neville came back to this country in 1957. As soon as her employer advised her to go to the Barnsley local office she went. Will my hon. Friend check the point about its being December or November, 1959—because this differs from what Miss Neville has told me?

Mr. Pentland

I understand my hon. Friend's point of view. I said that Miss Neville returned to England in 1957 or 1958, but according to my information, and the information passed to us from the Barnsley local office, her first visit to that office was made in November, 1959.

As I was saying, every year about 200,000 people go abroad for a substantial period of years rather than months, and the majority of these pay no voluntary contributions for the time they are abroad. If we allowed them to wait till they were approaching pension age, many of them would be glad to pay arrears of contributions and thus qualify for pensions at the full rate. We are already paying 110,000 retirement pensions abroad, but the number would be much greater if we had no time limit for the payment of voluntary contributions. We think that a time limit of six years is generous enough. Anything more than this would be unfair to the insured people who remain in this country, paying their contributions regularly every week and financing the national insurance scheme not only as contributors but also as taxpayers. For this reason, we feel bound to maintain the time limit of six years, and we must apply this time limit in an orderly way, for we are dealing with thousands of cases.

Bearing in mind that we have such a time limit it is, of course, quite fair to ask what we do to make certain people know where they stand. This is one of the issues raised by my hon. Friend. Well, I can tell him we do a great deal. Every year, for example, we send out just over 3 million notices telling people about gaps in their record of contributions; and our local offices hand out many thousands of leaflets about the position of insured people who are abroad and about the time limits for paying arrears of contributions. But we cannot tell everyone everything that is relevant to his national insurance position. We must rely on the individual to take an interest in his national insurance and to make inquiries if he is in doubt. Our local offices are always ready to help.

There are many hundreds of thousands of insured persons who have gaps in their records of contributions, because they have been abroad for substantial periods. Some of these, like Miss Neville, have had the opportunity of discussing their problems with our local offices. Others have never visited a local office in their lives and have never written to us from abroad.

I believe that most of these people, whether they are still abroad or have now come back to this country, could say honestly, when they are approaching pension age that, as far as they can remember, no one ever told them about the gaps in their contribution records or about their right to pay voluntary contributions. The Government are satisfied that it would be unfair to the general body of insured persons and taxpayers in this country if we allowed these people who have been abroad to gain an advantage by reason of their failure to ask us for information and advice.

I have been talking in general terms about the situation. I end by saying once again that I am sorry we have been unable to help Miss Neville. I know full well that my hon. Friend is deeply concerned about her case. As I have said, we all started with the aim of seeing what we could do, but, after the most careful review of all the circumstances, we have become convinced that her case has been properly and fairly handled in accordance with the rules which apply to such cases.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at thirteen minutes past One o'clock.