NATIONAL INSURANCE (PART II. AMENDMENT) BILL. (Hansard, 10 March 1915)

§ LORD ISLINGTON

My Lords, this is another emergency measure due to the war, and I think your Lordships will agree, when you realise its provisions, that it is non-contentious in character. It proposes to enable workmen and employers, by agreement, re continue to pay unemployment insurance contributions in respect of unemployment in the scheduled insured trades outside the United Kingdom. Under the National Insurance Act, 1911, unemployment contributions by employers and workmen am payable only when workmen are employed in the insured trades in the United Kingdom. At the present time there are a number of workmen employed in civilian work in connection with the military operations at the Front, who therefore, under the existing law, do not enjoy the provisions of the National Insurance Act. In the United Kingdom a workman and his employer are compelled in the scheduled trades to contribute to the unemployment fund. When they go abroad, as they are going now to the extent of some thousands upon the work that I have indicated, these workmen are employed by the same employer and are carrying on practically the same work; but owing to this temporary defect in the law payment is not only not required but voluntary contributions are at present invalid, so that although an employer may affix the unemployment stamp on the workman's book, that stamp is not valid, and it is in order to make it so that this short measure has been introduced. The total amount of benefit to a workman is governed by the number of contributions that he makes. For every five contribu- 658 tions he gets a week's unemployment pay, and therefore if there is any interruption in that period by his going abroad he would thereby suffer if he came under the fund. Complaints have already been made by workmen who have been invited to go abroad that the continuity of their contributions would cease. The Bill, therefore, merely validates these contributions outside the United Kingdom, and does so only by agreement as between employer and workman. The Bill has been made purposely retrospective from the beginning of the war, because already workmen have gone abroad and have paid their contributions. The Bill will validate the contributions of all who have been so employed since the war commenced.