NATIONAL ASSISTANCE (DETER MINATION OF NEED) AMEND MENT REGULATIONS 1963 (Hansard, 19 February 1963)

THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE

My Lords, on February 5 I made a statement to your Lordships outlining briefly the increases proposed in the national assistance scales. Your Lordships now have before you the draft Statutory Instrument which will give effect to these increases and also the Explanatory Memorandum upon it. The principal changes are the increases in the scale for husband and wife, which goes up from 95s. 6d. to 104s. 6d., and in the scale for a single householder, which goes up from 57s. 6d. to 63s. 6d. There are also appropriate increases for other classes of recipients and for dependants. As your Lordships will see, the full range of the increases is set out on page 2 of the Explanatory Memorandum. I should perhaps mention again that the new scales, like the former ones, are of course exclusive of rent, for which allowance is made separately by the National Assistance Board.

The new scales, which it is proposed should take effect generally on May 27, the same day as that proposed for increases in retirement pensions and other long-term national insurance benefits, represent a further improvement in the standard of living for the poorest members of the community—a standard which, as the House may remember, has already 1247 been substantially raised by a long series of changes. The new rates represent the tenth increase since the original scale rates were laid down in 1948, and the principal rates will now be more than 160 per cent. above the 1948 rates, a measure of improvement which compares favourably with what is shown by indices of price changes, by changes in the level of earnings, or by any other measurements which your Lordships' House choose to make. The increases now proposed, taken with those made last September, mean that a married couple will be 14s. 6d. a week better off than they were last August, while the single householder will be 10s. a week to the good.

As your Lordships will know, under the National Assistance Act the Board have to take account of insurance benefits in working out the amount of supplement which can be paid to an individual, but as a result of synchronising the dates on which both insurance and assistance rates go up, people receiving help from the Board will normally get an increase in their total income—namely, the increase in the assistance scale rate which applies to their case. It is in order to achieve the same result where people are receiving short-term insurance benefits, primarily unemployment benefit and sickness benefit, which it is proposed to increase in March, that the National Insurance Bill, which your Lordships will be considering shortly, contains a special temporary provision the effect of which is that the Board will work out grants in such cases as though the new assistance rates came into operation at the same time as the higher rates of benefit.

As to cost, the proposed increases in scale rates are estimated to cost, in a full year, an additional £34 million, making, with the cost of the increases last September, a total of well over £50 million. This will, of course, be partly offset by savings from the concurrent increases in benefit and pension rates, as always happens in a combined operation of this kind. With those few words, my Lords, I beg to move that the new draft Regulations be approved.