SOCIAL SECURITY (CONSEQUENCES OF EMERGENCY) (NORTHERN IRELAND) ORDER 1974

HL Deb 27 November 1974 vol 354 cc1457-61

5.18 p.m.

LORD DONALDSON OF KINGSBRIDGE rose to move, That the Social Security (Consequences of Emergency) (Northern Ireland) Order 1974, laid before the House on July 31, be approved. The noble Lord said: My Lords, the last Order I wish to bring before your Lordships results from the Ulster Workers stoppage last May. Among the services most seriously hit by the stoppage were the Social Security services. By the time the stoppage entered its second week the Northern Ireland Executive considered that it was no longer possible to maintain the normal administrative procedures for unemploy- ment benefit, sickness benefit and supplementary benefit. In fact while the average weekly number of cases was 3,500 in this fortnight it exceeded 200,000. The circumstances leading to this conclusion were the huge influx of claims to benefit and the inability of many of the staff of the Department of Health and Social Services to get to work because of the withdrawal of public transport, unofficial road blocks and, in some cases, intimidation.

Following on the Executive's conclusion an urgent approach was made by the then head of the Department of Health and Social Services for Northern Ireland to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, to make regulations under the Emergency Powers Act (Northern Ireland) 1926 empowering the Department of Health and Social Services to suspend at its discretion normal administrative procedures for unemployment benefit, sickness benefit and supplementary benefit and to introduce an emergency benefit scheme. My right honourable friend supported the Executive's assessment that it was quite impracticable to continue to operate the normal provisions for payment of these benefits under the normal rules of eligibility and agreed to make the Emergency Regulations.

The head of the Department of Health and Social Services in a Statement to the Northern Ireland Assembly later the same day, May 21, announced that he had decided to activate the emergency benefit scheme immediately. In this Statement, he explained his reasons for doing so as well as his concern about the difficulties of maintaining payments to those already receiving benefits, such as retirement pensioners, not directly involved in the stoppage. Inevitably, the introduction of this scheme which enabled standard rate payments to be made, meant abandoning the normal safeguards against abuse by unscrupulous individuals of the social security system for the sake of avoiding serious hardship for the vast majority of the victims of events, and not active participants in them.

My Lords, I have explained in some detail the background to the making of the Emergency (Payment of Benefit) Regulations, as this is essential to an understanding of the need for the Order now under consideration. The Emergency Powers Act (Northern Ireland) of 1926 did not contain powers to extinguish the right to normal benefits in respect of periods for which emergency benefit was paid. With the approval of the Northern Ireland Executive, the head of the Department intended to introduce a measure to deal with this and certain other matters arising as a consequence of the emergency benefit scheme. Unfortunately, the Executive fell before this could be done.

This Order makes a similar provision to what would have been achieved by the proposed measure had the Assembly not been prorogued. Articles 1 and 2 cover citation, commencement and interpretation. Article 3 has a twofold effect: first, to take away the title to normal benefits for any period for which the emergency benefit was paid; secondly, by treating claims for these benefits as claims for emergency benefit, it takes away the need to submit claims for decisions to the statutory adjudicating authority. Article 4 provides for the Northern Ireland Insurance Fund to repay to the Consolidated Fund of Northern Ireland certain expenses incurred in relation to the payment of emergency benefit. Briefly, these are expenses which the National Insurance Fund would have incurred in connection with sickness and unemployment benefit if payment of emergency benefit had not been made. Paragraph (1) enables the Department by subordinate Orders to make such incidental, transitional or supplementary provision as it appears expedient to it in connection with the operation, revocation or expiration of the emergency benefit regulations. Paragraph (2) provides that such an Order may be made to take effect earlier than the date on which the Order itself is made. This power is necessary to allow provisions of the Order to take effect from the date on which the Regulations take effect.

To sum up, the purpose of the Order is to exclude duplicate payments of social securities benefits to persons who have already received the emergency benefit, to ensure that the costs of paying it fall where they properly belonged, and to provide for certain consequential matters. My Lords, I beg to move.

Moved, That the Social Security (Consequences of Emergency) (Northern Ireland) Order 1974, laid before the House on July 31, be approved.—(Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge.)

5.24 p.m.

LORD BELSTEAD

My Lords, this is an important Order because, at a time when every item of public expenditure is under the closest scrutiny, the Order refers to a quite considerable sum of public money. Therefore, I wish to put two questions to the Government. First of all, despite the very thorough explanation of the reasons for the Order, for which I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, I am still not entirely clear under what criteria the emergency benefits were paid out during the period of the emergency. Of course, the noble Lord has explained that, in the extremely dangerous conditions prevailing in Northern Ireland in the third week of May, it needed a stout heart to get to work, and, once there, one often found one could not do any work because of lack of power. I can well believe that many, deprived of work and pay, felt compelled to make claims, but it would be informative if we could be told on what criteria those claims were decided.

My Lords, secondly, the Government, as I understand it, have assessed the probable total of payments made during the Ulster Workers' strike at about £5 million. Can the noble Lord give an approximate figure for the normal claims, for unemployment, sickness and supplementary benefits during a similar period, taken during the summer months? In other words, what has the emergency benefit scheme cost in reality? Of course, the main purpose of the Order, contained in the first part of Article 3, to prevent the duplication of payments of benefits, must certainly be supported. The scheme to which this Order refers was undoubtedly conceived in an emergency. Some of its consequences were perhaps unforeseen; for instance, I understand those normally entitled to earnings related supplements found they were not payable in fact. Undoubtedly the scheme must have placed considerable extra burdens on the Northern Ireland Civil Service, but it is the reason for the introduction of the scheme which we must hope will never occur again.

LORD DONALDSON OF KINGS-BRIDGE

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, and join him most strongly in that last sentiment. With reference to his first question, about criteria, normally when someone applies for unemployment benefit routine checks of various kinds are made. This process was abandoned, and the check was limited to the knowledge of the local people. The local exchange knew what was going on in the different firms; they knew the people they were dealing with, and did not make the normal routine checks. That is the answer to the first question. Whether or not that was satisfactory I think can be answered by the following figure which the Department of Health and Social Security in Northern Ireland has produced, without guaranteeing it. We asked the Department for its estimate of the number of possible double payments. The Department reckons there were something between 400 and 500, each one of which is being followed up. I think this shows that the criteria of local knowledge was not as ineffective as one might have expected.

My Lords, as to the difference between what it would have cost had the normal procedure been carried out and what it did cost, once again the Department of Health and Social Security believes that it is impossible to quantify this difference, but it would have been very small. The Department's estimate for both is £5 million. In other words, in spite of the irregularities and the unevenness of what went on, the Department does not believe that more money was paid out than would have been paid under the normal proceedings if there had been 200,000 claims treated with the full defences of the system. It is true that certain sickness benefits—and there were a few—lost the earnings related supplement for a short period. Our estimate is that it was very small, and whenever such a thing has been shown to have produced hardship it has been dealt with.

On Question, Motion agreed to.