§ Mr. Harold Macmillanasked the Minister of Labour (1) what would be the estimated saving in unemployment assistance and public assistance of making an offer to insured contributors of pensions at the rate of £1 per week for men aged 65 years of age or over without a wife to support, and 30s. per week for men aged 65 years of age or over with a wife to support; what would be the estimated number of employed persons aged 65 years of age or over who would accept this offer of pensioned retirement; and how many younger persons would be absorbed into industry in their place;
(2) what would be the additional cost of paying, as from the age of 65, a weekly pension of £1 to each insured contributor without a wife to support and 30s. per week to each married contributor with a wife to support and to whom he had been married for five years prior to his reaching the qualified age of 65, providing that these payments were made conditional upon the retirement of the contributor from paid employment?
§ Captain WallaceI have been asked to reply. I interpret my hon. Friend's proposal as involving the grant of a pension of £1 a week (£1 10s. to a married couple) to persons aged 65–70 in receipt of contributory pensions (including widows aged 65–70) and contributory pensioners over age 70, but not pensioners subject to a means qualification, the pension of £1 10s. a week to married men being granted irrespective of the age of their wives. The additional cost of increasing the contributory pensions in this way is estimated to be about £57 millions a year at the present time rising to nearly £75 millions a year in ten years' time. Data are not available from which an estimate could be made of the reduction in the additional cost which would be secured by limiting the increased pension to married men to cases where they had been married for five years prior to the attainment of age 65; nor is it practicable to assess what saving might be effected by limiting the £1 10s. pension to cases in which the husband was supporting the wife.
If retirement were made a condition for the grant of the increased pension, the cost would naturally depend upon the number who accepted the offer, and any 792W estimate of the effect of such a condition would depend upon the assumptions made as to the proportion who might be thus attracted. I regret, therefore, that I am not able to answer the further questions asked by my hon. Friend as to the numbers who would be absorbed into industry as a result of the grant of a retirement pension at the stated rates or the consquential saving in unemployment assistance and in other directions.
§ Mr. Harold Macmillanasked the Minister of Health, what additional amount of money would be raised by an increase of 1d. per week in the contribution now being paid by the worker, the employer, and the State, in respect of persons insured under the Old Age Contributory Pensions Scheme?
§ Captain WallaceI have been asked to reply. If the contribution payable in respect of men under the Contributory Pensions Acts were increased by 1d. a week, and in respect of women by ½d. a week in conformity with the present ratio of men's to women's contributions, the additional income would be about £3 millions a year at the present time. If additional contributions of these amounts were payable respectively by workers, employers and the State the total additional income would be about £9 millions a year. As my hon. Friend is doubtless aware, the State subvention to the Contributory Pensions Scheme does not take the form of a grant proportionate to the contribution income but is an annual amount on a scale laid down by Parliament.