§ Miss Richardsonasked the Secretary of State for Social Services how many unemployed people are not receiving un 386W employment benefit because they were previously self-employed; how many of these are receiving supplementary benefit; and for what reasons of policy the self-employed are not entitled to unemployment benefits.
§ Mr. OrmeInformation is not held in precisely the form requested. However, as at May 1976, the latest date for which figures are available, there were 150,000 men and 57,000 women registered as unemployed but not in receipt of unemployment benefit because of a deficient contribution record. Of these, 130,000 men and 43,000 women were in receipt of supplementary benefit.
Although no firm estimate can be made of the number of people who failed to meet the contribution conditions for unemployment benefit because they had previously been self-employed, the findings of the recent internal inquiry, details of which are given in my reply to the hon. Member for Wallasey (Mrs. Chalker) today, suggest that at May 1976 about 67,000 men may have had contribution deficiencies due to self-employment. It has never been found possible to extend unemployment benefit cover to the self-employed, as a class, because of the difficulty in deciding whether people who, to some extent at least, can control their own employment and working patterns are really unemployed. Supplementary benefit may, however, be payable to a person who was formerly self-employed if he is now available for work as an employee.
§ Mrs. Chalkerasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will make a statement on his investigations into the ineligibility of a high percentage of the unemployed to any unemployment benefit and their subsequent dependence on supplementary benefits for their whole period of unemployment.
§ Mr. Orme,pursuant to his reply [Official Report, 13th January 1978; Vol. 941, c. 858], gave the following information:
A special survey of a 1 per cent. sample of people registered as unemployed on 3rd May 1976 but not in receipt of unemployment benefit because of a contribution deficiency was undertaken by my Department in 1977. The aim of the inquiry was to discover the reasons 387W for the marked increase, since 1973, in the proportion of claimants failing to satisfy the contribution conditions for unemployment benefit. The information held by my Department proved insufficient to determine the reasons for contribution deficiencies in the case of 10 per cent. of men and 23 per cent. of women amongst those in the sample whose contribution records could be traced.
The main causes of contribution deficiency for the remaining men were attributed to:
Per cent. Self-employment 45 Full-time education 30 Non-employment 10 Prison 9 Abroad 4 Immigrant 2 100 The proportion attributed to the self-employment category was 67 per cent. among those aged 25 or over; in this age group many had been working in the construction industry.
The conclusion which can be drawn from the results of the inquiry is that it is likely that the increase in failures to satisfy the contribution conditions over the 1973–76 period was largely due to increases in the numbers of claimants who had previously been self-employed, many of whom may have been working on "the lump", and in the numbers who had been unable in the worsening employment situation, to obtain work on completing a course of full-time education.
No firm conclusion could be drawn about the reasons for contribution deficiency among women because of the small number of women covered by the sample and the high proportion of cases for which insufficient information was available.