§ Mr. Budgenasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he has any new proposals to make concerning qualifying days for statutory sick pay.
§ Dr. BoysonThe Social Security and Housing Benefits Act 1982 allows an employer to decide, by agreement with an employee, which should be the qualifying days for statutory sick pay, in order that those days should reflect the employee's normal terms of employment or pattern of work. However, in some cases this facility has been abused by so-called "optimising" or "maximising" schemes which vary the qualifying days accorded to the employee's spells of incapacity and have the effect of allowing the employer to charge the State, through self-deduction, with large amounts of his normal wage bill. It is the Government's intention to include a clause in the next Social Security Bill to prevent this practice and to take power to substitute a different pattern of qualifying days in cases where they have previously operated on this artificial basis.