§ Mr. Ralph Howellasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what is the normal ruling, for purposes of assessing entitlement to unemployment benefit, when workers who normally work overtime are placed on short time; and to what extent overtime is taken to be part of the normal working week.
§ Mr. O'MalleyUnder Section 17(1)(b) of the Social Security Act 1975, which consolidated earlier legislation, an employee working short time is not entitled to unemployment benefit for a day, commonly called a "normal idle day", on which, in the normal course, he would not work. Neither the Act nor regulations made under it distinguish between ordinary working days and overtime days for the purpose of deciding whether a person would normally work on a particular day.