§ Mr. Austin Mitchellasked the Secretary of State for Social Services how much it would cost to eliminate the contribution conditions for (a) retirement pensions; (b) unemployment benefit; (c) sickness benefit; and (d) invalidity benefit.
§ Mr. Orme, pursuant to his reply [Official Report, 28th July 1977; Vol. 936, c. 606], gave the following information
If the contribution conditions for benefit were to be abolished, it would be necessary to replace them with a qualifying condition of another kind—for example, a residence or an employment 761W test. Thus any attempt to estimate the cost of paying any benefit without regard to contributions, involves making a number of assumptions which might or might not apply in practice. In so far as the non-retirement benefits—unemployment, sickness and invalidity benefits—are concerned, I regret that the information which would enable estimates to be made is either not available or, when it does exist, could only be assembled with a considerable expenditure of time and effort which could not be justified in terms of the validity of the results. It is, however, estimated that the net additional cost to the National Insurance Fund of paying the standard rate of retirement pension to all those over pension age and retired but not currently entitled to that rate, might be of the order of £l.4 billion per annum at the benefit rates to be introduced in November.