§ Mr. Lofthouseasked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether he will take steps to eliminate the necessity for people who have retired early in accordance with early retirement schemes to have 52W to attend an employment office every week.
§ Mr. Orme:If someone who has retired early wishes to claim unemployment benefit he must satisfy the normal conditions regarding availability for work and registration, including the requirement to attend weekly at the unemployment benefit office. Where, for reasons such as severe disablement, weekly attendance would clearly cause hardship, easements are made to the normal registration conditions. It would be unfair to claimants generally to allow easier conditions for the receipt of unemployment benefit to apply to one group of claimants solely on the grounds that they had retired early from their previous employment.