§ Mr. Neil Thorneasked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether he has any plans to change the rules governing the payment of benefit to unemployed people to assist those who cannot obtain paid employment to do useful work within the community.
§ Mr. FowlerI have today laid before the House regulations which are designed to make it easier for unemployed people to do a certain amount of work without it affecting their entitlement to benefit. The regulations—the Social Security (Unemployment, Sickness and Invalidity Benefit and Credits) Amendment Regulations 1982—will come into operation on 8 March and should particularly assist those people who wish to undertake voluntary service. The regulations help whether the work being done is paid or unpaid but do not change the basic requirement that entitlement to benefit while unemployed, depends on availability for work. They take account of certain changes suggested by the social security advisory committee in its report on the draft regulations referred to them last year.
First, we are amending the conditions which people who are doing paid work have to satisfy in order to get unemployment benefit. The daily earnings limit of 75p is raised to £2, and it will no longer be a rule that any paid work done must be consistent with full-time work. In addition, the rule that a claimant doing paid work must not be working in his usual main occupation will no longer apply to a claimant doing voluntary work, for a charity, local authority or health authority.
Secondly, we are extending the circumstances in which claimants can be treated as being available for work. The regulations provide for a person to be deemed to be available for work while, as a member of an organised group, he is responding to an emergency or while, for up to a fortnight a year, he is away from home attending a project run by a charity or local authority. The regulations also provide for an unemployed person to be deemed to be available for work even if, because of a service he is providing, he could not respond immediately to a job opportunity but provided he could do so if given twenty-four hours' notice.
The rules concerning availability for work apply equally to people claiming supplementary benefit when unemployed.
The social security advisory committee's report and the comments of voluntary bodies indicate that these relaxations will be welcome. My Department will be issuing a new leaflet explaining how far social security benefits—for disabled people and retired people as well as 277W unemployed people—can still be paid when voluntary work is undertaken. We hope that it will be useful both for potential volunteers and for the organisations that they may work with.