Unemployment Benefit (Hansard, 12 June 1984)

§ Dr. Boyson

The effect of Territorial Army membership on an unemployed person's benefit depends on whether the volunteer is drawing unemployment benefit or supplementary benefit.

Unemployment benefit is not payable for any day on which earnings from employment exceed £2 and TA volunteers are therefore not entitled to unemployment benefit for days of paid training. However, because unemployment benefit is a daily benefit and is not paid for Sundays, the effect is that a volunteer loses only one day's benefit (about £4.50 for a single person and £7.30 for a married man) for a weekend's training and his TA pay is, of course, much higher than that.

Supplementary benefit is affected where earnigs are more than £4 a week. As TA earnings are paid monthly, volunteers have the benefit of the £4 disregard for each week of the month and not just for the week in which earnings are received. Thus, up to £16 of monthly earnings can be disregarded. As part of the Government's commitment to enhance the role of the TA, proposals for amending the regulations to provide for an extra £4 a week disregard of TA earnings have been referred to the Social Security Advisory Committee and draft regulations will be laid before the House shortly. The effect will be to increase the amount of monthly earnings which can be disregarded to £32. For most TA members undertaking one training weekend a month, supplementary benefit will not then be affected.

The Government have no plans for further changes in this respect. Apart from the question of cost —disregarding TA earnings completely for both benefits would cost about £5 million a year—there are questions of principle about how much a person should be allowed to earn while continuing to receive unemployment benefit, designed for people without work, and how much income can properly be disregarded in the assessment of supplementary benefit, designed to meet need.