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Chapter II
Pensions
Why not optional pensions at 60, invalidity pensions, and industrial disability pensions?
I BEGIN with pensions . At the moment the State pays a pension of 10s. a week to insured persons of 65 years of age, a pension to widows and also an old-age pension. The first two are payable whether the persons are still in employment or not, i.e., they receive the pension as a right. I hold very strongly that there should be an adequate pension at 65, with an optional pension at 60, payable on condition that the pensioners leave industry. The reason I fix the ages at 65 and 60 I will give later on.
At the moment two sets of conditions obtain; first, thousands of people are forced out of industry at 65, when their pensions become due, without having sufficient income to maintain them. They are compelled to go to the Poor Law to supplement their income, or become dependent upon their families.
Secondly, many pensioners remain at work—this applies, I am advised, particularly in the agricultural industry—and have their wages reduced by the amount of the pension on account of age.
The position of the man who is scrapped on becoming entitled to a pension, but whose wife is much younger and therefore not entitled to one, is deplorable. Surely it will be agreed that the state of affairs which the present pension scheme has produced is utterly wrong.
Pension on Retirement Only
The whole pensions’ scheme needs recasting and consolidating with a view to
(1) Removing the present charge on local expenditure, and
(2) To take out of industry those persons over 65.
No person should be entitled to a pension until retirement actually takes place.
It may be argued that if you take the aged and the young people out of industry, you do not necessarily put in one for every person displaced. Very well; let us assume that two go into industry for every three displaced—a very large proportion of those you put into industry will be between the ages of 25 and 50, and I think it will be generally agreed that men between the ages of 25 and 50 represent with their families the maintenance of probably four of the community as against one or two, at the most, at the ages of 16 and 65.
I have fixed the retiring age at 65 because longevity has increased considerably during the past few years. In fact, a contributory factor to the present unemployment situation is the effect of our social and health services. In the terrible conditions of the 19th century death saved the industrial system a tremendous liability. I do not justify this, but it is, nevertheless, the brutal fact.
I estimate that the number of people in industry at the present time who are over 65 and receiving a pension of 10s. a week from the State is in the neighbourhood of 350,000. If they were paid an adequate pension the number who would remain in industry would be very small.
Two factors would operate; the employers would discharge at that and gradually, by practice and habit, the workers would look forward to retirement at that age and shape their lives accordingly-
The elimination of the need of assistance from the Poor Law and the absence of any obstacle to retirement under fairly decent conditions and the payment of the joint pension irrespective of the age of the wife would, I feel sure, remove any serious difficulty.
Optional Pensions at 60
Persons of 60 years of age who have been thrown out of work by the introduction of machinery and reorganisation have but a remote chance of being reabsorbed into industry. They should be given the option of going off the unemployment register and be given an adequate pension.
At the present time, unemployed persons between the ages of 60 and 65 are in a desperate position. Hundreds of them are subject to the Means Test, and it is really unfair to the Employment Exchanges to keep them on the registers as unemployed because it is known by everybody—Courts of Referees, Poor Law Authorities, social workers, and Trade Union officials— that they are past re-adaptation, past training, and will not, therefore, return to industry.
In the light of these plain facts, why torture them with the Poor Law system? Why not give them the option of a pension, and thus dispose of that part of the unemployment problem?
The fixing of an optional pension at 60 would permit adjustments which cannot be made now without great hardship, which the better type of employers, to their credit, agree with the Trade Unions to avoid by retaining workpeople until they are 65 and become entitled to a pension. Optional pensions at 60 would also facilitate the promotion of the younger people.
I favour a pension of £1 per week at least to an individual person, and a minimum pension of 35s. per week for a man and wife (or an individual person with dependents), provided the liability is undertaken irrespective of the age of the wife, it being understood that the payment of the pension would be conditional upon the non-receipt of wages, either by the individual or the wife. In the case of a man dying and leaving a wife and a young family, I would favour a grant for the children.
I do not put these figures forward from a bargaining point of view. In my opinion they represent the absolute minimum upon which a pensioned person could possibly exist.
Invalidity Pensions
Another class which must be dealt with under the pension scheme is what I will term the invalid class. This aspect of the problem was discussed very fully in the Joint Conference, which took place between the employers and the Trade Union Movement some years ago—I refer to the much-abused Mond-T.U.C. Conferences—and it was then generally accepted on both sides that age should not be the sole determining right to a pension.
The question arises as to whether a person with a physical disability must become a charge upon the State or upon a fund provided through the State. At the moment a large number of such persons represent a heavy liability on the Approved Societies and other organisations, and there is a tendency sometimes to blame the doctors for giving them certificates.
Speaking as one who has the responsibility of administering both the Approved Society and the Trade Union side, I would only say that an investigation of a large number of what might be regarded from a Friendly Society point of view as doubtful cases revealed that in almost every instance the individual concerned was genuinely physically unfit to follow his trade, and past any possible training or readaptation for any other trade.
This problem is now intensified by the present physical condition of some thousands of men who endured great hardship and suffering during the war, the real effects of which are felt as they get older.
Why carry the tremendous cost of administration, both on the National Health and the Unemployment Insurance side, or, alternatively, make them victims of the Poor Law in respect of persons in this category? The great proportion of them are victims of the present industrial revolution, and, after all, if their incapacity was due to a military war the State would have to provide a disability pension.
Why not have an industrial disability pension?
These workers are not in any way responsible for the upheaval that has taken place in the industrial world, and therefore, for all these reasons, they also should be brought within the scheme and provided with pensions, subject to a medical examination.