Clause 1. — (Contributory Pensions for Widows, orphans and persons between the ages of 65 and 70.)

Part of Orders of the Day — Contributory Pensions Bill – in the House of Commons at on 1 July 1925.

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Photo of Mr Frederick Pethick-Lawrence Mr Frederick Pethick-Lawrence , Leicester West

I am quite sure that the Minister will not think me ungrateful, after the way he met my Amendment last night, if I still protest against certain injustices that remain in this first Clause of this Bill. I am quite sure that the Amendments he made last night for me he made because he thought—and I fully agree—that the proposals were a great improvement on the Bill as it originally stood. I would venture, therefore, to appeal to him to make an improvement in certain other lines in this Clause in order really that he may make it a better Bill. The right hon. Gentleman has expressed disagreement with my hon. Friends the Member for West Middlesbrough (Mr. T. Thomson) and Keighley (Mr. Lees-Smith) on the case they have put up in regard to women's position under this Bill. He says in effect: "It is no good your saying to us that certain women will make a great number of contributions and get no benefit, that is not the essence of insurance. The essence of insurance"—I quite agree—"is that a large number of people pay their contributions and that only some of them obtain benefit as a result of those contributions." That, I say, is quite true. But there is another essential factor in insurance that this Bill does not carry out. It is this: When a person is asked to insure he insures against certain definite risks and he has a right to feel dissatisfied if, having paid the money for those risks, eventually he does not get recompense if the risks actually occur. Our criticism of this Bill is that so far as women are concerned they have not got their benefit, because when a risk for which they have actually paid happens, from certain circumstances over which they have no control, the benefit does not come their way.

Let me put in the form of the insurance, about which we all know, against railway accident. When a passenger goes by train he in many cases takes out an insurance policy. Eventually it is only very few people who suffer accidents, and the contributions of those people who arrive safely at the end of their journey in large numbers make up for the very few accidents that a few people receive. But it would be a very serious form of insurance if the people, in taking their railway ticket, and with it an insurance ticket, found when an accident really happened that they were denied the recompense from circumstances over which they had no control. That is the position, in our contention, of the women who enter this insurance scheme. The Minister says that the contributions which the women make are part of the whole scheme and come back to the women, in the aggregate, in the shape of the various benefits received. That may be true. That is an actuarial question which may be true, taking all the factors of the Bill into account.

But the point is this: that you ask the woman to pay contributions in the early years, at the age of 16, when she enters industry; you ask, I say, the woman to pay her contributions, and hold out to her certain promises that if she pays those contributions and takes her share in this compulsory insurance scheme that she will have the benefit, if she becomes a widow —with or without children—that if she dies, her husband being dead also, and there are left orphan children, that those orphan children will be provided for, and that when she reaches the age of 65 she will get a pension. As a matter of fact, under the terms of this Clause, no one of these three risks are actually certain to be provided for in the case of the women. Let me take them one after the other. In the first place, let me take the woman's right to a pension as a widow. If she marries a man who is uninsured; if she marries a man who is crippled and cannot take his part; if she marries a man who through no fault of hers drops out of insurance, she has no certainty whatever that she will in those cases get a widow's pension or that she will get a pension on behalf of her children. Again, if she is insured, and marries, and goes on with the insurance all her life, and dies before her husband, and the husband is not insured in the last few years, her children will not get the orphan's pension.

Supposing, again, she marries a man who is not insured for the whole of his life. If he is younger than her by two or three years the fact that she has paid her contributions up to the time of marriage—and it may be many years afterwards—or it may be that on her marriage, as is natural and the usual custom in the case of married people that the woman devotes her attention to the house the man earning the money outside and she drops out of insurance she does not get her old age pension at the age of 65 Therefore, though the woman is called upon to make certain contributions with the intention that certain risks shall be covered, as a matter of fact under the-Clause not one of these risks is absolutely assured of being covered in cases of the sort I have given. That is our objection to the Bill. It is not that binder this Clause or under the insurance each individual person does not get back the full amount he has paid in. It would be perfectly natural and a proper thing not to expect that. Our objection is this, that a woman entering the scheme and paying her contributions is not, as a matter of fact, insured against any one of the three risks for which she makes against which she insures.

It is perfectly true and perfectly simple that when the Division comes along there are those from whom the Minister will be assured of a sufficient majority to carry the Clause. It may very well be that while this Bill is going through the people of this country as a whole will not understand the minutiæ of this provision, and, therefore, will not make their protest. That is perfectly natural, but later when the Bill comes into operation as an Act and the effect of the actual provisions of the Act are being found out by the people called upon to come under it there will be a very considerable resentment amongst the women when they find the risks for which they are called upon to pay for a great many years are, as a matter of fact, not covered under circumstances over which they have no control. I would only refer to one more point. I am dealing with the risks that the women consider they are by their contributions covering when they are not covered. Let me take one more illustration—the case of the spinster. Take the case of the girl who has gone on paying her contributions from 16 onwards and only gets a possible pension at 65. My hon. Friend the Member for Keighley pointed out that a large number of widows go on paying their contributions under the Insurance Act up to the age of 65.

The actuary's figures show that, whereas 57 per cent. of men continue to be insured up to 65 years of age, only 10 per cent. of women continue in insurance. It will be within the general knowledge of the Committee that a much larger proportion of women drop out of regular employment and, therefore, of health insurance before the age of 65, and all these women will not get any benefit at all from the provisions of this Bill. I think that is a very hard case. Those who do continue in up to 65, single women, do not get anything like adequate recompense for the money they have paid. Those who continue for, perhaps, 30, 35 or 40 years, and then drop out, get nothing, there is no reversionary value; all the money they have paid, as I understand it, goes for nothing at all. The right hon. Gentleman attempted to meet that by saying there is exactly the same hardship for bachelors. I do not think two wrongs make a right, but, even assuming that the risk which the bachelor runs is reasonable, the risk which the woman runs is very much less fair to her. As I have said, there is this discrepancy that, whereas 57 per cent. of men remain in employment up to 65, only 10 per cent. of women remain to that age. Then there is the further point that men are more likely to marry at a later age, and have more chance of having children in later years, and, therefore, more chance of obtaining the benefits under this Bill. I do not wish to make detailed arguments on this point, but I could illustrate them by a large number of cases of women who will suffer injustice. I am not making a speech to delay or obstruct the Bill, and I do not elaborate the point in detail, but if the Minister will take these two points into consideration he will see what a large amount of injustice will be suffered by people who come under the Bill. Women who are called upon to make these payments will, if they do not marry, not get any equivalent value for the money they have contributed; and, whether they do marry or not, the risks against which they think they are being insured they are not covered against if certain circumstances arise over which they themselves have no control whatever.