Orders of the Day — Insurance Officer's Decision

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 2 December 1976.

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Photo of Mr John Ovenden Mr John Ovenden , Gravesend 12:00, 2 December 1976

I accept that assurance. However, I am worried that we are being asked to approve in principle a Bill which removes the entitlement to supplementary benefit and will have a drastic effect on the living standards of our students without any assurance that anything effective is being offered to help them. I am appalled that the Government are proposing a hardship scheme in place of the supplementary benefit scheme. I always believed that the supplementary benefit scheme was there to meet cases of hardship. I cannot understand why the Government should now be seeking to dispense with it and to replace it with another scheme to relieve hardship.

The reason that this has become so much of a problem over the past year or so has nothing to do with any change in the attitude of students. It has to do with the dramatic decline in the employment situation. Many students do not wish to spend time at Christmas and Easter on supplementary benefit. However, they no longer have the opportunity to do anything else. I hope that my right hon. Friends will look at this again.

I come now to Clause 4, and I wish to express my complete and total opposition to it and the way that it withdraws unemployment pay from certain occupational pensioners.

The proposal has a long and shabby history. It was introduced by the Opposition when they were in Government. We have seen today how the Opposition have changed their minds. I am aware that the right hon. Member for Wanstead and Woodford (Mr. Jenkin) was not in the Social Security Department at the time and that he can probably shield behind that fact. However, there is such a thing in Government as collective responsibility. Therefore, he bears the responsibility, with his colleagues, for the Bill which was introduced by the last Conservative Government.