Old Age Pensions

OLD AGE PENSIONS. The royal commission on the Aged Poor was appointed in 1893 to consider whether any al terations in the system of poor law relief are desirable, in the case of persons whose destitution is occasioned by incapacity for work resulting from old age, or whether assistance could other wise be afforded in these cases." The commission considered three main schemes for the provision of old age pensions, viz., pensions paid from imperial taxation, compulsory insurance and the system of state-aided voluntary insurance supported by Joseph Chamberlain. The commission, which reported in 1895, was unable to recommend the adoption of any of these proposals. Sev eral committees were afterward set up to consider the question but little progress was made.

Such was the position when H. H. Asquith (afterwards Lord Oxford) in his budget speech of 1907 pledged the Liberal Gov ernment to deal with the question in the following session, fulfilling that pledge in the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908.

The Act of 1908.

Under that act, which was admittedly of an experimental and tentative character, the statutory conditions for the receipt of an old age pension were (a) the person must have attained the age of 7o: (b) he must have been a British sub ject for the last 20 years and have had his residence during that period in the United Kingdom and (c) his yearly means must not exceed £31.10. The following persons were disqualified even if the statutory conditions were fulfilled: (I) persons who were in receipt of Poor Law relief (other than medical or surgical relief) ; (2) persons who have been convicted of any offence and ordered to be imprisoned without the option of a fine—while in prison and for a further period of 1 o years; (3) persons con victed in certain cases under the Inebriates Act, 1898: (4) persons detained in any asylum within the meaning of the Lunacy Act, or maintained in any place as pauper or criminal lunatics: (5) persons who had habitually failed to work according to their ability, opportunity and need for their maintenance and the main tenance of their dependants. The maximum rate of pension was 5/– a week and was payable when the yearly means did not exceed £21. The rate fell by 1/– a week for every £2.12.6. by which

the means exceeded £21, the minimum rate of i/– a week being payable when the means exceeded £28.17.6. but did not exceed L31.10.0. When the claimant was one of a married couple living together in the same house, his means were to be taken as not less than half the total means of the couple.

The abnormal conditions existing during the Great War led to certain administrative modifications in the scheme; an additional allowance of 2/6d. a week was made to every pensioner and pensions were not subject to adjustment on account of an increase of means arising from (I) separation allowances and allotments, (2) allowances from voluntary sources not exceeding 5/– a week and (3) earnings so long as the total means did not exceed 3o/ a week. These emergency arrangements were terminable as soon as legislation could be obtained amending the statutory scheme, and in 1919 a departmental committee, with Sir W. Ryland Adkins, M.P., as chairman, was appointed "to consider and report what alterations, if any, as regards rates of pension or qualifica tion should be made in the existing statutory scheme of old age pensions." While the committee decided not to recommend any modifica tion of the age at which a pension should become payable, this sec tion of their report is of interest because it involved consideration of the relationship between the old age pensions scheme and the national health insurance scheme which was instituted in 1912. (See NATIONAL INSURANCE : Health.) The committee expressed the opinion that on financial and other grounds it was desirable to deal with the problem of lowering the pensionable age by an adaptation of the contributory system of insurance, and in this respect foreshadowed the scheme which was ultimately embodied in the Contributory Pensions Act, 1925. The committee unani mously recommended that the receipt of outdoor relief should not be a disqualification for the receipt of a pension and that the maxi mum rate of pension should be increased to I 0/– a week, so that the pre-war purchasing power of the pension should be restored.