Labour's Pensions Plan In its new pensions plan Labour has
outlined an objective which any Government might be glad to find itself in a position to achieve ; and it seems certain that one day, it May be in no very distant future, it will be achieved, though perhaps not by a Labour Government. Its main proposals are to provide a weekly pension of for a single person and 35s. for a married couple at the age of 65 ; to give the same pension at the age of 6o to the unemployed certified by the Unemployment Assistance Board as unlikely to find work ; and in either case to make the pension conditional on retire- ment. This is a means both of providing security for the old and of relieving the labour market ; and both are objects which must be aimed at by any progressive political policy. The immediate obstacle to achieving them is the cost of the plan, estimated at £80,000,000 a year for the next ten years, a sum impossible to raise by taxation while armament expenditure (which Labour now approves) remains at its present height, and representing, if raised by increasing con- tributions, a tax of £40,000,000 on industry and a weekly payment of Is. by the worker. Yet these objections are not final. Armaments will not always take so large a share of the national income ; part of the cost at least of the pensions scheme would be offset by savings on unemployment assist- ance ; the burden of even so large a plan will not be intolerable if shared, as Labour proposes, between the State, the employer and the employed.
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