Sir Robert Home on Wednesday gave the House a very
lucid account of the new Unemployment Insurance Bill, "applying the principles of the experimental Act of 1911 to all industries except agriculture, domestic service, and the railways. State and local employees and non-manual workers receiving over £250 a year will be excluded from the Bill, which applies to twelve million men and women. Each workman will pay three- pence a week and each woman twopence-halfpenny ; the em- ployer will contribute threepence and the State twopence. For every six weekly payments the workman, if unemployed, would be entitled to one week's benefit of fifteen shillings, the unem- ployed woman receiving twelve shillings. Industries will be allowed to contract out of the Bill, if they can devise sound schemes under the joint inanagernentof employers .and workmen, The Trade Unions distributing unemployment benefit of five shillings a week will also pay the State benefit and receive grants for their trouble. Mr. Clynes criticized the Bill as inadequate, suggesting that employers or the State ought to "guarantee. certainty of employment," and a Nottinghamshire miners' Member described the proposed benefits as " a direct insult to Labour," knowing well that no miner need ever be unemployed in normal times. But the Bill really pleased all parties.
Previous page
