19 NOVEMBER 1937, Page 3

Pensioners' Pocket Money Question time in the House of Commons

and the corre- spondence columns of The Times have brought to light a strange anomaly in the existing operation of old-age pensions. Discriminatory treatment exists between those old people who enter public assistance institutions because of the medical treatment which they require and those who enter merely because they are old, poor and infirm. The latter are debarred from retaining from their pension the Is. or is. 6d. per week which those who are ill or insane can keep--a piece of parsimony, not to say meanness, which should at once be remedied, if necessary by legislation. The cost would be small and the return in human happiness great.