OLD AGE PENSIONS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8152, 31 May 1906, Page 7

OLD AGE PENSIONS.

The question of Old Age Pensions is evidently to be pressed to some practical stage in the British Parliament before the session closes. Already no fewer than three measures dealing with the subject have been introduced, although the HOUSE OF COMMONS had already passed a pious resolution upon the subject, and the Government, hed, through the Chancellor of the Exchequer, expressed its regret that it had no money. The first measure, that of a quartette of four energetic members, IS COMPARATIVELY MODEST, for it provides for an expenditure of only £4,000,000 oer annqm, £2,000,000 from Consolidated Revenue and £2,000,000 from additional loaal rating. Under its terms, however. it is probable that there -would be more aged deserving poor outside its operations than inside. The proposal of Mr J. W. Wilson is less timid, for it provides for a pension of 5s to 7s a week to every deserving person over sixty, five years of age who has not been in RECEIPT Of 1 POOR RELIEF, and who has not an income of more than 10s a week. The money to provide for these payments is to come from the Treasury, in the shape of the a grant to local poor law unions of £7 a head for every aged pensioner within suoh pool law union. This practically means, as in the first case mentioned, that the Government will have to find half the money, and the lonal ratepayers the remaining half. The principal ia regarded in "advanced" circles as a serious defect, the opinion being held that whatever scheme is ultimately adopted, the whole of the money should come from the State. The third Bill, known as the Universal Bill, simply provides for a payment of £l3 a year to every person over the age of oixtyflve the sole disability BEING CRIME COMMITfED within five years of the right of pension. Thiß, if everybody who was entitled to the payment applied for i*, would mean an annual expenditure of £27,300,000. It is sugi gested as a compromise among those who support the general principle, but are opposed to universality, that an application of THE NEW ZEALAND LAW would solve the difficulty, though even on lines adopted in the colony the annual expenditure would amount to about £15,000,000. The Government, it is further suggested, could raise thiß money by a reduction of armaments and an inorease of the death duties, leaving the income tax untouohed. It is solely the question of finance, apparently, which stands in the way of an Old Age Pensions system for , the Old Country.