asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will seek powers to cease the payment of supplementary benefits to the families of men engaged in sit-ins.
If the claimant is thereby involved in a trade dispute, the relevant supplementary benefit provisions would be applicable, and, as my hon. Friend will be aware, the Government have them under review. If remunerative full-time work is involved, the claimant would be excluded from receiving supplementary benefit under Section 8(1) of the Supplementary Benefit Act 1966.
| Year | Number of workers involved (all disputes) | Number involved in stoppages of over two weeks duration | Number paid for their urgent need | Number paid for dependants | Total Supplementary benefit paid £ | |||
| 1966 | … | … | … | 544,000 | 71,700 | 230 | 7,722 | 127,588 |
| 1967 | … | … | … | 734,000 | 77,300 | 413 | 19,316 | 377,100 |
| 1968 | … | … | … | 2,258,000 | 103,600 | 187 | 18,965 | 334,471 |
| 1969 | … | … | … | 1,665,000 | 417,500 | 229 | 67,070 | 748,542 |
| 1970 | … | … | … | 1,801,000 | 555,600 | 422 | 102,004 | 1,448,103 |
| 1971 | … | … | … | 1,178,000 | 346,500 | 972 | 125,923 | 4,314,586 |
| 1972 | … | … | … | 1,734,000 | 768,800 | 14,666 | 234,995 | 8,561,571 |
| 1973 | … | … | … | 1,519,000* | Not available | 368 | 35,672 | 732,252 |
| * Provisional figure. | ||||||||
asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will take steps to ensure that any income tax rebates are deemed to have been paid when calculating supplementary benefits during a strike.
The Supplementary Benefits Commission is already required by paragraph 25(A)(1)(a) of Schedule 2 to the Supplementary Benefit Act 1966 (inserted by Section 1(4) of the Social Security Act 1971) to take into account as income a PAYE refund which becomes available to a striker, or would become available to him on application being duly made, and I have no proposals for amending this provision.
asked the Secretary of State for Social Services how much money has been paid out in supplementary benefits since the beginning of the sit-in at the Triumph motorcycle factory at Meriden to families of the men involved.
Nil.
asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will publish a table showing, for each year since 1966, (1) the total number of workers involved in stoppages of work (all disputes), (2) the total number of workers involved in stoppages lasting more than two weeks, (3) the total number of strikers who received supplementary benefit payments (a) for themselves, and (b) for their dependants, and (4) the total amounts of supplementary benefit involved.
Following is the available information:
asked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether, in view of the fact that supplementary benefits payable during strikes are intended specifically for maintenance of wives and children, he will consider changing the system so that such benefits are only payable to the wife.
No. The Supplementary Benefits Commission already has the power under Section 17(3) of the Supplementary Benefit Act 1966 to determine that benefit should be issued to a person other than the claimant to protect his own or his dependants' interests, and I am not persuaded that any extension of these powers is desirable.
asked the Secretary of State for Social Services what representations he has received from employers to stop all benefits being paid to families of employees involved in lock-outs and other industrial disputes.
Precise records are not kept, but in recent months a number of individual employers have made suggestions to this effect in correspondence. No employers' association has put forward such a proposal.