Report on the Beveridge proposals

1943-01-19 1943 1940s 20 pages 10. Unemployment Insurance. 14. We believe that at any rate unemployment insurance should continue to be dealt with by a separate Fund and that benefits must be related to the state of the Fund. Long-term unemployment is certainly not an insurable risk and it is not a...

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Institution:MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick
Language:English
English
Published: 19 January 1943
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Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10796/592F3E7D-273E-4138-AFF3-5E88FA31B51F
http://hdl.handle.net/10796/41D9DC3A-841F-417E-A015-A08FADABF8BB
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Summary:1943-01-19 1943 1940s 20 pages 10. Unemployment Insurance. 14. We believe that at any rate unemployment insurance should continue to be dealt with by a separate Fund and that benefits must be related to the state of the Fund. Long-term unemployment is certainly not an insurable risk and it is not appropriate to deal with it as if it was. It is essential to preserve the incentive to work and it is necessary, therefore, that benefit should as a rule be substantially lower than wages. As it is impossible to forecast the level of wages, so it is impossible to fix in advance the appropriate rate of unemployment benefit. Incentive to work. We do not think that those who have been unemployed for more than six months should be entitled of right to unemployment benefit; we urge that this should be dependent upon their placing their services at the disposal of the State, which will be entitled to direct those seeking its aid either to be trained for work other than their own or to go to whatever work may be available for them at fair wages, whether in their own trade or not. It is only when neither work nor training facilities can be provided that State assistance should be forthcoming and then only subject to a test of need. We should not again, for example, be prepared to tolerate numbers of young men receiving State assistance notwithstanding there was work for them though not in their own trade or near their own home. Moreover, there is no doubt that rates of unemployment benefit which are high in relation to wages tend to create unemployment amongst a limited section of the community, and for this reason it is essential to preserve an adequate margin between wages and benefit. This can only be done by adjusting unemployment benefit to wages, which would be impossible under a scheme of contract of the type implicit in Sir William Beveridge's Report. 15. We appreciate the advantages of a wider and better co-ordinated scheme of social insurance than the present, believing that the people of this country as a 200/B/3/2/C216/5/93
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