イギリス老齢保障改革の方向と性格

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Sir (later Lord) W. Beveridge argued in his famous Report of 1942 that any social security benefits paied as of right without test of means should be adequate for minimum subsistence without other means 'The subsistence principle' was generally regarded as the central idea of the Beveridge Plan, and so this means providing, as an essential part of the plan, a pension on retirement from work which is enough for subsistence, even though the pensioner has no other re- sources whatever. But in practice the rates of benefit and pension since the operation of the National Insurance Scheme have not yet reached subsistence level as Beveridge defined it. Year after year rising prices have eaten away the real value of the pension, then nearly a million and more retirement pensioners and their wives are forced to rely on supplementation from the National Assistance Board Why is it? One reason is the increase in prices; another-even more important-is the structure of National Insurance itself. The national contributory pension has always been a flat-rate payment in return for a flat-rate contribution. But the limitations of this system set an important social problem. The contributions must necessarily be fixed at a level which the lower-paid can afford and therefore are not even sufficient to pay for the present level of pensions. Even apart from this the pension scale possible under a flatrate scheme is necessarily restricted. This restriction dose not matter much to the higher-paid worker if he is also getting further pension rights in an occupational scheme. But despite their encouraging growth, occupational schemes do not yet cover much more than one-third of the total working population including half the men and seem unlikely to cover nearly everybody, at any rate for some time to come. The alternative is some graduation of contributions and pensions according to earnings. It has long been known that the Labour Party was preparing a proposal for a new National Superannuation Plan for persons reaching retiring age. This plan of the Labour Party has been maked public in May 1957. The Labour proposes that there shall be a national pension consisting of two parts - a flat-rate part and a part graded as a percentage of earnings. According to the plan, the basic pension payable at 65 to all insured workers would be increased immediately from ￡ 2 to ￡ 3. It would be supplemented by a super-annuation system related to earnings, which would be compulsory for everyone not participating in an approved private scheme or possessing adequate provision for old age. The aim of the plan is to ensure that, in return for extra contributions, a pension equivalent to 'half-pay' at 65 for the average wage-earner is reached. The employee would contribute 3 per cent of his earnings, the employer 5 per cent and the Exchequer 2 per cent of the total earnings of the community. Self-employed persons would contribute 8 per cent. The maximum benefit would be ￡ 750 a year. Payment of pensions might not be, as at present, conditional on retirement. The Labour's national superannuation benefit would be based on life earnings, taking account of their real value from the beginning of the worker's career and of the increase in the national income which had occurred since that time. Contributions in each year of working life would be related to the level of average of national earnings in the year when the pension was assessed. Opposing the Labour's plan, programm Government's programme to put the National Insurance Scheme on a sound financial footing and at the same time to introduce into it a measure of graduated contributions and retirement pensions related to earnings is announced in a White Paper on 14 Oct. 1958. The main features of Government's proposals are. (1) The basic flat-rate pensions would stay as they are now for all contributors, although those earning ￡ 9 a week or less would pay a smaller con- tribution. (2) On earnings between ￡ 9 and ￡ 15 a week workers (and employers) would pay graduated contributions of 8.5 per cent of earnings, as P.A.Y E. deductions, in return for a wage-related supplementary pension (8) The Exchequer would support the new scheme by a yearly payment of ￡ 170m. (4) To meet the rapidly rising cost of retirement pensions, contributions would have to be increased at five-yearly intervals during the first twenty years and would not add to graduated pensions. Thus, both the Government's scheme and the Labour's plan take bold step away from the universal flat-rate system, departing from the Beveridge principle of treating all men equally in social insurance irrespective of their rates of wages or other earnings. Both of them envisage adding a new graded superannuation pension to the existing National Insurance pension, while permitting approved private schemes to contract out' on certain conditions. But, on careful comparison, the grading in the Government scheme is a financial device for getting-more money to support the scheme. It looks as if one aspect of it is the purpose of keeping the Exchequer contribution down to a steady ￡ 170 m. In other words, it is a financial scheme even more than a pension scheme. On the contrary, the Labour proposed scheme, though it may be much more costly than envisaged and may be inflationary, leads to a very substantial redistribution of income from the higher-paied skilled worker to the unskilled worker and from the young to the old.
慶應義塾大学の論文
1960-04-25

著者

藤澤益夫
慶應義塾大学商学部

イギリス老齢保障改革の方向と性格

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