Page 70 - Group Insurance and Retirement Benefit IC 83 E- Book

widow became entitled to a pension on his death of one-quarter of the accrued or actual

pension of which he was formerly in receipt. Children's benefits were included
amounting to £50 a year for the youngest child and £45 a year for each other child up to a

certain maximum, and the Boarder Authority contributed twice as much as the member.
The scheme was optional for existing and new employees. It would be seen, therefore,

that there were many variations in the few schemes set up to provide widows' and
orphans' benefits for public servants. There appeared to be no intrinsic reason for those

variations, and it would have been a big step forward if one standard set of provisions had

been adopted. Such a reform was possible in respect of widows' and orphans' pensions,
because they were a recent innovation. The arguments for a unified scheme for all classes

of public servants—apart from unified finance, which he deplored—were strong, but the

forces against such a reform were stronger, and it would be wiser to limit any efforts
which were made to an attempt to secure immediately possible reforms. Unified widows'

and orphans' benefits were practicable and would, to a limited degree, ease the problem
of transfers such as were in fact taking place between local authorities, the Civil Service

and public boards. The standard widows' scheme he would recommend would be the
National Health Service scheme, where the whole cost 30 The Development of Public

Superannuation Schemes was thrown on the employee by scaling down the lump sum

payable on death or retirement.
Lump sum benefits were, he agreed, a luxury, which the Inland Revenue authorities

rightly discouraged by taxation regulations, with the result that private employers were
rarely able to include such benefits in their pension schemes. A standard scheme on the

National Health Service lines for all classes of public servants would encourage private
employers to embark on widows' and orphans' benefits as opposed to lump sums on death

or retirement. He would not encourage them to enter a State unfunded scheme, as the

author suggested in paragraph 19, but would strongly deprecate such a proposal.
Mr M. D. W. Elphinstone thought that there was nothing so objectionable in anything

that actuaries came across as the unfunded pension scheme. It was a form of promise

which the members of that generation were giving to their colleagues in the Civil Service
and in the public service generally, and which might be met, and probably would be met,

by their successors, who would, it was to be hoped, be honest men. If met, it would be at