Britain: An official handbook > 1959

BRITAIN: AN OFFICIAL HANDBOOK
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are normally paid on a single contribution card by National Insurance stamps
bought from a post office. It is the employer’s responsibility in the first place to see
that the Class i contributions are paid, but he can deduct the employee’s share from
his or her wages. The self-employed and non-employed must stamp their own cards.
Contributions are usually credited for weeks of unemployment, sickness or injury,
or if widow’s benefit is being paid.
insured person ceases to be liable for National Insurance contributions when
he retires, or is deemed to have retired, from regular employment. If such a person
does any work as an employed person thereafter, he must pay an Industrial Injuries
contribution; his employer’s liability remains the same as shown in Table 7.
Benefits
The scheme provides sickness, unemployment, maternity and widow s benefit,
guardian’s allowance, retirement pension and death grant. Persons in Class 1 are
covered for all benefits; those in Class 2 for benefits other than unemployment and
industrial injuries benefits; and those in Class 3 for benefits other than sickness,
unemployment and industrial injuries benefits, and maternity allowance.
For most of the benefits there are two contribution conditions. First, before any
benefit can be paid, a minimum number of contributions must actually have been
paid since entry into insurance; secondly, the full rate of benefit cannot be paid
unless a certain number of contributions have been paid or credited over a specified
period. For guardian’s allowance and industrial injuries benefits there are no
contribution conditions.
Rates of benefit have been increased since the scheme began. The rates current
in mid-195 8 are set out below.
Sickness Benefit
The standard weekly rate of sickness benefit for a man or woman over 18 (except
a married woman) is 50s., with an increase of 30s. for an adult dependant and 15s.
a week for the first or only child under the family allowances age limits, with 7s.,
in addition to any family allowance payable, for each subsequent child. The
weekly rate for a married women is 34s., but she is paid at the 50s. rate if she
is maintaining an invalid husband or is separated from her husband and cannot get
financial support from him.
Unless 156 Class 1 or Class 2 contributions have been paid since the entry into
insurance, sickness benefit can be drawn only for a year, but in general it continues
for as long as sickness lasts, once 156 contributions have been paid.
Unemployment Benefit
The rates of unemployment benefit are the same as for sickness benefit.
Unemployment benefit is payable in the first place for 30 weeks, but it may be
continued for up to a maximum of 19 months in all, according to the person’s
record of contributions paid as against unemployment benefit drawn in recent years.
Maternity Benefit
A maternity grant of £12 10s. is payable for a confinement, provided the required
contribution conditions have been satisfied, and a further grant of £12 10s. for
each additional child born at the confinement who is alive twelve hours after
birth. A home confinement grant of £5 is payable where the mother is not confined
in free accommodation under the National Health Service or in accommodation
otherwise paid for out of public funds. A maternity allowance of 50s. a week, begin¬
ning the eleventh week before the expected week of confinement, payable for