National Insurance Act 1957
| Jurisdiction | UK Non-devolved |
National Insurance Act , 1957
(5 & 6 Eliz. 2) CHAPTER 26
An Act to provide for modifying the provisions of the National Insurance Act, 1946, under which persons are treated as having retired; to amend the conditions of entitlement to certain benefits payable out of the National Insurance Fund or the Industrial Injuries Fund; to provide for an additional description of benefit under the aforesaid Act in respect of a child; to amend the provisions of that Act as to contributions in respect of periods as an insured person under the age of sixteen; and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid.
Be it enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—
1 Re-entry into regular employment after retirement.
(1) Regulations may provide that, in the case of a person of such description as may be prescribed who—
(a ) has retired for the purposes of the National Insurance Act, 1946 (hereafter in this Act referred to as ‘the principal Act’) from regular employment or has otherwise become entitled to a retirement pension but is, in the case of a woman, under the age of sixty-five or, in the case of a man, under the age of seventy; and
(b ) elects, in such manner and in accordance with such conditions as may be prescribed, that the regulations shall apply in his case,
the principal Act shall have effect as if that person had not retired or become entitled as aforesaid:
Provided that, where a husband and wife have both become entitled to retirement pensions by virtue of the husband's insurance, the husband shall not be entitled to elect as aforesaid without the consent of the wife, unless that consent is unreasonably withheld.
(2) Any such regulations may make such modifications of the principal Act or this Act in the application thereof in a case where a person elects as aforesaid as may appear to the Minister to be necessary or expedient, and may in particular provide for determining how contributions paid by that person, whether before or after that person's first retirement or, as the case may be, first becoming entitled to a retirement pension, are to be dealt with for the purposes of subsection (4) of section twenty of the principal Act.
2 Benefits for persons over pensionable age.
(1) In relation to a woman who attains pensionable age on or after the date of commencement of this subsection and who, immediately before attaining that age, is entitled to widow's benefit—
(a ) paragraph (b ) of subsection (1) of section twenty-one of the principal Act (which provides for a woman to be entitled to a retirement pension by virtue of the insurance of a husband in respect of whose death she was immediately before attaining pensionable age entitled to widow's benefit) shall not apply;
(b ) subsection (6) of the said section twenty-one (which provides that where a woman, immediately before attaining pensionable age, is a widow not entitled to widow's benefit, account may be taken of her husband's contributions for the purpose of her right to a retirement pension by virtue of her own insurance) shall have effect as if the words ‘not entitled to widow's benefit’ were omitted;
(c ) the following provisions of the principal Act, that is to say, paragraph (c ) of subsection (2) of section seventeen (which limits the payment of a widow's pension to periods during which the widow is under pensionable age) and paragraph (a ) of subsection (1) and paragraph (a ) of subsection (4) of section eighteen (which paragraphs confer certain rights with respect to a widow's pension on a widow who is under pensionable age) shall have effect as if after the words ‘pensionable age’ in each of those paragraphs there were inserted the words ‘or, being over pensionable age, has not retired from regular employment’; and
(d ) regulations made by virtue of subsection (3) of section seventy-one of the principal Act (which relates to certain women over the age of fifty immediately before the appointed day for the purposes of that Act) shall not apply.
(2) The proviso to subsection (2) of section twenty-one of the principal Act (which provides that if a widow entitled to a retirement pension by virtue of her late husband's insurance remarries, the pension shall not be payable for any subsequent period) shall not apply in relation to such a widow who remarries after the commencement of subsection (1) of this section.
(3) For subsections (1) to (3) of section twenty-six of the principal Act (which makes provision as to unemployment and sickness benefit for persons over pensionable age) there shall be substituted the following two subsections:—
(1) Subject to the next following subsection, a person who is over pensionable age but has not retired from regular employment shall be entitled to unemployment or sickness benefit in respect of any day for which he would be so entitled if for the conditions specified in paragraphs (a ) and (b of section eleven of this Act there were substituted a condition that on the day for which benefit is claimed he would be entitled to a retirement pension had he retired from regular employment on attaining pensionable age and made the necessary claim.
(2) Where unemployment or sickness benefit is payable by virtue of this section—
(a ) the weekly rate thereof, apart from any increase by virtue of any provision of this Act, shall be that at which, apart from any such increase, the said retirement pension would have been payable;
(b ) paragraphs (a ) and (b ) of subsection (2) of section twenty-four of this Act shall not apply in relation to the unemployment or sickness benefit; and
(c ) if the beneficiary would have been entitled to the retirement pension only by virtue of section twenty-five of this Act, that section shall have effect in relation to an increase of the weekly rate of unemployment or sickness benefit as if he were entitled to that benefit only by virtue of that section and as if the relevant contribution conditions for that benefit were those for the retirement pension’;
and consequently in subsection (4) of the said section twenty-six the words ‘(including the rate of any increase thereof)’ shall cease to have effect:
Provided that where a person was in receipt of unemployment or sickness benefit by virtue of the said section twenty-six immediately before the commencement of this subsection, then, for so long as that person would have continued without a break to receive one or other of those benefits if this subsection had not been passed, he shall continue to receive that benefit at a weekly rate, including any increase by virtue of any provision of the principal Act, not less than that at which the benefit would have been payable if this subsection had not been passed.
(4) For paragraph (b ) of subsection (2) of section twenty of the principal Act (which relates to the circumstances in which a person may be treated as having retired from regular employment) there shall be substituted the following—
‘(b ) subject to the next following paragraph, a person shall not be treated as having retired from regular employment unless he has complied with the prescribed requirements as to notice of the date of his retirement and—
(i) where the date of retirement specified in the notice falls before the date when the notice is given, that person shall not be treated as having so retired earlier than on the date of commencement of the prescribed period before the giving of the notice;
(ii) where the date of retirement specified in the notice falls after the date when the notice is given, an award of a retirement pension as from the date of retirement so specified may be made before that date but shall be conditional on that person's having retired on or before that date.’
3 Benefits in respect of adult dependants.
(1) In subsection (1) of section twenty-four of the principal Act, as amended by section six of the National Insurance Act, 1951 (which provides for the weekly rate of certain benefits to be increased by a specified amount for any period during which the beneficiary is residing with or is wholly or mainly maintaining his wife and her weekly earnings do not exceed twenty or, in certain circumstances, forty shillings)—
(a ) for the words ‘wholly or mainly maintaining’ there shall be substituted the words ‘contributing at a weekly rate of not less than that amount to the maintenance of’; and
(b ) for the words from ‘exceed’ onwards there shall be substituted the words ‘exceed forty shillings’;
and the said section six is hereby repealed.
(2) Immediately after subsection (2) of the said section twenty-four (which by paragraph (c ) thereof provides for an increase in the weekly rate of unemployment or sickness benefit for any period during which a female person other than a child has the care of a child of the beneficiary's family) there shall be inserted the following subsection:—
(2A) The weekly rate of a retirement pension shall be increased by the amount set out as aforesaid for any period during which the requirements of paragraph (c ) of subsection (2) of this section are satisfied in respect of the beneficiary:
Provided that this subsection shall not apply if the beneficiary—
(a ) being a man, is entitled to an increase of the pension in respect of his wife under subsection (1) of this section; or
(b ) is a man whose wife is entitled to a retirement pension by virtue of his insurance; or
(c ) being a woman, is entitled to the pension by virtue of her husband's insurance.’
(3) Paragraph (a of the said section twenty-four (which provides that in the case of a...
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