EXTRA SET PREMIUM FOR SOME C-LICENCE FIRMS
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From our Political Correspondent
MANUFACTURING firms already drawing SET premiums for their C-licence transport workers will be eligible for substantial extra subsidies from September 4—if their factories are in development areas.
The subsidy is to be made to all manufacturing industries in these areas of high unemployment. It means that those firms whose transport workers already qualify with production workers . for the premium will get the higher rate for them as well.
The extra subsidy will be at the rate of 30s. a week for male employees, and 15s. for women and boys. The rate for girls will be 9s. 6d. and part-time workers employed between eight and 21 hours a week will attract half the extra in each case.
The new "labour subsidy", costing the Government £100 m. a year, will last for at least seven years. It will apply only to industries wholly within development areas, which are in a large part of the North of England, the North West, the North East, the South West, Scotland and Wales.
Employers already getting premium payments under SET will receive forms to enable them to claim at the higher rates, and claims will continue to be made quarterly in arrears. The Government is firmly against the idea that the extra money should leak into extra profits or higher wages. They say that firms should exploit the subsidy to lower their costs and so attract orders from more prosperous parts of the country, increasing their share of national output and their share of exports.
The proposal will be implemented through an amendment to the 1967 Finance Bill, now before Parliament.