The Research On Contemporary British Unemployment Insurance Legal System Reform

The concept of unemployment is relative to employment. Employment is a kind of specific social form of human labour. At the labour market, inadequate employment causes unemployment. Unemployment makes labourers lose their life source, personal and family life quality or even leads to poverty; Unemployment makes the professional skills of labourers useless, wastes the labor resources, and affects the normal development of social economy; Unemployment contributes emotional instability of laborers, incurs crime, and affects social stability. When a state realizes the harm of serious unemployment to the society and the needs of government intervention to solve this problem, the establishment of the unemployment insurance legal system becomes a possibility. Unemployment insurance legal system is a kind of social insurance legal system, which is implemented through legislation, funded by the society, in order to provide material help to temporary unemployed workers. Except for providing unemployment benefit, unemployment insurance legal system also promotes employment of labourers. The UK is the earliest capitalist state to establish compulsory unemployment insurance legal system. The system has undergone a long period of development and reform, which has developed from simply providing relief to promoting employment, which becomes a successful example for other countries’to follow.However, unemployment insurance legal system in China is established relatively late, and has many problems such as limited coverage, limited benefit, and insufficient employment promotion. This paper focus on the reform of the contemporary British unemployment insurance legal system (since1980), including three periods, namely, the Conservatives period, New Labour period and United Labour Party period. The author will make a general assessment of the reform, and put forward the suggestions for the legislation of complete unemployment insurance legal system in China. We should take our national situation into consideration, and draw useful lessons from the successful experience of the British unemployment insurance legal system reform. We should abandon welfare unemployment insurance legal system mode, and establish positive legislative notions, insisting on the principles of corresponding the rights and obligations of the unemployment insurance legislation, reasonable allocation of the responsibility of the government, employees and employers, and a close link between unemployment insurance and employment promotion.This paper consists of four parts:In the first part, the author introduces the background of the establishment of the British unemployment insurance legal system, and its establishment and the development process. British compulsory unemployment insurance legal system was established in1911, and then it has undergone reforms in terms of unemployment insurance coverage, payment terms, and payment standard.In the second part, the author gives a brief introduction to the reform of contemporary British unemployment insurance iegai system, which focuses on the reform of three periods:the Conservatives, New Labour and Coalition government. Reasons of its reform and specific measures are elaborated.In the third part, the author makes some assessments on the contemporary British unemployment insurance legal system reform. The assessments are made from four aspects, the relationship between fairness and efficiency, national responsibility and individual responsibility, unemployment insurance and employment promotion, the economic recovery and development.In the fourth part, the author explores the enlightenment of contemporary British unemployment insurance legal system reform on our country, which can be listed as follows:(1) We should abandon welfare unemployment insurance legal system mode;(2) We should establish positive legislative notions;(3)We should insist on the principles of corresponding the rights and obligations of the unemployment insurance legislation;(4) We should have reasonable allocation of the responsibility of the government, employee s and employers;(5) We should combine unemployment insurance and employment promotion;(6) We should strengthen employment services and improve support measures of unemployment insurance.