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Hi, everyone and welcome back to Britain Under the Microscope. 欢迎回来【闲话英伦】Hi 安澜.

Hi, Lulu. Hi, everyone.

And then the unemployment what you call it the Dole.

Yeah in spoken English we will call it the Dole. But if you actually see it in governments, notice it is called jobseekers’ allowance.

Jobseekers’ allowance, I like the positivity instead of unemployment allowance.

Yeah, the idea is that you only getting that money because you're looking for a job as opposed to live in unemployment benefit.

I see, I see. So, you pay one contribution into national insurance, and that covers medical, that covers maternity, that covers pension, and that also covers unemployment.

So, it pretty much covers everything. And this was first introduced in 1911. So it's been around for a very long time and it's paid by everybody who is earning over£242 a week.

A week. Okay, so that's roughly about £1,000 a month then over that. But I suppose it's roughly the same - is the equivalent as the personal allowance threshold, the tax threshold like£12,000.

Yeah, and this is something you start paying at the age of 16.

So even when I was doing part-time jobs, I probably wouldn't have paid income tax, but I would still have to pay national insurance contributions.

Do you have to pay the same amount of national insurance, no matter how much money you make?

No, it still has its own brackets. So it's 12% of your weekly earnings between£242 and £967. And it's then 2% of your weekly earnings above£967.

I see. So you have again the brackets for people with different levels of income.

Yeah. And everybody in the UK, every British citizen and people who are working in the UK are given a national insurance number.

This is how you pay into and also access national insurance.

Yeah, yeah. So every time I fill out tax return or I fill out any paperworks, I have to add my national insurance number.

I see. When you go to the doctors, is that also the one that you show?

No, you don't have to show it. There's another number, an NHS number to access medical, national insurance is basically a way of calculating how much you've paid.

So, for example, I've lived in China for many years now. What I do is I pay voluntary contributions.

Voluntary means they don't force you to do it, but you choose to do it.

I choose to do it, because this is important to get a state pension.

So, let me get this straight. So, if you are a British person, a British national living overseas, working overseas, you don't have to pay national insurance in the UK.

No.

But if you don't, then you won't get the state pension.

Exactly. So both men and women at the moment, they get their pension at 66.

66. Wow.

66, yeah. It's probably gonna go up very, very soon. And what you have to do is you have to pay for 35 years in order to get the full amount.

35 years. I think this is much longer than in China.

Yeah. Now the good thing is that paying voluntary contributions is not really that expensive. It's only about £700 or £800 a year.