Colonel PENRY-WILLIAMS:

I join with the hon. Members who have urged the Government to deal with workmen's compensation and bring it up to date. I do not believe there is a single Member of the House against recognising the principle that an industry should pay compensation for the accidents incurred in it. The only question that remains is as to how we are to arrive at a fair system of compensating sufferers for the injuries which they have sustained. A very curious position arose during the War. Manufacturers and other employers were paying, perhaps, £2 per cent, for workmen's compensation insurance before the War, and they were paying that upon wages. When the War came along and wages advanced to about three times the former amount, they were still paying £2 per cent., and the result was that they were paying three times the total amount of premiums for workmen's compensation that they were paying before the War, and for a great deal of that time the insurance companies were paying the workpeople no increase in the compensation to which they were entitled. Therefore the industries were bearing three times their former burdens, and the workpeople were getting no increase. I rather sympathise with the hon. Member who has asked the Government to take over the insurance, and to eliminate the private company. If they did so, the Government would be able to devise a scheme which would make the burden on the industry as light as possible and give to the insured persons the fullest advantage that could possibly be given for the premiums paid.

I would ask the Government, if they are thinking of bringing in a new scheme, to eliminate all bargaining with the insured person and to allow a man to know what he is entitled to in case of injury, and also to clear up the difference between a fatal injury and a permanent disablement. There is a very serious discrepancy between the amounts paid in these two classes of cases. It is very often said, and sometimes brutally said, that it is much cheaper to kill a man than injure him permanently, but that is absolutely true under our present system, because whereas a widow and children are left unprovided for, very often and to a very large extent, in cases of fatal accidents, yet in cases of permanent disablement the wife and children are fairly well provided for. I think a Government insurance scheme would insure a rectification of benefit, if I may put it that way. It is very difficult now in cases of accidents which have occurred months or years ago to increase the benefit, because perhaps the employer who is liable in the first instance, has disappeared or the insurance company has disappeared, but if it were a Government scheme, then the Government could fix their premiums on the whole industry 60 as to cover the whole risk incurred for the workpeople, and give the workpeople the fullest benefit possible. It would also help if the Government took over the scheme to ensure that only such sums were drawn from the industry as were justifiable claims for accidents incurred in that industry. Such claims are justifiably a charge on any industry, but any money that is drawn irregularly is a tax on the industry. It would be a benefit both to the workpeople, to the employer, to the industry and to the community generally, to see that only such sums should be paid out of an insurance fund as could be justifiably attributed to the industry concerned. Finally, I ask the Government, when they are bringing in this scheme, to make it as liberal as possible to the workpeople. It is a very serious matter for a workman to go through life dreading the day on which he may be laid off or disabled by accident. One case was brought to my notice the other day in which a young man of 24 or 25 years of age was disabled. He has a wife and child and he has received compensation at the rate of 12s. 6d. per week, but that sum is less than the unemployment dole to which he would be entitled were he sound and unable to find employment. That is a position which should not be allowed to continue, and I hope the Government will be able to make the payments to the insured people as liberal as possible.