The National Insurance Act at work : what it is effecting and where it needs amending / by Sidney Webb.

  • Webb, Sidney, 1859-1947.
Date:
[1913]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The National Insurance Act at work : what it is effecting and where it needs amending / by Sidney Webb. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    XWei»EN«E. THE NATIONAL INSiirtiAi^E ACT AT WHAT IT IS EFFECTING AND WHERE IT NEEDS AMENDING. By SIDNEY WEBB. WORK: The Great Social Experiment. I. Sickness Insurance. (a) Who are Insured. (b) How the ;^5o,ooo a day is being paid. (c) The Approved Societies and their Membership. (d) The Dwindling of the Deposit Contributors. (e) Sanatorium Benefit. (/) Medical Benefit. (g) Sickness Benefit. (h) Disablement Benefit. (i) Maternity Benefit. (;) The Costliness and Complication of the Adminis- tration. The biggest social experiment of our time is now fairly launched. The vast scheme of National Insurance, which Mr. Lloyd George expounded to a bewildered House of Commons twenty-two months ago, is, at last, not only the law of the land, but also actually at work —no longer a mere instrument of taxation, but also a freely running fountain of benefits. A fund of nearly ten millions sterling has been already rolled up (apart from the Government con- trubution) as initial capital, six-sevenths of it as the Sickness Fund and one-seventh as the Un- employment Fund. On January 15th, 1913, nearly fourteen millions of people became eligible for one or other of the promised benefits in the event of the contingencies occurring. Yet, as regards the scheme as a whole, and how it is affecting our national life, the nation is still com- pletely in the dark. The machinery of the Act is so complicated, the regulations are so multi- farious, and the official information supplied is so discreetly limited—not to say evasive—that we none of us know where we are ! The news- papers, whilst wearying us with the controversy over the doctors, and throwing in picturesque details about the earliest babies to earn the Maternity Benefit, have given up even looking at the four or five documents that the Com- missioners publish day by day. The journalists have found the scheme as a whole, in its living and working reality, too complicated and difficult to tackle. We cannot see the forest for the trees ! It is, of course, far too early to pronounce any II. Unemployment Insurance. (a) Who are Insured. (b) How the Payments are being made. (c) The Failure to carry out Section gc, (d) The Permission to the Trade Unions to dfeal directly with their own members. (e) The Issue of Unemployment Benefit. (/) The Disputes for the Courts of Referees. is) The Subventions to Trade Unions in the un- insured trades. (h) The Costliness and Complication of the Scheme. (f) The Effects of Unemployment Insurance. balanced judgment on the scheme in its entirety. “ This,” said Mr. Balfour, ‘‘ is the most compli- cated Bill of the last hundred years, and it touches more sets of people in more obscure and un- analysable ways than any measure which has been tried. ”* That it will prevent an enormous amount of dis- tress, relieve much misery, and save innumerable households from destitution is clear; and the mere magnitude of this side of the effects justifies a very real ethusiasm for the Act. Three millions sterling will have been distributed in benefits or spent on doctoring before March 31st next; and the first complete year will see fifteen millions paid out. To have secured the allocation of this huge sum—more than forty thousand pounds on every day of the year—from whatever sources derived, continuously and forever, to provision for the lowly in the hour of their need, is an immense achieve- ment, for which we have all to be grateful to Mr. Lloyd George. And although we cannot yet trace, with even an approach to accuracy, all the varied effects, for good and for evil, that this vast social experiment will have on physique and character, on individual development and social organisation, it is important, if only with a view to the inevit- able amending Bills that must come, to note at once whatever we can discern. The following pages, imperfect as they are, embody the fruit of much personal study and the reports of many trustworthy correspondents in different parts of * House of Commons, October 25th, 1911.