Clause 2. — (Benefit scheme for workmen formerly employed in coal-mining industry and suffering from pneumoconiosis.)

Part of Orders of the Day — Workmen's Compensation Bill – in the House of Commons at on 9 December 1942.

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Photo of Mr Stephen Davies Mr Stephen Davies , Merthyr Tydfil Merthyr

The answer which the Under-Secretary gave a few moments ago disappointed me immensely. I concede with considerable pleasure the fact that there is something unprecedented in this scheme, but I should not like this Clause to go by having as its only virtue that of being unprecedented. I see in this Clause an opportunity of doing something really substantial, not merely to establish a benefit scheme for those who are suffering from this disease, but to provide some organised, constructive, medical treatment for these people. We are still left with these old cases; they will not come under this medical scheme at all. They are the persons who have been before the Silicosis Medical Board and who have been certified as having this disease in a "well-established" or "moderately advanced" form. They are supposed to be partially capable of work. This disease is progressively eating up their lives, as it were, yet they will not be covered by this benefit scheme. I do not want to enlarge too much on this, as we have a great deal to do in connection with this Bill to-day, but I must point out that it should have been possible to have increased this 15s. by a very substantial amount. I appreciate the fact that those in receipt of national insurance benefit will have the amount they receive from this source disregarded, but that men suffering from pneumoconiosis or silicosis and on public assistance benefit will not have the amount they receive from this source disregarded. Why this unfair discrimination? Detailed conditions upon which the scheme will be established have not yet been laid down, so I ask that the conditions which will determine benefit shall be more generous.