Costing ‘not part of brief'

Press, 13 May 1988, Page 9

Costing ‘not part of brief'

No costing has been done by. the Law Commission of the extra costs, involved in extending the scheme from injury to include sickness. The commission said such a costing was not part of its brief. For b’storicai and pragmatic rtjsons, sickness had not been included with injury when ' the scheme was set up in 1974, but 14 years later the historic reasons for compensating for a leg lost by injury but not a leg lost from Cancer seemed less relevant and less valid, the commission said.

It had seemed wise then to take only the one step, but the demarcation was anomalous and created a situation of “ini equality of luck.” The question was whether to deal with it now or later, and the commission has asked a series of questions for the Government to answer.

Could a way be opened

to pay for sickness only by taking an axe to the value of injury benefits? Would dovetailing sickness with injury create an insurmountable expense?

Could it be done in stages — by providing health services on an equal basis, then accepting congenital incapacities already supported by the social welfare system of becoming manifest by a defined age, then taking in higher disabilities, and finally taking in less serious disabilities? Could this be done without cutting present compensation benefits, which the Royal Commission on Social Policy had recommended but which the Law Commission considered unnecessary and socially undesirable?

The commission said it' would be a pity to cut the scheme from income maintenance to a level that was merely subsistence in order to expand it to include sickness.