WAR PENSIONS

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 84, 6 October 1922, Page 5

WAR PENSIONS

ADMINISTRATIVE METHODS

DEGREES OF DISABILITY

EVIDENCE OF COMMISSIONER.

The Commissioner of Pensions, Mr. George Cox Fache, gave evidence before the War ' Pensions Commission yesterday. The Commissioner said that he laid it down as a guiding principle to his officers that they should not) become callous ■in any matter associated ■with the administration. On the other hand the department endeavoured to offer every facility to applicants and to the Pensions Board. In actual practice every totally disabled soldier was already actually receiving the J33 10s asked by the association, viz., £2 statutory pension, £1 supplementary allowance, and an additional grant awarded by the board as a result of special legislation passed in 1919 under the Finance Act. Hundreds of men were receiving the amount stated, most of whom were in hospital. If the proposals before the Commission were granted, the first schedule of the Act would have to be divided to provide separately for men of from 50 per cent, to 100 per cent. disability and for those of less than 50 per cent, disability. He could state definitely that not a single man who was in receipt of £2 per week pension was totally incapacitated, although officially he might be classified as such. No soldier at the present time incapacitated through a curable disease was in receipt of a full pension.

METHODS OF ASSESSMENT.

The basis of calculation ef the percentage of disability in returned disabled soldiers was then described. Mr. Fache said that higher pensions were granted in the early days of the war than were being paid now. The board was frequently asked, "Why is my pension reduced when my condition is the same as it was four years ago?" He"was satisfied that the real. position of the War Pensions Board in regard to the percentago of disability was not, understood, by the Eetumed Soldiers' Association or anyone else. The board of the Department followed certain defined rules which of necessity were not disclosed. When the War Pensions Board was first set up it had no definite basis of assefsmerit for guidance, and it could be guided only by the military medical reports, which gave no indication whether the percentage of disability recommended was arrived at according to the earning capacity of the patient as an unskilled labourer before the war, or under any other head. Furthermore the members had no knowledge of the basis of calculation in Egypt or Fiance, where assessments were made without regard to the provisions for various percentages'of incapacity in New Zealand.

THE BOARD'S SYSTEM.

Consequently, the board had to frame a system of its own. It was found by experience that the assessments of military medical officers were not in accordance with the intentions of the legislation in the Dominion. Every man, therefore, who was judged jn New Zealand to be moTe than 50 per cent, in.capacity was granted a full pension, and the assessment of the military medical authorities was ignored. In the early stages of the war it was not customary to grant a pension for more than three or eix months. It became necessary to alter the form of re-port required from examining doctors; instead of asking them merely the extent of disability they were asked to assess the extent of disability for pension purposes; in other words, they were required to express the value of the disability in £e d. That was the practice to-day. The War Pensions Board reserved to itself the right to vary the percentage, and it very rarely went below that assessed by the medical officer. It was not an uncommon thing for a man who was assessed 70 per cent., 80 per cent., or 90 per cent incapacitated, to receive the benefit of » pension as for total incapacitation. Thus, there were men in possession of all their faculties, suffering, perhaps, from nothing more than severe facial disfigurement, who were in receipt of a full pension of £2.