NATIONAL INSURANCE BILL.

Otago Witness, Issue 2993, 26 July 1911, Page 37

NATIONAL INSURANCE BILL.

A STRENUOUS FIGHT. COMPROMISE EFFECTED: LONDON, July 18. In the debate on the National Insurance Bill Mr Lloyd George made a con cession whereby an insured man’s wife who worked and was insured would - receive sick pay of 7s 6d a week, besides the maternity benefit. The subsection withholding sickness and disablement benefits from boys and girls w r as omitted, Mr M'Kenna accepting Mr H. B. Lees Smith’s amendment fixing the benefits at 5s and 4s for boys and girls respectively. July 20.

In. the insurance- debate Mr Lloyd George is greatly harassed by critics on the Liberal and Labour benches asking for more concessions. Mr Lees Smith’s (Northampton) amendment has aroused excited interest. Its aim is to relieve a contributor from falling into arrears through unemployment and from liability to make good arrears of the contributions ■which an employee -would have paid had he been working. Mr Lees Smith predicted that if contributors were compelled to pay arrears before receiving the benefits odium might be cast on the bill and the scheme be wrecked. He contended that a State grant of £150,000 ought to be made.

Mr Lloyd George said the State was unable to boar this additional burden. The proposal was impracticable and would encourage the thriftless. Mr Sherwell declared that the Chancellor of the Exchequer deprived the most helpless of their due. ITnless the amendment was accepted the poor and destitute would be sadly disappointed. Sir O. Cripps (Bucks), the Hon. W. Peel (Taunton), and Mr Eowntree (York) pressed Mr Lloyd George to make the concession.

Mr Lloyd George then proposed a compromise—namely that the friendly societies should be given the right to pay the contributions which on ordinary bastes would be paid by the employers. Mr Ramsay Macdonald (Leicester) strenuously opposed this, declaring that the State ought to come to the unemployed contributors’ assistance. Mr Lloyd George refused to yield, and warned .the Liberals that if the amendment was carried it might mean that it would not merely defeat the Government hut defeat the hill. N

The amendment was negatived by 163 to 316.

Afterwards Mr Lloyd George’s compro mise was carried bv 210 to 77.

There was an all-night sitting over clause 11, the Labour party demanding that workmen get sick pay in addition to accident compensation. Mr Lloyd George, after an impassioned speech, secured the rejection of the amendment by 99 to 23. July 21. Mr Keir Hardie affirms that the National Insurance Bill is doomed. Mr Lloyd George’s health is giving way under the strain, and the defects of the measure, it is asserted, are more serious than was at first imagined. The Daily Chronicle says that the fate of the measure hangs in the balance. FRIENDLY SOCIETIES’ POSITION. LONDON, July 20. The Board of the Manchester Unity Order of Oddfellows resolved that Mr Lloyd George’s refusal to allow sick pay during the first three days of illness was most detrimental to friendly societies, and would possibly lead to them relinquishing the desire to become approved societies under the bill. Mr Lloyd George’s refusal was alleged to be due to a desire to prevent malingering.