Sickness Benefits Sta,—Two of the conditions under which sickness benefit
is payable are as follows:—" If the local National Insurance Office is not informed of the incapacity within the first three days the insured person may suffer a loss of benefit," and "Certificates must be sent . . . within ten days." Obviously there must be rules, and no doubt there must be penalties, but it sometimes happens that a man is much too ill, and his wife is much too anxious, to do anything about his sickness benefit, and a surprisingly large number of people are under the impression that they are not qualified for benefit, so that it may be weeks or perhaps months before the matter is raised It seems very wrong that a man who has been ill for six months should lose the whole of his benefit just because the rules were broken. Surely there should be some standard penalty for a breach of the rules? I would suggest that the patient should lose either a fixed sum (say ,C1) or a percentage of the sum to which he would have been entitled if he had sent in his certificates in time, but certainly not
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