CORRESPONDENCE.
NATIONAL INSURANCE.*
SIR,—The Government, against the sense of the country and without reasonable discussion in the House of Commons, succeeded last Session in placing on the Statute Book a law of national insurance. There was no demand for any provision of this nature. There had'fiecn no commission of inquiry to esta- blish either the principles on which such a measure should be framed or the real difficulties, due to existing methods and institutions, which would have to be overcome. In these columns you urged the House of Lords to make use of its powers of delay, since there was no time for revision, in order that, even at the eleventh hour, the country might be saved from the "horrid arbitrariness" of the Minister. You foresaw a state of chaos in the relations between the new commissioners for administering the Act and the medical profession. You foresaw the difficulties, now coming tea head, which would arise in the conflict of masters and men as to the incidence of the new burden. You pointed out the unnecessary waste of millions yearly due to the peculiar method adopted for the collection of the premiums by a stamp system. Finally, you were the first to insist on the fact that the State, which collects these con- tributions only to hand them over to institutions— the approved societies—most of which are insolvent at present, will be held by all compulsory contributore to have incurred a moral liability to guarantee their future solvency, notwithstanding the repudiation of any such liability by the Treasury representative in the House a Commons.
The wheel has come full circle, The public, growing more and more angry as the full significance of the new law dawns on its slow-moving intelligence, is smashing the Ministerial majorities at the by-elections. The medical profession is
• National inearanse. By A. S. Corium Carr and W. H. Stuart Garnett, Barristarsatdaw, and J. H. Taylor, M.A., ICS., Ch.B., litlember of the British Medical Associatiou. With a Preface by the Bight Hon, D. Lloyd. bloorge, M.P. London: Macmillan and Co. [es. net.] in full revolt. Mr. Keir Hardie Las publicly announced the determination of the workmen to make the employers pay the fourpence weekly workman's contribution, and in many districts employers have made up their minds that the workman shall submit to a wage reduction to meet the burden of the threepence imposed on them. Rather late in the day Sir Robert Morant and his colleagues have gathered together a number of people to tour the country as lecturers on the Act to friendly society officials and other interested persons—at a considerable weekly fee plus travel- ling expenses. A strong passive-resistance movement has developed amongst a large class of single young women employed in domestic service, who are to be forced to con- tribute with but little hope of ever coming into benefit. Finally, the Unionist Party, to whose failure to comprehend that the duty of an Opposition is to oppose the passage of the Bill is largely due, has been informed by the Chief Liberal Whip that he does not intend that they shall take any credit for their foolish compliance. To make sure on this point he has formed a committee to start a raging, tearing propaganda in favour of the Act, and to explain it and justify it, if possible, to the doubtful and hostile electorate. He has been obliged to withdraw the original title of this committee and to substitute the word "Liberal" for the word "National," but his purport is the same. The principal lecturer in his employ in the work of this committee is Me. A. S. Comyns Carr, the chief author of a volume now before me. Mr. Carr's claims to this distinguished position are based, it is thought, on some passionate and inaccurate letters contributed to the daily Press in defence of the Bill during the Commons debates. He is assisted by another young barrister, Mr. W. H. Stuart Garnett, and, finally, by Dr. Taylor, of the Council of the British Medical Association. If Dr. Taylor is responsible for the chapters on " The Medical Profession" and "Public Health" in the new book, I think every doctor who reads it will be filled with anger as he realizes into how neat a trap such men as Dr. Taylor have led his profession, and how astounding was Dr. Smith Whitaker's surrender of its interests.
Mr. Lloyd George tells us in an unilluminating preface which he has contributed—probably to assist the sale of the book by the use of his name—that the authors have made a minute study of the Act, and recommends the result of their labours to all who wish to bear their share in working out the scheme which Parliament has initiated. The authors them- selves commend their work to officials and members of approved societies, to future members of insurance corn. mittees, and go so far as to hope that members of the legal profession will find it not without value in suggesting inter- pretations, if not always in finally solving points of difficulty. We for our part commend it exclusively to the young men lecturers employed by the Master of Elibank and the Liberal Assurance Committee. It is of no value to any one else. It is a bundle of political pamphlets, with the Act bound in, to lend it a kind of authoritative air, and garnished with such "interpretations" ea-
" Months "—Calendar months (Interpretation Act, 1999, s. 8). "Voluntary Contribution". . . B. 1 (8), supra "The Commencement of the Act" . . . gee. s. 115, infra.
And so on and so forth, sheer padding, much like an annotated Qesar for the use of a junior school. Indeed, no really serious book of reference on the Act can be produced till the new Rules for its working are promulgated.
I had hoped to find some elucidation of the penal Section 69, of which we hear so little in Mr. Lloyd George's mob oratory or in the Radical Press. Especially had I hoped to find out who is going to be punished if the workman neglects to provide himself with the card which the employer has to stamp. It is said that the insured person under Part I. cannot be proceeded against for any failure to pay contribu- tions, but that is not the point, as Mr. Comyns Carr knows perfectly well, for his attention was called to it in connexion with a letter which he wrote to the Westminster Gazette uphold- ing this contention. In France the recent Compulsory Old- Age Pension Law has broken down on this very point. The Cour de Cessation has held that an employer is not in default for not stamping unless the workman produces his card for that purpose. It would be an outrage, even for Mr. Lloyd George, to fine, imprison, or distrain upon an employer willing to comply with his Act when such non-compliance is due to the workman's default. I chal- lenge Mr. Comyns Carr, or his lecturers, or the Master of Elibank, his employer, to make it clear to the workpeople of this country that there is no penal obligation on them to produce a card for stamping, and that in such a case the employer cannot be attacked under Section 69. These gentlemen know very well that if they tell the truth as to this the Act would be a dead letter. Practically all those workmen who want to insure are in Friendly Societies already. Those who are not will not come under the Act if they can help it, and there is apparently no power to make them. Suppose, however, the Commissioners use their Star Chamber powers under Section 78, in combination with their power to make stamp-sticking rules under Section 7, to create a penal offence under Section 69, and so punish the workman who fails to produce his card, will Mr. Comyns Carr tell me how many new gaols will have to be built to contain even one per cent. of the 14,000,000 possible defaulters—say even 140,000 persons ? This is the vital flaw in the Act. There must be plenty of Unionists left who favour personal liberty. Why should they not make it clear that the Act itself as worded provides no penalty for the man who refuses to take out a card, and that, if subsidiary legislation by the Commis- sioners creates such a new crime, immediate steps will be taken to set it aside P Mr. Bonar Law has already stated that if he were in power now he would repeal the Act, and that if he comes into power later he will amend it drastically. The first of such amendments should be one to curtail the power of the Commissioners to fill the gaols with defaulters, should they make rules to assert it, and generally to subject them to Treasury and Judicial control.
I would refer to only one other matter. There is a provision in Section 15 of the Act that any deficit in the expenditure of the Insurance Committees may be made good jointly by the Treasury and the local authority. It is quite clear that the authors look to this power as the ultimate means of settling the dispute with the doctors, who are to be servants of the Insuranee Com- mittees. I aelvise the local authorities to stiffen their }make when these demands fall to be made, as they will in due course. The burdens on owners and occupiers are already intolerable. But when it conies to calling on elected bodies to find money for the operations of non-elected bodies set up in open hostility to them, then I think the limit is reached. Indeed, I feel strongly that local authorities should decline all responsibility for the operations of these committees, and that members nominated should refuse to serve. They can gain no credit in such a milieu, and may suffer badly in reputation as the squabbles about benefit distribution increase. Needless to add that the authors of this book have not con- sidered what would happen in such a case. Possibly they would say—as Mr. Lloyd George did when discussing what would happen if the doctors refused to work the Act—,
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