3, 
DE 
MINORITY REPORT. 
that the cash benefits should be raised to those of the Unemploy- 
ment Act, which implies similar rates of allowances for 
dependants. 
124. The margin in the present contribution was determined 
by the Departmental Actuarial Committee to be 1-55d. men, and 
‘82d. women. As we observe that the Majority estimate that 
it will be possible to provide the cost of the proposed extension 
of medical benefit, taken over the whole country, from the 
present financial resources of the system, we consider it proper 
to deduct the contribution value of that cost, namely -44d. per 
week, from the actuarial calculation of the cost of existing 
benefits. There is therefore a margin available for our recom- 
mendations of 199d. men and 1:26d. women. 
125. The Committee estimated that (1) to increase the rate of 
sickness benefit to that of unemployment benefit with one-half 
the rate for disablement benefit would add to the contribution of 
men 9d. and women ‘75d. (2) the cost of providing dependants’ 
allowances at uniform rates with, and on substantially the same 
conditions as, the Unemployment Act would represent an increase 
in contributions of 1:6d. for men and :16d. for women, and (3) the 
provision of maternity services for the wives of insured men and 
for insured women, would involve an increase of ;44d. in the case 
of men but would allow a reduction of 11d. in the case of 
women. 
126. The net cost of providing the benefits mentioned in the 
preceding paragraph, excluding the statutory State grant of 
two-ninths, is 2:94d. per week in the case of men and 80d. per 
week in the case of women. This would leave nearly a penny 
(-95d.) a week to be found from other sources to supplement the 
contributions of men, but in the case of women, there is a 
margin of ‘46d. towards the cost of our further proposals respect- 
ing sickness benefit after 26 weeks and maintenance allowance 
at confinement. 
197. Our observations on the administration of sickness benefit 
to women during pregnancy might here be supplemented to 
suggest that part of the cost of the proposed maternity allow- 
ance would be a growing expenditure under any scheme. In so 
far as the extra moneys needed for our recommendations could 
not be provided on the present financial basis we submit that the 
general opinion, expressed so well in the Majority Report, that 
such services as we here recommend, will result in a higher 
standard of health and consequent reduction of expenditure on 
benefits would justify a further examination of the finances of 
the scheme, and that still further changes would be possible 
on the adoption of our recommendation to substitute the Local 
Authority for the Approved Society as the medium for 
administering all the benefits under the Act