MINORITY REPORT.
and the productive capacity of the country should from
time to time be struck, even though this can probably be done
only in a very general way and without reduction to any precise
formula.”* But since everything which impairs efficiency reduces
that productive capacity, the final balance will not be realised
till we have carried all our social services to perfection. Our
recommendations at this moment are, however, confined to those
which appear to us urgently necessary, and immediately practic-
able.
63. Social services, as has been well shown in the Mgjority
Report, are financed from various sources. The State, the
Local Authority, and various systems of insurance supply the
funds, and it is impossible to draw a hard-and-fast line between
the services to which we should contribute as taxpayers or rate-
payers, or as employers and employed persons. We do not
subscribe to the distinction drawn between social services con-
ducted in the interest of the individual, and similar services
conducted for the general well-being of the community, since the
‘“ well-being of the community >’ is involved in all. In this
connexion we feel that there is cogency in the representations
made to us, that the contributions of employer and employed to
National Health Insurance should alike be reduced and the
State’s contribution proportionately increased (National -Con-
federation of Employers’ Organisations, App. CVIL, 28). The
salient fact is that for every deficiency in our social services,
someone pays. We can alter the incidence of payment, and
treat our obligations as matters to be supplemented by the Poor
Law, or by voluntary aid, but the only case in which we pay
without return is in support of the disabled, who could by larger
preventive outlay have given us the return of efficient healthy
labour. While we feel that our present methods of conducting
our social services are expensive and over-lapping, and that real
economies are to be effected from their unification, we also feel
that any further moneys needed for the services indicated below
will go far to relieve us of the ** burdens ”’ (properly so-called)
described by Sir George Newman and the accredited officers of
the Ministry of Health.
MEDICAL BENEFIT.
64. We support the recommendations of the Majority Report
to extend the scope of medical benefit, but it should be noted that
Parliamentary grants were voted in 1914 for services, the develop-
ment of some of which has not been undertaken owing to War
conditions. Such services included :—
(1) Medical referees.
(2) Medical experts
be obtained bv medical
