~N 
MAJORITY REPORT, 
of interest due to the War which, as all are aware, has added 
enormously to the burdens of the taxpayer. The remaining 
cause of the reduction is the lapse from insurance of a consider. 
able proportion of those who were brought within the Scheme at 
the outset and in respect of whom reserve values, which have 
subsequently been withdrawn, were provided. 
190. The balance of margin in the contribution may be 
estimated as equivalent, with the appropriate State grant, to 
£22 millions a year. This margin is due to extraneous causes, 
among the most important of which is the general increase in 
the rate of interest on post-War investments, to which we have 
referred above. No income tax is payable on the interest earn- 
ings of Approved Societies, and the members of those Societies, 
accordingly, secure the full benefit of this increase and are able to 
claim additional State grant in respect of a rate which itself re- 
flects the weight of a national burden from which they are free. 
Having regard to the fact that the additional resources made 
available to the insured in this way and in the appreciation of 
investments which has already been realised will go almost in 
their entirety to supplement the benefits originally provided by 
Parliament, it is clear that the relations between the general 
body of insured persons and the Exchequer are more favourable 
to the former than has been generally supposed hitherto. While 
we have felt bound here to explain the situation in which this 
result arises, we do not desire what we have said to be regarded 
as. qualifying the recommendations which we make in later 
chapters of our Report in regard to the application of any margin 
in the existing scheme. 
191. We have recommended, in paragraph 182, that the cost 
of medical benefit, not hitherto borne by the funds of Approved 
Societies and expected to amount in future to about 3s. a year for 
each insured person, should now be placed upon those funds. On 
this recommendation a question arises with reference to the rate 
of contribution for men who are serving with the Forces of the 
Crown and to the special foreign-going rate of contribution for 
men of the Mercantile Marine. These rates of contribution are 
reduced, in each case, by the equivalent of the normal benefits 
which are not provided for insured persons in the classes to which 
they respectively relate, and, as a consequence, the rate for men 
in the Forces is 33d. a week instead of 9d., and the foreign-going 
seaman’s rate is 7d. instead of 9d. One of the benefits not pro- 
vided for men who are serving with the Forces is medical benefit : 
so far as the Mercantile Marine is concerned, this benefit is not 
provided for a man while he is on foreign articles, and the liabi. 
lity for any medical attention that he may require rests upon his 
employer under the provisions of the Merchant Shipping Act, 
1894. When, therefore, the cost of medical benefit in the case 
of civilian insured persons is increased, the reductions already 
made from the normal contribution in the case of these special