44 
MAJORITY REPORT. 
much greater than had originally been contemplated, and included 
many with a very small membership. In England alone over 
2,200 separate Societies had been approved within six months 
of the commencement of the Scheme. 
202. While the fullest use was attempted to be made of the 
bodies already in the field when the Act was passed, a short 
experience proved that in many cases, especially among the 
smaller Societies, the purpose would be defeated by a certain lack 
of adaptability on the part of some among those who would 
thus be brought into the work of administration under the 
national system. Though much was done to ease the situation 
by utilising existing methods, the new machinery was different 
in certain essential matters from that to which the officers of 
the Societies were accustomed. Contributions were not, for 
instance, paid in cash to the Society and applied directly to the 
benefit needs of the members. They were paid by employers 
through the medium of stamps and passed from the Post Office 
to the coffers of the Departments, the Societies afterwards clainm- 
ing their ‘‘ credits * in the departmental books on the vouchers 
represented by their members’ contribution cards. It followed 
that to place the Societies in a position to pay the benefits, 
funds had to be issued to them at stated intervals by the Depart- 
ments. This procedure, with its accounting requirements, 
though not in itself involving any particular difficulty, proved 
to be irksome to many, while the need to conform to the standard 
of precision and promptitude entailed by the requirements of an 
Act of Parliament was equally burdensome. The result was 
that among the smaller Societies many officials decided that the 
task of administering National Health Insurance was beyond 
their powers, and as it was impossible to replace a considerable 
proportion of them from among their fellows, transfer of engage- 
ments, on a considerable scale, resulted. Mainly for this reason 
there has, from the first, been a continuous and considerable 
decrease in the number of Societies remaining approved. In 
England alone, out of 2,208 which had been granted approval 
no fewer than 1,192 had ceased to administer the Act by the 
end of 1923. At the present time the number of Approved 
Societies is 886 in England, 94 in Scotland, and 40 in Wales. 
Of these 31 are Societies with branches, the total number of 
tranches for the purposes of National Health Insurance being 
6,887. The actual number of * units” administering the 
system is thus 7,876. 
203. The membership of Approved Societies varies within 
the widest limits from less than 50 to more than 2,000,000. 
In England there are still at one end of the scale 70 
Societies with less than 100 members, and at the other end 
there are 24 Societies with a membership of over 50,000 includ- 
ing two with over a million members in each. We were informed