MAJORITY REPORT. 
£3 
7, 
collected through the Societies, it is necessary for information to 
be furnished by every Society to each Insurance Committee of all 
members of the Society in the area of the Committee at any time. 
The keeping of the ‘‘ index register,” which constitutes in fact 
the chief occupation of the staffs of Insurance Committees, is 
obviously a more considerable task than it would be if the whole 
Scheme were locally administered. 
210. We do not regard this criticism with indifference, since 
it goes to the root of the question whether the present organisa- 
tion of the system should be continued. We. think, however, 
that its importance may be easily over-estimated. The chief 
criterion of the feature against which it is directed must be its 
effect upon the insured person. On this we have received no 
evidence that the insured person who has migrated from one dis- 
trict to another suffers delay in the receipt of benefit, or other 
inconvenience, from the fact that the office, or the head office, as 
the case may be, of his Society is not in the area in which he 
resides. It may be, indeed, that in this respect the existence of 
large Centralised Societies, with offices and representatives in 
every industrial centre in the country, is a positive advantage, 
since the member of such a Society is sure of the means by which 
his needs may be attended to wherever he may be. In any case, 
the insured person who suffers inconvenience has the remedy in 
his own hands, since he may transfer to a Society of his choice; 
and lest it should be urged that, in existing circumstances, some 
disability is attendant on transfer, we would add that in 
Chapter XIII we propose means for reducing such disability to a 
minimum. 
911. Another ground on which the Approved Society system 
has been much criticised is that, notwithstanding the statutory 
requirement that every Society should be under the absolute 
control of its members, such control does not in fact exist and 
that, particularly in some of the larger Societies, the. insured 
members have no effective means of exercising any influence in 
the government of the Society. The examination of Sir 
Thomas Neill, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the 
National Conference of Industrial Assurance Approved Societies, 
brought out in a striking manner the force of this criticism. 
(OQ. 4515-4529, 4568-4743.) 
212. Tt is doubtless true that, even in the case of those Socie- 
fies to which this criticism is most applicable, the rules provide 
in theory a means whereby the insured members could have a 
share in the control of the Society if they cared to exercise it. 
Whatever may have happened to the substance, the semblance of 
self-government is at least respected. Even so, however, we 
were informed by an official witness that “in the light of 
experience we do mot think that the rules of a few large 
Centralised Societies provide for the control by the members to