jd
MAJORITY REPORT.
the ages of 16 and 70 who are employed under a contract of
service or apprenticeship. Part IT of the same Schedule sets out
the classes of employment which are excepted from insurance,
of which the chief are :—
(1) Employment under the Crown or any Local Authority,
or as a salaried official of a railway or otner statutory com-
pany, provided in each case that the terms of service make
provision during sickness at least as favourable as that made
under the Act; and
(2) Employment of a non-manual character at a rate of
remuneration exceeding £250 a vear.
453. We were informed in evidence given on behalf of the
Ministry of Health that there has been no serious demand for
any extension of the classes who are required to be insured
(Kinnear, Q. 28). "We received, however, from other witnesses
suggestions for the inclusion of boys and girls in em-
ployment below the present age limit of 16, and of those
persons remaining in employment beyond the present higher
age limit for insurance; and further, for the extension
of the income limit for the insurance of non-manual
workers from the present figure of £250 to £350 a year. The
British Medical Association, on the other hand, put before us
suggestions for a lower income limit, e.g., £150 a year, to be
applicable to manual as well as non-manual workers as part of
a larger proposal for the exclusion from medical benefit of persons
who (in the view of the Association) might reasonably be expected
to make provision for themselves, and the inclusion of persons
(particularly the dependants of insured persons) for whom medical
treatment might properly be provided through a State scheme
of insurance. On the general aspects of this proposal we have
already commented in previous Chapters.
454. From the inception of the Scheme of National Health
Insurance the age limits for the payment of contributions and
title to sickness and disablement benefits have been 16 and 70.
We have had little evidence in support of any change of
these limits. The Scottish Miners’ Federation suggested that
logically boys and girls ought to come under the Health Insur-
ance Scheme as soon as they begin to be employed, which is in
many cases before they attain the age of 16 (Q. 6948-6949).
The Tancashire and Cheshire Miners’ Permanent Approved
Society also were of opinion that it was desirable that insurance
should begin with the commencement of employment, and gave
as their chief argument in support of this view the undesirability
of there being any gap in the provision for medical supervision
of the health of boys and girls between the cessation of the pro-
vision made under the School Medical Service and the beginning
of that under the National Health Insurance Scheme when they
reach the age of 16. (App. XI, 4; Q. 7060-7064, 7093-7096, 7116-
