269 
Sf 
MAJORITY REPORT. 
that the absence of a contribution for a particular week was, in 
fact, due to inability to obtain employment. 
655. We feel, however, that these difficulties to which Mr. 
Price, a Principal Assistant Secretary of the Ministry of Labour, 
alluded in his evidence should not prove insuperable and we, 
therefore, recommend that for the purposes of the Health Insur- 
ance Scheme, any week in respect of which an employed contri- 
butor can produce satisfactory evidence of genuine inability to 
obtain work should be counted as a week for which a contribution 
was paid. We are not in a position to make detailed recommen- 
dations as to the machinery by which evidence of genuine un- 
employment should be obtained. We understand, however, 
that the Ministry of Labour is sympathetically considering the 
question and that a satisfactory solution of the problems to which 
it gives rise may be expected to result from consultation between 
the two Departments, so far as concerns the large majority of 
persons who are insured under both the Health and Unemploy- 
ment Schemes. 
656. If arrears due to genuine unemployment were excused in 
accordance with our recommendation, it should result in great 
simplification in the administration of National Health Insur- 
ance and a great saving of work to Approved Societies. If 
the arrears involving penalties could then be limited to those due 
to voluntary abstention from work or engagement in some non- 
insurable occupation, the system of penalties for arrears might 
be simplified by the adoption of one scale for emploved and 
voluntary contributors 
PAYMENTS TO CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS 
657. The original intention of Section 21 of the 1911 Act (now 
Section 26 of the Act of 1924) was to enable Approved Societies 
and Insurance Committees without any question of receiving an 
equivalent return to make subscriptions or donations to hospitals 
or charitable institutions which serve the interests of the public 
health. 
658. We have had evidence (Kinnear, Q. 853; Ministry of 
Health, App. I, B, 247; Middleton, App. CI. 34) that the 
Section is now used by some Societies for the purpose of pro- 
viding benefits in the nature of additional benefits to all members, 
whether qualified to receive additional benefits or not, by paying 
fairly large sums in anticipation of surpluses to institutions 
specially set up to receive such payments. 
659. These institutions are in some cases little more than the 
Societies themselves under other names, and in other cases bodies 
set up by enterprising officials of Societies, and with very little, 
if any, income from any source other than payments out of the 
Health Insurance funds of contributing Societies. These pay- 
ments are made in bulk to the Institutions. and no details are