3,

DE

MINORITY REPORT.

that the cash benefits should be raised to those of the Unemployment
 Act, which implies similar rates of allowances for
dependants.

124. The margin in the present contribution was determined
by the Departmental Actuarial Committee to be 1-55d. men, and
‘82d. women. As we observe that the Majority estimate that
it will be possible to provide the cost of the proposed extension
of medical benefit, taken over the whole country, from the
present financial resources of the system, we consider it proper
to deduct the contribution value of that cost, namely -44d. per
week, from the actuarial calculation of the cost of existing
benefits. There is therefore a margin available for our recommendations
 of 199d. men and 1:26d. women.

125. The Committee estimated that (1) to increase the rate of
sickness benefit to that of unemployment benefit with one-half
the rate for disablement benefit would add to the contribution of
men 9d. and women ‘75d. (2) the cost of providing dependants’
allowances at uniform rates with, and on substantially the same
conditions as, the Unemployment Act would represent an increase
in contributions of 1:6d. for men and :16d. for women, and (3) the
provision of maternity services for the wives of insured men and
for insured women, would involve an increase of ;44d. in the case
of men but would allow a reduction of 11d. in the case of
women.

126. The net cost of providing the benefits mentioned in the
preceding paragraph, excluding the statutory State grant of
two-ninths, is 2:94d. per week in the case of men and 80d. per
week in the case of women. This would leave nearly a penny
(-95d.) a week to be found from other sources to supplement the
contributions of men, but in the case of women, there is a
margin of ‘46d. towards the cost of our further proposals respecting
 sickness benefit after 26 weeks and maintenance allowance
at confinement.

197. Our observations on the administration of sickness benefit
to women during pregnancy might here be supplemented to
suggest that part of the cost of the proposed maternity allowance
 would be a growing expenditure under any scheme. In so
far as the extra moneys needed for our recommendations could
not be provided on the present financial basis we submit that the
general opinion, expressed so well in the Majority Report, that
such services as we here recommend, will result in a higher
standard of health and consequent reduction of expenditure on
benefits would justify a further examination of the finances of
the scheme, and that still further changes would be possible
on the adoption of our recommendation to substitute the Local
Authority for the Approved Society as the medium for
administering all the benefits under the Act