§ MR. HILLS (Durham)To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many medical referees were appointed under the Workmen's Compensation Act prior to the Act of 1907 coming into force; how many references were referred to each such referee; how many times the county court judges have asked such medical referees to act as assessors with them or called them in to advise them as to their judgments; and have 1684 the Channel Islands, and Guernsey in particular, refused to adopt the Act.
(Answered by Mr. Secretary Gladstone.) If I understand the first part of the hon. Member's inquiry rightly, he desires to know how many medical referees have been appointed for the purposes of the Workmen's Compensation Act, 1906. The number is 343. The total number of references made to referees in the nine months from 1st July, 1907, the date on which the Act of 1906 came into force, up to 31st of last March, the latest date for which figures are available, is 189. Of these references twelve were made under Section 8 of the Act, twenty-eight under Paragraph 15 of Schedule I., and 149 under Paragraph 15 of Schedule II. The number of cases during the same period in which referees have been summoned to sit as assessors is thirty-three. The States of both Jersey and Guernsey have deliberated on the question of enacting legislation for the islands on the lines of our Act of 1906, but in. both cases the proposal was rejected.