§ Mr. HODGEThe Bill I ask leave to introduce is to amend the Workmen's Compensation Act of 1906. By a recent decision in the House of Lords, taxi-cab drivers have been ruled out of the benefit of the Workmen's Compensation Act, and the simple object of the Bill is to place them in the position they suppose they occupied previous to that decision. In the definition of a workman in the Workmen's Compensation Act of 1906, we find it includes:—
"Any person who has entered into or works under a contract of service or apprenticeship with an employer which is by way of manual labour, clerical work or otherwise."
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I do not think any Member of this House would seek to declare that a taxi-cab driver was not a workman in the real sense of the term. I think I will have the sympathy of the whole House when I say that the Workmen's Compensation Act was last amended it was believed it covered all workmen. I seek in this Bill, which is a Bill of one Clause, to provide that taxi-cab drivers or ordinary cab drivers plying for hire for wages or a percentage of profits or who hire a vehicle for a fixed sum for a day, in fact no matter what the method of payment is, that such drivers shall not be contracted out of the Act. I do not think I need say anything further. This Bill puts the matter in a very plain way. It is calculated that there are over 20,000 taxi-cab drivers in the whole of the United Kingdom, and to me it appears a great hardship that these men should be ruled out against the evident intention of the Act of Parliament: However, I dare say most of us have utterly failed to understand the tortuous imagination of the legal mind. I beg to ask leave to introduce the Bill.
Bill to amend the Workmen's Compensation Act, 1906. ordered to be brought in by Mr. Hodge, Mr. Gill, Mr. Barnes, Mr. Stephen Walsh, and Mr. Bowerman. Presented accordingly, and read the first time; to be read a second time upon Monday, 31st July, and to be printed.