Mr. CLEMENT EDWARDSI beg to move, "That leave be given to introduce a Bill to provide for an Amendment of the National Insurance Act, by making provision for an additional contribution from employers and to enable death benefit to be paid."
This measure proposes to do this by providing that the employers shall pay a penny per week above and beyond the present contribution in respect of each insured person. The workman is already paying as large a sum as he can generally afford and as a private Member I am precluded from making any proposition relating to a State contribution. The Bill proposes that the accumulation of this penny per week shall be definitely ear-marked for the purpose of death benefit. In the case of an insured person who is not now insured for death benefit the whole will go to supply that benefit, and where he is so insured then it will be used for the augmentation of the present sum for which he is insured. It is further proposed by the Bill to collect the money in 1206 precisely the same way as the contributions are now collected. It is not proposed in any other respect to amend the National Insurance Act except that the death benefit shall be paid in the case of a workman killed by accident quite apart from and in addition to any sum he may get under the Workmen's Compensation Act, under the Employers' Liability Act, or at Common Law.
§ Question put, and agreed to.
§ Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Clement Edwards, Mr. James Hogge, Mr. John Ward, Mr. Frederick Hall, Mr. Lambert, and Mr. Hughes. Presented accordingly, and read the first time; to be read a second time upon Monday next, and to be printed. [Bill 88.]