§ 81. Mr. NEWMANasked whether, under the terms of the National Insurance Act, a dispenser who may have been regularly employed by a general medical practitioner for a number of years, but who is unregistered and not actually in the employment of a doctor at the date of the passing of the Act, is debarred from going on his local panel, while a doctor's groom, occasionally employed as an assistant dispenser during the past three years, is entitled to be placed on the panel; and, if so, whether it is intended to take steps to remedy this state of affairs?
§ Mr. MASTERMANThe hon. Member is under a misapprehension. Neither of the classes of persons mentioned by him could be included on a panel for the purpose of supplying to insured persons medicines requiring to be dispensed. The question whether persons of the first class could dispense as assistants would depend in each case upon whether they had acted as dispensers to a medical practitioner or public institution for three years immediately prior to the 16th December, 1911. Persons of the second class mentioned would in no case be qualified by such occasional services to themselves supply medicines requiring dispensing or to dispense as assistants.