NEW CLAUSE.—(Exemption from the Provisions of the National Insurance Act, 1911.) (Hansard, 4 November 1918)

§ Major DAVID DAVIES
On a point of Order. I have given notice of an Amendment on Clause 1—

§ Mr. SPEAKER
Upon the Report stage new Clauses take precedence.

§ The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. Herbert Fisher)
I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a second time."
This Clause is little more than a drafting Clause, since its object is to give effect to the clear intention and meaning of the National Insurance Act of 1911. Under that Act, among the employments to be excepted was 1829 employment as a teacher to whom the Elementary School Teachers Superannuation Act, 1898, or a scheme under Section 14 of the Education (Scotland) Act, 1908, or the National School Teachers (Ireland) Act, 1879, applies or, in the event of any similar enactment being hereafter passed as respects teachers or any class of teachers (other than teachers in public elementary schools), as a teacher to whom such enactment applies. It is impossible to read this passage without coming to the conclusion that it was the intention of the Act of 1911 to except from the previsions of the Act all persons who are pensionable under the Act of 1898, and all teachers who might become pensionable under any similar enactment. The present Bill, for the purposes of this Section, is a similar enactment. It confers benefits by way of superannuation and disablement allowance just as the Act of 1898 does, and it is none the less a similar enactment, because the benefits which are conferred are wider than those contained in the Act of 1898. There can be little or no question that the present Bill is a similar enactment within the meaning of the words quoted, and, if that is so, it is clear that any statutory provisions for teachers other than teachers in public elementary schools would be excepted from the National Insurance Act. Consequently, as far as these teachers are concerned, namely, teachers in secondary and technical schools, no enactment is necessary, but the passage quoted makes one exception. It makes an exception with respect to teachers in public elementary schools. It makes this exception because the Act of 1911 did not contemplate that any system of superannuation allowance would be established in favour of uncertificated teachers and teachers of special subjects in public elementary schools. If it had been foreseen that the Act of 1898 or some more beneficial enactment would be extended to those teachers, undoubtedly they would have been put upon the same footing as certificated teachers under the Act of 1898. In other words, the foundation of the exception in 1911 was that the teacher was subject to the beneficial provisions of the Act of 1898. Now that the wider class of teachers is made subject to a more beneficial scheme of superannuation, it follows, almost as a matter of course, that this exception should be extended to that wider class.