§ 104. Mr. WALSHasked the Minister of Pensions whether he is aware of the large number of cases of men in receipt of temporary pensions consequent upon a 471 disability percentage varying from 30 to 20 per cent., who have had by final award their disablement percentage reduced to a percentage from 19 to 15 per cent.; whether he is aware that such award has the effect of at once reducing the amount of pension and later of stopping it altogether; whether he is aware of the dissatisfaction created by such decisions; and whether in such cases, where the border line of disablement percentage is purely a question of opinion and not of fact, he will cause specific data, upon which the decision is based, to be supplied to the recipient before any reduction is made in the amount of pension?
§ The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of PENSIONS (Captain Craig)The rate of disablement is in all cases the result of the judgment of the medical board as formed upon the clinical facts and circumstances of the case before them. In a case where a medical board consider that the degree of disablement involved by a minor disability is such as to justify, not a continuing pension but a gratuity or an allowance for a terminable period, the man concerned has in all cases the right of appeal to one of the independent Appeal Tribunals which deal with assessment. If he exercises his right he is furnished before the hearing of the case with a full précis of his medical history as known to the Ministry, including clinical details of the case as seen by the several medical boards which have from time to time examined him, and as the result of which the assessment arrived at in each case has been given. It is also open to the man to bring before the Appeal Tribunal such other evidence as he may desire.