RESERVE AND AUXILIARY FORCES (PROTECTION OF FRIENDLY SOCIETY LIFE POLICIES) REGULATIONS, 1951 (Hansard, 4 December 1951)

§ VISCOUNT SWINTON

My Lords, with your Lordships' permission, I will deal with this Order and the Reserve and Auxiliary Forces (Protection of Industrial Assurance, etc.: Policies) Regulations, 1951, together. They look most complicated, but when they are translated into English, they are really quite simple. Your Lordships will remember that in the Auxiliary Forces (Protection of Civil Interests) Act the House approved certain safeguards for holders of assurance policies while they were on active Service—I think that is the correct expression. But what the Act did not lay down was the procedure by which those safeguards should be assured. That has to be done by regulation. The sole object of these two rather complicated looking Orders is to give practical effect to the intention of the main Act. The first Order provides, for exampe, how relief should be applied for; the information which has to be given; how applicants are to be notified; how appeals are to be lodged with the Commissioner; and applications for relief where an applicant has not made his application in due time.

The second is similar and deals with the case of Friendly Society life policies. It is again entirely procedural and covers the method of applying for reinstatement of life policies; the method of notifying applicants of grant or refusal of reinstatement how they are to lodge an appeal with the Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies—who, by another name, is the distinguished gentleman to whom I have already referred: the Commissioner—and how application is to be made to the Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies if the application for reinstatement has not been lodged in due time. In all these cases there has been the fullest discussion with the interests concerned. In the case of the first Order, they include the Industrial Life Offices Association, the Prudential Assurance Company, the Cooperative Insurance Company and the Association of Collecting Friendly Societies. In the case of the second Order, that applies to all the Friendly Societies' interests concerned. As I say 774 the regulations are purely procedural, to give effect to an Act which your Lordship have already approved. Therefore I beg to move that the House do approve the first of these two Orders.