§ Mr. SNOWDENasked the Under-Secretary for War if he will make inquiries. 2277W into two cases which were before the Southwark Tribunal on 8th March, where one man with only one hand and another man with a paralysed leg claimed exemption on the ground of physical condition, both having been passed by the Army doctor as physically fit for the Army; and will he ascertain who the doctor was who passed these men, and if he was paid a fee for so doing?
§ Mr. TENNANTI have made myself acquainted with the two cases in question. In the first, I think a mistake was made, and that the recruiting officer should have been informed as to the physical state of the man, so that he might have been discharged. In the second case, the man was classified as fit for sedentary work only. The doctor was not paid a fee for the examination of these men, but is paid at a fixed rate of pay per day, irrespectively of the number examined.
§ Mr. HENRY M'LARENasked the Financial Secretary to the War Office whether he is aware that the recruiting authorities are accepting numbers of attested men with weak hearts and other physical infirmities; and whether, seeing that such action is a waste of the taxpayers' money and unfair to the individual, he will institute a system of appeal from the military medical officer to an independent medical board in cases where an attested man gets a medical certificate from his own doctor that he is not physically fit for service?
§ Mr. TENNANTI presume my hon. Friend is referring to men accepted for active service in the Army. For this men are not accepted who are in the state described. Before any man can be accepted to such service he has to go before a medical board at the headquarters of the recruiting area in which he resides. These boards consist of expert doctors, who pass no one for any service for which his phsyical condition unfits him. I may add that medical officers do not get a fee only for men they pass. The fee is paid for each man examined, whether he is passed or whether he is not passed.