§ Mr. Meacherasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if in the assessment of percentage disablement for industrial injury benefit he will require that pain, emotional discomfort and social handicap should all be taken into account, based if necessary on reports by social workers as well as doctors.
§ Mr. DeanDisablement benefit is paid for disablement which is the result of a 399W relevant loss of faculty, that is the loss of physical or mental capacity to lead a normally occupied life. A normally occupied life includes household and social activities and leisure pursuits as well as work. Assessments, which take account of disfigurement, discomfort or, on occasion, pain, are made by independent medical authorities. In certain circumstances an additional allowance is paid for loss of earnings. We are satisfied that compensation for industrial disablement is adequately measured in this way.
§ Mr. Meacherasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will set up a committee of inquiry into the structure and functioning of the industrial injuries insurance system, in view of the disqualifications from full benefit that are applied to many disabled individuals as a result of the existing criteria for benefit.
§ Mr. DeanNo. I assume that the hon. Member has in mind the provision which applies where some or all of a claimant's disablement arises from a congenital defect or pre-existing injury or disease, to the effect that disablement must be excluded from his assessment to the extent that he would have been so disabled had the accident never happened. Such a provision is necessary to ensure that the industrial injuries scheme does not provide compensation for conditions which have no industrial causation.
§ Mr. Meacherasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if, in view of the £350 million surplus in the Industrial Injuries Fund, he will extend benefit to persons injured by industrial process and to persons who settled for a lump sum under the Workmen's Compensation Act whose condition due to their industrial injury has since worsened.
§ Mr. DeanNo. Conditions due to injury not caused by accident arising out of and in the course of insurable employment can be considered for prescription under the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act, 1965, where the requirements of Section 56(2) of the Act are met, namely that the condition is an occupational rather than a general risk, and that attributability to employment can be established with reasonable certainty. We have no proposals in mind to extend the payment of benefit to persons who received lump sum payments in400W full and final settlement of their claims under the Workmen's Compensation Acts.
§ Mr. Meacherasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will seek powers to assume greater supervisory control over the industrial injuries insurance scheme and its internal rules for granting or refusing benefit in order to ensure the individual claimant is more favoured in cases of dispute about the causes of disabling conditions.
§ Mr. DeanNo. The claimant discharges the burden of proving any necessary fact if he satisfies the independent determining authorities that, on balance of probability, it is more likely that it is so than that it is not so. My Department gives as much help as is practicable to claimants in establishing the facts.