§ Mr. Rookerasked the Secretary of State for Social Services how many of the examinations of recipients of invalidity benefit in each of the past six years found (a) that the claimant was considered incapable of work, (b) that the claimant was considered incapable of normal occupation, but not incapable of alternative work, and (c) that the claimant was considered not incapable of work; and what percentage was each of these findings of the total of examinations for each of the years.
Mr. Prentice: Separate figures for invalidity benefit claimants are not maintained. The following information relates to sickness and invalidity benefit. It is regretted that details for 1979 are not yet available
843W
§ Mr. Rookerasked the Secretary of State for Social Services (1) how many appeals were made against the decision to withdraw invalidity benefit following examinations by regional medical officers in each of the past six years; how many of these appeals were decided in favour of the claimant; and what was the percentage of these decisions of all such appeals in each of the six years;
(2) if he will publish a breakdown of the numbers of persons in receipt of invalidity benefit who were found after examination by regional medical officers to be not incapable of work, showing for each of the past six years the length of time the recipient had received the benefit from less than six months, in intervals of six months up to five years and over five years;
(3) how many examinations by regional medical officers of recipients of invalidity benefit were made in each of the past six years; and if he will list the information, showing the length of time the recipient had received the benefit from less than six months, in intervals of six months up to five year and over five years.
§ Mr. PrenticeThis information is not available and could not be obtained without disproportionate cost.
§ Mr. Rookerasked the Secretary of State for Social Services how many claimants were in receipt of invalidity benefit in 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978 and 1979.
844W
NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE MANPOWER ENGLAND AS AT 30 SEPTEMBER WHOLE TIME EQUIVALENTS 1971 1977 wte per cent. wte per cent. All directly-employed staff and independent contractors(1)(2) 675,269 — 793,600 — of which: administrative and clerical(3) 70,396 10.4 99,037 12.5 medical(2)(4) and nursing and mid-wifery(5) 328,787* 48.7 395,067 49.8 Notes on Tables: (1) The figures for independent contractors are numbers of general medical practitioners, genera dental practitioners, ophthalmic medical practitioners, ophthalmic opticians and dispensing opticians in the general ophthalmic services and general practice pharmacists—that is chemists, drug stores and applicance contractors. (2) The figures for general medical practitioners relate to 1 October. Some GPs are also employed on a part-time basis in the community health service and such effort is included in the totals for "medical and directly-employed staff". This implies an element of double-counting. Figures for the general ophthalmic services relate to 31 December. There is a small unquantifiable number of ophthalmic medical practitioners who are also general medical practitioners, which again implies a minor element of double-counting.
§ Mr. PrenticeThe number of claimants in receipt of contributory and noncontributory invalidity benefits, respectively, at the beginning of June in each year is given below. Totals have been rounded to the nearest thousand. I regret that information for 1979 is not yet available.
Invalidity benefit (thousands) Non-contributory invalidity pension (thousands) 1974 … … 442 — 1975 … … 450 — 1976 … … —* — 1977 … … 505 105 1978 … … 557 151 * Because of changes in the sampling procedure in 1975 incapacity statistics are not available for 1975–76 † Non-contributory invalidity pension was introduced in November 1975 and housewife's non-contributory invalidity pension (HNCIP) in 1978. There were 40,000 HNCIP recipients in 1978.