§ Mr. Craigenasked the Secretary of State for the Social Services, pursuant to his reply on 28 October to the hon. Member for Glasgow, Maryhill, if he will list in the Official Report those major bodies which made representations to his Department in support of the Green Paper on "Income During Initial Sickness—A New Strategy"—Cmnd. 7846.
684Wgroups may reflect changes in hours worked, in the composition of the labour force arising from industrial and technical change, and so on, and do not necessarily imply corresponding relative changes in basic pay rates for different levels of skill within a specific industrial process.
§ Mr. Alfred Morrisasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will list the organisations from which comments have been received on his Green Paper entitled "Income During Initial Sickness: A New Strategy"; and how many of these comments were in favour of the proposals and how many against.
§ Mr. Patrick JenkinThe great majority of the 900 or so individuals and organisations who have made representations 685W on the Green Paper have indicated their support for one or more of the scheme's objectives—to cut public expenditure by about £400 million, to reduce the size of the Civil Service by about 5,000 and to make payments for short-term sickness taxable. However, all the representations made some comments on the detailed proposals in the Green Paper for achieving these objectives.
§ Mr. Skeetasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what is the aggregate of liability the Government propose to transfer from the State to employers under Cmnd. 7864, entitled "Income During Initial Sickness", and what percentage of this figure will be compensated for in payments to employers to meet the cost of the transfer.
§ Mr. PrenticeWe estimate that on the basis of the proposals put forward in the Green Paper, employers' wage bills would rise by about £415 million, upon which they would have to pay national insurance
NHS MANPOWER ENGLAND AS AT 30 SEPTEMBER WHOLE-TIME EQUIVALENTS 1971 1978 1979 All staff and independent contractors of which: … … … … … 674,602 805,853 814,714 Directly employed staff 1, 2, 3, 4 … … … … … 625,526 754,685 762,674 Independent contractors 5, 6, 7 … … … … … 49,076 50,385 52,040 1. Includes whole-time equivalents of hospital and community health service medical and dental staff except locums, hospital practitioners, part-time medical/dental officers, clinical assistants, general medical practitioners participating in hospital staff funds and occasional sessional staff in community health service. 2. Owing to the effect of the 1974 NHS re-organisation the figure, for 1971 is not directly comparable with those for 1978 and 1979. 3. Excludes all agency staff. 4. The figure for 1979 is provisional; it contains an estimate of the whole-time equivalent of non-medical staff based on information available so far from 13 regions only 5. The figures for independent contractors are numbers of general medical practitioners, general dental practitioners, ophthalmic medical practitioners, ophthalmic opticians and dispensing opticians in the general ophthalmic services. Estimated numbers of general practice pharmacists (i.e. chemists, drug stores and appliance contractors) are based on the number of establishments, not the actual number practising. 6. Figures for general medical practitioners as at 1 October. 7. Figures for the general ophthalmic services as at 31 December.