§ Mr. Greg Knightasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will report the outcome of his investigation into the practice of referring back decisions to medical boards in claims for industrial disablement benefit.
§ Mr. LyellIn seeking consistent adjudication it was for many years the practice for the Department's medical staff to refer claims back to the medical board if it was thought that the hoard's decision, or the record of it, needed clarification or reconsideration. Following a commissioner's decision which criticised this practice, instructions were issued in 1985 to prevent reference back to medical hoards by Departmental staff outside the terms of the legal provisions.
The Department has been looking into the extent of this practice as regards industrial disablement benefit and the possibility that some claimants may have been disadvantaged by it. A sample comprising about 4,000 decisions by medical boards has been examined. About 9 per cent. of these were found to have been referred back to the hoard by the Department's medical staff for reconsideration. In less than 0.3 per cent. of the cases was the outcome potentially adverse to the claimant. The changes made were fully consistent with other unamended decisions made in similar circumstances and amounted in most cases to no more than minor adjustments, for example, to the date set for the next review of a provisional award.
In the light of this information, I have considered whether a wider-ranging search for such cases should he undertaken. To seek out all such instances would involve the scrutiny of some 17.5 million decisions made since the industrial injuries scheme was set up in 1948. The high cost involved and the delays this could cause to other claimants would be out of all proportion to the amounts of benefit at stake. I have therefore decided to take no further action to identify amended industrial disablement decisions.