This section proposes to override a provision that was in the 1953 Act. This is a very important matter. It is one of these things that must and will hit at our whole social legislation. We have unemployment insurance, national health insurance, children's allowances and other social welfare benefits but in each and every one of these we have a provision whereby the unemployed man, if he is a married man with a family, receives special consideration. If he is insured under national health insurance and if he is struck by illness he receives an allowance for himself, his wife and his children. The former Minister for Social Welfare introduced what to my mind was a very welcome step in this code of social welfare, that is, a provision whereby a married man received 50/- for himself, 12/- on behalf of his wife and 14/- for one or two children. I think we should give encouragement to that section of our people who are placed in the responsible position of bringing up families in this country. We have given consideration to that in the various Acts I have referred to but now we are going further because we propose to provide more money for other persons too.
The argument advanced by the Minister does not, as one might say if one were a Yank, hold water. It discourages the employer to employ married men. I am going to put one question to the Minister and I am sure he should be in a position to answer it. On that question must hinge my case. In this country we have a number of insurance companies. The great majority of them cover workmen's compensation. Can the Minister name one company to-night or mention one case in which it was suggested to an employer, because of the fact that he employed a married man with a family, that they proposed to increase their premium under the workmen's compensation insurance scheme? Has that happened in any one particular case? Since 1953, when this provision was first brought in by the then Minister, not one insurance company in this country has asked that question of its clientele. There is not one employer in the country who—because a man has been married and has a family of over two persons—has said to that person: "I feel compelled, because of the increased burden that is being placed on me under the Workmen's Compensation Act, to dispose of your services."
I think that, last night, it was very effectively pointed out that the majority of our employers in this country are anxious to employ married persons because of their sense of responsibility, because of their appreciation of their employment at the present time and because of all the relevant circumstances. In my view, we in this House should give very serious consideration to the matter before we take the step the Minister asks us to take. What, in fact, is that step? Do we realise what that step is? In this Bill, the Minister proposes to raise the weekly contribution for persons who have been injured in their employment from 50/- to 90/- per week with an overriding provision that 90/- is the maximum, that they cannot receive anything over that amount and that it is in relation to their earned weekly income.
Take, for example, two persons, one of whom is a single man. When we pass this Bill and when the President signs it, thus making it an Act of Parliament, that single man who has no encumbrance and who has no responsibility, if he is injured in the course of his employment—whether the injury be permanent or merely for the time being does not enter into the question now—is being put into a different position: we are making available to him an additional £2 per week over the sum he is now entitled to receive. It should be borne in mind that this £4 10s. per week is not £4 10s. to every person who meets with an injury, but the maximum sum which any person may receive, whether or not he was in receipt of £12 or £14 a week previously. What we are doing—and we are doing it with our eyes open and in the complete knowledge of what we are doing—is increasing the weekly amount to a single man, with no encumbrances, from 50/- to the maximum of 90/- per week.
Look then at the other man who has succeeded in getting a house from a local authority—and that requires something. He is bringing up a family and has the responsibility of keeping himself and his family of five or six children. He is now entitled to receive 76/- per week, because under the 1953 Act it is provided that he shall receive 50/- for himself, 12/- for his wife and 14/ for one or two children. We are giving the married man an increase of 14/- per week, whereas we are providing—not out of central funds, because not one halfpenny of it will come out of central funds, but out of industry and insurance—that the single man will benefit by £2 per week, whereas we are providing that the married man with a family of three or four children will benefit by at most 14/- per week.
This is not the approach we make in our social welfare legislation. In all other social legislation passed here, we have made provision for supplementary grants in the case of a married man, but in this case we are providing that a single man will gain £2 per week, while the married man will benefit only to the extent of 14/-. I put down this amendment in the hope that we would get back to the position laid down in the 1953 Act and I am asking the House to do nothing very revolutionary. All I am asking the House to do is to continue the provision made in the 1953 Act.
The Minister in very slipshod fashion has suggested that this will react unfavourably on the married man and I have asked the question as to whether he can produce any case of an employer saying to a married man: "I recognise that you are a good worker and I have complete confidence in your ability to do what I want you to do, but the fact that you are a married man prevents me giving you this employment". If the Minister can produce any evidence of an insurance company in this State having increased the premium payable by an employer because he has employed married people in preference to single people, I am prepared to agree that there is something in the Minister's suggestion, but he cannot do so, because it has never been suggested by any company. Why a Minister who is a member of the Labour Party should put this proposal before us is something I cannot understand, and why he should broadcast the suggestion, as he has done on two occasions to my knowledge, to the employers of this country that they should be more careful in the selection of their employees, I fail to see. This proposal would have more effect on that particular category of people than on any other.
Let us turn to what has been provided and to the inducements being held out to our people across the water.
