National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act 1946
National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act, 1946
(9 & 10 Geo. 6.) CHAPTER 62.
An Act to substitute for the Workmen's Compensation Acts, 1925 to 1945, a system of insurance against personal injury caused by accident arising out of and in the course of a person's employment and against prescribed diseases and injuries due to the nature of a person's employment, and for purposes connected therewith.
[26th July 1946]
B E it enacted by the King's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—
Part I.
Insured Persons and Contributions.
1 Persons to be insured.
(1) Subject to the provisions of this Act, all persons employed in insurable employment shall be insured in manner provided by this Act against personal injury caused on or after the appointed day by accident arising out of and in the course of such employment.
(2) For the purposes of this Act, every employment specified in Part I of the First Schedule to this Act is an insurable employment unless it is an excepted employment, that is to say an employment specified in Part II of that Schedule:
Provided that Parts I and II of that Schedule shall have effect subject to the provision made by Part III thereof for preventing anomalies.
2 Source of funds.
2. For the purpose of providing the funds required for paying benefit, and for making any other payments which under this Act are to be made out of the Industrial Injuries Fund established under this Act, contributions shall, subject to the provisions of this Act, be payable as follows:—
3 Payment of contributions.
(1) Except where regulations otherwise prescribe, the employer shall, in the first instance, be liable to pay both the contribution payable by himself and also, on behalf of and to the exclusion of the insured person, the contribution payable by that person; and for the purposes of this Act contributions paid by an employer on behalf of an insured person shall be deemed to be contributions by the insured person.
(2) A weekly contribution shall be payable for each contribution week during the whole or any part of which an insured person is employed:
Provided that—
(a ) where one weekly contribution has been paid in respect of an insured person for any week, no further contribution shall be payable in respect of him for the same week; and
(b ) where, as respects any insurable employment, no services have been rendered by an insured person during any week, and no remuneration is paid wholly or partly in respect of any day in that week other than a day on which he either—
(i) has been rendered incapable of work by reason of some specific disease or bodily or mental disablement and would but for the incapacity have been working; or
(ii) does not work in a normal week;
then, as respects that employment, no contribution shall be payable in respect of the insured person for that week.
(3) Regulations may provide, as respects any period during which no services are rendered by an insured person, that for the purposes of this Part of this Act any payments which the insured person receives or is entitled (whether conditionally or not) to receive in any prescribed circumstances are or are not to be deemed to be remuneration paid in respect of any day in that period.
(4) If any employer or insured person fails to pay any contribution which he is liable under this Act to pay, he shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding ten pounds.
(5) The provisions of Part III of the Second Schedule to this Act shall have effect as respects the return of contributions paid erroneously, and the provisions of Part IV of that Schedule shall have effect as respects the payment of contributions through an employment exchange as defined in the said Part IV.
4 Employer's contribution irrecoverable from insured person.
(1) Notwithstanding any contract to the contrary, the employer shall not be entitled to deduct from the wages or other remuneration of, or otherwise to recover from, the insured person the employer's contribution.
(2) If an employer deducts or attempts to deduct from the wages or other remuneration of an insured person the whole or any part of the employer's contribution, he shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding ten pounds.
5 Recovery by employer of insured person's contributions.
(1) Subject to the provisions of this section, and subject to any regulations, the employer shall be entitled to recover from the insured person in accordance with the provisions of this section the amount of any contributions paid or to be paid by him on behalf of that person:
Provided that the amount of any contribution not yet paid shall not be recoverable except under and in accordance with the next following subsection.
(2) Where the insured person receives any wages or other pecuniary remuneration from the employer, the amount of any contribution paid or to be paid by the employer on behalf of the insured person shall, notwithstanding the provisions of any Act or any contract to the contrary, be recoverable by means of deductions from the wages of that person or from any other remuneration due from the employer to that person and not otherwise:
Provided that—
(a ) no such deduction may be made from any wages or remuneration other than such as are paid wholly or partly in respect of the contribution week or part of the contribution week for which the contribution is payable or may become payable, as the case may be;
(b ) no such deduction may be made of any contribution not yet paid except where it is not payable until after the date when the said wages or remuneration are paid.
(3) Where the insured person does not receive any wages or other pecuniary remuneration from the employer, but receives such remuneration from some other person, the amount of any contribution paid by the employer on behalf of the insured person shall (without prejudice to any other means of recovery) be recoverable from the insured person summarily as a civil debt, if proceedings for the purpose are instituted within three months from the date on which the contribution was payable.
(4) Where the insured person does not receive any wages or other pecuniary remuneration either from his employer or from any other person, the employer shall be liable to pay the contributions payable both by himself and the insured person and shall not be entitled to recover any part thereof from the insured person.
6 Consequential amendment of enactments relating to minimum wages.
6. In the following enactments, that is to say—
(which provide among other things that, for the purpose of seeing whether a person's remuneration is less than the minimum provided for by those Acts, his remuneration shall be calculated before deduction of his contributions for unemployment insurance and national health insurance), there shall after the words ‘the National Health Insurance Act, 1936,’ or ‘the National Health Insurance Acts, 1936 to 1941,’ as the case may be, be inserted the words ‘the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act, 1946.’
Part II.
Benefit.
Description of benefit and general conditions thereof.
7 Right to and description of benefit.
(1) Subject to the provisions of this Act, where an insured person suffers personal injury caused on or after the appointed day by accident arising out of and in the course of his employment, being insurable employment, then—
(a ) industrial injury benefit (in this Act referred to as ‘injury benefit’) shall be payable to the insured person if during such period as is hereinafter provided he is, as the result of the injury, incapable of work;
(b ) industrial disablement benefit (in this Act referred to as ‘disablement benefit’) shall be payable to the insured person if at a time not falling within the said period he suffers, as the result of the injury, from such loss of physical or mental faculty as is hereinafter provided;
(c ) industrial death benefit (in this Act referred to as ‘death benefit’) shall be payable to such persons as are hereinafter provided if the death of the insured person results from the injury.
(2) In this Act references to loss of physical faculty shall be construed as including references to disfigurement, whether or not accompanied by any actual loss of faculty.
(3) Subject to the provisions of Part VI of this...
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