Family Allowances and National Insurance Act 1961

JurisdictionUK Non-devolved
Citation1961 c. 6
Year1961


Family Allowances and National Insurance Act, 1961

(10 & 11 Eliz. 2) CHAPTER 6

An Act to improve and extend the allowances payable out of the Industrial Injuries Fund in respect of injury or disease arising out of pre-1948 employment; to amend the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Acts, 1946 to 1960, and the National Insurance Acts, 1946 to 1960, as regards the circumstances giving a right to or affecting the continuance or rate of certain benefits, as regards the references in certain provisions relating to contributions to an income not exceeding one hundred and fifty-six pounds a year or to remuneration not exceeding sixty shillings a week, and as regards matters connected with the administration of the Acts and the making and operation of orders and regulations thereunder; to make further provision as to sums wrongly paid by way of benefit under those Acts or by way of family allowance; to alter the meaning in those Acts and the Family Allowances Acts, 1945 to 1959, of the word ‘child’; to provide for certain expenses of the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance; and for purposes connected therewith.

Be it enacted by the Queen'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:—

I Industrial Injuries

Part I

Industrial Injuries

S-1 Improved allowances in respect of incapacities arising from pre-1948 employment.

1 Improved allowances in respect of incapacities arising from pre-1948 employment.

(1) The Workmen's Compensation and Benefit (Supplementation) Act, 1956 (which provides for the payment of allowances out of the Industrial Injuries Fund in cases of injury or disease arising out of pre-1948 employment and resulting in total disablement or incapacity for work), shall have effect with the substitution in section two of a rate of allowance of thirty-two shillings and sixpence a week for the rate of seventeen shillings and sixpence a week.

(2) The Workmen's Compensation (Supplementation) Act, 1951 (which authorises the making of schemes for the payment of allowances out of the Industrial Injuries Fund in cases of injury or disease arising out of pre-1924 employment), in relation to the payment of allowances for such periods of incapacity for work as are mentioned below in this subsection—

(a ) shall be amended by the substitution in subsections (2) and (8) of section two of references to sixty-six shillings and to fifty shillings for the references to fifty-six shillings and forty shillings (which operate to limit the maximum weekly rate of allowance under any scheme); and

(b ) subject to subsection (4) below, shall authorise the making and variation of schemes so as to provide for the payment of allowances at a weekly rate not exceeding ten shillings to persons who are or have since the passing of this Act been entitled to weekly payments by way of workmen's compensation in consequence of an accident happening after the beginning of the year nineteen hundred and twenty-four.

This subsection shall have effect in relation to the payment of allowances to a person for any periods of incapacity for work resulting from the relevant injury or disease within the meaning of the Workmen's Compensation (Supplementation) Act, 1951, other than periods for which as a result of that injury or disease (with or without any other injury or disease) the Workmen's Compensation and Benefit (Supplementation) Act, 1956, applies to him, and other than periods before the coming into force of this subsection.

(3) The Industrial Diseases (Benefit) Acts, 1951 and 1954 (which authorise the making of schemes for the payment of allowances out of the Industrial Injuries Fund in cases of disease arising out of pre-1948 employment but not entitling the sufferer to workmen's compensation), shall have effect as if in subsection (2) of section three of the Pneumoconiosis and Byssinosis Benefit Act, 1951, after the words ‘the weekly rate of allowance in respect of disablement shall be forty shillings’ there were inserted the words ‘or, if the disablement is not total, twenty-seven shillings and sixpence’ (instead of the words ‘or, if the disablement is not total, twenty shillings’ inserted by subsection (1) of section two of the Industrial Diseases (Benefit) Act, 1954); and any scheme under those Acts which is in force at the coming into force of this subsection shall have effect accordingly.

(4) In relation to the payment of allowances by virtue of paragraph (b ) of subsection (2) above—

(a ) the Workmen's Compensation (Supplementation) Act, 1951, shall have effect subject to the modifications mentioned in the First Schedule to this Act; and

(b ) the references in that paragraph to workmen's compensation and to the happening of an accident shall be construed in accordance with subsection (5) of section one of that Act as so modified.

S-2 Extension of class of accidents treated as arising out of employment.

2 Extension of class of accidents treated as arising out of employment.

2. For the purposes of the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Acts, 1946 to 1960, an accident happening after the coming into force of this section shall be treated (where it would not be apart from this section) as arising out of a person's employment if—

a ) the accident arises in the course of the employment and
b ) the accident either is caused by another person's misconduct, skylarking or negligence, or by steps taker in consequence of any such misconduct, skylarking or negligence, or by the behaviour or presence of an animal (including a bird, fish or insect), or is caused by or consists in the insured person being struck by any object or by lightning; and
c ) the insured person did not directly or indirectly induce or contribute to the happening of the accident by his conduct outside the employment or by any act not incidental to the employment
S-3 Amendments as to certain increase in injury benefit or disablement pension \(or corresponding benefits).

3 Amendments as to certain increase in injury benefit or disablement pension \(or corresponding benefits).

(1) For the purposes of section fourteen of the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act, 1946 (which as amended by and set out in the Schedule to the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act, 1948, provides for increased disablement benefit for persons incapacitated from following their regular occupations or any suitable employment of equivalent standard), a person's regular occupation shall be treated as extending to and including employment in the capacities to which the persons in that occupation (or a class or description of them to which he belonged at the time of the relevant accident) are in the normal course advanced, and to which, if he had continued to follow that occupation without having suffered the relevant loss of faculty, he would have had at least the normal prospects of advancement; and so long as he is as a result of the relevant loss of faculty deprived in whole or in part of those prospects, he shall be treated as incapable of following that occupation.

(2) In section thirteen (unemployability supplement) of the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act, 1946, the words ‘one hundred and four pounds’ shall be substituted for the words ‘fifty-two pounds’ in subsection (2) (which enables a person to be treated as incapable and likely to remain permanently incapable of work, if the relevant loss of faculty is likely to prevent his earnings exceeding fifty-two pounds in a year).

(3) A married woman shall not be entitled to any increase of benefit under section seventeen of the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act, 1946 (which provides for increases in respect of children of the beneficiary's family), for any period during which she is residing with her husband and he is not incapable of self-support.

(4) Subsections (2) and (3) above shall have effect for the purpose of the powers conferred by reference to section thirteen or seventeen of the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act, 1946, by section eighty-two of that Act (or by that section as extended by section six of the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act, 1953), or by the Industrial Diseases (Benefit) Acts, 1951 and 1954, and any regulations or scheme made under those powers and in force at the coming into force of subsection (2) or (3) of this section shall have effect accordingly; and in subsection (3) of section one of the Workmen's Compensation and Benefit (Supplementation) Act, 1956 (which makes provision for the purposes of that Act similar to subsection (2) of section thirteen of the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act, 1946), the words ‘one hundred and four pounds’ shall be substituted for the words ‘fifty-two pounds’.

S-4 Death benefit.

4 Death benefit.

(1) In section twenty-two of the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act, 1946 (which relates to death benefit for the deceased's parents), in relation to deaths occurring after the coming into force of this subsection, the expression ‘parent’ shall include a parent by adoption, and the expression ‘mother’ shall be construed accordingly.

(2) Subsection (3) of section eighty-eight of the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act, 1946 (by virtue of which, for the purpose of any provision of the Act providing that benefit shall not be payable to a woman after her marriage or re-marriage, references to marriage include cohabitation with a man), shall cease to have effect, but the benefits to which that subsection applied, that is to say,—

(a ) a pension payable under section nineteen to the deceased's widow; and

(b ) a pension payable under section twenty-two to the deceased's mother (within the meaning of that section); and

(c ) a pension payable under section twenty-three to a female...

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