The new minister at once strengthened and reorganized the staff of his department. He disencumbered it of the vocational train ing and re-employment of disabled men with which it had not the technical equipment to cope, and this branch of "re-settle ment" was transferred to the Ministry of Labour, working in conjunction with the Boards of Agriculture and Education. At the same time he provided the ministry for the first time with an adequate medical staff both central and local, mainly by transfer from the recruiting organization of the Ministry of National Service. But he soon became convinced that the whole administration needed a more drastic change and decentralization of pensions administration, except for a central control of policy, was determined on. Eleven regions with central offices and staff, medical and lay, under regional directors were constituted, following the model of the war organization for recruitment. To each region was attached an outdoor medical staff appointed directly by the minister, for the examination of pensioners, and hospitals and clinics for their treatment, and a lay staff to supervise the work of the local committee staffs. For each region, moreover, was formed an advisory council, composed of repre sentatives of the war pension committees of the district, which met monthly for the discussion of difficulties that had emerged in local administration. The regional system of working carried the ministry very successfully through the great volume of work in connection with pension claims and medical treatment, which was at its maximum in 1919 and 1920. Thereafter the work declined and the last of the regional offices and advisory councils was abolished in 1926.
During 1918 three strong associations of ex-service men had been founded to formulate their grievances and war pensions committees were in many cases active in seconding their claims. The committee took a volume of evidence and sifted the whole working of pensions. Its recommendations, which were in the main accepted by the Government, were directed partly to giving greater precision to the rights of the pensioner or claim ant and partly to increasing the scales of pension. In the former direction, the first step was the War Pensions Act, 1919, which substituted for the informal appeal tribunal appointed by the ministry in 1918, a new series of appeal tribunals, independent of the ministry, constituted by the Lord Chancellor and consisting of a legal chairman, a doctor and an ex-service officer or man, to hear and determine finally all appeals against a refusal by the ministry to admit disablement or death as due to, or aggra vated by, war service. In the second place, a regular system of appeal to medical boards within the ministry was instituted for the benefit of pensioners who might claim to be dissatisfied with their pensions or to have become worse since they were last examined for pension. Moreover, pensioners and claimants were to be freely informed of their new rights of appeal. Finally,
pensioners were by the act of 1919 given a statutory right "to receive such pension, gratuity or allowance as shall be awarded, but the award shall be subject to the conditions contained in the Warrant." These concessions gave a substantial semblance of civil compensation to war pensions.
With regard to the scales of pension the Government sub stantially increased the rates of all classes of pension by an amount which bore a definite relation to the percentage increase of the cost of living in 1919 over the cost in 1913-14. No new class of pensioner was created, except that the disability pension for non-commissioned ranks carried a new allowance for a wife (maximum ios.od. a week) married before the man's discharge. The increased rates of pension were by the terms of the warrant fixed for three years, but were then to vary annually according as the cost of living in the previous year had varied, by at least 5%, as compared with the cost in 1919. But though prices have fallen the rates have been maintained from time to time on the ground that stability of prices has not been reached. The Government have recently (July, 1928) announced that the rates will not be reduced however much the cost of living may fall, subject to certain conditions designed to safeguard both the pensioner and the State—namely (a) that the rates of pension shall still be deemed to be based on the cost of living in 1919, and therefore liable to increase if (though only if) the cost of living should ever come to exceed the cost in that year; and (b) that the maintenance of the present rates is conditional on the scope of the warrants and war pensions acts, so far as regards the classes of pensioner admissible, and their existing principles of working, remaining substantially unchanged. Stability of the pension list is thus secured along with the rates of pension.
Following the generous increase of World War rates, the claims of other classes of pension were forced upon the Government, and substantial increases given to long service pensions, to pre-war pensioners, both civil and service, and to other classes. Early in 1920, however, the Government deemed it advisable to review and define its pension obligations. The Ministry of Pensions Act 1916, passed in the hurry of war time, had made the minister of Pen sions for all time the authority for awarding pension for service disablement, sustained either in peace or war. The Government decided that under normal conditions pension was more properly administered by the service departments who were responsible for the employment and pay of the man during his service. The result was the War Pensions Act, 1920, which confined the operations of the ministry to disabilities or deaths occurring as a result of *The rates quoted in each column are those applicable to ex-privates or ex-seamen and to officers below the rank of major or lieut.-com mander respectively. Higher rates are payable for higher ranks.