Explanatory note

These Regulations amend the Social Security (Industrial Injuries) (Prescribed Diseases) Regulations 1985 (“the principal Regulations”) which provide for Industrial Injuries Disability Benefit to be paid to individuals whose employment has caused them to develop one or more of certain prescribed diseases listed in the principal Regulations.

Regulation 2 substitutes regulation 4 of the principal Regulations, which provides that certain prescribed diseases are to benefit from a presumption that those diseases were caused by a person’s employed earner’s employment.

The new regulation 4 provides for a person who has developed one of twenty prescribed diseases referred to in regulation 4(1) to benefit from the presumption that that disease was caused by that person’s employed earner’s employment, provided that that person was employed within the relevant prescribed occupation for that disease within one month of the date on which they developed that prescribed disease. It then provides for a person who has developed one of the twenty six diseases referred to in regulation 4(2) to benefit from the same presumption regardless of when they were last employed within the relevant prescribed occupation for that prescribed disease.

The new regulation 4 also prescribes, in paragraphs (3) to (7), additional disease specific rules regarding presumption in respect of eight other specified prescribed diseases.

Regulation 3 substitutes regulation 20B of the principal Regulations. The new regulation 20B lists seven diseases in respect of which certain words contained in section 103(6) of, and paragraph 6(1) of Schedule 6 to, the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 are substituted or omitted.

Regulation 4(1) to (6) amends column 1 Part 1 of Schedule 1 to the principal Regulations, which prescribes the diseases for which industrial injuries benefit is payable, by amending the description of four prescribed diseases and inserting one new prescribed disease.

Regulation 4(7) to (9) amends column 2 of that Part of that Schedule by amending the description of the prescribed occupation for one prescribed disease and inserting details of the prescribed occupation for one new prescribed disease.

Regulation 5 makes consequential amendments to the principal Regulations as a result of the amendment to the description of prescribed disease D12 by regulation 4(6)(a).

A full impact assessment has not been published for this instrument as it has no impact on the private sector or civil society organisations.