Joseph Chamberlain, leader of the Liberal Unionist party and in coalition with the Conservatives, designed a plan that was enacted under the Salisbury government in 1897.

[2] However, the Workmen's Compensation Act 1897 did not require any form of risk pooling, such as insurance, on the part of the employers.

[5] Thus, the British working population was only fully covered under employer liability after the passage of the 1906 act and full "social insurance" for work-injury only came later with Beveridge.

Part of the confusion on this issue is that pensions, unemployment and health care all had developed more or less into social insurance in the early 1900s.

Courts took a restrictive interpretation of the act in Simpson v. Ebbw Vale Steel, Iron & Coal Co.[7] A widow claimed for the death of a colliery manager who had been killed in an underground accident.