HC Deb 22 February 1875 vol 222 cc622-3
MR. GOLDSMID

asked the Postmaster General, If he would explain to the House on what grounds he inflicted the severe punishments of dismissal and stoppage of promotion on the sorters of the Post Office for memorializing for an increase of pay, and on the clerks in the Savings Bank for alleged communications with the public press?

LORD JOHN MANNERS

In answering the Question of the hon. Gentleman, Sir, it will be necessary for me to separate the case of the sorters from that of the clerks in the Savings Bank. Of the sorters, five were dismissed, and several young men who had very recently been promoted were reduced to their former position on the understanding that if they behaved well they would after a short period be restored. The five men were dismissed not for memorializing for an increase of pay, but because they had allied themselves to professional agitators outside the Department, by whose assistance they were promoting agitation within. I may remind the House that the case of the minor establishment in London, including the sorters, was considered in July, and their pay and prospects were then improved. In the case of the clerks of the Savings Bank, none were dismissed, but promotion was stopped because statements had appeared in the public Press not only reprehensible in themselves, as imputing corrupt motives to the Controller of the department, but obviously proceeding upon information which could not have been derived except from official sources. A similar offence had been committed earlier in the same year, when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Edinburgh (Mr. Lyon Playfair) was at the head of the Post Office, and had been treated in a similar way. Among those statements, I may observe, were some challenging the propriety of the very promotions which I have felt it my duty to suspend. A Committee, consisting of gentlemen not belonging to the Savings Bank, has been appointed to inquire into this and other matters connected with that department, and I am now awaiting their Report, which, I have reason to believe, will be presented to me in a few days.

MR. GOLDSMID

inquired if the stoppage of promotion still continued?

LORD JOHN MANNERS

replied that it was necessarily so until he received the Report of the Committee.