§ MR. O'SHEAasked the Under Secretary of State for India, Whether the only official information furnished to candidates for the Indian Medical Service regarding their pay and allowances when in India is contained in a Memorandum supplied by the India Office; whether paragraph 18 of that Memorandum states that the pay of a surgeon in charge of a regiment, who has passed the "lower standard" language test, is, if under five years' service, 450 rupees, and, if over five years' service, 600 rupees, a month; whether it is a fact that, although, with five exceptions, the surgeons in Bengal are qualified, not one of them having less than five years' service is now in receipt of the rate of pay laid down in the above-mentioned paragraph 18; whether, on the first of January last, only four of the eighty-four surgeons appointed to Bengal within the previous six years were in receipt of the rates therein specified; and, whether any mention of "officiating pay," which is substituted for the rates promised under the conditions of paragraph 18, occurs in the Official Memorandum inviting candidates to compete?
§ MR. J. K. CROSSI think my hon. Friend assumes that paragraph 18 of the India Office Memorandum guarantees to all surgeons of five years' service who have passed the language test the substantive charge of a regiment, which alone commands the pay of 600 rupees per month. The first and governing qualification for the receipt of 600 rupees a-month is that the "five years' service language test man" shall be in substantive command of a regiment. Till then he is only strictly entitled to unemployed pay. The Bengal Army List shows that on the 1st of January, 1883, of the 84 surgeons appointed during the six previous years, 21 were holding substantive or acting civil appointments at varying rates of Staff pay, and eight had not passed the language test. Of the remaining 55 only four were in substantive charge of regiments, and therefore en- 954 titled to the full rate of salary prescribed in paragraph 18; but 24 were officiating for the actual holders of the appointments, and were drawing acting allowances, which, though less than the full rate of salary, is more than the unemployed pay. The 27 remaining officers held no charge, either substantive or acting, and were drawing only unemployed pay as notified in the Memorandum. This Memorandum is the only official information furnished to candidates for the Indian Medical Service. It mentions only the salaries of the substantive appointments tenable by medical officers, and does not refer to the rates of officiating pay, which are not substituted for the rates laid down in the Memorandum, but are supplementary to them, being payments to officers who do not come under the conditions of the Memorandum. I have several times explained the causes of there being a temporary excess of medical officers who do not hold the substantive appointments which command the higher rates of pay.