COLONEL NORTHsaid, he rose to ask the Secretary of State for War if he can state the reason why the recommendations of the Select Committee on the Medical Department of the Army which reported on the 3rd of July, 1856, relative to the pay and position of the Medical Officers of the Army, have not been attended to? He put this question in consequence of the statement made the other night by the right hon. Member for South Wiltshire (Mr. S. Herbert) that several Regiments of the Queen had marched up the country in India unaccompanied by Medical Officers, and that great difficulty was experienced in finding candidates for the Medical Department of the Army. The Select Committee to which he had referred had strongly recommended that increased pay and other advantages should be held out to those officers, but though two years had elapsed since that recommendation was made, it had not yet been carried into effect.
GENERAL PEELreplied that, just previously to the Report of the Committee of 1856 being presented, Lord Panmure had submitted to the Treasury a draft Warrant laying down an increased scale of pay for the Medical Officers of the Army. The Treasury, however, refused to sanction the Warrant, and a subsequent effort on the part of Lord Panmure for the same object was equally unsuccessful in the same quarter. Under these circumstances, although the Select Committee had reported on the subject, Lord Panmure did not 1083 think it expedient to renew his application to the Treasury again after so recent a refusal. The Report presented in March last as the result of the inquiry in which the right hon. Member for South Wiltshire took part, and suggesting a scale of pay for medical officers similar to that which had been previously rejected, was now undergoing consideration in the War Department, and a warrant had been drawn up in order to be submitted to the Treasury, from whom he hoped it would meet with a more favourable reception.