HC Deb 19 June 1865 vol 180 cc499-508

Bill, as amended, considered.

MR. CHILDERS

said, he had an Amendment to propose in Clause 13, which he believed took precedence of the Amendment of the right hon. Baronet (Sir John Pakington). In 1862 Sir Richard Bromley, now one of the Commissioners of Greenwich Hospital, held the office of Accountant General of the Navy, with a salary of £1,000 a year, and an allowance of £300 a year for a house, making £1,300. He also held the important office of Auditor of Prize Accounts, with a salary of £300 a year, which brought his official income up to £1,600. His health having become somewhat impaired from the labours of his office in which he had conducted himself to the satisfaction of all who had been officially connected with him, in the early part of 1863 he accepted the office of Commissioner of Greenwich Hospital, at a salary of £600 a year, with allowances of different kinds, amounting to something more than £200 a year. On his thus vacating the office of Accountant General of the Navy he received a special retiring allowance of £1,000 a year, being about £300 a year more than he was strictly entitled to, and it was declared that the Commissioner ship of Greenwich Hospital must be treated as a public office within the meaning of the Act. His salary as Commissioner, with his superannuation allowance, amounted accordingly to £1,300 a year, and he still continued by leave of the First Lord of the Admiralty to enjoy the emolument of £300 a year as Auditor of Prize Accounts. Under this Bill it was proposed that the Commissionership should cease, and the effect would be, as the clause stood, that Sir Richard Bromley would continue to receive £1,600 a year so long as he held his office of auditor of Prize Accounts. That appeared to the Government to be a fair arrangement; but it had been stated that he was entitled to receive more— namely, £715 in respect of his former appointment of Accountant General, and £800 in respect of the Commissionership, or between £l,500 or £1,600 a year, besides his salary of £300 a year as Auditor of Prize Money. This idea was founded on a supposed illegality in the condition, in the grant of pension, as to the Commissionership being an office within the Act. In order, therefore, to prevent Clause 13 from having a retrospective effect in respect of the superannuation allowance, he was now about to propose certain verbal Amendments. The clause provided— That if any Commissioner or any officer who is removed from office as aforesaid is at the commencement of this Act in receipt of any superannuation allowance in respect of any former employment in the civil service of the Crown, he shall be entitled to continue to receive, in addition to such annuity as aforesaid, the amount of superannuation allowance of which he is at the commencement of this Act in receipt, and no more. He proposed to leave out the words "in receipt," where it first occurred, and insert "entitled to receive in addition to the salary of his office," to leave out the word "of" after "allowance," and in the last part of the clause to leave out "in receipt," and insert "so entitled to receive." So that whatever amount of superannuation allowances Sir Richard Bromley was entitled to in addition to the Commissionership of Greenwich Hospital he would still be entitled to receive after the vacation of that office. He begged to move the first of these Amendments.

Amendment agreed to, as were also the two other Amendments which were subsequently proposed by the hon. Gentleman.

SIR JOHN PAKINGTON

said, he rose to move that the clause be struck out, and submitted that the Treasury had deprived Sir Richard Bromley—a most able and distinguished public servant—of £233 a year, to which he had an absolute legal claim. He asked the opinion of the Attorney General as to whether this was not so. He could not help remarking upon the extraordinary and unexpected course which the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Childers) had just taken. He was sorry to see that the Government had inserted in a Bill placed before that House a clause which he could describe in no other terms than as a shameful clause. The Bill was introduced many weeks ago, and the omission of this clause was moved by the hon. Member for Finsbury (Sir Morton Peto). The Government resisted the Motion, and had persistently adhered to the clause. The clause in the Bill, as it originally stood, had for its object to debar a meritorious and distinguished public servant from seeking a remedy in the Courts of Law. The Government must have introduced this clause under an erroneous impression, for the House would not have tolerated such treatment of any subject of Her Majesty. However, the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Childers) had seen right to change his course, and this change must be attributed to a conversation which he (Sir John Pakington) had with the Attorney General on Thursday last. He felt so clearly the nature and mischief of the clause that he drew the attention of the Attorney General to it, and asked him if he were conversant with the facts of the case, as he could not believe the House would tolerate such an injustice as was sought to be effected by this clause. After this conversation the clause which had stood for weeks in the unjust shape was changed so as to leave Sir Richard Bromley open to sue the Government in a Court of Justice. It was evident that the Attorney General saw the unreasonableness of the original clause. But the House had a right to be informed of the nature of Sir Richard Bromley's case. A Minute of the Treasury was passed in 1854 by the present Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time when Sir Richard Bromley was appointed to the office of Accountant General of the Navy, in which the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer recognized the services of Sir Richard Bromley during the Irish famine, and mentioned eleven instances in which that gentleman had performed essential service to the country, apart from his official duties, and gratuitously. The Minute went on to say that those services ought to establish his claim to a special reward, and ought to be taken into consideration when the amount of his retiring allowance came to he settled. He (Sir John Pakington) in 1858 found Sir Richard Bromley as Accountant General of the Navy, and about this time his health gave way, and it became so impaired that it was necessary to give him a long leave of absence. On that occasion a Minute was drawn up at the Admiralty in which he (Sir John Pakington) thought it due to Sir Richard Bromley to express his sense of the manner in which this able officer had discharged his duties, and that such a series of special services established a claim to special acknowledgment and reward and the highest superannuation allowance consistent with the existing regulations. Sir Richard Bromley was then allowed a long leave of absence, and his health was restored; he returned to his duties and continued to act for two or three years as Accountant General until his health again broke down from the multifarious duties which for a long series of years he had performed. In 1862 he asked the Duke of Somerset to increase his salary by £500 a year for additional duties placed upon him, and the Duke of Somerset replied that he wished him to go to Greenwich Hospital with a view to reform it, and that this would be his reward. In October, 1862, Sir Richard Bromley expressed to the Duke of Somerset that if it was his Grace's pleasure to appoint him a Civil Commissioner of the Hospital he should be happy to accept it, as he could hold it with his pension. In December, 1862, Mr. Whitbread, the Lord of the Admiralty, by the direction of the Duke of Somerset, again asked Sir Richard Bromley if he would go to Greenwich Hospital, and Sir Richard Bromley, on the 9th December, replied that he was willing, as he felt the work of his present office too harrassing to go on with after thirty-three years of service, and he could hold the Commissionership, with his pension, as others had done. In this he alluded to Lord Auckland and Sir Thomas Thompson, both of whom held the office with an untouched pension. In February, 1863, Captain Drummond and Lord Clarence Paget spoke to him on the subject, and on the 19th of March, Captain Ryder, the Private Secretary of the Duke of Somerset, wrote that he was directed to inform him that it was the pleasure of the Queen to approve of his being appointed to a Commissionership of Greenwich Hospital. Thus this office was offered to Sir Richard Bromley without conditions, and was accepted by him on the principle that he was entitled to hold his full pension. In April, 1863, Sir Richard Bromley wrote to the Secretary of the Admiralty resigning his office of Accountant General, applying for his pension to be granted him, and the Board of Admiralty passed a Minute recommending his pension to be fixed at the largest amount consistent with the law, which would be £1,300 a year. At the moment the Board of Admiralty recommended the highest amount of pension to Sir Richard Bromley he was in possession of his appointment at Greenwich Hospital, In their Minute of July, 1863, the Treasury said that under the Superannuation Act he was entitled to £715 a year, but added that with a view to mark the sense entertained of Sir Richard Bromley's eminent and special services, and with the understanding that the Superannuation Act applied to his appointment in Greenwich Hospital, his allowance would be fixed at £1,000 per annum. Now, was Greenwich Hospital under the Superannuation Act? He (Sir John Pakington) did not think any Member of the Treasury Bench would say it was. The Government had unjustly and illegally endeavoured to override the Act of Parliament by introducing a condition of this kind, and to set up their own decision in opposition to the Superannuation Act. Professing to give Sir Richard Bromley £1,000 a year they had practically reduced his pension to £481, although he had a positive legal right under the Superannuation Act to £715 a year. He admitted that Sir Richard Bromley had no absolute right to the £1,000 promised him, and that to give him that sum would be an act of grace and favour on the part of the Treasury for which he would be grateful; but if he applied to the Court of Queen's Bench for a mandamus the Treasury might be compelled to pay him the £715 a year, to which he was entitled under the Superannuation Act. The hon. Member opposite (Mr. Childers) had consented to alter the clause so as no longer to preclude Sir Richard Bromley from asserting his right in a court of law; and he therefore appealed to the hon. Gentleman and to the House, whether it was not better that a claim of that kind, on the part of a distinguished public servant, should be met by the generosity and good feeling of the Government rather than that he should be driven to establish it against them in a Court of Justice. The clause applied to Sir Richard Bromley and to him only, and its sole effect had been to keep him out of a court of law. The words having that effect being, however, now abandoned, he asked what was the object of retaining the clause at all? He hoped the House would support him in his endeavour to have the clause struck out altogether, as a record against an attempt to deprive a distinguished officer of his rights. He moved the rejection of the clause.

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

said, he was at a loss to understand what object the right hon. Gentleman (Sir John Pakington) could have in objecting to a clause which he himself acknowledged afforded sufficient security for perfect justice being done to the gentleman whose name he had mentioned. It was not at any time the intention of the Government to interfere with any legal right which Sir Richard Bromley might be able to establish, and he did not believe that the original words of the clause would have been construed in a court as having that effect; but the moment they found that those words were thought to be in the least degree ambiguous they had endeavoured to amend them, so as to obviate the possibility of any such construction being put upon them, and to leave Sir Richard Bromley with all his legal rights entirely untouched. If that gentleman was able to satisfy the Government that he had the lights which he claimed without having recourse to a Court of Law, they would admit them; but if he was unable to satisfy them on that point, or to establish his claim in a Court of Law, surely the House would not go out of its way to give him that to which, upon that hypothesis, he was not legally entitled. The whole circumstances of the arrangement had not, he believed, been fully stated by the right hon. Gentleman. As far as his (the Attorney General's) information went, he believed that the arrangement forgiving the appointment of Greenwich Hospital, and the pension, were parts of the same transaction. With regard to the question of law, having done his best to make himself master of it, he must say he thought that question was by no means so clear as it appeared to be to the right hon. Gentleman opposite. Putting aside all questions of form, the question was whether the Commissionership of Greenwich Hospital was an office in a Public Department within the meaning of the 20th section of the Superannuation Act. He had looked into that Act, but did not feel competent, without further consideration, to pronounce a decided opinion. If he looked at the list of Public Departments mentioned in the Act, he agreed that Greenwich Hospital was not one of those Public Departments, but it would be erroneous to decide upon the meaning of the words "public department" with reference to that clause only. No doubt Greenwich Hospital was not mentioned in the Act. No doubt the 14th section said that superannuation allowances were to extend to all civil offices and Departments of State set forth and enumerated in the schedule. But it did not stop there, for the same section gave power to the Lords of the Treasury to add to the list of Departments any others which then existed or should thereafter exist, and to place them under the provisions of the Act. Therefore, those enumerated in the Act did not exhaust the list of Public Departments. The question required examination whether Greenwich Hospital had or had not been treated as a Public Department. He was not prepared to say decidedly whether the Commissionership of Greenwich Hospital had been treated as a public office. Seeing that the payment on account of the office was not voted by Parliament, nor did it come out of the Consolidated Fund, he thought those were, at first sight, arguments in favour of the view of the right hon. Gentleman. But he did not think that these arguments were of necessity conclusive, and the House would be ill-advised if it were to come to a vote upon an assumption of the question when the rights of Sir Richard Bromley had been strictly preserved to him by the clause in the Bill.

SIR FITZROY KELLY

said, he was sure that the Government had acted under some misapprehension in this matter. He agreed that they ought not there to discuss a question of law; but he was also sure that when the hon. and learned gentleman (the Attorney General) had considered the terms of the statute of William IV. he would at once see that the Commissionership of Greenwich Hospital was not within that Act. He would state shortly the facts. When Sir Richard Bromley, after thirty-two years' service, was desirous of retiring from the office of Accountant General of the Navy, his services had been recorded in successive Minutes of the Admiralty and of the Treasury, and it was said that those services entitled him to the highest pension consistent with existing regulations whenever he should retire. He had performed many gratuitous services, and the Government had expressed a desire to reward him for them, and it was a question whether he should receive a considerable increase of salary; but instead of this course being acted on, he, at the suggestion of the Duke of Somerset, accepted the office of Commissioner of Greenwich Hospital. Sir Richard Bromley had accepted the office of Commissioner of Greenwich Hospital on the understanding that he was to receive £1,000 a year, or £285 more than he was legally entitled to as retiring Accountant General. On 1st April, 1863, when Sir Richard Bromley resigned the office of Accountant General, he was entitled by law to a permanent retiring pension of £715 a year; and, upon accepting the office of Commissioner, he became legally entitled to £818 a year more, making his total income £1,533 a year. This was undisputed. But the Government had offered him £1,000 a year, or £285 more than the £715 to which he was legally entitled. Such were his legal rights on the 1st April, 1863, when he resigned his office. He applied for his pension, and he hoped in addition to receive something from the grace and favour of the Government for his meritorious services. He applied, and then the Treasury made tills Minute. It recited his services, and the records of those services by the Treasury and the Admiralty, and then it recited that his permanent retiring allowance had been fixed at the highest amount. It went on — My Lords therefore feel that the case is eminently one to be dealt with under the 9th section of the Superannuation Act of 1859. The question he wished to ask Her Majesty's Government was, whether or not they intended to give Sir Richard Bromley £285 per annum, according to the recommendation of the Admiralty, beyond what he was strictly entitled to? Unfortunately, the Government had annexed the condition that the office was to be deemed to be within the Act of William IV., and by so doing, instead of giving Sir Richard Bromley the £285 per annum, for his extraordinary services, in addition to the £1,533 to which he was legally entitled, they had actually despoiled him of £235 per annum, out of the £1,533 per annum to which he was legally entitled. As the office was not within the Act of William IV., let the Government grant him a pension of £1,000 a year according to the statute, without more, and Sir Richard Bromley would receive the reward they professed to give him of £285 a year in addition to that to which he was legally entitled. If the office was within the Act, which cannot be seriously contended, the Minute was superfluous, and unnecessary.

MR. CHILDERS

said, he would explain why the clause had boon inserted, It was the principle of the Superannuation Act that an officer receiving superannuation and appointed to another office, should not draw more of his superannuation allowance than would make up the salary of his new office to his former salary. But it was necessary to provide that, on being a second time removed from office, the annuity should stand in the same position as the second salary. If the clause was not inserted in the Bill, Sir Richard Bromley would, apparently, be able to claim to have no deduction made from his superannuation, whatever deduction was legally made from it while he held office. Thus he would, receive more for doing nothing, than while in office; a state of things which he felt the House would be indisposed to tolerate. Sir Richard Bromley was at present in receipt of a total sum of £1,600, and that income, so long as he is Auditor of Prize Accounts, he would still retain. With respect to the supposed hardship of the Treasury decision, he was obliged to explain to the House that at Sir Richard Bromley's request, the Duke of Somerset had already made up to him all he could claim. On the 12th of June, 1863, and subsequently to his acceptance of the office of Commissioner of Greenwich Hospital, Sir Richard Bromley wrote to the Duke of Somerset stating that he understood that a pension had been granted to him of £1,000 a year, calculated upon his salary of £1,300 a year. Sir Richard Bromley complained of the condition which was insisted on—that his salary as Commissioner of the Hospital and his pension together should not exceed the £1,300 a year which he had previously enjoyed as Accountant General of the Navy. He then requested to be allowed to retain his £300 as Auditor of Prize Accounts, an office which he regarded as having been conferred upon him personally, and not in his capacity of Accountant General. In accordance with this request he was allowed to retain the office of Auditor, which till then had been combined with that of Accountant General, and it enabled him to receive the £1,600 which he had before received. He (Mr. Childers) asked whether that proposal of Sir Richard Bromley—in consequence of the decision of the Treasury—and the acceptance of the proposal by the Duke of Somerset to allow him to receive £1,600 per annum up to this time, as provided in the Bill, did not do justice to that officer.

SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE

said, he wished to say a few words, as the justice of Her Majesty's Government had been called into question. With regard to the liberality of the Government, he might state that if Sir Richard Bromley had retired from the office of Accountant General of the Navy on his superannuation allowance, and had afterwards been appointed to the Commissionership of Greenwich Hospital and superannuated or pensioned on the abolition of that office, he would be in a better position than if the Minute which had been referred to had not been made. The Minute intended to make a liberal arrangement for Sir Richard Bromley, but it was rather an injury to him than a favour. He hoped, after what had fallen from the Attorney General and the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Childers), the case would be fairly considered by the Government, and that the House would be spared the necessity of dividing on the clause, on the understanding that Sir Richard Bromley's legal rights, whatever they were, would be preserved to him.

SIR JOHN PAKINGTON

said, he hoped after what had fallen from the Attorney General, who had dealt very fairly with the case, that the Government would concede to Sir Richard Bromley whatever was due to him in point of law.

THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER

said, he was not prepared to enter into any condition.

Question put, "That Clause 13, as amended, stand part of the Bill."

The House divided: —Ayes 124; Noes 67: Majority 57.

Bill to be read 3° To-morrow, at Twelve of the clock.