HC Deb 08 May 1866 vol 183 cc585-98
SIR ROBERT ANSTRUTHER

, in calling the attention of the House to the proposed alteration in the system of promotion among the Medical Officers of the Brigade of Guards, and in moving for an Address for Copies of the Warrant or Order of 1860, under which a change in the system of promotion among the Medical Officers of the Brigade of Guards is to be made; and of any Communication from the War Office or the Horse Guards to the Officers commanding the three regiments of Guards, intimating the proposed change of system to the Officers affected by it, said, that though his Notice nominally referred to the Brigade of Guards only, he believed, in that fact, the Motion affected the whole of the medical department in Her Majesty's service, and, through that department, the whole medical profession throughout the country. It could scarcely be expected that first-class men of the medical profession would enter Her Majesty's service unless they could be certain of the rules under which their promotion was to be regulated. It was supposed by some that his Motion went further, and affected the authority of the Crown over the army. He should be the last man to wish to see the power of the Crown over the army controlled in any way, and he should regard it as a great misfortune were that House to take the control of the army into its own hands; but they had a right to expect that the recommendations which were given to Her Majesty by her advisers should be made with a due regard to existing and ancient interests, and that any innovation upon the ordinary rules should be preceded by ample notice to the parties likely to be affected by such changes. The promotion to the rank of surgeon in the Guards had hitherto been regulated by seniority in the regiment, and he had heard of no reason why a system which had endured for so many years should be altered. It appeared that in 1858 a Royal Warrant was issued, founded upon the recommendations of the Royal Commission of 1857, which ordered that the assistant-surgeons should as a general rule be promoted to the rank of surgeons in the order of their seniority in the service, unless exceptional circumstances should prevent them being so promoted. The medical officers in the Guards did not imagine that that warrant affected them, as it had hitherto been supposed that when the Guards were not especially mentioned in a warrant they were not affected by it. The warrant in question contained no special mention of that particular branch of the service, and, therefore, the medical officers in it were justified in believing that they were not affected by it. Either they were or they were not affected by it—if they were not, then his argument held good; if they were, then there was no necessity for any subsequent warrant. It now turned out, however, that in 1860 a special warrant was drawn up which decided that the promotion to the rank of surgeon in the Guards should go by seniority in the Brigade of Guards. He was not there to dispute the wisdom of that arrangement, but he thought that the gentlemen affected by it should have been informed of the existence of the warrant. The noble Lord the Secretary of State for War on the 9th of April, in answer to a question, admitted that that warrant had been neither seen nor promulgated. Doubtless the noble Lord in his reply would state that, although the warrant had not been promulgated, the medical officers in the Guards were perfectly well acquainted with the substance of the warrant; but he (Sir Robert Anstruther) had made inquiries at the orderly room of the Guards, and there was no copy of the warrant there, and the only document to be found was a letter in 1865 from Earl de Grey, in which he said— That promotion by seniority in the Brigade is recommended by his Royal Highness as the most suitable arrangement, and would be adhered to. In the face of the warrant, however, Assistant Surgeon Kerin was appointed, in 1863, over the heads of the assistant-surgeons of brigades, and Surgeon Wylde was promoted in a similar manner. He thought it extremely hard that an officer entering the service before the warrant was signed should suddenly find his prospects destroyed without the slightest warning. At the time the warrant was signed many officers, he was informed, would, if it had been promulgated, have resigned and sought advancement in other walks of life; but now they found that all the time they had spent in the profession had simply been of no advantage to them. The discontent which existed among the members of the medical branch of the army was not, he thought, surprising, when it was found that the professional prospects of those officers would be so suddenly destroyed. On the con- trary, indeed, he thought it was but natural that such discontent and distrust should exist. In addition to all the objections which might fairly be urged against the warrant itself, the time of its promulgation was about the worst that could possibly have been chosen. He had, he ventured to think, brought the matter forward in the interest of the service itself, as well as in the interest of the medical men. The assistant-surgeons of the Brigade of Guards did not ask that the warrant should be repealed—they did not say that it was a bad warrant, and they would even admit that it might possibly be a good one—what they asked, however, was that it might not have retrospective action. He should conclude by moving an Address for— Copies of the Warrant or Order of 1860, under which a change in the system of promotion amongst the Medical Officers of the Brigade of Guards is to be made: And of any Communications from the War Office or the Horse Guards to the Officers commanding the three regiments of Guards, intimating the proposed change of system to the Officers affected by it.

LORD HENRY PERCY

said, that the matter was a most important one. In his opinion the question affected the interests of the whole army. No Government was entitled to introduce measures having a retrospective operation unless great public interests were concerned. Some of these officers had entered the army fifteen years ago, and had served with credit and without the slightest reproach in the Crimea, in Canada, or wherever they had been called by their duty. No fault had ever been found with the medical organization of the Guards. The warrant was certainly not wanted, and was ruinous to the interests of the assistant-surgeons, many of whom had served thirteen or fourteen years. It was generally found, indeed, that retrospective measures created a want of confidence in the army, and when measures of that kind had been promulgated before it had been found desirable to make a fresh change. In 1854, for example, the warrant that was then issued had to be altered in consequence of the discontent it created amongst the officers in 1857 or 1858. The way to remedy the evil occasioned by the warrant in question was very simple—namely, to allow all those assistant-surgeons in the service before the promulgation of this warrant to have their promotion, according to the old regimental system. He thought it hardly worth while to create dissatisfaction by carrying out a rule which had lain dormant for so long; and he trusted that the Secretary of State for War would re-consider the matter to which his attention had been called, and not add to the discontent prevailing in the medical branch of the army, so largely contributed to the changes introduced since 1854.

MR. BRADY

supported the Motion, and said, that the changes which took place some time ago in regard to the medical officers in the public service had a great effect in raising the standard of those gentlemen generally. He, however, held that the advantages hitherto conferred on them were after all by no means commensurate with the services which they rendered to the country. Nothing was more calculated to injure the service than the adoption of any regulation by which the younger men of the service were advanced over the heads of their seniors, not because their merits were greater, but because it was thought expedient by the military authorities to introduce an entirely new system of promotion. The warrant in question committed a gross injustice against those officers who had entered the service upon the faith of that system under which promotion was to proceed according to seniority.

MR. PEEL DAWSON

felt a great interest in a discussion respecting the medical promotion in a regiment in which he had had the honour to serve, and the interests of officers with whom he was as sociated. He could not help thinking that this warrant had not been sufficiently promulgated, and that it had remained for a long time unknown even to those whom it deeply concerned. He thought that its provisions should be made prospective and not retrospective, and that it should not affect those officers who entered the service before 1860. If that principle were acceded to, in his opinion there would be no semblance of a grievance to complain of.

MR. INGHAM

said, that the fact of the medical officers having accepted the Warrant of 1858 seemed to be construed into an abnegation of all the privileges to which the medical officers in the Guards were formerly entitled. That, he thought, was a very hard construction to place upon the matter, and although he acquitted the heads of the Department of any intention to do injustice to those for whom the appeal was made, he could not help thinking there had been inadvertence. It was especially unwise to promulgate any measure of doubtful justice at the present time. He saw from the newspapers that a wiser course had recently been pursued by Russia, which, though a neutral Power, as England was, in respect to the agitation now prevailing in Europe, had issued a public notice with a view to reinforce the medical staff of the army. Seeing the difficulty of recruiting the medical staff of our army, he thought it was peculiarly necessary at that moment to observe religiously our engagements to those who rendered us such invaluable services.

THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON

Although I am unable to admit that the Papers for which the hon. Baronet the Member for Fifeshire has moved are documents which the House has any right to claim, still, as I shall have to refer to them in the course of my reply to his Questions, it will only be in accordance with the rule of the House if I lay them upon the table. I therefore make no opposition to his Motion. I have, however, to make one or two observations with respect to his remarks and the request which he has made, and I hope I shall succeed in placing the matter before the House in a somewhat different light from what it appears in the statement of my hon. and gallant Friend. It is quite true, as was stated by my hon. and gallant Friend, that up to the year 1858—and I think I may say 1860—the rule of promotion from the rank of assistant-surgeon to surgeon in the Brigade of Guards was by seniority in the regiment. However, in 1858, as has already been stated, a warrant was published altering in almost every particular the status of the army medical officers—altering their position with regard to pay, relative rank, allowances, promotion, and pensions. The rule of promotion from the rank of assistant-surgeon to Burgeon was, save in some exceptional cases which were specified, to be by seniority in the service. Now, it has been stated that, the Guards not being specially mentioned in that warrant, there was nothing to show that its provisions affected the medical officers of the Brigade. I was astonished to hear that statement. Does my hon. and gallant Friend deny that the surgeons and assistant-surgeons of the Brigade of Guards have taken advantage of every provision in that warrant which tended to their benefit? Does he deny that the assistant-surgeons are at this moment in receipt of the increased pay given by that warrant, and that in the Brigade of Guards two at least of the surgeons of the regiments have attained the rank of surgeon-majors simply through the operation of that warrant? There is no objection on the part of the surgeons of the Guards to accept those provisions of the warrant which tended to their advantage, and I have no hesitation in saying that the medical officers of the Guards have accepted this change as beneficial to them. If they had any doubts on the subject of promotion, surely it would not have been too much trouble for them to make inquiries as to whether the provisions of the warrant were to be set aside or not in their case. A great deal has been said about what has been called the Warrant of 1860; but that term is hardly applicable to the document in question, and if I have made use of the term it was in error. The history of it is as follows:—In 1860 a vacancy took place in the office of surgeon in one of the regiments of the Household Cavalry, and the Colonel of the 2nd Life Guards, Field-Marshal Lord Seaton, according to custom, recommended the appointment of the senior assistant-surgeon in his own regiment. At that time Mr. Kerin was not only the senior assistant-surgeon of the Household Cavalry, But also senior of that rank in the army. His Royal Highness the Commander-in-Chief, in a letter to Mr. Herbert (afterwards Lord Herbert) who was the Secretary of State for War, in recommending that the appointment should not he given to Mr. Buckland, the senior assistant-surgeon in the 2nd Life Guards, hut to Mr. Kerin as the assistant-surgeon of the Brigade, took occasion to state the way in which he proposed to carry out the provisions of the Warrant of 1858 with respect to the Household Cavalry and the Brigade of Guards, so as to fulfil the intention of that warrant, and at the same time to preserve, not the rights of the assistant-surgeons—who, it seems, he did not think had any rights at all to regimental promotion—but the rights and the privileges of the Colonels of the Guards, who had hitherto had the power of recommending these promotions. That letter of his Royal Highness, and the reply of Mr. Herbert, I shall be able to lay on the table of this House. The reply of Mr. Herbert will show that he had no doubt whatever about the propriety of the promotion of Mr. Kerin; the only doubt that existed in his mind was, whether or not the limitations proposed by His Royal Highness that promotion should go by seniority in the Brigade were in contravention of the warrant. The result of that correspondence between Mr. Herbert and His Royal Highness was a document which was submitted for the approval of Her Majesty, and which became what was designated the Warrant of 1860. That document, as I have explained, is not a warrant, but merely a "submission" by the Commander-in-Chief to Her Majesty of explanations of portions of the Warrant of 1858 applying to surgeons of the Brigade of Guards. Therein it is laid down— That on the appointment of surgeon becoming vacant, if in the Household Cavalry, the colonel of the regiment should be permitted to recommend for the succession the senior assistant-surgeon of those three regiments, if duly qualified, and he thought proper to do so, or, if he considered it more desirable to recommend the transfer of a surgeon from the cavalry or infantry of the line, or the promotion of the senior assistant-surgeon of the whole army, to fill the vacancy; and that the same rule should be observed on any vacancy becoming vacant in one of the regiments of Foot Guards, the promotion being given on the recommendation of the colonel either to the senior assistant-surgeon of those three regiments or the vacancy filled by the transfer of a surgeon or the promotion of a senior assistant-surgeon of the army if duly qualified. After this document came from the Queen there was no necessity for keeping the knowledge of it from the Brigade of Guards; but I admit that through an inadvertency that document was not well known, and that this is a circumstance to be regretted. However, for reasons I have mentioned, I do not think that that circumstance is sufficient to make it necessary to postpone the operation of the provisions the document contained. For I maintain that the Warrant of 1858 is the only warrant under which the surgeons of the Guards, in the same way as the surgeons of the whole rest of the army are placed. If they wanted to become acquainted with the regulations affecting their promotion, they had only to look to that warrant, and if they thought that exception should have been made in their case they should have applied for it. As it has been admitted by the hon. and gallant Baronet who moved the Address, the decision arrived at on this subject has been perfectly well known to the surgeons in the Brigade certainly since the year 1861. With regard to the case mentioned by my hon. and gallant Friend, in which he said there had been a regimental promotion, he has omitted to mention circumstances which fully show that instead of the promotion of Assistant Surgeon Hayward being an in- fringement of the warrant, it was in conformity with the principle laid down in it—namely, that not the surgeon who has served longest in the Brigade, but longest in the army, should be promoted. My hon. and gallant Friend has also referred to Surgeon Major Wylde. Now, the Warrant of 1858 and the submission of 1860 did not refer in any way whatever to any promotion excepting the promotion from assistant-surgeon to surgeon. The regimental surgeon-major, the hon. and gallant Baronet is aware, is one of the peculiarities of the regiments of the Guards, which does not exist in any other regiments, and my hon. and gallant Friend will remember that what applies to the medical department of the lower ranks of the army no longer applies to the higher ranks. Considering, therefore, that the decision arrived at in 1860 was in strict accordance with the principles laid down in the Warrant of 1858, and that the surgeons of the Brigade of Guards have without exception acted under it, and that it has not been shown that they were ignorant of the decision arrived at in 1860, I do not think any cause has been stated for setting it aside,

SIR ROBERT ANSTRUTHER

said, that the Secretary for War had misunderstood him, in arguing that he admitted that the assistant-surgeons of the Guards were aware of the warrant. What he had said, however, was that there was absolutely no communication to them till 1865, and the communication then sent referred to a very small part of the submission from which the Secretary for War had quoted.

THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON

I understood my hon. and gallant Friend to say that, although it had never been officially promulgated, the assistant-surgeons of the Guards were perfectly aware of the decision which had been arrived at in 1860. If my hon. Friend does not admit this, I am prepared to assert on information which I possess, that the greater part, if not the whole of the assistant-surgeons of the Guards, previous to 1865, were aware of the decision, and that it underwent considerable discussion among them. With regard to the question of the merit of the case, I do not think it necessary to enter upon it at the present time. I do not see why what has been generally adopted in the army at large should not be adopted in the Guards. The hon. Member for Leitrim (Mr. Brady) contended that faith has been broken with these officers, who were natu- rally dissatisfied that juniors should he promoted over their heads. But that is the very thing this regulation was intended to avoid, and the objection of the hon. Member for Leitrim therefore fails of its point. As to the passages which my hon. Friend read out from the Report of a Committee, which has not been laid on the table, but which, on the contrary, is a confidential document, I do not know how he obtained it, and I must decline to follow him into those passages, more particularly as the Report is one which has no special bearing upon the case. For the reasons which I have stated, I regret that I shall not be able to advise the Commander-in-Chief to postpone the operation of the Warrant of 1858 with regard to assistant-surgeons; but rather that matters shall be left upon the footing on which they were placed in 1860.

GENERAL PEEL

Although I am perfectly aware that the opinions I am about to express will not be in accordance with those of many of my hon. and gallant Friends, I cannot but regret that the assistant-surgeons of the Guards should have urged the hon. and gallant Officer opposite (Sir Robert Anstruther) to call the attention of the House to a case with which [conceive it has nothing whatever to do. I take this to be one of the cases in which Parliament has, happily, come to the decision that it is not within its province to interfere with the administration and discipline of the army as long as confidence is felt in the Secretary of State for War and the Commander-in-Chief. I believe it is the universal feeling of the country that our army should not be made a Parliamentary army, and I have never seen any disposition on the part of Parliament to make it so. But, unfortunately, hon. and gallant Officers on both sides of this House are constantly induced to get up to call upon the House to interfere with the discretion of the Secretary of State and the Commander-in-Chief, and to seek by proceedings in this House to overrule the decisions of the responsible heads of the profession. A great case of hardship is made out for these assistant-surgeons of the Guards. I venture to say there never yet was a case of a Royal Warrant dealing with promotions which did not inflict hardship upon some individual or other When the Royal Warrant altered the promotion from the rank of lieutenant-colonel to colonel in the army, there is not the slightest doubt that captains and lieutenant-colonels in the Guards suffered, or that this medical warrant of 1858 affected all the assistant-surgeons in the service. The warrant contemplated the promotion from assistant-surgeon to surgeon throughout the whole army. Previously, the promotions had taken place within certain districts, and there can be no question that several assistant-surgeons who were senior within their own districts suffered hardship by the alteration. Though it is said that the assistant-surgeons in the Guards were not aware that the Warrant of 1858 applied to them, that they were never acquainted with it, and that it was never sent to their orderly room, I can state—for I was Secretary of State for War at the time—that it was circulated in the usual way. It was no doubt published in the monthly Army List, and no departure whatever was made from the usual practice in that case. The warrant was drawn up by myself from the Report of the Royal Commissioners; and it is quite evident from his proceedings in 1860 that the Chairman of that Commission, Mr. Herbert, when he became Secretary for War, conceived that the warrant applied to the medical officers of the Guards. But, whether it did or did not apply to the Guards, I am quite certain that the hon. and gallant Officer opposite will not dispute the power of the Crown, on the recommendation of the Commander-in-Chief, approved by the Secretary of State for War, to make alterations with regard to the promotion of officers. Everybody who enters the army enters it subject to the alterations that may be made in the conditions of the service, even though he may have entered it with the understanding that the promotion was to be by seniority. Captains and lieutenant-colonels purchased their commissions upon the understanding that the system was to continue; but in the case I have already mentioned they had to submit The hon. and gallant Officer who brought forward this subject, I must say, somewhat irregularly quoted evidence not before the House, and proposed to deal with the Warrant of 1858. Nobody regrets more than I do that the Warrant of 1858 was departed from. It think it a very bad thing for the service; but I never doubted the power of the Secretary of State to make the alteration. In the House and out of the House, I have always done everything I could for the medical officers of the army, and I am happy to say that in the Guards great good feeling exists between the combatant officers and the assistant- surgeons and surgeons of the regiment. I only wish that similar good feeling had been universal throughout the army, and in that case, I believe there would hare been no necessity for altering the warrant. As the noble Lord the Secretary for War has agreed to give the papers moved for, I have nothing further to say upon the subject.

CAPTAIN VIVIAN

said, that whilst he agreed with the right hon. and gallant Member for Huntingdon that the House should not interfere with the discipline of the army, and that it had always shown great disinclination to trench on the prerogative of the Crown, he must still remind hon. Members that the House had a right to supervise everything relating to that great money-spending establishment, and if anything like a case of grievance or hardship were put forward it must give rise to a sort of jealousy if the House were told that they were not at liberty to pursue the discussion, because of the prerogative of the Crown. It did not appear to him that the noble Marquess had given a satisfactory answer to the point raised. The medical officers of the Guards complained that they had been taken by surprise; and he must say that the answer of the noble Marquess did not successfully refute that allegation. It must be remembered that many of these surgeons had given up large and lucrative private practice to take service in the Guards; and it certainly could not be satisfactory to gentlemen whose future must be materially affected by the contents of these documents, to be told as a sufficient reply that some of them had known of the warrant, and that others had discussed it. He hoped His Royal Highness upon re-consideration would see grounds leading him to decide that the warrant ought not to be retrospective in its operation, and that the officers who had entered the service under the previous regulations would be promoted in their proper turn.

COLONEL ANNESLEY

concurred in the opinion expressed by the right hon. and gallant Member for Huntingdon, and only rose for the purpose of making an observation with regard to a statement made by the hon. and gallant Gentleman who introduced the subject, and which was the only blot on the Secretary of State for War—how it was that the warrant, which in fact was not a warrant, was not promulgated to the medical officers of the Brigade of Guards. He thought the speech of his right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon had exhausted the arguments on this question, and he should follow the right hon. Gentleman with great pleasure into the lobby.

LORD DUNKELLIN

said, he thought his noble Friend the Secretary of State for War had scarcely met the case raised by the hon. and gallant Baronet (Sir Robert Anstruther). The grounds on which his noble Friend based his answer was, first, that the operation alluded to took place under a Warrant of 1858; and that the second order of 1860 was made known to the gentlemen whom it immediately affected very soon after it was written. In opposition to this the position of assistant-surgeons of the Guards was, that they did not accept the Warrant of 1858, and did nothing on the explanatory warrant or document of 1860. They had not accepted them because they really had no option in the matter. If they had had the opportunity they would not have consented to such a suicidal arrangement, for the sake of the additional 2s. 6d. per day pay, to take a position which would prevent them from rising to the higher ranks of their profession, or if they got there deprived them of their old pay or pension. With regard to the memorandum of 1860 this explanatory document was written, and what became of it no one knew—it was not made known to those whom it affected, and though his noble Friend said he had good reason to believe they were acquainted with it, he (Lord Dunkellin) had very good reason himself to believe that it was not known to many of them in 1861, or for some years afterwards. It was true that a rumour of the matter got abroad; but in 1863, two years afterwards, promotions took place in a regiment he was acquainted with expressly on the old arrangement. If the whole thing was to be opened the assistant-surgeons in the Guards ought to he promoted into the Line; but he was told that a surgeon going into the Guards had no chance of getting into the Line. The medical staff of the army was filled from the Line, and medical officers in the Guards were supposed to have been satisfied with the prospect of promotion to the rank of surgeon-major and its accompanying advantages. What they wanted to know was how this promotion was to go on; hut, at the same time, he did not think the Warrant of 1860 could be said to have been made known. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman opposite (General Peel) said this was not a question to be discussed by the House of Commons, as it related to the administration of the army; but this did not quite come under that head. He believed that in the matter of those warrants a hardship was inflicted on individuals without any benefit to the service; and as there were only eleven officers affected by them, he hoped his noble Friend would avail himself of the opportunity now afforded him of doing a very graceful act, and one which could not in any way impair the efficiency of the service.

COLONEL NORTH

said, the noble Lord the Secretary of State for War having referred to the Warrant of 1858, he could not help remarking that if the surgeons of the Guards were amenable to that warrant surely all the high offices affected by it should be open to them. He was one of the Committee of the House on the Medical Department of the Army, and he must say that every Member of the Committee was satisfied that the medical and hospital arrangements of the Guards under their own surgeons were a model for the rest of the army.

COLONEL KNOX

said, the noble Lord the Secretary for War had admitted that there was an omission in not promulgating these warrants. With that of 1858 these gentlemen had nothing to do; and it was admitted that the document of 1860 was not a warrant, but only a submission or memorandum. The noble Marquess said that the medical officers of the Guards took the advantage of the Warrant of 1858 by taking the increased pay. Why, of course they took whatever was given generally to the army. He thought great credit was due to the hon. and gallant Baronet for the manner in which he had brought this question forward, and he ought not to have been met by having the prerogative of the Crown thrust down his throat; for if an injustice was done to any body of officers what appeal had they beyond those who made the order if it was not to the House of Commons? He wished to warn the present Secretary of State for War, and those who might hereafter hold that position, that the Warrant of 1858 was breaking down, and they were getting inferior classes of surgeons; indeed, it was very difficult to get any at all.

MAJOR JERVIS

said, it should be borne in mind that the House voted all the supplies, and took a certain sum from the army and made the necessary provision for them. The Guards, however, were a separate and self-administering body, and that was the great point in the question. If they made it incumbent on any body of officers to look after the medical charge of their men, certainly they had a right to have something to do with the appointment of the surgeons. If they had for assistant-surgeons young men who had been, as it were, brought up amongst them, and in whom they had confidence, it was reasonable that they should wish them to be promoted and to keep them amongst them.

SIR ROBERT ANSTRUTHER

, In reply, insisted on the hardship of bringing parties under the operation of the warrant when the noble Lord himself admitted they had never seen it. He had not the least wish to interfere with the prerogative of the Crown in this matter, but he begged very respectfully to submit to the noble Marquess and the Commander-in-Chief, not as a question of right but of justice, that the action of the warrant should simply not be retrospective. He thanked the noble Lord for having agreed to lay the papers he required on the table.

Motion agreed to. Address for, "Copies of the Warrant or Order of 1860, under which a change in the system of promotion amongst the Medical Officers of the Brigade of Guards is to be made: And of any Communications from the War Office or the Horse Guards to the Officers commanding the three regiments of Guards, intimating the proposed change of system to the Officers affected by it."—(Sir Robert Anstruther.)