HC Deb 11 June 1869 vol 196 cc1621-9
CAPTAIN GROSVENOR

said, he rose to call attention to the position of certain Third Class Clerks in the Departments of the principal Offices of the Admiralty. About ton years ago the flow of promotion began to slacken in the Admiralty, and these third-class clerks found themselves in a disadvantageous position as contrasted with that of other civil servants. From time to time memorials were in consequence addressed to the principal officers. In 1865 a committee of experienced person in the Admiralty and Treasury was appointed to consider this question. They reported in favour of an increased scale of pay. and, in December of that year, effect was given to that Report by an Order in Council. There was joy among these third-class clerks when this Order was promulgated, but cruel disappointment awaited them, for the benefit of that Order was restricted, owing to the construction put upon it by the Treasury. The question, however, was not as to the intentions of the Treasury expressed in any letter or Minute, but as to the benefit actually conferred by the terms of the Order in Council. The whole Papers had been submitted to an eminent Queen's Counsel, who was of opinion that the Order of February 16, 1866, if acted upon according to its terms, conferred upon all third-class clerks then in the service whether of eight years' standing or not, a right to have their salaries' immediately paid to them according to the new scale; and Counsel further stated that, in his opinion, it was not competent to the Treasury to place on the Order in Council the qualification of which these clerks complained. The learned Counsel concluded by staling that the case of the aggrieved clerks was not within the cognizance of the law courts, and that all those individuals could do was to forward a respectful memorial containing a statement of their grievances to the authorities. That opinion was signed "John Duke Coleridge," and the advice it contained had been followed, but without result. The right hon. Gentleman the first, Lord of the Admiralty might possibly urge, as the reason for his inaction in the matter, the large economical reforms which, were about to be intro- duced, but tins was a question of principle—of right or wrong—and he did not believe in an economy which was based upon the ruin of good faith and of fairness. He had no hesitation, under the circumstances, in asking the right hon. Gentleman to agree to the Resolution of which he had given notice.

LORD HENRY LENNOX

, in seconding the Motion, said, the Treasury had always differed from the Admiralty upon this subject, although it was true that the letter which had crushed the hopes or these young gentlemen was signed by the First Lord of the Admiralty at the time that he was Secretary to the Treasury. Knowing, as he must now do, the duties of these third-class clerks and the hardships of their case, the right hon. Gentleman would not, he trusted, still refuse to re-consider his decision with respect to them. The Order in Council announced that the salaries of certain of the third-class clerks should be raised at the end of eight years. Those who entered the service in 1857 and 1858, and those who entered in 1867 and 1868 enjoyed the boon; but those who entered the service between these two periods found themselves in a much inferior position. Although they had no legal claim whatever to consideration in the matter, he could not help thinking that they had a strong moral claim to have their case favourably considered. He (Lord Henry Lennox) had himself done what he could, but the Treasury was immovable. Cases of this kind had only to be well ventilated and to be properly laid before the country, to induce public opinion to back up Her Majesty's Government in doing that which was simply an act of justice. He would suggest that the third-class clerks should defer the proposal contained in this Motion until the period for preparing the Civil Service Estimates next year.

Amendment proposed, To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "in the opinion of this House, the members of the Civil Service are entitled to a scale of pay in accordance with the terms of any Order in Council which has not been revoked or qualified by a succeeding Order of equal authority,"— (Captain Grosvenor,) —instead thereof.

VISCOUNT BURY

said, he was glad that the noble Lord had anticipated him in seconding the Motion, which it had been his intention to do. The course that had been taken by the Treasury upon this matter involved manifest injustice to certain members of the Civil Service, which arose probably from sonic inadvertence on the part of the authorities, and not from any desire to act unfairly towards them. In 1866 it became necessary to raise the scale of pay of the third-class clerks from £90 to £100 per annum, but only clerks who had sowed, eight years were to receive that increase. There were a great number of persons who had not completed eight years' service, but who had gone some way towards it. They were in a move disadvantageous position than clerks who went in later. While seniors in the office were? receiving only £90 a year, clerks who were much their juniors received n higher salary.

MR. CHILDERS

said., that this was not at all an interesting subject; it was technical, and involved minute details which could not be of any very general interest. He felt bound, however, to give an explanation of the circumstances under which the change in respect of the salaries of those clerks had been made. The case had been stated with perfect fairness, but not with complete accuracy. In. 1865, as a consequence of the introduction of writers to do work which, did not require much brains, it became necessary to consider the position of the third-class clerks in the Admiralty, and a committee was appointed by the Treasury and Admiralty to go into the whole subject. the committee recommended that the junior clerks who entered at £90 a year and who received an increase of £10 a year should, after a certain number of years' service, but without rising to another grade, receive a sudden increase of £30, which would bring their salary up from £170 1o £200 a year, rising afterwards by £10. That plan would have involved an increased charge to the public of £1,51;; a year. The Treasury thought there would be au inconvenience in the mode of increase recommended by the committee, which would be demanded by others, and accordingly they made a different arrangement, by which they proposed that after a certain number of years the salaries of the clerks should be increased annually by £15, instead of £10 a year. This plan, which received the sanction of the Admiralty, and was carried into effect by an Order in Council involved an increased charge to the public of £2,043. Besides the change in respect of the annual increase, the Order in Council gave clerks on their entry into the office £100 instead of £90 a year. In addition to this, the Treasury, without any reference to the Order in Council, allowed the then existing clerks with more than eight years' service to receive the rate of salary they would have been entitled to had they entered the service at £100 instead of £90. Thus the clerks had got all that the Order in Council gave them, and some of them got considerably more; and the proposition of his hon. Friend was that because the seniors were receiving something beyond what the Order in Council gave them, the juniors should also receive something more. If such proposals as the one now made by his hon. Friend were agreed to it would be impossible to carry out anything like uniform arrangements in respect of the classification or of the payment of the clerks. He did not see how the case put by his noble Friend the Member for Berwick (Viscount Bury) of juniors receiving more than their seniors, could occur; because, if a. clerk had entered at £90 in 1864 his salary would have been rising by £10 between that time and 1866. There had been one case of inconvenience—that of a clerk appointed a few months before the Order at £90. This had been rectified. For his part, neither at the Admiralty nor at the Treasury had he shown the least disposition to underpay any officer. On the contrary, the motto he had always used was—"Pay your officers well, but keep down their numbers." The real extravagance of the Civil Service—and, in certain Departments, there could be no doubt that some extravagance existed —was in point of numbers rather than of salaries. Acting on the principle which he had mentioned, the Government were effecting great reductions among the subordinate clerks at Somerset House, which, when completed, would result in an economy of something like £10,000 or £12.000 a year; but they had it in contemplation at the same time to propose an improved scale of pay which the House, he hoped, would readily assent to. He trusted, therefore, that he should be freed from the imputation of any de- sire to pare down salaries. In the doctrine laid down in the latter part of his hon. Friend's Motion, which might almost be called a truism, he cordially concurred; but, having shown that the officers on whose behalf the Motion was brought forward had really received everything to which they were entitled, he Hoped the House would not be put to the trouble of dividing.

SIR ROBERT PEEL

said, the question which the House were engaged in considering was not the motto of the First Lord of the Admiralty in dealing with the Civil Service, but a ease alleged to be one of great hardship affecting the third-class clerks in nine departments of the Admiralty, numbering nearly 100 persons, and growing out of a misunderstanding between the Admiralty and the Treasury. The First Lord of the Admiralty, who, as Secretary to the Treasury, wrote the letter out of which this misunderstanding had now arisen, stated, at the commencement of his observations, that the subject was not a very interesting one with which to occupy the attention of the House; but it was so far interesting that it involved a sum of nearly £3,000 which these clerks claimed as their due under an Order in Council. His noble Friend opposite (Lord Henry Lennox) declared that these clerks had no positive right, though he believed them to have a moral claim; but had he looked into the Papers more closely, his noble Friend, he believed, would have formed a more favourable opinion. "Wait," it was said, "till next year's Estimates are under consideration, and the matter can then be brought forward with better effect." The answer was obvious; the clerks had already agitated this question through the heads of departments for four years, without obtaining any satisfaction, and early in the present Session, when a question was put to the First Lord of the Admiralty, his answer was very ambiguous. According to the right hon. Gentleman, because the seniors in the department had received something which they deserved, therefore the juniors now were pressing their claims. [Mr. CHILDERS: That is not what I said.] I took down the words. The right hon. Gentleman said that the case of the hon. Member who made the Motion was this—because the seniors had something given to them to which they were entitled, therefore the juniors now were asking for that to which they had no claim.

MR. CHILDERS

As the hon. Baronet says he has taken down my words, I may be allowed to correct them. I said that the purport of my hon. and gallant Friend's argument was, because the seniors had received something beyond that which they were entitled to, therefore the juniors now were making a claim.

LORD HENRY LENNOX

I should like also to make a correction of what my right hon. Friend (Sir Robert Peel) has attributed to me. What I said was that I believed the clerks had no positive right, inasmuch as when they originally agreed to serve it was at the rate of £90 a year, and any increase subsequently made was by the beneficence of Parliament and of the Government.

SIR ROBERT PEEL

said, he did not know whether anybody else wished to interrupt him, but he suffered no inconvenience from the remarks just made, in as much as he regarded the point at issue as one of public importance, and believed he had not over-stated the effect of any argument used in debate. The First Lord of the Admiralty told the House this was an uninteresting question; but before the discussion closed he hoped that the First Lord of the Treasury, with his accustomed spirit and sense of justice, would rise and acknowledge that these clerks had a just claim upon the consideration of Parliament. All the Papers in this ease had been placed before the Solicitor General; he had been consulted as one of the most eminent counsel in the country, and he gave his opinion, before he became in any way connected with the present Government or with the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Admiralty. That opinion was to the effect, that these clerks had clearly a case, and that the Government were over-riding an Order in Council. Here, then, was an occasion upon which the Government and the House ought to show generosity and consideration.

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL

said, he had no complaint to make of his opinion having been brought forward, more especially as the clerks, before doing so, had kindly asked him whether he had any objection to their taking that course. It was no part of his busi- ness to interfere with the discretion, of the Government in the matter; all he wished to do was to inform the House upon what materials the opinion was given. For as to the opinion itself he would say respectfully but firmly that upon the same materials lie should again give the same opinion, without adding anything to what he had previously written. He had nothing; to alter in the opinion he had given, but the question now before the House was totally different from that placed before him. The question submitted to him was as to the true construction of the Order in Council, and whether, the terms being clear, the Treasury had the power to limit its operation, and no one who looked at the ease submitted to him could come to any other conclusion than that the Treasury had not. The Order in Council was the first and leading document submitted to him, and no suggestion was made to him of the existence of any prefatory correspondence by the light of which the terms of the Order in Council were to be read. It appeared to him then, as now, that if the Order in Council stood alone it meant that all the third-class clerks at the Admiralty from the date of the Order coming into operation wove to receive salaries on the scale laid down in that Order, whether they had joined the Admiralty after the date of the Order in Council or were there already. It was then suggested to him that the construction placed on the Order by the Treasury was that whereas for the future all third-class clerks were to come in at £100 a year, were to rise £10 a year for eight years, and were then to rise by £15 a year until they reached £300 a year, it was only to take effect in the case of those who had been in the Admiralty eight years, and those who joined it after that date, but that it was not to apply to those who had not completed the term of eight years, who were to receive £90 up to the completion of that term, when the £15 a year was to be added. That interpretation he certainly thought there was no foundation for in the Order of Council, and if the Treasury had so limited its operation he was of opinion that they had exceeded their competency. It. however, turned ant—which he was not aware of at the time—that the third-class clerks who came in at £90 a year were receiv- ing a yearly accretion of £10, and therefore the question was whether if they had, for instance, entered a year upon the service they were to receive a retrospective £10 to put them on an equality with those who had begun at the £100. He never understood that his opinion was taken on that point. A very different question had been agitated between the Admiralty and the Treasury, and it appeared that the state of things was not what he had supposed in his third answer. It was further suggested to him that a person who entered at £100 a year might be receiving more pay than his seniors in the same department. That was certainly an anomalous position; and he thought that if the matter were referred in a memorial to the authorities it would be corrected. He was, at all events, justified in saying that none of the grievances he supposed he was advising upon now existed. His opinion was given upon the facts before him, and he had no idea of the previous correspondence and of the real state of the case.

MR. GLADSTONE

said, that the merits of the question were of a kind very difficult to follow, from its complex nature, and if his hon. Friend (Captain Grosvenor) wished to challenge the opinion of the House it would be necessary he should take some means for putting the House in fuller possession of the facts. There were, however, objections to the Motion which were quite independent of the merits of the particular case. As to its meaning, he had no doubt it was conformable to common sense and justice: but it would be very inconvenient for the House to adopt the terms of the Resolution. He was not aware that that House had asserted or admitted, or could by possibility admit in justice to itself or to the people, that the terms of any Order in Council constituted a title to a payment of public money. If they constituted an obligation to anything it would only be to an obligation on the part of the Government to make application to that House, but no Order in Council could bind the House or constitute a title to pay. His hon. Friend bad not adverted to that aspect of the Resolution, which was of a very serious character. He would hardly lay down such a doctrine as that the terms of such a document bound the Executive irrespective of the previous assent of that House, or constituted a title, to the receipt of public money. Such a doctrine was entirely novel, and; he trusted his hon. Friend would not press his Motion to a division.

Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."

The House divided:—Ayes 107; Noes 64: Majority 43.

Question again proposed, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair."