§ SIR HENRY HAVELOCKasked the Secretary to the Treasury, Whether Civil Clerks of the Royal Engineer Department are to be included as regards superannuation in the terms offered to War Office Clerks; and, if not, if he will state on what grounds those clerks are deemed not to form a branch of the War Office, nor to come under the operation of the Superannuation Act?
§ SIR HENRY SELWIN-IBBETSONSir, the clerks of the Engineer Department are not included in the Admiralty and War Office Re-organization Bill. The circumstances of the reduction in the Engineer Department are wholly different from those in the two Offices named in the Bill. The number of clerks in the Engineer Department to be reduced is comparatively small, and the retirement, in their case, will not be compulsory. Even had it been otherwise, the scale of compensation would certainly not have been applied to them. The unit of extra compensation was fixed with reference, among other things, to the loss of prospect which compulsory abolition of office entailed, and it does not follow that the same unit would be adopted for an Office in which the maximum pay is £270, as in one the maximum of which is £800.