§ MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORasked the Secretary to the Treasury, If he will state on what grounds the Treasury declined to apply the Superannuation Clauses of the Play fair Scheme when reorganizing the Customs Department, and refused to permit men who wished to leave or retire on the usual terms; if it is true that, in reorganizing the 1753 Department, no system of selection was put in force in forming the Upper Division; if it is true that men who, on previous occasions, had been passed over as unfit for promotion have been placed in the Upper Division with increased salaries; if it is true that men passed over as unfit for promotion in the reorganization itself have been allowed to remain, and have been appointed to "duty pay" seats whereby their salaries were increased; and, if it appears necessary to the Treasury now to institute a system of selection, why the re-organization itself was not carried out on that system?
§ LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHSir, the Customs establishment had been largely reduced, as recently as 1870–1. The present re-organization had its origin in appeals from the Establishment to be treated on the same terms as the Inland Revenue, which in 1876–8 had been revised on the system set forth in the Report of the Playfair Division. The character of the Customs Service is such as to make a change of this kind far from easy; but, after long discussions, the Treasury accepted proposals submitted to them by the Board of Customs. These proposals were by the nature of the case impersonal, because the selection of persons for duty—in other words, promotion—within the establishment of the Customs itself belongs to the Commissioners of Customs, and not to the Treasury. Subject to this general statement, and to the further one, that the frequency during the last four or five years of Questions in Parliament respecting the details of the Customs Establishment tends to impair its discipline, the answer which, after communicating with the Commissioners of Customs, I have to give to the Questions of the hon. Member is as follows:—The retirement of clerks under the Superannuation Act of 1859 did not form any part of the scheme for the re-organization of the Customs Department, inasmuch as no reduction took place in the number of persons employed. The new upper division of clerks has been formed from— 1. The number of principal clerks who remained in excess of the establishment; 2. The clerks who were on the first class of the old establishment; 3. So many deserving and fully qualified clerks of the second class as were necessary to complete the approved 1754 number of upper division clerks. In carrying out the re-organization in the manner I have described a system of selection was necessarily put in force, and in some instances senior clerks of the second class were passed over by appointment of their juniors to the upper division. Certain clerks who had been passed over for the superior situations of principal of a department, or principal clerk, who were first-class clerks at the time of the re-organization, have been placed on the upper division with salaries rising to £400 instead of £340, the maximum of the old first class; and in two cases clerks who had been previously passed over for a special case of misconduct, but were not on other grounds unfit for promotion, were included in the upper division. In two instances principal clerks of the second section of the old establishment were not deemed eligible for principal clerkships on the new establishment, and their juniors were accordingly selected for those posts; but the duties which the two clerks who were not promoted were retained to perform as upper division clerks were precisely the same as those which attached to their former offices of principal clerks, second section, and duty pay of the upper division has been allotted to them, whereby their total income exceeds that which they had on the old establishment. In two other instances clerks of the second class who were not deemed eligible for the upper division, but who have been retained in lieu of lower division clerks, are in receipt of certain lower division duty pay, whereby their total income has been increased. With regard to the future promotion of redundant second-class clerks to the upper division, the Treasury has given explicit directions that it shall be made irrespective of seniority and absolutely according to merit, and that merit should be looked for as widely as possible, and not necessarily in the department where the particular vacancy has occurred.