§ MR. ANDERSONasked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Whether it be not the fact that the terms on which the two £4,000 pensions have been commuted would still cost the taxpayer £6,420 per annum of interest, leaving the debt of £214,000 to the Savings Banks still unpaid; and that, if the 1785 £1,580 saved every year were put into a sinking fund, it would take about 55 years to pay the debt; whether the transaction is not thus, to the taxpayer, equivalent to giving the pensions an assured continuance of other 55 years; whether, in order to end the payment sooner, and to recoup the Post Office Savings Banks the £214,000 taken from them, and the interest on it, he is to create ten year terminable annuities; and, whether it will not require for those ten years an annual payment of about £25,000, in place of the £8,000 now paid?
§ MR. COURTNEYMy hon. Friend's arithmetic appears to be correct; and he is also right in supposing that it is intended to create 10 year annuities for this purpose.