EARL COMPTON (York, W.R., Barnsley)I beg to ask the Postmaster General whether the average service of clerks employed at the Central Telegraph Office who were promoted to the Senior Class prior to the issue of the Raikes scheme in 1890 was eighteen years; whether he is aware that there are now clerks with over twenty years' service whose prospects of promotion are remote, and whose annual leave is ten days less than the Senior Class; and whether he will make some arrangement whereby the amount of annual leave may in future depend on the number of years' service?
§ THE POSTMASTER GENERAL (Sir J. FERGUSSON,) Manchester; N.E.At the time of the last revision of the Central Telegraph Office, which took place in 1890, the average service of those who were promoted from the First to the Senior Class was between eighteen and nineteen years. Out of six hundred persons now standing on the First Class, only twenty are of more than twenty years' service, and of these some have been passed over as ineligible for promotion. Not one of the six hundred has yet reached the maximum of the First Class. The period of annual leave of absence is, in the case of the Senior Class, one month; and, in the case of the First Class, three weeks. It is not considered advisable to regulate the annual leave by length of service.