§ MR. GRAHAM (St. Pancras, W.)I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he is aware that there are three clerks at the Home Office performing the duties of the staff of the Prison Department, but who are accredited to certain prisons, and are paid therefrom at lower rates of pay than are allowed to staff appointments; and, if so, whether he will consider the advisability of promoting to the Prison Department of the Home Office three senior members of the clerical staff in Her Majesty's prisons—namely, storekeepers?
§ MR. ASQUITHYes, Sir; three of the prison clerks who became redundant on the closing of the prisons are employed in the Prison Department, as it is considered better to utilise in any reasonable way the services of men who are still fit for work than to pension them off. One of them fills a post for which when it was first created the pay of a prison clerk was thought sufficient. The 1914 second fills a vacancy in the staff to which the Treasury declined to assign more than a prison clerk's salary. The third has not yet, I believe, been absorbed in the staff of the Department.