§ MR. J. W. MACLURE (Lancashire, Stretford)I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India will he explain why the small extra pensions, for which Chief Engineers and Superintending Engineers in the Public Works Department have hitherto been eligible, have been withdrawn by the orders of the India Office; whether any Dispatch ordering a curtailment of the privileges of officers of long service can have a retrospective effect, or can take effect before such Dispatch is publicly gazetted; and, if all the Correspondence on this subject can be laid upon the Table of the House?
§ LORD GEORGE HAMILTONThe exceptional pensions, which were sanctioned in 1883, are not to be granted in the Public Works Department in future, because the special circumstances which were then held to justify them no longer exist. The Dispatch does not affect any officers who were already in the Service at the time when it was written; and the case of those who may have entered since that date, but before its publication, has been provided for. The correspondence relating to the discontinuance of further grants of these pensions is contained in the Return recently laid on the Table.