MR. FIELDI beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether he will state the number of abstractors in the Civil Service who are at present in receipt of an annual salary of £100 and upwards, and the average number of years actually served by those officers as writers and abstractors before attaining that salary?
§ * MR. HANBURYPractically, all abstractors of the old class who have served four years as such, draw salaries exceeding £100. Their annual increment is £2 10s., and in all seven hour offices they started at not less than £91 5s., plus the amount of any bonus which they received as copyists, such bonus being calculated at the rate of 30s. for each year of copyist service over eight. The longer the service as copyist, the greater the initial salary as abstractor. The new abstractor class, which is to be recruited from boy clerks and boy copyists, will not reach £100 till after 12 years of service as abstractors.