§ LORD HUGH CECIL (Greenwich)I beg to ask the Financial Secretary to the War Office whether he would favourably consider the propriety of establishing a pension scheme for employees in the Ordnance Factories on the same lines as those laid down by the Poor Law Officers' Superannuation Act, and founded partly on deductions from wages; and whether he would consider if moneys now available for gratuities to those employees might be better used for such a pension scheme?
§ MR. BRODRICKIt has before been stated to the House that it is not considered necessary or desirable to add to the number of established workmen employed in the Ordnance Factories; and even if the value of the gratuity to which some of the workmen become entitled were taken into account, it is believed that the deduction from wages which would have to be made in order to provide a pension is more than the great majority of the men concerned would be prepared to submit to.