MR. PATRICK O'BRIENI beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether the Civil Service Commissioners, have given notice that on and after July next condidates for assistants of excise who are already in the service will not be allowed to add more than one year to the ordinary age limit, and that candidates for assistants of customs will only be allowed to add two years; whether he is aware that hitherto civil servants who have served for two years in continuous 859 service have been allowed to add those two years, or any time up to five years they may have served, to the outside of age limit; and that numbers of young men have entered lower departments in order to come under this extension; and whether, seeing that by this sudden change they will be left in a lower position than their knowledge and acquirements entitle them to, he will arrange that those who entered the service under the old regulations should be allowed to compete under them.
§ MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINThe facts are correctly stated in the first paragraph. More than a year's notice of the proposed change was given, so that anyone interested had ample time to make his arrangements. No vested interest in the old regulations can be recognised.