§ MR. WILLIAM ALLANI beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if he is aware that assistant paymasters in His Majesty's Navy, when promoted at thirty-one years of age to paymasters, receive 14s. per day; while engineers between the ages of thirty-one and thirty-eight receive only 12s. per day; and, seeing that doctors on entering the Navy receive 14s. 6d. per day, while the engineer after five years' experience as assistant receives 10s. per day, can he state the reason for such difierences in pay.
§ MR. ARNOLD-FORSTERThe statement that engineers between the ages of thirty-one and thirty-eight receive only 12s. a day is not correct, the average rates of pay of engineer officers being as follow :—At thirty-one. 11s. a day with an allowance of 1s. 6d. a day for change of engines; total 12s. 6d. At thirty-three, 12s. a day, with the same allowance, or 13s. 6d. a day in all. Between thirty-six and thirty-seven (which, as I explained to the hon. Member last week, is the average age for promotion to Chief Engineer), 16s. a day, together with the allowance of Is. 6d. a day; total 17s. 6d. Between thirty-seven and thirty-eight, 17s. a day, with the same allowance, 34 or 18s. 6d. a day in all. As regards the latter part of the Question, the pay of surgeons on entry has recently been raised from 11s. 6d. a day to 14s. a day (not 14s. 6d., as stated by the hon. Member), and the reasons for this increase have already been given fully to the House. The reasons were peculiar to the medical service, and therefore the increase in pay was limited to this branch of the service.