§ MR. SWIFT MACNEILLI beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether he is aware that there are several chief petty officers now on the Pension List who have been pensioned on a scale of rating inferior to the position they held when pensioned off; and, seeing that they are the only class of officers in the Royal Navy that have not received pensions according to their rank, whether the recent Admiralty Order granting chief petty officers pensions according to their rank from the 1st April last will he made retrospective so as to include the men already on the Pension List who have 323 for years been under the conditions mentioned.
§ THE SECRETARY TO THE ADMIRALTY (Mr. ARNOLD-FORSTER, Belfast, W.)The Admiralty are aware that there are a large number of chief petty officers now on the Pension List who, having been pensioned before the 1st April last, receive pensions calculated on the lower scale in force before that date, but, as I have stated on former occasions, it has been decided that it is not practicable to make the new regulations retrospective.