HC Deb 25 June 1903 vol 124 cc546-7
MR. BAYLEY (Derbyshire, Chesterfiled)

To ask the Postmaster-General whether, in view of the fact that for a number of years after the issue of the Fawcett Revision the Civil Service Commissioners issued a paper to entrants to the telegraph service promising them a prospect of £190 per annum, he will state whether the maximum salary attainable by an operator of the general body in London is now only £160 per annum.

(Answered by Mr. Austen Chamberlain.) Entrants into the class of telegraphists in London, which is the only class referred to in the notice in question, have still, as they always had, the prospect of attaining to a salary of £190 a year, if they obtain promotion to the class of overseers and senior telegraphists. The scale of pay of that class is £160, increasing by increments of £8 to £190; and promotion to it depends, as it always has done, on the occurrence of vacancies. The maximum salary attainable on the class of telegraphists is £160 a year, as it was prior to the Tweedmouth Revision, the Tweedmouth Committee having expressed the opinion that that salary offered adequate remuneration for the work to be performed.