§ MR. PATRICK O'BRIEN (Kilkenny)To ask the Postmaster-General if he is aware that the provincial night messengers have received no increase of pay under his new scheme as they were already paid the minimum wage of town postmen; and will he consider the case of the night messengers with five years of approved service, with a view to their being paid a similar increment as all postmen receive on attaining the age of twenty-five, or granted a proportionate increase of pay on the scale of the rural postmen.
(Answered by Lord Stanley.) The hon. Member appears to be under a misapprehension. The minimum of the provincial town postmen has been raised in four of the five classes, and where the unestablished night telegraph messengers were formerly paid at the minimum of the town postmen's scale it follows that in such cases they have received a corresponding increase. I fully considered the further points to which the hon. Member 200 refers, and I see no reason for giving these men any further increase of pay. Their work is of an extremely simple character, and widely different from that performed by postmen.