SIR THOMAS ESMONDSTo ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether, in view of the fact that the Treasury, in December, 1904, informed the War Office that the ages for retirement of those temporary copyists selected for beneficial promotion to the established abstractor class were to be sixty-five and seventy years, and that this Treasury decision was to be applied retrospectively to temporary copyists so appointed since 1890 to the War Office, he will now cause the three War Office abstractor class clerks compulsorily retired from that office at the respective ages of sixty, sixty-two, and sixty, while efficient and with less than forty years of service, to receive the benefits intended by this Treasury decision.
396 (Answered by Mr. Victor Cavendish.) Full discretion rests with the Department concerned to call upon any officer to retire upon reaching the age of sixty or upwards. With that discretion I have no power nor wish to interfere.