§ MR. REDDYTo ask the Secretary to the Treasury if he will state what proportion the assistant clerks employed in the General Register and Record Office of Shipping and Seamen bear to the whole staff; how many of these are eligible for promotion to the second division; and how many of them have been promoted; whether the Treasury will consider the advisability of extending the allowances of £20 granted to abstractors (old class) in this office in 1898 to the assistant clerks (new class), seeing that they are performing the same work for which the allowances were originally granted and that their initial salary is considerably smaller.
(Answered by Mr. Victor Cavendish.) The proportion of the assistant clerks in this Department to the total staff is as 36 is to 59. Seventeen assistant clerks are qualified, as regards length of service, for promotion to the second division. Since 1898 six vacancies have occurred in the second division, and have been filled by promotion from the assistant clerk class. The allowances, to which the hon. Member refers in the last part of his Question, were granted specially to certain officers, and I am not prepared to extend them.