§ * MR. HUDSON (Newcastle-on-Tyne)I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if his attention has been called to the difference in pay existing in the subordinate ranks of officers employed in His Majesty's local and convict prisons; can he, in view of the fact that the responsibilities have been equalised by reason of convicts not only being located in local prisons but in those cases where the convict is sentenced to penal servitude the term of separate confinement has to be passed there, give to the officers of local prisons the same annual increment and maximum salary as officers in convict prisons.
§ * MR. GLADSTONEConvicts have been kept in local prisons for their term of separate confinement for the last nineteen years, and the recent decision to send certain selected convicts to local prisons after the term of their separate confinement is completed would offer no sufficient justification for an increase of pay. It affects only three prisons, and the convicts, being carefully selected men of good behaviour, throw no special responsibility on the warders. The 239 petitions from prison officers which are now being received will be given careful consideration, but any general increase of pay would involve a very serious additional charge on the Prison Vote.