§ MR. SUMMERBELL (Sunderlandd)To ask the hon. Member for South Somerset, as representing the President of the Board of Agriculture, if his attention has been called to the notice posted at the Royal Botanic Gardens, to the effect that any person employed in the Royal Botanic Gardens who desires to make a complaint must send it in writing, with the complainant's name, to the curator, who will lay it before the director, and to the effect that it is strictly forbidden to make a complaint through an outside person, and any case of the kind will be regarded by the director as a serious breach of discipline; and will he say whether, in view of the right to negotiate through their representatives recently conceded to the workers of several Government Departments, he will have the notice removed, in order that the workmen at the Royal Botanic Gardens might enjoy the same privilege as the men in other Departments.
(Answered by Sir Edward Strachey.) My noble friend the President of the Board gave directions in February last that the same procedure should be followed with respect to representations made by or on behalf of the men employed at Kew Gardens as that sanctioned in the case of Post Office servants. The notice referred to by my hon. friend was issued in 1903, and it is now in course of revision.