§ MR. CLAUDE HAYI beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he proposes to take any steps, not involving legislation, to assimilate the status and pay of the staffs of the Board of Trade and the Local Government Board to the status and pay of the Home Office and other Departments, in accordance with the recommendations of the Committee appointed by Treasury Minute, dated July 18th, 1903.
§ SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANI am not aware that the Committee to which the hon. Member refers made any such recommendations. It is quite true that they stated that it had been represented to them that the salaries of the clerical staff of the two Departments were fixed at a lower rate than in certain other Departments but they did not understand that the question of remuneration had been specifically referred to them and they confined themselves to pointing out that these inequalities had been brought to their notice. No doubt the alterations in the status and remuneration of the political and permanent heads of the Department which the Committee recommended would raise the question of some modification in the position of the staffs; but as I have already informed the hon. Member, His Majesty's Government are not in a 202 position to deal with this Question during the present session.