§ MR. CLELAND (Glasgow, Bridgeton)To ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether he is aware that the second class examining officers of Customs to whom temporary personal allowances of £7 10s. and £15 per annum respectively were granted as compensation for retardation of promotion due to departmental reorganisations had to serve from thirteen to sixteen years before obtaining the 1301 position, while officers are at present promoted in the ordinary course at less than six years, and every officer on completion of eight years' service will receive the salary of second class examining officer if not promoted at that time; and that a difference of eight years' deferred promotion to the seniors represents a loss of £60 per annum for a lengthened period against which only £7 10s. or £15 per annum has been granted for a short period, with the result that, in the event of neither officer obtaining any further advancement in the service, the officer at present promoted will be eight years longer in receipt of the maximum salary, and will receive upwards of £1,000 more than the senior; and, if so, whether the Board of Customs and the Treasury will reconsider the case of those officers whose promotion was delayed through circumstances over which they had no control, with a view to giving a personal allowance until the maximum salary is reached; as a partial compensation for the loss they have sustained.
§ (Answered by Mr. McKenna.) The service as outdoor officer of the second class examining officers to whom temporary allowances have been or will be granted as compensation for retardation of promotion is as follows:—Under thirteen years, 236 officers; between thirteen and sixteen years (the period stated in the Question), 230 officers; over sixteen years, 73 officers. It is true that officers (assistants of Customs) are now being promoted to the grade of second class examining officer after less than six years' service in the Department, and that, if not so promoted after eight years' service, they will be allowed the salary of that grade. But the older officers to whom the compensation allowances have been granted entered the department as outdoor officers, and as such were required to perform a certain amount of inferior work which has now been handed over to the unestablished class known as watchers. Hence the entrance examination of the outdoor officer was much simpler, and the scale of salary lower, than in the case of assistants, and no proper comparison can be made between the periods served before promotion, or the amounts of salary received, by those who entered as outdoor officers and those who entered as assistants. With reference to the con- 1302 cluding part of the Question, the claims of the second class examining officers (formerly outdoor officers) are considered to have been reasonably met, as I explained in the Answer to the Question by my hon. friend the Member for the North Division of West Ham on 18th July last.†