§ MR. DELANY (Queen's County, Ossory)To ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether he is aware that in various Government Departments in the United Kingdom there are temporary, other than boy, clerks employed, the services of whom are as indispensable as those of clerks on the establishment, and that when any of these clerks are absent from duty on account of sickness a deduction is made from their salary, a practice that is not adopted in outside commercial houses; and, in view of the fact that to many of those officials such a deduction is a great hardship, will he take steps to have this grievance removed, seeing that the present Government have already made many reforms in the conditions of employment of other civil servants.
(Answered by Mr. Hobhouse.) I do not see any sufficient ground for altering the rule under which only three-quarters pay is allowed to temporary employees. The rule is, I believe, more generous than the practice which generally obtains in private employment for temporary clerks.