§ SIR HENRY KIMBER (Wandsworth)To ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether Civil Servants of the State why have previously served in the naval or military services are allowed to count the time of their service in the latter for pension in the Civil Service; whether a person who commences to serve the State at the age of twenty in a military capacity for seven years and then joins the Civil Service is unable to obtain full Civil Service pension as he cannot give forty years' service in the Civil Service but must retire at fifty-eight and count nine years less for pension than a person who entered the Civil Service at the age of twenty and who could retire on a full pension at sixty; and whether any action has, or will be, taken on the Report of Sir Edward Ward's Committee on the Unemployment of Discharged Soldiers and Sailors to remove, by legislation or otherwise, this disadvantage of ex-soldier and sailor civil servants.
(Answered by Mr. Runciman.) As regards the general question raised by the hon. Baronet I must refer him to my Answer to the hon. Member for Mile End on the 3rd instant. Civil servants of the State who have previously served in the naval or military services are not allowed to reckon their services in the latter for pension in the Civil Service They are not required to retire at fifty eight, but at sixty or sixty-five as the case may be.