§ Motion made and Question proposed, 3. "That a sum, not exceeding £1,429,600, be granted to His Majesty to complete the sum necessary to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st of March, 1910, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Customs and Excise Department."
§ Mr. P. SNOWDENThere are one or two points in connection with the discussion of the Excise Department to which I wish to call attention. The first has reference to the compulsory retirement of officers who have not completed the full term of 40 years' service. The old Customs and Excise and the Board of Inland Revenue have been joined, and the two Departments so formed a few months ago issued an Order reducing the age at which its servants might be called upon to take superannuation payment. I do not go into the question of the legal right of the Board of Customs and Excise to issue instructions of this character. The age has been successively reduced by Order from 65 to 61, the limit at which the age stands at present. The latest Order intimates that possibly at no very distant period the age may be reduced to 60. The matter to which I wish to call the attention of the Committee is very simple. The question of Excise officers' superannuation is regulated by the Act of 1859, and that has been interpreted by a number of circulars which have been issued by the Board of Inland Revenue since the period of the passing of the Act. The most important is the General Order issued by the Board of Inland Revenue in June, 1897. It states that officers of all ranks who attain to the age of 63 will be required to retire provided they have completed 40 years' service. My case is mainly based on the phrase of that General Order, that the officers are only to be called upon to 1651 take their superannuation papers if they have reached the age of 63 and have completed 40 years' service. That has been the practice up to within the last few months. The Board of Customs and Excise are now calling upon officers on the completion of 61 years of age to take their superannuation papers, notwithstanding the fact that they have not completed 40 years' service. That is an innovation, and one which, although it may be legal, is not justified by precedent. It is, I think, a violation of the expectations under which these men entered the service; at any rate, that was the opinion held and expressed by Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Goschen. Mr. Gladstone said that, in his opinion, the Treasury should take no action which changed the conditions under which the men entered the service. These men entered the service in the reasonable expectation that they would be permitted to complete 40 years' service.
By this Order the Department is making a new precedent, and officers are called upon to retire after 37, 38 and 39 years' service. When the anticipated Order comes into force fixing the age at 60, it will be quite possible for men to be called upon to retire five years short of the maximum service of 40 years. That is a very serious matter, because it means that they are called upon to retire at 37 years, with the loss for three years of the difference between the amount of pension and the amount of salary they will be receiving if they were kept for the full period of service. Another matter which I think constitutes a very real grievance is that the men, when they are called upon to retire, have gone a very long way towards completing another year's service. A number of questions from time to time have been addressed to the right hon. Gentleman the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, and now we have got from him the definite statement that any Civil servant who, on reaching the age of 61, is within three months of completing another year's service will be permitted to make up that three months' service. That means that a man may have been retired at 38 2–3 years, and therefore may be deprived of two-thirds of a year's pension. I do not wish to use a harsh term, but I think that is distinctly dishonourable. This man has earned at least two-thirds of another year's pension, and by this action of the Board of Customs the Treasury is appropriating what I believe is not only morally but legally his property. May I just sum 1652 up the points of grievance which these men have? In the first place, there is a distinct violation of the practice, which has obtained up to this time, that compulsory retirement shall not affect any officer at all until he has completed 40 years' service. Another point is that a man is being deprived of the uncompleted part of a current year's service. I do not want to trouble the Committee with a number of cases, but I may perhaps be allowed to suggest one or two. There is a case of an officer who until recently was a principal clerk in Birmingham, and if he had been permitted to remain only three weeks longer in the service he would have been able to obtain another year's service for pension, and that would have increased his pension by £6 a year. This man is poorer by £6 a year, and the Treasury is richer by £6 a year. There is the case of an officer in Leeds who had even a longer term of service before he was called upon to retire. He repeatedly put his case before the Treasury, but gained no satisfaction. This man was born in 1848, and entered the service when he had turned 21. He was called upon to retire on his sixty-first birthday. He applied to the Board to be allowed to complete 40 years' service, but was refused. He applied again about a fortnight ago to be given a full pension, in view of the fact that he had completed 39¾ years' service. This morning he showed me a reply to the effect that the Board had refused to modify the Order; and when he wrote to the Treasury they sent him a copy of the Board's letter that his application had not been successful. This is a case which is distinctly in violation of the statement in reply to a question given by the Secretary to the Treasury in the House some time ago. In reply to the hon. Member for Andover (Captain Faber) this reply was given. [The HON. MEMBER quoted text of reply.] Here is a case where that has not been done, and where, if he had been permitted to remain three months, he would have been enabled to gain another year towards his pension. The Treasury, under the Superannuation Act of 1859, have the power to grant the pension for the uncompleted portion of the year, or if they wish to do so to make an exceptional allowance on account of the compulsory retirement. Clause 7 of the Superannuation Act of 1859 provides: "It shall be lawful for the Treasury to grant to any person retiring or removed from the public service in consequence of the abolition of his office, or for the 1653 purpose of facilitating improvements in the organisation of the Department—"May I say that the reason given for reducing the age is that they want to facilitate improvements in the organisation of the Department. Therefore, it is covered by the words of this clause. The clause continues: "to which he belongs, by which greater efficiency and economy can be effected, such special annual allowance by way of compensation as on a full consideration of the circumstances of the case may seem to the said Commissioners to be a reasonable and just compensation for the loss of office; and if the compensation shall exceed the amount to which such person would have been entitled under the scale of superannuation provided by this Act if 10 years were added to the number of years which he may have actually served, such allowance shall be granted by special Minute … and no such allowance shall exceed two-thirds of the salary and emoluments of the office." Under those circumstances the Treasury have not only the power to do what I am asking of adding four or five months to the service, but they have actually the power to add a year to the pensional service.
There is another question which I wish to refer to, and I have been told this is the proper occasion to do so. I want to draw the attention of the House to the way the Board of Customs and Excise have remunerated their officers for their special work in connection with old age pensions. When the announcement was first made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer he described it as special remuneration. Later it became a "gratuity," and I think the name which it has been given entitles it to be correctly described as a tip. There can be no question of the efficient way in which these men have carried out the duty. I could occupy a long time reading eulogies which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has passed on the pension officers for the admirable and efficient way in which they have done their work. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has recently taken refuge in the statement that this gratuity is an addition to their salary. I do not blame the right hon. Gentleman for statements he may make in this House, and which have been put into his mouth by the permanent officers at the Treasury, but I think I am justified in stating that that is not a correct representation of the actual state of things. Of course, they were drawing their salaries in addition to the remuneration for pension work, but 1654 they were doing the pension work in addition to the work for which they were ordinarily paid. I am quite sure it is not the desire of the Board of Customs and Excise that their officers should work regularly 14 and 16 hours per day for seven days per week. That does not constitute an ordinary official day certainly at the office of the Customs, or at the Treasury. These men were working for the last three months of last year on an average from 14 to 16 hours per day, not for six days' work, but for seven. I have here statements giving the fullest details of the kind of work the pension officers have done, and these cases are not exceptional, they are typical. Here is a case of a pensions officer who was engaged in pension work alone 1,472 hours for six days per week, averaging 18 hours. In addition to that, he did all the ordinary work of a very heavy Excise station. He fully investigated just under 400 pension claims, and the special gratuity he received for this work from the Board of Customs and Excise was £18, which works out at 1¼d. per hour overtime. The clerk of the committee received £54. If this pensions officer had been paid what I believe is the recognised rate of pay for overtime of 2s. per hour, his remuneration would have been £85 12s. I have here the case of six officers in one town, and the total amount they received was £98. The clerk of the pensions committee, who had nothing at all to do, and I know everything appertaining to these cases of my own knowledge, but appointed one of his clerks to do it, actually received remuneration which amounted to £230, while the six officers who did all the hard work in connection with the investigation of claims received a total of £98. When we come to consider individual cases, the indictment against the Board of Inland Revenue for the way in which this grant has been distributed becomes all the more serious. Here is' the case of an officer whom I know personally. He distributed over 400 pension books in 10 days. He was at the same time doing his own Excise work and the Excise work of a brother officer who was specially engaged in pension work. For that work he received from the Board a princely gratuity of £2.
There is one other matter I want to mention in regard to the remuneration, because it shows the way in which the Board of Customs and Excise have approached this question. When we raised this matter on 25th March we were told by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that 1655 he had received no complaints; yet I know that at that very moment there had been sent up to Somerset House from one district in the Midlands alone 70 complaints, a petition signed by 10 supervisors had been forwarded, and 20 officers in a certain district in Shropshire had also sent in. There must have been at the time hundreds of complaints somewhere, either at Somerset House or at the Treasury. After stating that he had had no complaints, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said:—
I cannot help thinking that if these men feel badly treated they should first make a representation to the Inland Revenue Department. I am waiting for them to begin.The Secretary to the Treasury cannot say to-night that he has heard no complaints. They had begun when the Chancellor of the Exchequer made that statement, and the complaints have been coming in ever since. The Chancellor of the Exchequer at the same time promised that if any complaints were made they should receive the careful consideration of himself. Encouraged by that statement, the complaints increased. I have a letter in which one pension officer says:—After fruitlessly sending in complaints to the Board of Customs and Excise, I should have written to Lloyd-George, but as, according to the general instructions it must go to the Board of Excise, I cannot believe that it would ever reach him, and I do not think it worth while to waste my time.I have in my possession dozens, I might say scores, of copies of letters which have been sent by the Board of Customs and Excise in reply to these complaints, and they are all couched in the same language:—I am directed by the Board to inform you that the amount awarded you as remuneration in respect of old age pensions cannot lie increased.Just to show that the Board of Customs and Excise have never carried out the spirit of the promise made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I should like to read a letter which I have here. It expresses the case very concisely, though it is a rather lengthy letter; but as it will save many words of my own I should like to be permitted to read it. It is the case of an officer who had to provide special office accommodation for the old age pensions work, and he appealed to the Board for some acknowledgment. He says:—At the commencement of the old age pensions work my supervisor called on me and stated that he was authorised to obtain rooms in a convenient place suitable for the performance of the work. He said he was prepared to take £10 for three months. He tried to get a suitable place, but did not succeed in finding one. He asked me if I could provide accommodation in my house for a second officer and himself, and told me I should 1656 be sure to receive a substantial increase in my office allowance. On this understanding I agreed to provide the necessary accommodationThe letter proceeded to state that in the first week of the work 152 claimants called at the officer's house; that during the three months every person who called was asked into the house; that sometimes there were six or seven old people in different parts of the house waiting for interviews, and that the increase in the amount of gas consumed, as compared with the corresponding quarter of the previous year, was 7,000 cubic feet. To sum up the matter, he made an application to the Board of Excise and Customs for 50s. on account of the use for three months of this room and of the extra expense he had incurred, and he received from the Board a curt reply, saying that his application could not be entertained I cannot convey to the Committee any idea of the indignation that has been caused throughout the whole of the Revenue service by the way in which this pension grant has been distributed. I have a letter, not from a pension officer, but from a supervisor of Inland Revenue, who knows from personal touch something of the work that these pension officers have done. His testimony is all the more valuable because it comes from an officer who, in a very special sense, is a Board man, expected by the Board to look after their interests rather than the interests of the men he supervises. At the conclusion of a long letter dealing with other matters which are causing grave dissatisfaction in the service, he says:—The distribution of the pension payment is a scandal. Some officers who were relieved of Excise work and devoted their whole time to pensions, received the same payment per claim as officers who had their ordinary work to do in addition to the pension work, although assistance was also given to the pension officer in the former case by doing the clerical work. This resulted in one man getting £40, and another, who worked quite as hard, got not dug. The Board would not take the trouble to ascertain from supervisors and collectors how the money should be divided, but threw it to the service as carelessly as a man would throw some bones to a pack of bounds Lloyd-George will not get the service to work again as they did last winter.I am not going to say that these men are going to do their work less efficiently because of the way in which they have been treated, but it is only human nature that men cannot work so earnestly when they are labouring under a sense of injustice, as these men undoubtedly are. I would like to say that, from a revenue point of view, it is not desirable to treat these men shabbily, because they are practically responsible for the disbursement of about £8,000,000 of public money a year, and it would be easy, by a little carelessness, for 1657 an officer to throw away a great deal more than a proper amount of remuneration. I will give one case which came under my notice to show how important it is that officers should be encouraged to do their work well. This is a case where a pension had been granted to a woman in a certain town in the Midlands, and the officer went to give her her pension. Of course it was necessary that he should see the woman and obtain her signature. When he went the woman was not there. He was told by one of the daughters that she was away on a visit. He said: "Very well, I will call back later." The woman seemed anxious that she should sign for her mother. However, the officer went back, and when he saw the applicant he noticed that she seemed to be dressed very differently to what he had expected she would be. He had his suspicions aroused. To cut a long story short, he eventually discovered that the woman did not live there at all, but that she lived in a comfortable boarding house, where she actually paid £2 per week. I mention that to show bow important it is that these officers should be encouraged to do their work well, and that they should feel that their services are appreciated by the responsible authorities. Just one other matter, although I believe it will be raised by subsequent speakers. That is the question of the salaries of the officers of the Customs and Excise. I can quite understand that for the present it may be impossible for the Secretary to the Treasury to give any definite information, but I should be very glad indeed if, when he does reply, he is able to tell us what is to be done in the matter.
§ Mr. HENRY VIVIANI rise to appeal to my hon. Friend to consider the matter of the payment of the pension officers, or at least those officers who have been doing the pension work. It is not very congenial work to do; to take up point by point, and detail by detail, the work of Government employés; and I am sure that every Member wishes that some other method was possible than to bring it before the Committee. But I only want briefly to say that I went into this matter very closely, and, so far as can be judged from the information placed before one, the division of payment has by no means corresponded with the division of the work. It does seem that those who have done the bulk of the work—very trying work too, visiting the slums, and taking out extracts concerning the history of applicants, and sometimes men in unpleasant circum- 1658 stances—have been paid a few shillings;, whereas the men who merely stamped, or sealed, or gave their formal approval to the work were paid in pounds, or even more. It does seem that the first-named have a grievance, and I here appeal to the hon. Gentleman to see whether he cannot reconsider the matter. I can assure him that I rise with great reluctance. But the feeling that these men have not been fairly dealt with compels me to rise. I will say this: If the work at the start had been regarded as a piece of philanthropy, and it had been made known to those who administered the Pension Act that they were to act from philanthropic motives, I do not think they would have made it a matter of complaint. But when they see that those who have done little or no work receiving adequate and sometimes excessive remuneration for their work, and those who have done the real work put off with a few shillings, their feelings are to a large extent that injustice has been done to them.
§ Mr. ROWLAND HUNTThe House will remember that an appeal was made by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue to the Excise officers to make a special effort in dealing with the new and trying work of old age pensions. These officers were promised special remuneration. That was changed to a gratuity, and a very insufficient gratuity at that. I can give the House a case to show how the thing has worked out. The supervisor at Bridgnorth had a considerable part of two counties to look after. They contain eighty breweries, scattered about in a wild country. Two of his officers were taken away and sent to Ireland, and he had to do part of their work in order to help the rest of the staff, and keep them from breaking down. He had to do this extra work as well as attend to his ordinary work, which is also scattered all over a wild country. He had 745 old age pensions to look after. The remuneration that he got for all the labour he was put to extending over three months—very trying and worrying work—was £6—this for all his extra work night and day. The difference between what this officer got and what the clerks of the committee got is really extraordinary. The clerk of the committee who really does very little got an annual salary, and besides that he got 2s. 6d. per claim.
§ The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr Hobhouse)Do I understand the hon. Member to allege that in the case to which he has referred the clerk to the pension committee gets not only 2s. 6d. per claim, but a salary as well?
§ Mr. HUNTYes, that is so. [An HON. MEMBER: "The clerk gets his regular salary."] Sub-postmasters get 1s. per claim for merely helping the pensioners to fill up their claims. The registrar of deaths is paid 2d. for every nil return and he gets 2d. additional for every name upon any of these returns. The Excise officer did nearly all the work. He had to enter up the claim on the pension register, he had to interview each claimant and get full particulars of character, means, etc. In the country districts these officers have sometimes to go two or three times to the same village to make the necessary inquiries. Very often one old woman who has got a pension meets another and tells her she had better put in for a pension also. The Excise officers have to investigate these cases. They work very hard and the distances they have to travel are very long. They have to make up papers showing the result of their investigations; they have to make entries on the official registers, and they have to report to the committees as well; and they have to post the committee's decision in the register and post the decision that the applicant is entitled to the pension.
Let me impress upon the right hon. Gentleman many of these men had to work from four or five o'clock in the morning until ten or eleven at night. I think I can say that to my certain knowledge, and for doing all this, the gratuities, at all events in the Bridgnorth district, worked out at from 10d. to 1s. per claim. The long and the short of it is that the Excise officers and supervisors do most of the work and get very little pay while the outsiders do very little work and get very well paid. Several Excise officers have actually died from overwork, and there are quite a number of them now suffering from bad health as the result of overwork. The Government appears to have considered that they have got these Civil servants entirely in their power, and they proceed to work the old age pension scheme by a system of sweating. I think if such a thing as that had been done by a Conservative Government there would be a pretty good row kicked up by the Opposition in this House. As Excise officers are working men, I must ven- 1660 ture to say that the Labour Party can now see how Liberals treat working people when they get them by the short hair.
How is the administration of the Act carried out in Ireland? In Ireland it is generally the case that the Excise officers there had only to deal with the old age Pensions Act; they got their Excise pay, although they did no Excise work. They are treated better than those in England, and that seems to be a great injustice to the English officers. It does seem to me that no Government has any right to ask its own Civil servants, especially after having promised definitely adequate remuneration, to do this work and to work them extremely hard, and then to do them out of their just reward by substituting for what was promised a small and quite insufficient gratuity. A gratuity, as the hon. Member for Blackburn said, is a sort of a tip. Tips are usually large in proportion to services rendered. Government tips in this case are the very reverse of large, and I do think that nobody can deny that the Government have treated these men very badly indeed. It certainly is not right, and hon. Gentlemen upon the other side of the House who vote for an injustice like this, which is unmistakably a very great injustice, would vote for anything. I beg to move a reduction of the Vote by £100.
§ Question proposed, ''That a reduced sum of £1,429,500 be granted to His Majesty for the said Service."
§ Mr. HOBHOUSETie hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Philip Snowden), who initiated this discussion, has raised a subject which has been raised upon three or four previous occasions in this House, and perhaps I might be permitted to say a word or two in reply. I will take the question of the payments for old age pensions first of all. The hon. Member who moved the reduction touched upon the same subject, and so did the hon. Member for Birkenhead. The general allegation has been that the remuneration for old age pension work which, despite the assertion of the hon. Member who has just sat down, is given in addition to the ordinary Depart mental pay—
§ Mr. HUNTI did not say it was not an addition. I said it was not anything at all approaching enough.
§ Mr. HOBHOUSEThe hon. Member quoted the case of Ireland, and said that 1661 the officials there got their Excise pay, and suggested that the officials in England only got gratuities in lieu of pay.
§ Mr. HUNTThe right hon. Gentleman has got it quite wrong. I said that the Irish officers got the money for their Excise work, but did not do Excise work, and only did the old age pensions work.
§ Mr. HOBHOUSEThe hon. Member is mistaken even in that. The total remuneration for the working of old age pensions is £40,000, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer has over and over again stated that he is not prepared to increase that payment. Certainly on this occasion I do not intend to give any different pledge on behalf of the Chancellor of the Exchequer than that which he has himself already given. The hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Snowden) talked about this money being thrown about as bones are thrown to a dog—
§ Mr. SNOWDENThose were not my own words, I was quoting an extract from something written by an official. It was an extract from a letter sent to me by a supervisor.
§ Mr. HOBHOUSEThen the person who made that statement is entirely ignorant of the principles upon which the money is distributed. It is not thrown carelessly to anybody, but it is paid for definite work done. The money is allotted in such a way that a man who has the most work to do gets the most pay. In regard to what has been said about the scantiness of the remuneration for this work, I may say that the amount earned by a particular officer was no less than 75 per cent, of his pay for the quarter. It is not so large in all cases, and in some instances it ranges down to 12 or 15 per cent. Whether 75
§ per cent, was too much or 15 per cent, too little it is difficult to say unless we know the amount of work that is done. It must be remembered that the gratuity is not given in a haphazard way not in a careless or casual way, but it is given upon a regular scale. It is not unimportant to mention that the ordinary Excise work of the Excise officials must be enormously reduced by this arrangement. A great deal of the ordinary supervision in connection with breweries is entirely discontinued, and in some cases the ordinary licence work has been entirely taken away from these officials by the transfer of the work to county councils, with the result that a very small proportion indeed of the ordinary Excise officer's work is left to be done by the Excise officers who are employed upon Excise work in addition to the old age pensions.
§ Mr. ROWLAND HUNTDoes the right hon. Gentleman say that that happened in the case I gave him?
§ Mr. HOBHOUSEI do not know the name of the officer or the district, but I will make inquiries. It cannot be expected that I can carry in my head all these cases which occur in the country. All I can say is that my right hon. Friend' is not disposed to increase this remuneration, which has been given upon the definite understanding which he and I think is quite adequate for the work done. I am sorry I cannot go further into this question, but, under the Rules of the House, the discussion must now cease.
§ Question put, "That a reduced sum of £1,429,500 be granted for the said Service."
§ The Committee divided: Ayes, 66; Noes, 118.
1663| Division No. 379.] | AYES. | [10.1 p.m. |
| Acland-Hood, Rt. Hon. Sir Alex. F. | Fell, Arthur | Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich) |
| Anstruther-Gray, Major | Fetherstonhaugh, Godfrey | Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred |
| Arkwright, John Stanhope | Forster, Henry William | Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester) |
| Ashley, W. W. | Gardner, Ernest | M'Arthur, Charles |
| Balcarres, Lord | Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West) | Marks, H. H. (Kent) |
| Banbury, Sir Frederick George | Gill, A. H. | Mooney, J. J. |
| Barnes, G. N. | Ginnell, L. | Nolan, Joseph |
| Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry, N.) | Glover, Thomas | Oddy, John James |
| Bull, Sir William James | Guinness, Hon. R. (Haggerston) | Parker, James (Halifax) |
| Butcher, Samuel Henry | Guinness, Hon. W. E. (B'y St. Edm'ds. | Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington) |
| Cooper, G. J. | Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil) | Pretyman, E. G. |
| Corbett, T. L. (Down, North) | Harris, Frederick Leverton | Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel |
| Craig, Captain James (Down, E.) | Hazleton, Richard | Richards, T. F. (Wolverhampton, W.) |
| Crooks, William | Henderson, Arthur (Durham) | Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall) |
| Dickson, Rt. Hon. C. Scott- | Hermon-Hodge, Sir Robert | Ronaldshay, Earl of |
| Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers- | Hodge, John | Rutherford, Watson (Liverpool) |
| Du Cros, Arthur | Hudson, Walter | Smith, Abel H. (Hertford, East) |
| Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness) | Kelley, George D. | Snowden, P. |
| Faber, George Denison (York) | Keswick, William | Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester) |
| Thomson. W. Mitchell- (Lanark) | Williams, J. (Glamorgan) | Younger, George |
| Tuke, Sir John Batty | Willoughby de Eresby, Lord | |
| Valentia, Viscount | Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E.R.) | TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. Hunt and Mr. Carlile. |
| Walker, Col. W. H. (Lancashire) | Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton) | |
| NOES. | ||
| Alden, Percy | Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose) | Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek) |
| Astbury, John Meir | Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worcester) | Rainy, A. Rolland |
| Barlow, Percy (Bedford) | Harmsworth, R. L. (Caithness-sh.) | Rea, St. Hon. Russell, (Gloucester) |
| Barnard, E. B. | Hart-Davies, T. | Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough) |
| Beale, W. P. | Haworth, Arthur A. | Rees, J. D. |
| Berridge, T. H. D. | Hedges, A. Paget | Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln) |
| Boulton, A. C. F. | Higham, John Sharp | Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford) |
| Bowerman, C. W. | Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H. | Runciman, Rt. Hon. Walter |
| Bramsdon, Sir T. A. | Holland, Sir William Henry | Russell, Rt. Hon. T. W. |
| Brocklehurst, W. B. | Hope, W. H. B. (Somerset, N.) | Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford) |
| Bryce, J. Annan | Horridge, Thomas Gardner | Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland) |
| Burns, Rt. Hon. John | Jones, Leif (Appleby) | Scott, A. H. (Ashton-under-Lyne) |
| Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas | Jones, William (Carnarvonshire) | Seely, Colonel |
| Byles, William Pollard | Kekewich, Sir George | Sherwell, Arthur James |
| Cawley, Sir Frederick | King, Alfred John (Knutsford) | Shipman, Dr. John G. |
| Channing, Sir Francis Allston | Laidlaw, Robert | Silcock, Thomas Ball |
| Cheetham, John Frederick | Lamont, Norman | Simon, John Allsebrook |
| Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R. | Law, Hugh A. (Donegal, W.) | Soames, Arthur Wellesley |
| Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston S. | Lehmann, R. C. | Soares, Ernest J. |
| Clough, William | Levy, Sir Maurice | Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire) |
| Cobbold, Felix Thornley | Lewis, John Herbert | Thompson, J. W. H. (Somerset, E.) |
| Compton-Rickett, Sir J. | Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs) | Thorne, G. H. (Wolverhampton) |
| Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Grinstead) | Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J. | Trevelyan, Charles Philips |
| Cornwall, Sir Edwin A. | M'Callum, John M. | Ure, Rt. Hon. Alexander |
| Cotton, Sir H. J. S. | M'Micking, Major G. | Vivian, Henry |
| Cross, Alexander | Maddison, Frederick | Walton, Joseph |
| Dalziel, Sir James Henry | Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston) | Waring, Walter |
| Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles | Massle, J. | Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney) |
| Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall) | Masterman, C. F. G. | White, J. Dundas (Dumbartonshire) |
| Evans, Sir S. T. | Menzies, Sir Walter | White, Sir Luke (York, E.R.) |
| Everett, R. Lacey | Micklem, Nathaniel | Whitley, John Henry (Halifax) |
| Fenwick, Charles | Molteno, Percy Alport | Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P. |
| Ferens, T. R. | Mond, A. | Williams, W. Llewelyn (Carmarthen) |
| Findlay, Alexander | Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen) | Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.) |
| Fuller, John Michael F. | Morse, L. L. | Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.) |
| Gibb, James (Harrow) | Murray, Capt. Hon. A. C. (Kincard.) | Wood, T. M'Kinnon |
| Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford | Myer, Horatio | Yoxall, Sir James Henry |
| Gooch, George Peabody (Bath) | Napier, T. B. | |
| Gulland, John W. | Nussey, Sir Willans | TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. Joseph Pease and Captain Norton. |
| Gwynn, Stephen Lucius | O'Doherty, Philip | |
| Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard S. | Partington, Oswald |
§ And it being Ten of the clock, the Chairman proceeded, in pursuance of Standing Order No. 15, to put forthwith the Question necessary to dispose of the Vote under consideration.
1664§ Question put, "That a sum not exceeding £1,429,600 be granted for the said Service.
§ The Committee divided: Ayes, 135; Noes, 53.
1665The CHAIRMANthen proceeded to put severally the Questions, That the total amount of the Votes outstanding in each Class of the Civil Services Estimates, including Supplementary Estimates, and the total amount of the Votes outstanding in the Estimates for the Navy, the Army (including Ordnance Factories), and the Revenue Departments, be granted for the Services defined in those Classes and Estimates.