HC Deb 19 June 1925 vol 185 cc978-9
Lieut.-Colonel HENDERSON

I beg to move, in page 17, line 38, to leave out the words "and the provisions of this Act shall not apply," and to insert instead thereof the words excepting the provisions contained in Section six of this Act, which shall apply.

Mr. SPEAKER

This seems to me to involve a matter for the rates. I shall be glad to hear the hon. and gallant Gentleman.

Lieut.-Colonel HENDERSON

That point had certainly not occurred to me. The object of the Amendment is very simple. Under Clause 6 there are certain definite provisions laid down for the transfer of a man from one Brigade to another with the sanction of the Brigade in which he is and if such a transfer occurs, when the man subsequently retires on pension the local authority from which he retires should be entitled, rightly, to claim on the former local authority for such amount of that man's pension as the local authority have to their credit owing to the fact that the man was paying contributions to the former local authority in which he was. But we found it necessary to exclude the London Fire Brigade from the provisions of the Bill, partly because they asked to be excluded, partly because the Royal Commission on the recommendations of which this Bill is founded suggested that they should be excluded, and partly because they have a statutory scheme which is as good as the provisions of this Bill. We found that if we let Clause 23 stand as it stands on the Paper at present what would happen would be that a man who moved from the London Fire Brigade to another brigade would not be able to gain his back service and vice versa, a man who moved from another brigade to the London Fire Brigade would also not be able to gain his back service. As the whole object of the Bill is to try to get a universal system for the whole country which will facilitate transfers and enable men who are worthy of promotion to take promotion in another Brigade without loss of rights, we thought it necessary in the case of the London County Council that we should put these words in to make it clear that men could transfer to and from the London Fire Brigade without loss of pension rights. I cannot see that that involves any greater charge on the rates than is already laid down under Clause 6 as it exists. It is merely to carry out the provisions of Clause 6 as they were originally intended. We endeavoured to deal with the question in Committee but there was some confusion and we were not able to get a proper form of words.

Mr. SPEAKER

Looking at Clause 6, I think I might take this under the heading of "definition."

Lieut.-Colonel HENDERSON

That is what it is really intended to be.

Captain BOURNE

I beg to second the Amendment.

Amendment agreed to.