THIRD READING. (Hansard, 25 February 1890)

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR

With regard to the question which was asked mo last night by the noble Earl Kimberley, I am not quite certain that I properly heard or understood the discussion which occurred between him and the noble Lord Selborne, who also referred to the matter. However, I have now got the figures, which are already familiar to those who take part in the Black Rod Committee, and I can state them exactly. The actual saving which has been made on the occasion of the new arrangement involving the appointment at the Table of your Lordships' House is £1,400; and the amount is arrived at thus: the reduction in the salary of the office, in accordance with the Committee's Report, accounts for £600 per annum; the transfer of Mr. Thesiger from the list of Parliament Clerks, where his salary was £600, rising to £1,000, accounts for £600 more; and the abolition of the office of Secretary of Presentations accounts for another £500. That makes a total of £1,700. On the other hand has to be taken into account, as I am now in formed, the appointment of a new Clerk in the Parliament Office, with a salary beginning at £100. An allowance has also to be made for the officer by whom the large personal correspondence of the Lord Chancellor must be carried on in relation to ecclesiastical matters, and that correspondence will not cease or diminish merely because the formalities of presentations are transferred by the Bill to the Clerk of the Crown. I may mention, for the 1130 information of the noble Lord who put the question, that this matter was not arranged by me, but was recommended in 1874 by a, Royal Commission, and was agreed to in a correspondence which occurred in 1884, before I was in office. What has taken place will not diminish or alter the character of the arrangement by the fact of the transfer of the duties from one person to another. The amount of the allowance was fixed at £200 by the Commissioners, who recommended the abolition of the Presentation Office—an office which, I need hardly say, was far from being a sinecure. So that the noble Lord will see there has been a considerable saving effected. There has been some question as to the saving effected by the recommendation of the Black Rod Committee, acquiesced in by me, and carried out, though it was competent to me under the Statute to have appointed somebody else, had I not considered myself bound by the undertaking, as far as it was an undertaking, of my predecessors. But I think there has been a saving effected by the new arrangements, which include the appointment of Mr. Thesiger. The House, of course, understands that reductions, corresponding more or less to the two largest items in the calculation, would have followed the appointment of any other gentleman from the Parliament Office to the vacant place at the Table; but the particular appointment which I took the opportunity of making carried with it two further advantages which could not have been otherwise obtained—the rejection of an engagement to abolish the Presentation Office, and the consequent saving of £300 per annum. As I have said, the saving is £1,400, and by the appointment of Mr. Thesiger the saving has been £300 less than it might have been had I not taken him. That, I believe, is how the figures are arrived at, though I confess I did not quite understand them the other night, nor indeed do I now entirely, as neither set of figures appears to be quite accurate.