§ First Report of the Select Committee considered (according to Order).
1330*THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (The Earl of MORLEY)said, he wished to say a few words in presenting this Report for the consideration of the House. Their Lordships would remember that last year when the House of Lords Estimates were before the House of Commons the sum of £500 was struck off the total amount of the salaries of the House of Lords officials on the ground that those officials wore paid on a higher scale than those of the House of Commons. That statement was based on false inferences. The Correspondence attached to the Report showed exactly what had taken place between the Treasury and the Offices Committee on the subject. The difference between the salaries of the officials of the two Houses was partly due to a difference in the classification of the clerks, and was partly due to the longer standing of the officials of the House of Lords, who had an average of 25½ years' service, as against an average of 17¼ years' service on the part of the House of Commons officials. It followed that a mere superficial examination of the figures would give a very erroneous impression with regard to the salaries paid to the officers of the two Houses respectively. At the end of last year the usual Estimate for 1894–5 was presented, which was larger by £193 than the Estimate for 1893–4, the increase being due to the ordinary increment of salaries. The Treasury refused to present the Estimate to the House of Commons, and they requested the authorities of the House of Lords to reconsider the Estimate with a view to its reduction to an amount not exceeding the grant for 1893–4. The House of Lords Offices Committee replied that they could not reduce the Estimate without a breach of faith towards their officials, and without setting aside the arrangement entered into in 1868. It had been proposed that a Joint Committee of the two Houses should examine into the comparative salaries of their staffs, but that proposal, he regretted to say, had been found to be an inconvenient one and had fallen through. Following upon that an interview had taken place between Sir J. T. Hibbert, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury; Sir F. Mowatt, the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury; and Lord Welby, and equal anxiety was expressed on both sides to arrive at 1331 some arrangement. The result of that interview was fairly set forth in the letters of the Clerk of the Parliaments and Sir J. T. Hibbert. The result had been that a new scale of salaries had been drawn up which, he thought, might be adopted without any injury to the House of Lords clerks or to the service of the House. At present there were 17 clerks in the House of Lords in two classes. The junior clerks began at £100 a year, and rose by increments of £20 per annum to £600. There were five senior clerks at fixed salaries of £700, £750, £800, £850, and £900 respectively; but the heads of Departments, who were generally but not invariably senior clerks, received an allowance in the nature of additional salary of £150 per annum, up to a maximum of £1,000 per annum. In that case there were no annual increments at all, and the salaries rose as the clerks on vacancies occurring obtained higher positions. The new proposal was to bring the House of Lords more nearly into accord with the classification of the House of Commons, and it was proposed with that view to have three classes of clerks—five principal, six assistants, and six juniors; and in all cases there would be an annual increment. The arrangement would not be retrospective, but would be given effect to in the future. The six juniors would rise from £100 to £250 by £15 a year; the six assistants from £300 by £20 a year to £600; and the five principal clerks from £850 by £50 a year to £1,000 as a maximum, the allowances to the heads of Departments being abolished. Practically, therefore, there would be very little difference, as far as the clerks were concerned, between the proposed scale and the scale of the House of Commons. He thought that in some respects, however, the existing scale was better, on the ground that it gave more elasticity, especially in appointing to the higher positions; but, as far as regarded advantage to the clerks, there apparently was not much to choose between the two. The juniors would be in a somewhat less advantageous position, but that was compensated for by greater advantages given in the higher grades. The great advantage which he thought the House of Commons and the Treasury would see in the arrangement was that the two classes 1332 of clerks could be easily compared with each other. Referring to the Papers marked A and B attached to the Report, he stated that their Lordships were aware of the fact that the Offices Committee five years ago—in 1889—made a careful investigation as to the establishments of the House and the manner in which the expenses could be reduced as far as possible. The result then reported was this: Between 1866 and 1889—the time the Committee sat—the staff of clerks in their Lordships' House was reduced from 28 to 19, and the annual salaries from £16,700 to £12,300, thereby effecting an economy in 23 years of nine clerks and £4,400 a year. The Committee, after long and careful consideration, made recommendations for certain further economies extending not. only to the establishment of the Clerk of Parliaments, but to other establishments connected with the House. The result of those recommendations would be an eventual economy of £6,500 a year, of which up to the present time£2,104 had been already carried into effect. Economies in other parts of the Establishment had been effected, and the saving already carried into effect amounted altogether to £2,400. Thus at the present time there were only 18 clerks, of whom four were in the judicial office of which there is no counterpart in the House of Commons, so that practically in discharging the business of the House there were only 14 clerks as compared with 32 in the House of Commons. He was not comparing the work in the two cases—it would take too long to make the comparison. Paper B showed the cost of the Departments in their Lordships' House with the corresponding Departments in the House of Commons. Some of the Departments in the House of Commons had obviously more work than those connected with their Lordships' House, but in others there was a very similar amount of work both in quality and quantity. In carrying those economies into effect during the last 16 years only two clerks had been appointed in the House of Lords, and only one in the last 10 years which amply accounted for the fact that the Lords clerks had on an average far more years of service than the Commons clerks. Those figures showed, at any rate, that the House of Lords. 1333 Offices Committee had done all in their power to introduce economy without interfering with efficiency in the service of their Lordships' House. The Committee had been urged to introduce the principle of compulsory retirement at a certain age, in the same way as in other branches of the Civil Service. It was the opinion of the Committee, as appeared at page 17 of the Report, that no valid reason could be urged against the application of that principle in certain circumstances, and therefore the Committee had passed a Resolution adopting the application of the Rule of compulsory retirement at the age of 65, unless such retirement should be detrimental to the service of the House or there were other special circumstances which rendered a relaxation of the Rule expedient. That might tend to place the establishment of the House on a more satisfactory footing. He concluded by asking their Lordships to agree to the Report.
§ Report agreed to.