LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGHMy Lords, I want to ask the indulgence of the House, and perhaps I ought to apologise for the intrusion of what is largely a personal matter. I desire to make a short statement with regard to a subject which has been referred to in another place. If it concerned only myself, I think I should leave it to the judgment of my friends and where the Prime Minister placed it in his most courteous answer in another place on Thursday last. But after careful consideration and consultation with others I have come to the conclusion that in respect of attacks and insinuations which have been made in various quarters it is due to myself and perhaps to others to make a short statement of facts on the subject.
Everybody knows that I hold what is called a political pension of the second class, and that the conditions on which these pensions are given are that the financial circumstances of the men to whom they are given are such as to require them. I venture to say that people who make statements of acreage owned and things of that kind, and think that taken by themselves they are conclusive on the 1046 matter, are very much mistaken. My position—and I shall not go further into it than this—has been one of some difficulty all my life. When I entered the Cabinet in 1895 it involved a considerable loss of income, but to me the idea of the Public Service had attractions which, I think, at any rate were honourable. But it is the fact that the acceptance of that office reduced my income. I had to give up a good many things, but I gave them up without hesitation because it was right that they should be given up.
The effect of my having to make this sacrifice was that, during the whole time I was in office, even including the salary of the office, my personal income was considerably less than it would otherwise have been. When I resigned, as I did voluntarily for reasons which are probably fresh in the minds of some, at any rate, who are here, I did not get back what I had abandoned. I could not do so, because obviously it must take time. All I have to say on that point is that the circumstances will stand the most rigorous examination. The Prime Minister says that it is a matter of honour, and there I leave it; but if the present Prime Minister wants to know the facts, which I disclosed to his predecessor, he shall have them. Gradually, in the course of years, other things came to me, and when my earned income increased I made, through a friend high up in the confidence of the Treasury, an offer to see whether it were possible to resign my pension with the power to resume it should earned income cease from ill health or causes of that kind. I thought this was analogous to the conditions which are properly imposed on the holders of pensions—that if they take public office, as I did when I was Chairman of Committees for a short period, the pension should cease but that it should be resumable. I was told that no precedent existed for such a course, and that the legal conditions were such that I could not be sure of resumption. If those difficulties can be got over, I am prepared to make the same offer again. I hope that those who discuss this subject will recognise the difference between income from realised capital and that which is dependent on one's own exertions.
May I, without conceit, in one concluding word allude to my own personal record? It is forty years since I began 1047 to do unpaid work for the State, and during the whole of that forty years I have never been without it. Opinions may vary as to the value of the work. I have been on nine Royal Commissions and chairman of seven. I have sat upon a large number of inter-Departmental Committees, and I am glad to say that in the majority of both classes of cases practical results have arisen from them. In some years I have spent more than 150 days in that unpaid work. I have taken an arbitration in which three Government Departments were concerned. As noble Lords opposite know, and have been generous in their acknowledgment of it, I took a commission which involved prolonged absence from the country and a certain consequent sacrifice of emoluments. I have the honour to be upon the Panel of Chairmen for arbitrations appointed by the Board of Trade; and perhaps I may be allowed to refer with pardonable pride to the fact that I have five or six times been chosen as mutual chairman by the whole of the coal-masters and miners of Scotland to sit and help them to settle their disputes. I have told the Board of Trade and I have told these gentlemen that owing to the position to which I have alluded, I have felt bound in honour to take no remuneration from them for any of these services, and I propose to continue that course.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (THE MARQUESS OF CREWE)My Lords, I am sure that the House as a whole will have sympathised with the noble Lord in his desire to make the statement to which we have just listened, and that that statement will have been heard with general sympathy. Certainly I, for one, and many other noble Lords in the House are not likely to underrate the amount or the value of the services which the noble Lord has given to the country. I have been associated with him myself once or twice, and I have had personal knowledge of other occasions on which he has given the benefit of his great experience and his almost unrivalled skill in the conduct of various public inquiries.
The noble Lord knows, and we all know, that the whole system of pensions for public service of all kinds is one which excites not a little criticism and not a little public comment. Many of us have noticed it in relation to the work of such 1048 bodies as county councils, and we are familiar with the particular criticisms which have been levelled at the class of pension, political pension, of which the noble Lord is one of the recipients. I am bound to say that in my opinion, as regards that particular kind of pension, a great deal of the criticism that has been levelled at them is unreasonable and not well-founded. But as regards the noble Lord himself, I can only repeat what was said by my right hon. friend in another place, that we have most complete confidence in the absolutely stainless honour of the noble Lord, and we are entirely confident that if his personal circumstances made it no longer necessary for him to receive that public reward for his general service, no man would be more prompt than he to come forward and resign it. Of that, from my long knowledge of the noble Lord, I am absolutely confident, and, like my right hon. friend, I am entirely content to leave the matter there.
What the noble Lord has further told us—it was not known to me—of the attempt which he made with the Treasury, in view of improved circumstances, to bring about a temporary resignation of this emolument is, we shall all agree, most entirely to his credit, and it will, I think, greatly blunt the edge of any further criticism which anybody may desire to direct against the noble Lord for his retention of that pension, which I, for one, say quite categorically I consider to be a very reasonable reward for the great amount of service which he has rendered to the public.