§ VISCOUNT ELIBANK had given Notice that he would draw the attention of His Majesty's Government to the inadequacy of the pensions paid to under the Governors Colonial Governors Pension Act of 1911, and to ask His Majesty's Government to consider the desirability of amending that Act so as to increase those pensions to a scale commensurate with the present cost of living and taxation; and move for Papers. The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion which stands on the Paper in my name. In doing so I should like to add a few remarks to elucidate a Motion which in itself seems quite clearly put. The Colonial Governors Pension Act, 1911, was passed only after very urgent representations had been made by the Governors as to the inadequacy of the pensions paid to them. At the time that that Bill was passed they were receiving maximum pensions at the rate of £1,000 a year. The Act provides that they shall receive maximum pensions at the rate of £1,300 a year.
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Actually, whilst those pensions apply to Colonial Governors of Dominions, the Act principally applies to Colonial Governors of Crown Colonies. In support of that I should like to quote from the speech of Lord Lucas, the then Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, in the House of Lords, on August 26, 1911, on the Second Reading of the Bill, when he said:—
The Bill applies practically to ex-Governors of Crown Colonies and only in rare cases to ex-Governors of Dominions.
My reason for emphasising that is that actually anything that is done or may be done with regard to increasing the pensions of Governors will not apply usually, or will apply very rarely, to members of your Lordships' House who go out from time to time to govern one of His Majesty's Dominions, but will apply chiefly to those Governors who
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spend all their lives administering the far-distant Possessions of the Crown under very difficult conditions, in climates that are often very insalubrious, and who have to bear the brunt of a great deal of hard work and a great deal of responsibility under conditions which are extremely difficult.
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When that Act was passed the question arose as to the basis upon which the pensions of Governors should be placed. I find on referring to the debate on the Second Reading in the House of Commons that the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Mr. Hobhouse, speaking on June 27, 1911, said:—
My hon. friend alluded to the maximum fixed for a Governor's pension, £1,300. That sum is taken for, I think, a very good reason. It represents the maximum pension of other Ministers in the Diplomatic Service, not Ambassadors, and it approximates as closely as possible to the pension which is paid to the head of one of the great Departments of State when he retires and draws his maximum pension. We think that the work, duties, and responsibilities of a Colonial Governor approximate very nearly to the work, duties, and responsibilities of Ministers in the Diplomatic Service and of the head of a Department.
What has actually happened in the meantime? The pensions of Governors have remained in statu quo, that is, their maximum still remains at £1,300 per annum; the pensions of the Diplomatic Ministers other than Ambassadors also remain in status quo, that is, at a maximum of £1,300; but I have received authoritative information that the maximum pension that can now be drawn by a Permanent Under-Secretary of State, that is, the head of a Department, is £1,500 plus one and a half year's pay. If his pay is at the rate of £3,000 a year, which entitles him to draw the maximum pension, that is another £4,500, and that, if invested at five per cent. interest, will give him another £225 per annum. That, together with his £1,500, gives him a maximum pension of £1,725 as against the maximum pension of a Colonial Governor of £1,300 and of a Diplomatic Minister of £1,300.
§ We all know that charity begins at home, and we can see that in this case the permanent heads of Departments have taken care that while their salaries have gone up their pensions have gone up likewise. It so happens, notwithstanding the fact that the salaries of 1002 Colonial Governors have gone up and not-withstanding the fact that a great deal of the pension payable to Colonial Governors is actually drawn from Colonial Funds, that because their pensions are actually paid under an Imperial Act they have been left as they were and nothing has been done to alleviate their conditions in the same way as in the case of the permanent civil heads of Departments in this country. I think your Lordships will agree that that is neither fair nor reasonable. When we go to the Colonies themselves we find that the Colonial Secretaries of the various Crown Colonies, like every other civil servant since the War, have had their salaries increased and have also had their pensions increased. Therefore, in some places the Colonial Secretary retires with a pension of £2,000 a year, while the Governor, who may have served a number of years longer than the Colonial Secretary and certainly in more responsible positions, has to retire with a pension of £1,300 a year.
§ It may be that the Colonial Office and the Treasury are considering this subject. If so, I hope they will look at it from a generous point of view. But I have neither heard nor seen that this question has been before the public in another place or in your Lordships' House during the last two or three years. It is for that reason that I bring it forward to-day, in the hope that His Majesty's Government may do something to help these unfortunate people—I call them unfortunate—who come home to this country after long service to a position which they find extremely difficult to uphold. They have to buy or to rent a house. They have to set up an entirely new establishment, and the condition of many of them who have no private incomes, or very small private incomes, is a really pathetic one to-day. I ask His Majesty's Government to do something towards helping that situation. I beg to move.
§ LORD OLIVIERMy Lords, we should have been very glad, I am sure, to hear what the noble Lord who represents the Colonial Office in this House had to say on behalf of the Government, but I wanted to reinforce the case put by my noble friend opposite. I happen to have been a Colonial Governor; I have been at the Colonial Office in a position of being able to criticise Colonial affairs; I have 1003 been in the Colonial Service, and I have been an Assistant Auditor-General. From those four different points of view I am entirely in accord with the spirit of what the noble Viscount, Lord Elibank, has said. I am speaking without the slightest personal interest because, having retired from the British Civil Service, I receive more than I could possibly have got as a Colonial Governor, although I am perfectly sure that anything I did as a Colonial Governor was much more important and beneficial to the Empire than anything I did in the home Civil Service. All my life I have been struck by the extraordinary anomalies of the principles upon which the pensions of Colonial Governors are calculated. It is not quite so bad as it used to be, when it was like a sort of game of ringing knives on the part of the Governor as to whether he would get a pension at all, and as to whether he would jump in time into the position of a first-class Governor and retain it sufficiently long to enable him to get a first-class pension. If he did not manage to stay in it for a sufficient period he did not get his first-class pension at all. That is not the case now; it was altered by the Act of 1911.
In the Colonial Service, as I know, in several instances it is possible now, as the noble Viscount has said, for a man who reaches the position of Colonial Secretary, or of Auditor-General, or one of the higher paid appointments in the Colonial Service, to get a bigger pension than the Governor of a Colony; while, a fortiori, it is possible for a man who reaches that position in the British Civil Service to get a higher pension. The recruiting and staffing of the Governorships of Colonies has always been a very difficult matter to execute satisfactorily, and in my younger days in the Colonial Office it was, I am bound to say, executed very unsatisfactorily. One of the reasons for that was this difficulty about the Governor's pension. Another was that the number of first-class Colonies was not large enough to go round. There was also the fact that the higher posts in the Colonial Service had to be recruited from men who, not because of their intellectual ability but because of their great physical stamina, had managed to survive the pestilential climates of the Gold Coast and other parts of Africa and had preserved their lives and moved 1004 on into other Colonies ahead of the men who had had the physical advantages of serving in those other Colonies.
There is still a great deal of difficulty on the part of the Colonial Office, partly owing to this financial reason, as the noble Lord I think will admit, in finding the first-class men who are required in the Colonial Service, although it is much easier than it used to be. For many years the ranks of the Colonial Service have been steadily recruited from very able men by competition in the various Colonies, and I will say for the Colonial Office that for many years that Office has paid most special and close attention to this question of getting suitable Governors, although from time to time I am sorry to say they are still liable to lapses and little mistakes. Nevertheless, the financial difficulty must still be a difficulty to the Colonial Office in properly staffing the Governors' Service. It is not possible for a Governor to save money in any Colony that I am aware of if he does his duty, unless he is a very rapacious or a very stingy man or, as is more commonly the case, he has a very rapacious and stingy wife who insists upon his saving money. That, possibly, is the only case in which Governors save money. When, however, a Governor manages to save money it is always known immediately, and, perhaps from qualities or gifts of second sight which prevail in the Colonies, it is almost always immediately known how much he remits to his bankers every month. Also, if he attempts to save any part of his salary, it does not increase his reputation, and from my certain knowledge public-spirited Governors in many of our Colonies are necessarily out of pocket because of the expense of travelling, of entertaining and hospitality and of various other calls. And the utmost a Governor will get at the end of his service for his public spirit is a G.C.M.G. instead of a K.C.M.G.
I hope we shall have a sympathetic reply from the Government, and that the noble Lord who represents the Colonial Office will be in accord with my noble friend and myself, that the Colonial Civil Service is not adequately or equitably remunerated in regard to its pensionable emoluments as compared with men in equally responsible positions and of equal abilities in other parts 1005 of the Civil Service. Except upon the principle which, I suppose, as a member of these Benches I ought to strive for—namely, that nobody is deserving of any higher pay than anybody else—except upon that principle, I must say there is a strong case made for the request of my noble friend and for a reorganisation of our present system so as to give higher remuneration for higher services. I think it is right that our Governors should receive some higher retiring remuneration than they do at present.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE FOR DOMINION AFFAIRS (LORD LOVAT)My Lords, I think I can give a satisfactory answer both to the noble Viscount who raised this Question and also to the noble Lord who has just sat down. His Majesty's Government have been impressed for a considerable time with the necessity for reviewing pensions of Colonial Governors. In the first place it is necessary owing to the increased cost of living, and, in the second place, it is only fair, as the noble Lord has pointed out, that men who have these very great burdens thrown upon them, which our higher Governors undoubtedly have, should be adequately paid on their retirement. Another consideration is that we cannot expect to get really first-class men unless this is done. A Committee accordingly sat to enquire into the matter and the Dominion Office is very much indebted to the noble Earl, Lord Buxton, who presided over that Committee, and to those who worked with him on the Committee for the careful investigation which they gave to this question and the recommendations that they made. The Committee was appointed in April, 1927. I can assure noble Lords that the recommendations of the Committee have not only received very careful attention, but that they are at the present time being embodied in a Bill, which His Majesty's Government cannot promise to introduce this year on account of the pressure of business, but which will be introduced as soon as possible. The general lines of it are agreed.
The broad recommendation of Earl Buxton's Committee was that the limit of pensions should be raised from £1,300 to £2,000 a year. There were also recommendations on questions of classification, 1006 the qualification period and leave. The question of entertainment allowance was outside the reference which was given to that Committee and, very rightly, it declined to deal with that question. The object of the Government will be to put the pensions of the retiring Governors on a level suitable to the times and so induce the best men to come forward for those positions. Two noble Lords have quoted examples of anomalies which were mentioned before the Committee. I see that one of the members of the Committee, Sir Donald Cameron, a very distinguished civil servant, announced that his retiring allowance would have been less than that of his Chief Secretary, although he was a first-class Governor. It is obvious that these anomalies must be redressed and I can assure noble Lords that His Majesty's Government will take the first opportunity to deal with the matter.
§ EARL BUXTONMy Lords, it would be improper for me to enter into details of the Report of the Committee over which I presided, but there is one point upon which I think I ought to say something. We did press that the classified pension of the various classes should be increased. As regards the pension being retrospective, the Committee unanimously agree that while it should not be retrospective in regard to any officer who had left the Service, it should be made retrospective in regard to those at present in the Service. I understood from the Colonial Office that practically all the suggestions of my Committee were adopted. I think that perhaps my noble friend Lord Lovat was confusing two classes—those out of the Service, whose pension increase will not be retrospective, and those in the Service, whose increase of pension will be retrospective. It is only on that point that I venture to intervene.
The Report of the Committee was published last January. We were urged to make our Report at an early date so that the matter might be dealt with this Session. That has not been done, and 1007 that means that these particular increases will not come into force until some months hence. I would ask my noble friend Lord Lovat, in those circumstances, if there is to be a substantial delay, to arrange that the retrospective day might date back to the day of the publication of the Report last January, or to some intermediate time, so that if any one has left the Service during this period he would obtain the benefit which he would have had if a Bill had been introduced this Session. I should like that point to be considered by the Colonial Office—that the date carrying retrospective right should be from the date of the publication of the Report or some date shortly after that, and not from the date of the passing of the Bill. If a whole year is to elapse before it comes into force a certain number of officers will lose the advantage which the Committee thought they should have. It was on that point particularly that I ventured to rise and address your Lordships.
LORD LOVATMy Lords, I would like to clear up the retrospective question. I understand from my noble friend Lord 1008 Elibank, that he wished that whatever was done should be done for those who had left the Service. That, of course, is impossible. It will be retrospective in the sense of those actually serving. To the second point raised by my noble friend Lord Buxton, obviously I cannot give an answer at this moment, because it is not in my section of the Dominion Office that it arises. I will, however, most certainly convey the suggestion of the noble Earl to the right quarter, and the fact that he was Chairman of the Committee will ensure its very careful consideration.
VISCOUNT ELIBANKMy Lords, in view of the assurance given to myself and the further assurance given to the noble Earl, Lord Buxton, with regard to the retrospective nature of these pensions, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion and to thank His Majesty's Government for what they intend to do.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
§ House adjourned at twenty minutes past five o'clock.