§ Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
§ VISCOUNT HALIFAXMy Lords, I have to move the Second Reading of this Bill which, like its predecessor of last year, is a temporary Bill designed to permit a reduction of pay to a protected class of servants serving in India, to place them alongside the general reduction in pay that is still unhappily necessary in that country. Your Lordships will remember that when this Bill was first passed eighteen months or two years ago it involved a cut of ten per cent. and it was then passed on the temporary basis of one year. Last year it had been hoped by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for India that he would be in a position to remit the general cut. It was found only possible to remit it as to five per cent., and he had hoped again this year that it would be possible to remit the remaining five per cent., but again his hopes have been disappointed. Accordingly he has been obliged to come to Parliament to ask authority to continue the five per cent. cut, having regard to the exigencies of the Indian Budget into the details of which it is probably not necessary for me to enter at this stage, but which your Lordships will perhaps take it from me render it impossible, to the great regret of my right honourable friend, to refrain from again imposing this five per cent. cut, Accordingly I move the Second Reading of this Bill still on a temporary basis, and still with great hope that by this time next year it may be possible to restore in full the pay of a class that has rendered and is rendering most loyal service to the State.
§ Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a. —(Viscount Halifax.)
§ On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.