Mr. TYSON WILSONasked the Secretary to the Treasury if he will state upon what grounds the Board of Customs and Excise have, by their order of the 25th September, abolished an allowance of 9d. per night to preventive men when employed between the hours of midnight and 5 a.m., which was sanctioned by the Treasury on the 12th September, 1900; whether he is aware that the taking away of this allowance means a considerable financial loss to a number of these officers; and whether it is proposed to give them a Port of London allowance in lieu?
1210W
§ Mr. MONTAGUThis anomalous allowance was the last survival of the now obsolete system of paying piecemeal allowances representing travelling and subsistence expenses for special details of work. In old days the class of boatmen, now converted into preventive men, had not the same general advantages of ordinary and overtime pay and an allowance for night work as their modern representatives, and those win were on duty in the London Docks during the small hours of the night were considered to have special disadvantages in regard to facility of access from their homes and of obtaining refreshments as compared with the boatmen employed elsewhere. For this reason they were given this allowance, and though the arguments for it are certainly not valid now, it was allowed to continue untouched on account of the small amount involved until the completion of the final revision of the travelling, subsistence, and overtime allowances of the general Customs and Excise Service, which followed upon the recent amalgamation of the separate Customs and Excise Departments. There is no reason nowadays to continue a perquisite in the case of such preventive men as may happen to be employed in London which is not given to any of their fellows employed elsewhere, and which conflicts with the general Civil Service rule that officials must bear their own expenses in proceeding from home to the ordinary place of work. The allowance must therefore be abolished as soon as possible, but it has been decided that actual existing recipients shall continue to draw it so long as they satisfy the conditions which at present attach to its receipt.