§ Lieut.-Colonel D. WHITEasked the Minister of Transport if the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company is granting a smaller superannuation allowance to its older employés than is granted by the London and North Western Railway Company; and whether he can arrange that the employés of the former company can be brought up, as regards these allowances, to the standard of the latter company, more especially in view of the amalgamation of these two companies?
§ Mr. NEALMy right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport is not aware of the amounts now being paid to annuitants out of the superanuation funds of individual railway companies. These funds are usually vested in trustees and administered by committees representing the railway company and its staff, and the amounts which are payable will doubtless vary. My right hon. Friend has been informed, however, that in many cases the companies are supplementing these payments, to avoid hardship, out of their own resources. The position of the Government in relation to these funds was fully explained on the 2nd of March last year, when a Motion by the hon. and gallant Member for St. Pancras South-West (Major Barnett) was under discussion.