Sir F. HALLasked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury whether, seeing that ex-temporary women have now been established on the clerical grade of the Civil Service and have received substantial increases of salary, and that many permanent women who entered the clerical grade by the harder pre-War method of recruitment or by promotion from a lower grade are now in receipt of smaller salaries than ex-temporary women with shorter service, he will forthwith take steps to see that the permanent pre-War woman clerk shall not be in a worse 2432W position financially than the ex-temporary woman clerk who has entered the service without the full examination still required for the established class?
Mr. GRAHAMFollowiing claims made by associations representing, not only Lytton entrants, but the clerical class generally, the Southborough Committee (in accordance with the general principles adopted previously by the Lytton Committee) granted preferential starting rates of pay within the clerical class to Lytton entrants. Arrangements have been made in agreement with the associations concerned for the extension of the Southborough increases to all who, by any stretch of the imagination, can be regarded as Lytton enrants, but I do not think that it would be consistent with those arrangements that what was explicitly granted by way of special treatment should now be abrogated by a general levelling up of the salaries of other clerical officers to whom the special considerations noted by the Lytton and Southborough Committees do not apply. I am not aware, however, that any clerical officers with pre-War service as women clerks are in receipt of lower salaries than those drawn generally by Lytton entrants.