asked the Secretary of State for War why arrangements have not yet been made to credit the accounts of officers commissioned between October, 1948, and mid-January, 1949, with the higher rate of outfit allowances.

These arrangements have been authorised in recent instructions for Army officers concerned except those of the Reserve Forces, the Territorial Army and the Cadet Forces, for whom appropriate instructions will be issued shortly.

Will the hon. Gentleman see that delay of this kind does not take place in future when new allowances are introduced, because it causes great hardship?

The delay in this case applied to the retrospective working of the concession that was made. There were a number of matters, such as definition of eligibility, that made it difficult to reach an earlier agreement.