I beg to move in page 3, line 4, to leave out from "section," to end of line 7, and to insert:

"and

(ii) the Treasury are satisfied at a subsequent date that the marriage or cohabitation has come to an end or that there are compassionate grounds for the payment of pension notwithstanding the marriage."

As the Bill stands, pensions to widows who cohabit outside the marriage state or marry again are either stopped or not issued. Discretion, however, is given to the Treasury to pay or re-issue such a pension should a subsequent marriage come to an end. This Amendment and the next Amendment, in line 9, allow the Treasury discretion to give or to re-issue a pension, both where cohabitation ceases and where, although a subsequent marriage may subsist, the woman has been, for example, left destitute. I should perhaps say that the discretion to re-issue or pay a pension when after a subsequent marriage the husband is still living will be used very sparingly. What we cannot contemplate is the issuing of a pension simply because the subsequent husband happens to be in poor circumstances.

I only rise to thank the right hon. Gentleman for putting down this Amendment to deal with a matter upon which there was a fairly long discussion in Standing Committee. If a widow cohabited for a very short time and her pension was cut off for that reason, under the Bill as it stood there was not even discretion on the part of the Treasury to restore the pension. That seemed to hon. Members on all sides a remarkably harsh provision; we thought that the pension should not be cut off on grounds of that kind, certainly not permanently. By this Amendment the right hon. Gentleman has certainly gone a very long way to meet the point previously made, and I hope the Committee will accept it.

There is one point which may appear small, but which is nevertheless important. Could the Financial Secretary tell me exactly what the word "cohabit" means? It is important to know the meaning from two points of view. As I understand it, the word is used in this Bill as a genteel word for adultery or fornication. Why the Parliamentary draftsmen have used this word, I do not know, although I do not like to attack members of this esoteric and macabre profession. The word does not appear in any dictionary as meaning what is apparently intended here, except as an alternative. The plain meaning of the word "cohabit" is to live or to dwell under the same roof. The Philistines cohabited with the Ark of God; and so far as I am aware a man may cohabit with his mother-in-law without the slightest loss of any moral status, although it may be a reflection upon his discretion.

This is an important matter, because we are here discussing a subject upon which many of us feel very deeply. As I understand it, this Amendment stops short at two points, and there ought to be provision so that when cohabitation ceases the same effect should be had as when marriage ceases, because we can well understand that, even if for the moment I accept that the word means adultery, the meaning attributed to the word is clear in intention. It is quite clear that there may be a woman who lives with a man who is married to somebody else and obviously cannot marry her, and if that association ceases for any reason, I see no reason why she should not be treated in the same way as a woman who has remarried.

There is another reason why we should not use these words which do not mean what is intended. The word is not in Wharton's Law Lexicon; it is described in the dictionary of legal words, where there is a quite different definition. Even the Divorce Court has become genteel in these days, and as the word is used there, one gets a definition by which "cohabit" need not mean living under the same roof as man and wife; it may mean casual adultery in certain cases. Therefore there may be cases in which it can be argued that certain acts of adultery may lead to entitlement to pension. That is never the intention or meaning.

This can be put right in two ways: first, by the right hon. Gentleman considering whether he should not give to cohabitation, or whatever he cares to call it, the same position as he gives to a re-marriage so far as pension rights are concerned; secondly, by using a word which means what is intended; and there are plenty of Anglo-Saxon words available. Even Mr. James Thurber has used some quite poetic descriptions which the right hon. Gentleman might use if he wished; or he can give a clear definition at the conclusion of the Bill as to precisely what is meant by this and precisely what are the limitations, which I hope will be drawn as tightly as possible.

As the hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. P. Thorneycroft) very properly said, we spent a good deal of time discussing this matter in Standing Committee. I can assure my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham (Mr. Hale) that what was meant by "cohabit" was well understood in all parts of the Standing Committee. I understand that it is a term of art which is well understood in Acts of Parliament, and also I imagine in courts of law, although I agree that the dictionary meaning is undoubtedly the one mentioned by my hon. Friend. I shall certainly look at this again before the Bill goes to another place, but it appears to us that the meaning of the word is well understood. For that reason it might perhaps be a waste of time— I put it no higher and no lower than that—to move further Amendments to add certain words which may qualify the matter for the benefit of my hon. Friend but not for the ordinary citizen or the person who will have to study this Bill. The Treasury well understand what is meant by the word, and after all it is the Treasury who will have to use its discretion in this matter.

We do seem to be in rather a difficulty here because the right hon. Gentleman has himself admitted that he is not very clear on the matter. The hon. Member for Oldham (Mr. Hale) has pointed out the great difficulties which may arise. I understand that there was considerable debate on this in Standing Committee, and I should have thought that by the time we had reached this stage of the Bill there ought not to be uncertainty about whether "cohabit" means that a man is living with his mother-in-law. It is all very well to leave this until yet a later stage, but I should have thought that the simple and expeditious way of dealing with such a problem would have been to have present a Law Officer who would know precisely what it meant. It is very bad that it should go out from this House that we are passing something which the Treasury does not really understand. In any event, we ought to be enacting not what the Treasury understand but what will be a legal fact. We ought not to leave anything to be interpreted by any one Ministry, or any part of a Ministry, however efficient it may be. While there is no question of voting against this Amendment, I must express my dissatisfaction.

I beg to move, in page 3, line 9, to leave out from "from" to the end of the line, and to insert "that date."

In the event of its being consequential, I would point out that we are being consequential about something, when we do not really understand what we are doing.

I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman what will be the financial effect now that this Amendment has been made, because the scheme is contributory and the Exchequer are paying a portion. Presumably when the Bill was first presented to the House the actuaries had worked out an estimate of what was involved in this Clause. Presumably through this Amendment there will be increase in expenditure, and we should be told how much it is. I should like before we part with this Clause, once again to lodge a protest, as I did on the Second Reading, against the penalisation, as I consider it to be, of widows who remarry. I still think it is a cruel piece of legislation wherever it occurs. I am not singling out this Bill in particular, but it seems to me quite wrong that when a widow remarries, she should lose certain rights and pension, especially in view of the fact that her husband contributed towards those benefits.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman raised two points, and if I may I should like to answer the second first. It is quite true that a civil servant will have to contribute towards his pension, but not to anything like the extent of the full value which may be paid by way of a pension. When working this out the actuaries realised that a certain number of widows would marry again and, therefore, would cease to draw a pension. That makes it cheaper for the civil servants and also for the State, because half is being paid by the taxpayer. It will be wrong if under this scheme, the taxpayer has to pay more and the civil servant in his lifetime has to pay a higher contribution in order that the widow should draw a pension until the day she dies even though she had remarried. If she marries again it is assumed that her husband should keep her, and there is no reason why the taxpayer should.

The extra cost of this Amendment is negligible. We do not assume that widows of all civil servants will—I hesitate to use the word but it is the only one which occurs to me—cohabit once they become widows, and the short answer to the hon. and gallant Member is that I do not think there will be many cases of this kind, and that in any event the cost will be negligible.

It is quite obvious that the widow under this Clause is in a position whereby she might lose her pension. I should like to ask if it is possible for the man to lose his pension as well, not under this Clause maybe, but under some other regulation. Do the two things combine?

I probably misunderstood what the hon. Gentleman said, but the widow will not start drawing her pension until she is a widow, so that the husband by that time will be dead.

I am sorry if I did not make myself clear. A widow in certain circumstances loses her pension. Is it possible that the person she marries, who is also a civil servant, could also lose his pension under some other regulation? Could that case occur?

Whether the widower loses his pension largely depends on the source. Once the widow marries a second time, the pension ceases, so that to that extent it is quite immaterial where the husband gets his income from. It is his job to keep his wife. If ever he deserts her, or goes mad or if quite a number of things happen to him and the widow once again becomes destitute, discretion is given to the Treasury under this Amendment to re-issue the pension if they think it is desirable.

Therefore, it is possible for both parties to lose their pensions, one under this regulation and the other under another regulation.

I beg to move, in page 4, line 13, to leave out "reason of her marriage," and to insert "virtue of this subsection."

This does for the child of the family what we have done for the widow in the previous Clause.

As I understand it, the Amendments just moved make an important and generous improvement in the Bill, which we should welcome, because it means that the children's rights are protected if marriage or cohabitation ceases and their rights can be restored. That brings us to the real question which comes up under Clause 17 again, and that is whether under that Clause my right hon. Friend should not, between now and the consideration of the Bill in another place, consider adding that where cohabitation ceases the matter will be reconsidered in the same way as where the marriage ceases.

I think I should make the matter clear. My hon. Friend was not on the Committee and perhaps I should have remembered that, but here we are dealing with a female child over 16 who may be still at school and for that reason the pension is still paid to her. She may well be a girl of seventeen or eighteen, and the Treasury may, in its wisdom, have to exercise its discretion to re-issue the pension to her. In this part of the Bill we get the problem of the incapacitated child, who, in certain circumstances, can go on for life on pension. It was felt that it would be grossly unfair to cut off her pension indefinitely if some rogue got hold of her temporarily and lived on her pension. That comes under this Clause, and that is the reason why we are doing this.

I beg to move in page 14, line 28, to leave out from "section," to end of line 30, and to insert:

"and

(ii) the Treasury are satisfied at a subsequent date that the marriage or cohabitation has come to an end or that there are compassionate grounds for the payment of pension notwithstanding the marriage."

We are doing here just what we did in Clause 4 when we made Amendments there. This gives discretion to the Treasury in regard to the widow, and we want to do it for the female under the dependents scheme.

I beg to move, in page 15, line 37, to leave out "reason of her marriage," and to insert "virtue of this subsection."

We have now come to the dependent children and the series of Amendments to Clause 18 deal with them.

I want to raise a point which is very much the same as that mentioned earlier. It seemed rather ridiculous that a dependent child should have a pension taken away in those circumstances. I rise to reinforce what was said by the hon. Member for Oldham (Mr. Hale) just now. I would ask the right hon. Gentleman to have a word with the Law Officers on the meaning of the word "cohabit." I think the hon. Member for Oldham has mentioned something which is quite important. I remember that in one of the earliest cases I ever had at the Bar, a woman was charged with taking a pension while cohabiting. It shows that different expressions can be used to describe those circumstances. It is desirable to use the same phrases to describe the same thing. If the right hon. Gentleman will consult the Law Officers, he might save a lot of trouble later.

I beg to move, in page 26, line 4, to leave out subsection (3), and to insert:

"(3) The provisions of this section shall apply and shall be deemed always to have applied to persons who retired from the Civil Service at any time after the third day of December nineteen hundred and forty-eight, and to persons who so retired on or before that date and are living at the passing of this Act, and superannuation allowances and additional allowances granted before the passing of this Act may be increased accordingly; but nothing in this subsection shall authorise the payment, in respect of any period before the passing of this Act of any increase in the superannuation allowance of a person who retired as aforesaid on or before the said third day of December."

The Clause as it now stands permits those who retired on grounds of ill-health after 3rd December, 1948, with more than 10 years' but less than 20 years' reckonable pension, to be assessed for pension as if 20 years' service had in fact been given. My hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Mr. C. Smith) moved an Amendment in Standing Committee and asked that this concession should be applied to those who had already retired on 3rd December, 1948, as from some current date. The Amendment now proposed accedes to his request.

The concession will be generally welcomed. It extends to persons who have already retired, the benefit of getting at least one quarter of their retiring salary by way of pension in the same way that the original Bill proposed for persons retiring from the Civil Service after the passage of the Bill. I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman, since he opposed a number of proposals of this character during the Committee stage on the ground that they would be expensive and costly to the Exchequer, to tell us the estimated cost of the concession now being made.

I wish to thank my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary for the concession which he is making. I associate myself with the question which has just been asked of him, and I should also like to ask the number of people likely to be affected by the concession.

I support what was said by my right hon. Friend, and I also should like to make how many people the concession will affect. Obviously he must have had that information in Standing Committee or he could not have rejected the proposal. The fact that he has changed his mind may be connected with the number of people as well as with the cost, and it is a matter in which most of us would be interested, especially those of us who have a large number of pensioners in our constituencies.

The hon. Gentleman is wrong in one particular. I did not reject the Amendment. I undertook to have it considered between the Committ stage and the Report stage. We have considered it, and my right hon. and learned Friend has been glad to accede to the request made by my hon. Friend and other hon. Friends behind me. The cost of the concession will be negligible. I do not know exactly what the number affected will be, but we shall obviously know in due course. We felt that the number would not be great and that it would be a waste of time to make an inquiry. We shall have to collect the information and get into touch with the people if the Amendment be accepted.

I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman if I inadvertently used the word "reject" when I should have used the word "consider." It does rather strengthen our case. If it was a matter of rejection, the right hon. Gentleman has gone further than if it were a matter of consideration, when he would be doing obviously what he promised the Committee. Another matter to which I would draw attention is that not very long since, the Treasury always gave some sort of estimate of cost before advising the Committee to accept or reject an Amendment. I would point out, not in a hostile way, that the right hon. Gentleman has been unable to give the estimates called for and that therefore the Treasury are not so efficient as they used to be.

I beg to move, in page 30, line 11, after "year," to insert "not exceeding five."

The object of this Amendment and the one that follows is to prevent an anomaly arising in the case of those who give service after the retiring age, some of which is reckonable under Clause 35 as service rendered before the civil servant leaves the established service, and the remainder of which is reckonable under Clause 36 as service by a re-engaged pensioner, and which together amount to six years or more. Clause 35 deals with the established man who continues after he has reached the retiring age in an established capacity. This Clause deals with the established man who continues in an established capacity and, having gone out, comes back and continues in an unestablished capacity.

As drafted, the Bill requires service rendered after the retiring age to reckon under Clause 35, in so far as it is reckonable under that Clause, and only allows service to be reckoned under Clause 36 to the extent that the Clause 35 service has not exhausted the maximum of five years' reckonable under that Clause. This Amendment, and those which succeed it relating to this Clause, allow the civil servant who has served sufficiently long to have reckonable service under both Clauses, together amounting to six years or more, to count his years under Clause 36 and not his years under Clause 35 if they give him a better pension. In other words, we are giving under the two Clauses the best of both worlds to the civil servant.

Could we have an estimate of what is involved in this?

It will not add noticeably to the estimate of cost given on Committee. All we are doing is to give the civil servant the right to be dealt with under Clause 36 if it gives him a better lump sum and pension, or Clause 35 if that gives him a higher lump sum and pension or under a combination of the two Clauses if that gives him better provision. It makes very little difference to the cost.

I have a case in mind and I should like to know if it is covered by these provisions. It is that of a Customs officer who after 37 years' service retired in 1938. He returned in 1940 and worked five years and four months in a post similar to the one he occupied before. He was compulsorily retired at 61 and did not complete 40 years, only getting 37-eightieths. I have sought opinion and have been told that for some reason he will not qualify. He returned to the service in May, 1940, and did not retire until August, 1945. Will this Clause cover that individual and permit him at least to count three of those years, thus making his pension 40-eightieths instead of 37-eightieths?

I understand that the case put by my hon. Friend is that the officer came back during the war and finally retired in 1945. If so, he cannot benefit under this Clause.

A moment ago the right hon. Gentleman was saying that the civil servant would get the best of both worlds. I do not in the least object to that, but it would hardly be right if we went any further without pointing out that in those circumstances the taxpayer will obviously get the worst of both worlds. While I do not in any way quarrel with the Amendment—indeed I would support it if any hon. Member opposed it in the Division lobby—I am sure that if my right hon. Friend the Member for North Leeds (Mr. Peake) had been in charge, he would have given us an estimate.

I beg to move, in page 30, line 37, to leave out subsection (6).

This is a drafting Amendment. We shall be coming back to this later when we deal with a subsequent Amendment on Clause 47.

I beg to move, in page 34, line 45, after "to," to insert:

"one half or, if and so far as that service took place before the passing of this Act."

This Amendment is consequential upon an Amendment to Clause 38 which we have not yet dealt with, but with which we shall deal on the Report stage. I ask the Committee to take the Amendment on trust until we reach that Amendment which I have no doubt will be debated.

As the right hon. Gentleman has said, this Amendment is consequential upon what the Government propose to do as regards Clause 38. When we reach Clause 38 on the Report stage we shall have some rather strong expressions to give vent to with regard to the attitude which the Government have taken upon this matter of unestablished service. At this stage, I only want to protect my position by saying that though we shall accept this Amendment without a Division, we object to the qualifying words:

"If and so far as that service took place before the passing of this Act."

I want to enter a similar qualification. I am prepared to agree to what the right hon. Gentleman has suggested, but I understand that there will be an opportunity later to express our opinions about the question of part-time service.

I hope very much that when we come to Clause 38 the Government will either withdraw their proposed Amendment or that, if they do not, we shall soundly beat them in the Lobby. Suppose we do beat them in the Lobby on Clause 38, would the Government then agree that the Amendment which we are now asked to pass should be withdrawn and the terms of this Clause amended to conform with the terms of Clause 38 as it would then be?

Most certainly I give that assurance. Obviously what we do in this Clause must follow what we do in Clause 38, otherwise it makes nonsense of quite a lot of the Bill. I give an assurance that if any change is made in the Government proposal when we reach Clause 38, this will have to be amended again in another place in order to make it correspond.

I want to enter a similar caveat to that of my hon. Friend the Member for East Walthamstow (Mr. H. Wallace). There is an additional point about which the Financial Secretary might like to say a word. He will remember that during the Committee stage we discussed the rather unusual position of the assistant postmen in the Post Office whose service was whole-time and not part-time in the accepted sense of this Clause. There was some understanding that my right hon. Friend would look further into the matter to see how far assistant postman service could be counted as full-time rather than the half-time referred to in the Amendment. Has my right hon. Friend a statement to make on that?

Surely it would be much more convenient, Mr. Bowles, to leave the Amendment out and to let another place deal with it if it is necessary. It is highly probable that the Government will be defeated this afternoon on a subsequent Amendment and this one will then be unnecessary. It would be much more convenient to leave this out and then, in the unlikely event of the Government being victorious, it could be dealt with subsequently.

This is not a matter for an expression of opinion by the Chair. I have no views about the matter at all.

I think that that would be an unwise thing to do, and I ask the Committee to reflect before it takes that course. I have given an undertaking and I can assure the Committee that it will be honoured if any change is made when we reach Clause 38. It is much better that we should insert these words rather than leave them for another place. I do not know whether the question of privilege would arise in another place, and I am not quite sure of the powers of another place in this matter, although, of course, privilege could be waived if an Amendment was inserted, particularly if it was inserted at the request of the Government. However, I advise the Committee to deal with the matter here.

The suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Hollis) is the commonsense suggestion. On the other hand, whatever happens at the next stage, the inclusion of these words in the Bill will in all probability eventually improve the position. For that reason, although I dislike some of the words used by the Financial Secretary, for once I feel that we should accept what he advises, although it seems a pity that these things have to be taken in this sequence.

I beg to move, in page 42, line 1, at the beginning, to insert:

"(1) The following provisions of the Pensions (Increase) Act, 1947, that is to say—

(a) subsection (2) of section three (which prevents a pension being increased where the amount of the pension is determined by reference to a rate of emoluments received on or after the first day of April, nineteen hundred and forty-seven, or by reference to an average rate of emolument received over a period of service beginning on or after the first day of April, nineteen hundred and forty-six);

(b) subsection (3) of the said section three (which requires any increase of pension to be reduced where the amount of the pension is determined by reference to an average rate of emoluments received over a period of service beginning before the first day of April, nineteen hundred and forty-six, but ending after that date),

shall not apply to a superannuation allowance computed upon the amount mentioned in paragraph (a) of subsection (2) of section thirty-six of this Act unless they would have applied thereto had it been computed upon the amount mentioned in paragraph (b) thereof.

(2) Where subsection (3) of section three of the Pensions (Increase) Act, 1947 (as modified by the preceding subsection) applies to a superannuation allowance computed upon the amount mentioned in paragraph (a) of subsection (2) of section thirty-six of this Act, the period of service by reference to which the amount mentioned in the said paragraph (a) is determined shall be deemed for the purposes of the said subsection (3) to have begun and ended on the same dates as the period of service which would have been relevant if the superannuation allowance had been computed upon the amount mentioned in paragraph (b) of subsection (2) of the said section thirty-six.

(3) Notwithstanding anything in subsection (2) of section three of the Pensions (Increase) Act, 1944 (which requires increases otherwise payable under that Act to be withheld or reduced in the case of pensions increased in consequence of war bonus or similar payments) a superannuation allowance computed upon the amount mentioned in paragraph (a) of subsection (2) of section thirty-six of this Act may be increased under the Pensions (Increase) Acts, 1944 and 1947, to an amount not exceeding the amount to which that allowance could have been increased in accordance with the provisions of those Acts and subsection (3) of section sixty of this Act, if it had been computed upon the amount mentioned in paragraph (b) of subsection (2) of the said section thirty-six."

The object of this Amendment is to prevent a re-engaged pensioner who is due to gain extra pension under Clause 36 finding that it is swallowed up in a loss of the pensions increase awarded to him on his original pension. Subsection (6) of Clause 36, now transferred to this Clause, has already dealt with one of the provisions in the Pensions (Increase) Acts which had to be dealt with to prevent this anomaly. The remaining provisions in this rather long Amendment deal with other provisions of the Pension (Increase) Acts which investigation has shown also need to be taken into account. Generally this Amendment safeguards the position of pensioners who have received increases under the 1944 and 1947 Acts.

I beg to move, in page 45, line 29, after "forty-three," to insert:

"and section (Counting of certain war services for superannuation purposes)."

This Amendment is in anticipation of the Committee accepting the new Clause to which we shall come presently and, if that is passed, it will enable the man who succeeded in the 1914 and 1915 competitions for the Civil Service, but did not take up his appointment until after the war because of war service, to count his war service for superannuation. Hon. Members who were on the Standing Committee upstairs will remember that I then promised to consider this. My right hon. and learned Friend has considered it, and we have agreed to accede to the request then made in Committee.

I understand that this Amendment paves the way for the new Clause in the name of the Financial Secretary which meets completely the point brought forward during the Committee stage by my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Dodds-Parker). My hon. Friend discovered that there were some 80 or 90 civil servants who, at the call of King and country in 1914 or 1915, having already passed the Civil Service examination, went to the war and, in consequence, lost four or five reckonable years for the purposes of pension. Those civil servants, if they have not already retired, are now approaching the retirement age, they are in the higher ranks of the Civil Service, and I am sure that they will be extremely grateful to the Government for meeting the point brought forward by my hon. Friend, and meeting it in full.

I beg to move, in page 47, line 23, after "person," to insert "his stepfather and."

Again Members of the Standing Committee will remember that it was suggested that we should include stepfathers and stepmothers within the definition. I promised that on Report stage this would be done, and the Amendment is in fulfilment of the promise then made.

I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a Second time."

The Committee is familiar with what we seek to do in this Clause; in fact, I have just referred to it in moving an Amendment to Clause 56. We desire here to count for superannuation purposes certain war service given by men during the 1914–18 war who entered the Civil Service but physically did not take up their appointments because they went straight into the Forces. It has long been felt by a number of people that this was unfair, that they should be allowed to count that period, and we are putting the matter right now by giving them the right so to count that service. The number involved is not great, being between 80 and 90, and I am delighted that we are at last doing justice to these men.

All of us on this side of the Committee will join with my right hon. Friend the Member for North Leeds (Mr. Peake) in welcoming what the right hon. Gentleman has done. For purposes of clarification, however, before we part with the Clause, would he explain why he has had to put in subsection (2), and why the wording of the Clause is considerably different from that put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Dodds-Parker). Subsection (2) mentions a period of three months and I should be grateful if the right hon. Gentleman would clarify that.

It is normal for a person entering the Civil Service to take up the appointment within a month or so. Here we are dealing with a group of men particulars of whose war service may be unknown to us. Therefore it is essential that we should assume certain things, and this gives us legal power to credit these men with a period of war service which cannot officially be verified.

Mr Glenvil Hall.

On a point of Order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. Is it to be understood that you are not calling the new Clause standing in the name of my two hon. Friends and myself—(Counting of certain service in the regular forces of the Crown for superannuation purposes)?

No. Mr. Speaker has not selected it. It is out of Order because it increases the charge.

I beg to move, in page 7, line 21, to leave out from "years." to "and," in line 25.

This Amendment and the corresponding Amendment to Clause 21 prepare the way for the new paragraph 1 which it is proposed to move, and which I hope will be inserted, in the Second Schedule. The object of these Amendments is to make a minor adjustment in the machinery for the payment of contributions. A civil servant may make contributions either by deductions from his salary year by year, or by an abatement of the lump sum which he receives on retirement, or, if he dies whilst still serving, from the lump sum paid to his estate. Civil servants may complete 40 years' reckonable service before age 60, or at that age or later. Both categories, if they have elected to pay by deduction from salary, continue to do so until they retire; but the first category—those who complete 40 years' reckonable service before the age of 60—unlike the second, will under the Clause as it stands have these deductions returned to them, not only in so far as they have been paid in respect of their period of service between the completion of 40 years' reckonable service and age 60, but also in so far as they have been paid in respect of any service rendered after the age of 60. If, therefore, they are to continue to serve after the age of 60, their contributions in respect of this period of their service will have to be settled by abatement of the lump sum.

Representations have been made to the Treasury by the National Staff Side that this distinction is unreasonable and unnecessary. It is agreed, therefore, that the Amendment should be put down; it puts both categories in exactly the same position.

I beg to move, in page 9, line 3, after "capacity," to insert "or part-time service."

The effect of this Amendment and the two which follow is that the Clause determines the categories of civil servants who have the option to contract out of the widows' scheme in Part I of the Bill. Those who have this right are, under the Bill as now drafted, those who at the date of the passing of the Act were already serving in either an established or an unestablished capacity and who subsequently became established. The effect of the Amendments is to add those who at that time were serving in a part-time capacity, and who subsequently became established. This is a little technical but it is essential that we should have these words inserted in order to include the part-timer.

I beg to move, in page 14, line 36, to leave out subsection (5).

This Amendment paves the way for an Amendment to Clause 61, in page 47, line 35, which transfers this definition to the Interpretation Clause, where it properly belongs in view of the transfer to the First Schedule of the provisions relating to the incapacitated child.

I beg to move, in page 15, line 18, to leave out "deceased," and to insert "nominator."

Elsewhere in the Clause the civil servant is referred to as the "nominator." We thought we had better use the same word on each occasion.

I beg to move in page 20, line 40, to leave out "would have," and to insert "had."

This is a matter of drafting. The point here is that these people are to be treated as if they had actually been eligible for pension.

I beg to move, in page 25, line 28, to leave out from "allowances," to "might."

The right hon. Gentleman says that this is a merely drafting Amendment, but may we have an explanation——

I am sorry, but I have put the Question and collected the voices. I beg the hon. Gentleman's pardon, but he did not get up before I did so.

I beg to move, in page 32, line 3, after "1935," to insert:

"and section three of the Superannuation Act, 1887."

This and a number of subsequent Amendments to the Clause all have the same object. I think the House is well aware that when we were dealing with this matter upstairs the Committee came to the conclusion by a narrow majority that the whole of the service should count. We are endeavouring here to make the change.

I would respectfully suggest that we should accept the first two Amendments, which are, I think merely of a drafting character, and take the discussion on the third Amendment, which proposes to leave out certain words inserted by the Standing Committee, for it is upon that Amendment that we on this side shall wish to make a demonstration.

I beg to move, in page 32, line 4, to leave out from "shall" to "apply," in line 8.

This matter arises, as my right hon. Friend has said, from a discussion which took place on the Committee stage as a result of which the Government were defeated in Committee and an alteration was made to the Clause. This is a matter in which it is very easy to arouse people's sympathy and, indeed, it is very easy for us all to feel sympathy for the cause. It is a question which arises out of the policies of past Governments who have not seen fit to reckon unestablished service towards established pension. The House will recollect that the Tomlin Commission made an investigation into this subject matter, which was very much discussed as a result of the large amount of unestablished service which originated in the first world war—and discussion was increased by the entrance of a great many ex-Service men on that basis after the first world war.

The Tomlin Commission recommended that the unestablished service, if the performer of that service was subsequently established, should be counted as to half towards the pension which would be earned under establishment. In 1935, a very long time after the problem arose, the Act was passed which, as from 1935, made one half of the unestablished service countable towards the established pension and that state of affairs continued until 1946, when my predecessor decided to extend the period during which unestablished service could count for half back to 1919, the end of the first world war, from 1935. So the situation remains today.

The claim which has been put forward is that, instead of that unestablished service back to 1919 reckoning for one half, it should reckon in total, 100 per cent. That was the effect of the Amendment passed on Committee stage and my right hon. Friend, who was conducting the Bill through the Committee, told the Committee that he would lay the matter before me and acquaint me with the arguments which had been brought forward in the Committee. He has duly acquainted me with them and the Government have considered the situation. Everyone will agree that, broadly speaking, the Bill is a very good advance as a whole in the matter of superannuation of civil servants, but, as in all these matters, there must at any given time be a limit to the amount of advance which can be made.

If one were to give way to all the desirable suggestions which are made for the improvement of the conditions and the lot of the people of this country in every sort of walk of life, I am afraid that the demands of hon. and right hon. Members opposite that we should reduce taxation would never even look like being met. As I remarked on the occasion of the Budget Debate, it is, after all, the privilege of the House of Commons to protect the taxpayer from undue charges and, when one has worked out an elaborate scheme for assisting any particular body of taxpayers, one has to regard it in the light of the general economic situation of the country. That is what I have attempted to do in this case.

My right hon. Friend told the Committee that if the alteration were made—which in fact the Committee made in the Bill—it would lead to an immediate cost of between £1 million and £2 million a year, climbing to an eventual cost of £5 million to £7 million in about 15 years' time. I have had to consider whether we are justified in view of competing demands and in view of what we have already done for the civil servants, in spending this money in trying to put right what it is alleged some former Government did wrongly. My view is that, much as I should like to do this to assist those who have unestablished service, it is not possible or justifiable to make that immediate or prospective expenditure.

On the other hand, I am anxious that we should make it quite clear that this system both of long periods of unestablishment and of not taking those periods into account for pension purposes, should cease. I do not believe it was ever right to have these very long, indeed unending, periods of unestablishment. Nor was it right in the first place to introduce a system which might result over these long periods in very great loss of ultimate pension rights granted on establishment. We suggest that we should so alter this Clause—and the Amendment I am moving is one which will have that result in association with the other Amendments—that, as from the passing of this Bill, all unestablished service will in future count 100 per cent. towards pension and that we should leave the antecedent period as it is at present. That would mean very little expense for the immediate next few years——

Surely it could not possibly mean any expense for the next 10 years, because no one qualifies for civil service pension unless he has 10 years of established service.

It would probably make no substantial effect for that period of time; that is perfectly correct. Eventually, of course, it would make an effect in so far as there was a continued long period of unestablishment. If there were no long period of unestablishment, it would have no effect, and we hope that in the future the unestablished period will be more of a probationary period and will not form a large factor in the employment of any civil servant who subsequently becomes established. We therefore suggest that these Amendments should be passed which will protect us from the immediate additional expenditure which would otherwise be incurred and which, as I have said quite frankly, we are not prepared to face; and on the other hand we suggest that we should make it quite clear that in future these evil effects of past policies will not be perpetuated.

The speech which the right hon. and learned Gentleman has just delivered to the House and the Amendment which he was moving will, as I think he must recognise, be a very great disappointment to thousands of civil servants——

reported the Royal Assent to:

1. Consolidation of Enactments (Procedure) Act, 1949.

2. Milk (Special Designations) Act, 1949.

3. British Film Institute Act, 1949.

4. War Damage (Public Utility Undertakings, &c.) Act, 1949.

5. Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1949.

6. Agricultural Marketing Act, 1949.

7. Commonwealth Telegraphs Act, 1949.

8. Mid-Northamptonshire Water Board Order Confirmation (Special Procedure) Act, 1949.

9. Grimsby Corporation Act, 1949.

10. University of Nottingham Act, 1949.

The speech of the right hon. and learned Gentleman will, as I was saying, be a great disappointment not only to thousands of civil servants, but also to many Members sitting behind the right hon. and learned Gentleman who feel strongly upon this particular point. I listened, as the whole House did, very carefully for any arguments the right hon. and learned Gentleman could adduce upon the merits of the case, and it would be no reflection upon him to say that there were no arguments adduced by him, for the very good reason that there are none that can be adduced. He had to restrict himself, therefore, to the issue of the cost, about which I shall say a few words in a moment. The only other point I should like to make about his speech just now is that I think he rather over-estimated the effect of the Amendment he has put upon the Order Paper. As my right hon. Friend pointed out, under the Government's proposal it would be difficult to see how anyone could benefit, for 10 years at any rate, and even that would be a very rare and exceptional case because these people would become eligible only 10 years from now and presumably most of them would go on serving a considerable time thereafter.

What this really amounts to is that we are paying these people with a postdated cheque, and a cheque which is dated very far ahead indeed. I, like most other Members, have been inundated with letters from Civil Service organisation and from individual civil servants. There was one point which was brought to my notice this morning, which comes from the Civil Service Superannuation Joint Committee and merits special emphasis. They say:

"It will hit especially hard those very lowly-paid messengers and paper-keeper grades, and Post Office grades, where it was the custom for many years of temporary service to precede establishment."

That is an important point which the House should take note of in dealing with this matter.

The case has already been elaborately argued during the Committee stage, and I am not going to make a long speech about its merits. The Committee came to a decision, and the Bill as it now stands represents that decision. The decision is that unestablished service should count in full for pension as soon as the civil servant becomes established. That is the position for which we shall contend, and I hope very much that Members opposite will also contend for it and use words to persuade the right hon. and learned Gentleman, and that if their words are of no avail they will use their votes. I do not think that anyone in private life with a servant who had served him faithfully for 20 years would turn round and tell him that he will get less pension because part of his service was on an unestablished basis. [HON. MEMBERS: "Who started it?"] It would be regarded as a monstrous argument, and it would not be tolerated by Members opposite in their private affairs. Therefore, I see no reason why any of us should tolerate it in this case.

5.15 p.m.

The civil servant is paid less on balance than his colleagues in industry, and he is paid less because at the end of his period of service, he hopes to get a pension. The temporary civil servant is often paid even less, and so, a fortiori, he ought to rank for pension during the period when he was unestablished and lower paid. That his service should count for only half, is a position we cannot maintain. Of course, the position would be much easier if Governments before had taken a different line. But all reforms would be unnecessary if previous Governments had already carried them into effect.

Of course it would be easier if there were no unestablished civil servants, but there always will be unestablished civil servants. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] We live in times when we have wars and matters of that kind when the Civil Service is widely expanded on a temporary basis, at the end of which it is necessary and proper that the Civil Service should be scaled down to some extent, when some go into industry and others elect to carry on in the public service. In such circumstances, there is no reason why people who remain in the Service should not count their unestablished time. Of course it can be said that a previous Government should have done something better, or that the Conservatives ought to have taken a different line in 1935; but it is a most extraordinary thing for any Government to model itself on the actions of its predecessors some 30 years previously. That would be an astonishing agument to adduce, and I do not think the right hon. and learned Gentleman would ever use it.

As far as the costs are concerned, which is the substantial point to which the Chancellor addressed himself, I will say just this. A number of suggestions as to how this Bill could be amended were made in Committee, and some of those suggestions would have cost quite a lot of money. This was the one that was pressed the hardest, and it was probably the one which had the most merit. It was the one that was carried even in a Committee with a majority of Socialists upon it. But look at the Amendments and concessions which have been made, all of which have cost very little indeed. There was the concession made earlier today about the case where pensions had been cut off because the widow had been cohabiting. The Chancellor of the Exchequer told us that the cost was negligible in that case. Then there was the point made by the hon. Member for Colchester (Mr. Charles Smith). That was met, and again the cost was negligible. There was Clause 36 and a certain amendment to the position about additional pension, which the right hon. and learned Gentleman said would cost really nothing, at all. Then there was the point of the Service civil servant. A new Clause met the point put by my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Dodds-Parker), and I think that only 80 or 90 civil servants were involved.

No one can say that we have been extravagant so far with the concessions we have won from the Treasury in Amendments to this Bill. It is true that the cost in the first year will be between £1 million and £2 million, rising, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman says, to between £5 million and £7 million in 15 years' time. I must say, however, that when I first heard these figures I thought they were rather lower than the anticipated total cost might be of an Amendment of this kind. But every doing of justice of this character must cost money. I do not believe we are justified in saving money by doing less than justice to the servants of the Crown. We can argue very forcibly that fewer people should be employed in the Civil Service, but in so far as people are employed, and will be employed, in substantial numbers in that Service it is to everybody's interest, irrespective of party, to see that they are fairly treated. To postpone the whole matter for another 10 or 20 years cannot be accepted at all.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman has given us the figures. He said that last year 86,000 civil servants became established. That means that these people will suffer. It is only unestablished service after the passing of the Bill which will count for pension. All these 86,000 are eliminated from the benefits of the Bill if the Government Amendment is carried. I do not think it would be the wish of the House that we should proceed in that way, and I hope that hon. Members opposite will use their undoubted influence to persuade the Chancellor to take a more generous view of this matter. I hope they will put not only the cost, which is important, but the justice of the case foremost in their argument. If we cannot get such a concession, then I very much hope they will join with us in putting the matter to the issue, because it is votes which eventually count and not speeches.

I do not in the least want to make any party points about the Bill; indeed, I have no party for which to make them, and I do not pretend for a moment that the Bill as it stands has not substantial merits and attractions from the point of view of the Civil Service. Nevertheless, I want to appeal to the Chancellor not to press the Government Amendment but to accept the decision reached by the Committee upstairs. It is true, as he said, that the decision in Committee was reached by a very narrow margin—a majority of two in a Committee of 20 to 22 Members. But it is also the case—and I am sure I am within the recollection of every Member of that Committee—that there was not one speech in the whole of the Debate on this matter—Conservative, Labour, Liberal or Independent—which did not beg the Chancellor to do what the Committee upstairs ultimately decided by a small majority should be done. We must, therefore, start with the fact that it is the considered desire of the Committee, which represented all sides of the House, that the Clause should stand as it is in the Bill now and should not be amended as the Chancellor proposes to amend it today.

I want to make clear to the House, if I can, although I think most Members are familiar with this issue, what is the difference between the position of the Committee and the position now adopted by the Chancellor. For many decades the public service in this country has been troubled by a grotesque anomaly and a very substantial grievance; it is that when a man went out of the service at the end of his days he was pensioned not on the total length of service he had put in, but only on that portion of it which had been labelled with the word "established." All the rest of his service was completely disregarded.

I shall give one striking example, out of many hundreds which could be quoted, of the effect of that sort of thing. There is a servant of this House—there is not need to go across to Whitehall to find cases—who became established last year after having put in 44 years' service. In short, there is no relation at all between the meaning of the word "established" and the total length of time that the civil servant puts in.

Until a little while ago no unestablished service was allowed to count at all. Then, by the 1946 Act, a distinct improvement was made in that situation; it was decided that half of the service in an unestablished capacity, put in from 1919 onwards, should count for pension. Here is a point which is not without bearing on today's Debate. If the then Chancellor had taken the same line in 1946 as the present Chancellor is taking today, we would not have got in that year the half service to count which, in fact, we did get. If he had said, "You cannot expect me, as Chancellor, to make up for the sins of my predecessors," that would have barred the 1946 Act and, indeed, would bar reforms of any kind. It is the constant and repeated fate of Governments to have to do things because of the shortcomings of their predecessors. That is the whole idea of a change of Government. The whole idea is to get a new Government to do things which the old one did not do. The doctrine which the Chancellor has enunciated today would strike at the root of every conceivable kind of progress, both inside and outside the public service.

In Committee upstairs and today no Minister of the Crown attacked the merits of the proposal which was put forward. No word was said in defence of the situation in which only a half of unestablished service counted for pension. Today, the Chancellor has not sought to make any defence; rather has he confirmed the case. By saying that in future that kind of situation should never be allowed to arise he is really saying that it should not have been allowed to arise in the past. If it ought not to have been allowed to arise in the past, we ought, therefore, to put it right now.

In effect, the Chancellor says, "I will concede the case that you have made, but not to you. I will concede the merits of your argument, and I will see that anyone who enters the service in future will not be badly treated in this way, but I will do nothing to alleviate the bad treatment of those who have borne the heat and burden of the day in the past, and who are still in the Service." There is a Scriptural precedent for this in the case of the labourer who enters the vineyard at the eleventh hour, and who gets the same trade union rate as the man who enters at nine o'clock in the morning. But there is no precedent, Scriptural, or otherwise, that I can think of, which would justify the giving of a penny a day to the man who has not yet entered and only a halfpenny to those who have done 30 to 40 years' service.

Suppose we do not retain the Clause as it stands, and accept the Government Amendment. Does not the Chancellor realise, as I am sure most of us do, that the fact of making that provision for future entrants will intensify, rather than diminish, the sense of grievance of those who have put in long service and who are still working. He confronts us with the situation in which, year after year, theses public servants will be coming to us to ask that this matter should be put right, and neither he nor we will be able to give any answer on the merits except "You cannot ask this Government to bear and pay for the sins of their predecessors."

We should "go broke" if they did.

It may be that we shall even go broke without the Government having remedied the sins of their predecessors. Is it not plain that we shall have a permanent canker of discontent on this matter if we do not put it right?

The Chancellor makes the point, which is a fair one for him to make, and I do not complain about it, that if they are to put things right for people in every walk of life the result would be, so to speak, to break the camel's back. That is a perfectly fair point, but does not the Chancellor recognise, as I think the rest of us will, that we stand in a special relation to the people about whom we are now talking? In a general way the Government are responsible for the whole of the people of the country, and still more grave, the people of the country are responsible for the Government, but there is no doubt that there is a special relationship between the Government and the people about whom we are speaking today. These men are our servants, and though there may be many injustices affecting sections of the community who are not our servants, many injustices which we would desire to put right, here is an injustice touching our own servants, and we cannot shelter from the responsibility for putting that right by any consideration that there are a lot of other people who also suffer injustice.

I apologise for the fact that I shall not be able to be here later, because I have to go to a conference at Cardiff, and I have to travel tonight. That will explain my absence from the Division Lobby, if we have to go through the Division lobbies, which I hope we shall not have to do. I ask the Chancellor to deliver us from the intolerable position which the passage of his Amendment would create. I have never seen, in a long life of agitation—I have done about 35 years of Civil Service work—all this House in agreement that something should be done on a particular Civil Service matter. I have known occasions when the Labour Party have rendered extremely valuable support for claims which I, with others, was advancing on behalf of civil servants. I have known cases when I have had support from Members on this side of the House, for which I have been grateful, I cannot remember an occasion when the cumulative disposition of all was so great in favour of justice being done to the civil servants of this country. On every count, I ask the Chancellor not to press his Amendment, but to accept the decision of the Committee upstairs, which faithfully reflects the view of the House, and to leave the Clause as it now stands in the Bill.

I do not propose to go over points which have already been raised, because I am in agreement with the views which have been expressed. Like the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. W. J. Brown), I agree that there are merits, and substantial merits, in this Bill. It has been said that we should not make a party question of this; certainly I do not wish to do so. Like the hon. Member for Rugby also I have spent most of my life seeking for improvements, of which this has certainly been one. I cannot but feel happy that all parts of the House are at last united that this fiction of unestablished service should be abolished. From the passing of this Bill it will be abolished, and I attach great value to that fact.

I am sorry that I cannot accept the doctrine of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that nothing can be done here because of the repercussions elsewhere. I take the view that the unestablished civil servant is in a special position. He was engaged by the Civil Service to do certain duties. He was denied the proper pay for those duties and the proper emoluments. The Chancellor speaks of the cost. May I remind him of the loss to the men who did the work, received a lower rate of pay and were robbed of their pensionable service? I cannot agree that those unestablished civil servants are only in the position of people outside the Service because an unestablished civil servant is in a special position. They have got their certificates, and look forward to establishment.

I wish to join in the appeal to the Chancellor to have another look at this matter. I do not intend to be dogmatic. He has talked about the cost. There are other ways of approaching this question. I should like to feel that he would try to meet the desire of the House and not alter the Bill as it now stands. Before I sit down, because I do not think there is any need for a long argument, I wish to say that the agitation for this reform will not cease until it has been carried out. How can a civil servant who will have three years' unestablished service after the passing of the Act, which will count in full, be satisfied when he has three years' service before the passing of the Act which will count only as to one half. The matter cannot stop there and it would be far better if an attempt were made now to settle the question. I hope that the Chancellor will look again at the date.

I have referred to the fact that there are what I call small areas here which might be put right. In view of what has been said by the Financial Secretary, I wish to see if I can get some statement this afternoon about those points. I would remind the Chancellor that although the Government were defeated upstairs by a small majority, a number of Members voted with the Government because we had a promise that all the points raised would be looked at as a whole. As has been said, there was finally a concentration upon this particular point. The Chancellor ought therefore to appreciate that in order to try to get this reform, quite a number of points are not being pressed.

The two points which I wish to raise are as follow: I have previously referred to the grade known as assistant postman. Technically, a man in that grade was a part-time but really a whole time officer——

I am afraid that the hon. Member is going rather wide of the point before the House. He must concentrate on the Amendment which is before the House, and not refer to other matters which have been dropped in order that the Government should not make this Amendment.

I think that when we reached this discussion you indicated, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that you would allow it to be rather wide to permit of reference being made to a later Amendment, in Clause 40, page 34, line 45, because the two questions are related.

The hon. Member may proceed, and I will see how far he goes.

I am pressing now the point of view of a service which was unestablished, the assistant postman service. Technically the duty is part-time, but they were whole-time servants. I wish to ask the Chancellor whether that case can be considered Departmentally. I hope it can.

With regard to the other I think, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that I may run counter to your Ruling. If so, I shall abide by your decision. As I understand it what is to happen to the part-time civil servants is related to the decision now made by the House on the Amendment in the name of the Chancellor. I have emphasised the point that many of these men did do full time duty for a number of months each year and may have so done this duty for 10, 15 or 20 years. I wish to ask whether those cases can be specially considered departmentally. If those two grievances could be removed it would help considerably in connection with the main point.

I hope the Chancellor will listen to the appeals which have been made to—I will put it this way—modify this date and make some concession to those men and women who have given so many years of service. If after twenty years of agitation have been conducted we say, "You will get nothing, but those who come in the future will," it really is expecting too much of human nature to think that they can accept a decision like that; though I appreciate very much that the Chancellor wishes to bring this obnoxious system to an end. Hon. Members have not pressed other points, because they hoped that the Chancellor would be able to make some concession with regard to the date of application. I hope that the appeal which has been made will not be in vain.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer used an argument today with which I think hon. Members in all parts of the House would agree. He said that unestablished service was something in the nature of a probationary period. If that had been observed, this problem would never have arisen. We were given an illustration by the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. W. J. Brown) of a man who had given unestablished service for a period of over 40 years. That is not probation or anything in the nature of probation. It is clearly an unjustified period of service, if he is to serve for a period of 40 years and to be given no pension at the end of it because it was unestablished service. It does not even come within the very correct definition of what unestablished service should be which was given by the Chancellor himself. Parliament has recognised that that definition is unfair and in 1946 passed an Act making provision for half of that service.

But by what principle can we say that half of it shall count? Taking again the instance given by the hon. Member for Rugby, that would reduce the period to 20 years. Twenty years is quite as long a probationary period as 40 years. From the probationary point of view, there is no difference between 20 years and 40 years. Therefore, using the argument of the Chancellor himself and applying that test to it, surely if he is abolishing it from the present date forward, as he is in this Bill, that is quite a strong argument for abolishing it for the previous period too. I add my voice to the appeals made by other hon. Members that the Chancellor should look at this again.

The only argument he has given is one of additional cost. As the hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. P. Thorneycroft) pointed out, he can meet that additional cost by combing the Civil Service. It is a great deal too big and it is being increased. He should meet that cost. Those people who have given long service should be given justice first of all, before the Civil Service Vote is increased. There are other methods, there are certain economies which he could effect, but this is not one of them, because in this case justice is involved. I hope that he will look at this again and reconsider the matter.

I would add my words to the appeals which are being made that the right hon. and learned Gentleman should consider this again, and I would put forward three points. The first is that recently there has been brought into the Civil Service men who have given up positions outside in order to assist the Government in the very important work of a technical type which is now thrust upon them. There are a large number of these people who, if this proposal of the right hon. Gentleman is accepted, will be particularly hardly treated. They are men who certainly deserve special consideration.

The second point I would make is that if a summary date is fixed, which just happens to be that of the passing of an Act, I am convinced that it is an arrangement which cannot last for any appreciable period of time. What is much more important is that a feeling of utter discontent will be created right through the Civil Service, and nothing is more essential than that the Civil Service should be a contented service and a service with prospects to look forward to. Knowing a good many of these men who happen to work in my part of the country, I feel that they have given loyal service. To treat them differently from those now coming in, will create a very false impression, and one not in the best interests of the Civil Service itself.

There is, thirdly, the question of the reduction of numbers in the Civil Service. I believe an efficient service is what all good civil servants wish to see established, but I do not think we shall ever get efficiency if we generate a sense of grievance. I am convinced that there will be a sense of grievance, because this proposal will be interpreted as being unfair. Ever since the days of Michael Hicks Beach it has been the business of the Chancellor to say, "No." This may cost something like £8 million, ultimately, but surely it is money well spent and equal savings could be made in other directions. The Civil Service should be contented and the right type of person encouraged to come into it.

This is not a party matter; I think all parties wish to see efficiency in the Civil Service. I have not heard one argument which would justify the proposal of the right hon. and learned Gentleman. I hope that this will be dealt with without our having to go into the Division Lobby, because I believe that a great many hon. Members would be put in a most difficult position. As the Chancellor and the Treasury are nominally the directors of the Civil Service it is to them that the service should look for fair treatment, and this proposal is not treating the service fairly and properly and that appears to be the view of all hon. Members who have spoken.

It is not easy to adduce any arguments which have not already been used in this Debate, but I feel I cannot let the occasion pass without at least placing on record how I feel in this matter. In the first place, I should disclose my interest, which is that for the past 25 years, if not longer, I have been associated with the national staff side of the Civil Service and with associations in the Civil Service. There are two or three problems which are so old that we were dealing with them as far back as 25 years ago. It is, therefore, very difficult for a person in my position to feel that he can discard altogether the labour and the agitation of a quarter of a century, especially if one feels keenly that right is on one's side, as I feel it is here. I think that, in general, civil servants will agree when I say that never in the history of this country has so much been done in regard to the conditions of the Civil Service as has been done by this Government in the short time that they have been in power. We ought to make that perfectly clear.

I believe that this is the third occasion on which we have tried to improve the superannuation scheme in the Service. I recall with particular gratitude the effort of my right hon. and learned Friend's predecessor who agreed that half the period of unestablished service should count as from 1st January, 1919. That was a distinct improvement on the Act of 1935, which merely permitted the counting of half of that service as from the date of the application of that Act. But I felt, as I am sure did many other hon. Members, that although the then Chancellor could not concede the whole of the case we put forward at that time—he could not concede the years in full as some of us asked—it was only a matter of time before this Government in any future review of the Superannuation Acts would reach the same conclusion as some of us did, and that the time was opportune to redress what had been an injustice over many years.

In regard to this Bill I agree with those who say that there have been substantial improvements. However, I qualify that by saying that if I had had my personal choice, with my long experience of the agitation in the Civil Service, I should have chosen to deal with one or two of the aspects under discussion today rather than some of the other matters which are in the Bill. I think that they go more deeply to the roots of the problem which has been agitating the minds of members of the Civil Service for the best part of a quarter of a century. I suppose that I should be ruled out of Order if I refered to the new Clause in the name of myself and my hon. Friends. I think I had better take note of your gesture, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, but I think that hon. Members will know what I mean when I say that I am referring to the suggestion that service with the colours should count, and so on. That is one aspect. The other is undeniably the argument that unestablished service should count.

Only one matter grieves me in all this business. I have been reading a letter written by some hon. Gentleman opposite as to the attitude of certain people towards this Bill. I do not know how hon. Gentlemen opposite have the effrontery to do this. I think that it is cheek and impertinence on their part. They are trying to prove in the letter that there are some people on this side of the House who have not voted in favour of this provision upstairs.

What does the letter say?

It is a letter of which I have seen a copy. If hon. Members want it to be read, I do not mind. It says:

"The Committee stage was taken, not on the Floor of the House, but by a Standing Committee of which I was unfortunately not a member. I replied accordingly, but promised …"

[HON. MEMBERS: "What Member?"] If hon. Gentlemen want the name, I do not mind giving it, but I thought that I would keep out any reference to it. The hon. Member writes:

"I replied accordingly, but promised that the three following points would be ventilated on the Committee by Conservative Members. Conservative Members put down an Amendment in favour of counting full temporary service for superannuation. …"

The point I wish to make is that I think that they have got real cheek and impertinence to try to make people in the Civil Service and in the constituencies believe that had the Tories been in power now, they would have done something more and given something more to the Civil Service than is contained in this Bill. I wish to make it clear that in my opinion nothing would have been given by a Tory Government at this stage, having regard to what has been done before by this Government in the period of three years.

I think that the hon. Member is quoting from a letter which I sent to some of my constituents. Is that so?

I should say that it was, yes.

The letter is signed, so there cannot be any doubt about it. Is it so or not?

Yes.

Why not say so? There is no statement in the letter which is not a precise and accurate statement of the facts. There is no attempt whatever to make any party capital except such as may accrue from the facts themselves.

I will not deny that. It is the truth all right, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That is my difficulty with a statement of this kind, when a Tory who has done nothing for the Civil Service worth talking about for 25 or 30 years, has the effrontery now, when this Government have done so much, to try to belittle what has been done and to try to mislead the civil servants of the country.

Would the hon. Gentleman say what he means when he says that it is not the whole truth? In what respect is it not the whole truth? It purports to be a statement of what happened on this Amendment in the Committee upstairs. I studied the matter very carefully and I attempted to state the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

If the hon. Member wanted to give the whole truth, possibly he might have suggested, "But this is infinitely more than my party would have given you had they been in power." I hope that with that explanation and understanding between the hon. Member for Twickenham and myself, I can proceed to my next point.

There are two important points involved. The first is the declaration made for the first time in my experience by any Government, that unestablished service is a vile thing, a bad thing which should not be countenanced any longer. That is a great declaration. Moreover, it is not only a declaration. We are assured by the Financial Secretary and by the Chancellor that steps have already been taken to make sure that the probationary period referred to by the hon. and learned Member for Carmarthen (Mr. Hopkin Morris) is, in essence, a probationary period and not a lifetime of service in an unestablished capacity. Having said that, and having thanked the Government and my right hon. and learned Friend for this important declaration and concession, I must say that I am sorry that the Chancellor is now being so illogical as to say, having decided that a thing was evil and wrong and should not be countenanced, "I am sorry; I cannot give any redress whatever to the people who have suffered under that error for the best part of 40 or 50 years."

I appreciate the argument that we cannot remedy all these defects at the same time, and I quite understand the clamour that would be made by hon. Gentlemen opposite if increased taxation was necessary in order to do this. They would say that it was "reckless expenditure" as the Leader of the Opposition so pertinently and so often tries to state to the country.

I heard the hon. Gentleman use the word "pertinently." Is that what he meant?

I am glad that the hon. and gallant Member has drawn my attention to that error. Of course, I meant "impertinently."

6.0 p.m.

I wish to make an appeal to my right hon. and learned Friend to give further consideration to this matter. Personally, I feel that £2,500,000 at present, and £7 million or £8 million in the ultimate in the next 15 years, is not too great a price to pay for removing something which has been a sore in the body politic of the Civil Service for a couple of generations, and I do not think the people of this country would think that an injustice had been done to any other workers in other industries, socialised or otherwise, if he took the decision, as I think he ought to, to do the right thing by loyal, faithful members of his own staff, servants of the Crown and of his own Department.

I shall not vote against him on it, but neither shall I vote for him on this occasion. I feel sure that there is an opportunity here for my right hon. and learned Friend to consider between now and the time when the Bill goes to another place, a way in which he could meet what seems to be the general view of the House in this matter.

I do not know whether the hon. Member for Heston and Isleworth (Mr. W. R. Williams) wishes to get a majority of the House in support of the arguments which he has been advancing or not, but, if he was wooing us, he certainly wooed us in a rather peculiar manner. I do not think it necessary to delay the House by dealing at length with the contest between the hon. Member and my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr. Keeling). I was on the Standing Committee and on the other hand I was quite unaware of the existence of the letter which the hon. Member quoted until this moment, but, so far as the portion of the letter which the hon. Member read out is concerned, it seemed to me a characteristically accurate account by my hon. Friend of what took place in Committee, and why complaint has been made against my hon. Friend I cannot imagine.

On the general merits of the question, this matter has been thoroughly threshed out both this afternoon and in the Committee upstairs, and I need not delay the House by going into the merits again. Indeed, there is less necessity to do so because there has been no dispute in any quarter of the House on the merits of the question. I would merely urge three considerations which weigh with me very much.

The first is that the concession which the Government are offering means practically nothing, and for this reason. The Chancellor and the Financial Secretary have told us that it is their intention radically to revise the whole system of unestablished service, and that in future it would only be used in a very narrow sense for people undergoing a merely probationary period. They are to get rid of what the hon. Member for Heston and Isleworth considered "this vile thing, this bad thing," which has existed in the past. They may well deserve commendation for that, and I think they do, and I am not going to quarrel with it. But that means that the concession is nothing at all, because there will not therefore be these unestablished people in the future and it makes one ask why it should be put into the Bill; in fact, it would be much better if it were not in the Bill. If we cannot win our point, it is better not to have the Government's point in the Bill at all. It will simply have the effect of creating this sense of rank injustice and continuing it in the future.

The second point is a basic point, and it is that no attempt whatever has been made, either by the Financial Secretary upstairs or by the Chancellor today, to pretend that there is any argument whatever about the justice of this claim. If there had been a difference of opinion on whether it was just, that would be a different situation, but that is not the situation and that case goes entirely by default. It has been admitted by both the Chancellor and the Financial Secretary that all these suggestions are in themselves desirable suggestions. This is an absolutely just demand, and, that being so, we have before us a different proposition than if we were merely asking for something which was desirable.

We are asking for a matter of absolute justice. There can only be one answer in refusing a demand for absolute justice, and that is that it is impossible. No other justification should be given. The only case which the Government have put forward has rested entirely on the matter of cost. That is not one to which we have any right to be indifferent, but we have a right to say that, if there are certain things clamouring to be done and one is a matter of absolute justice while the others are merely desirable concessions, the absolute justice should be granted first, even if that answer means postponing other things until later. That appears to me to be an unanswerable argument.

The third point is that there has been a certain amount of talk, both in the Committee upstairs and in this Debate today, about the records of parties and Governments in the past and why these things were not done before. I make no complaint about that at all. Hon. Members who recollect the discussion in the Committee upstairs will remember the suggestion that, if we get the records of the parties, all the brickbats are by no means on one side. I shall not go into that, because I do want to approach this matter in a non-partisan spirit. I want hon. Members to approach it in the same spirit in order to see what is the correct conclusion to be drawn from these facts concerning this problem which has caused so much anguish in the past. When my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (Mr. P. Thorneycroft) was speaking about what happened in 1935, the hon. Member for Enfield (Mr. Ernest Davies), if I heard him aright, and I am not going to say anything to his discredit——

I have not spoken this afternoon.

Well, one hon. Member in that part of the House said that it would have been much easier if it had been done in 1935. It was quite a proper observation and I am not complaining about it. What I would ask the hon. Member who made that interruption to do is to meditate on what is the true lesson to be drawn from that fact. It is surely that every year that this reform is delayed, it becomes more difficult to do. It is true that it would have been easier to have done it in 1935 than it is today, and it is a pity it was not done in 1935. Nevertheless, it is equally true that it will be much more difficult to do it in 1960 or some other time in future with every year that passes, because the additional sense of grievance which will grow will make the problem still more difficult.

Therefore, for those three reasons, I beg the House and the Chancellor very seriously to consider accepting the verdict given on a non-party basis by the Standing Committee upstairs.

I think it is about time that some- body on this side of the House spoke in a quite different strain from that of the speeches to which we have been listening. The hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Hollis) has referred to absolute justice. What, particularly, are we concerned about in this Amendment? We are concerned chiefly with giving a certain section of the population rather more of the national cake than they expected to have. I think that is a perfectly fair statement. If this superannuation is increased, as was proposed and decided in the Committee upstairs, somebody will get an additional share of the national cake over and above what they expected to receive.

It is true that the beneficiaries of this transaction will be certain members of the Civil Service, who in the past have been unestablished and who have found themselves without the emoluments of their established brethren. It is my experience, and probably the experience of every hon. Member in recent weeks, that these people have constituted themselves a pressure group. I, like other hon. Members, have received the attentions of this pressure group. Even if I make a vote-losing speech, I do not care; I think something wants saying at this stage. I do not propose in future to say "Yes" to every pressure group, even if their case does involve what the hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Hollis) has just called "absolute justice."

The assumption in the minds of some of my hon. Friends on this side of the House, and in the mind of the hon. Baronet the Member for Abingdon (Sir R. Glyn)—whom I have always regarded as representing the more responsible and more respectable element in the party opposite—is that, if a given pressure group has got a case which on its merits stands up, then the Government must necessarily give in to that pressure group on the merits of its case. That assumption is fantastic. It is not fair to my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer who, after all, has got his job to do as Chancellor of the Exchequer. He has to administer a financial system which every hon. Member with one exception—the hon. Member for South Nottingham—accepts.

Seeing that that system is accepted, and that my right hon. and learned Friend is supposed to balance his Budget, why should he have to give in to a pressure group merely because that pressure group happens to have an inherently good case? It is no use considering this subject in a vacuum and dissociating this subject from all the other topics that crowd in on this House in an era like the present. This Labour Government took office in 1945 in a difficult epoch, and because they are a Labour Government, they are expected to do the right thing by everybody, irrespective of the economic circumstances in which the country finds itself.

From now until the General Election I am going to say to all pressure groups, "I think you have a good case—or you have not, as the case may be—but if you want to have a concession made to you, you must show me how I can put it up to the Chancellor of the Exchequer so that his course will be easy and so that nobody else will be deprived." Some hon. Members have actually had the effrontery to suggest that this concession should be paid for by docking somebody else, by giving somebody the sack, or something of that sort.

I believe that these civil servants have a good case, but I refuse to vote against this Government who are, though belatedly, arranging that this evil shall not recur. I defend my right hon. and learned Friend; I hope he will stand firm and challenge those who oppose either to abstain from voting or to vote against the Government, to show where the money is to come from under the existing orthodox and fantastic financial system.

I respect the courage of the hon. Member for South Nottingham (Mr. Norman Smith) in his stern resistance to what he describes as "pressure groups." I take it that by "pressure groups" he means those expressions of public opinion with which he happens to disagree. But I was a little surprised when he told the House that it made no difference whatever to his resistance to those pressure groups if their case happened to be inherently a good one. That is a very remarkable proposition, because it suggests that the hon. Member is not prepared to back an inherently good case if it happens to be put to him rather vocally and by numbers of his constituents or of other people. I disagree with that attitude.

Surely, it is for this House to take into account public opinion in the matter, and to come to the right decision upon the merits. Public opinion on the matter is a very real and relevant consideration. The public in this country have a very considerable inherent sense of justice, and if there is a strong expression of public opinion on a matter of this sort it is, at any rate, some evidence which this House should weigh in coming to a conclusion whether or not the case is, in the words of the hon. Member for South Nottingham, "inherently a good one."

Like the right hon. and learned Gentleman who moved the Amendments, I did not have the privilege of serving upon the Standing Committee, but I think I can claim that I represent in this House at least as many civil servants as any other hon. Member. There is no doubt at all that the action of the right hon. and learned Gentleman in putting down these Amendments has aroused a very considerable degree of indignation. To any hon. Member who is accustomed to weighing the reactions and to weighing the genuineness of representations made to him, there can be little doubt that there is a very great deal of feeling aroused on this matter. It seemed to me that in moving these Amendments the right hon. and learned Gentleman did not appear fully to appreciate that in so doing he was outraging the sense of justice of a considerable section of the community.

As I understood them, the right hon. and learned Gentleman's arguments were two. First of all there was the question of cost, which went immediately from £1 million to £2 million. He did not tell the House whether that was a gross or net figure. With the present high rate of direct taxation, there may be a substantial difference between the two, and when the Financial Secretary winds up the House should be told whether this is a gross or net figure. The argument of public economy is one which it is absolutely right in the present situation for the House to consider, and did it come from a Chancellor of the Exchequer who in other respects was sedulously practising public economy, it would, perhaps, have even more compelling weight.

6.15 p.m.

But the figure involved is a sufficiently small one when compared with the total Budget of £3,200 million not to amount to an insuperable obstacle if there is—again quoting the hon. Member for South Nottingham—"an inherently good case." The Chancellor is a better mathematician than I am—that is a very limited compliment—and can work out what percentage a sum of between £1 million and £2 million is of £3,200 million. In any case, it is very small. There is no doubt, as my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes has said, that other claims upon the Exchequer at this time are less backed by elementary justice, and, therefore, should give place to this. I should be out of Order if I were to give the right hon. and learned Gentleman any suggestions, but he might perhaps cast his eye on the Central Office of Information.

The question that really arises is what the right hon. and learned Gentleman is trying to do by these Amendments. As I understand it, it is a compromise—perhaps very characteristic of the warm geniality for which the right hon. and learned Gentleman is famous—by which he accepts the principle and then proceeds to emasculate, to attenuate and to procrastinate the substance of the matter. He accepts the principle as being right. He has not said at that Box, and no one has stood there to say, that the principle that unestablished service prior to established service should rank for full pension is wrong. No hon. Member in the course of an hour and a half has said that, and by this very Amendment the right hon. and learned Gentleman is putting on record that in the view of the Government the principle is right.

Having done that, in the same breath metaphorically, and literally in the same Amendment, he proceeds so to arrange matters that no person shall benefit from these principles for the space of 10 years. That is a ludicrous position with which to confront the House of Commons. As my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes has said, it would be more intellectually honest not to put the principle into the Bill at all; it would be intellectually more honest to leave the whole matter open. To put the principle into the Bill and then to refuse to operate it is, in the opinion of many people affected and who have spoken to me, to add insult to injury. Surely, the issue is quite simple. In terms of contemporary finance, if this is the right thing to do it is quite absurd to say that from £1 million to £2 million, be it gross or net is too much. If it be the right thing to do, then this country, even under Socialist finance, has not reached the stage at which it cannot afford it.

The hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Hollis) chided my hon. Friend the Member for Heston and Isleworth (Mr. W. R. Williams) and said he was not wooing hon. Members on the other side towards the case that we have espoused. But I do not think some of the speeches from hon. Members opposite have been designed to woo the Chancellor of the Exchequer who, after all, holds the key to this situation.

The House holds the key.

I agree at once that the House holds the key to the situation, but the Chancellor has a very special responsibility to this House as custodian of the nation's finances.

With regard to the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for South Nottingham (Mr. Norman Smith), I submit that civil servants are the servants of this House. We are the employers of civil servants and when civil servants exercise their due right of putting their grievances before hon. Members, it is a little unkind to suggest that they are a pressure group. They must be distinguished from pressure groups as we understand them, because this is the final court of appeal for the grievances of the servants of this House. They have no right to take a matter of this kind to any arbitration tribunal, and it so happens that, on matters of superannuation, legislation is necessary before any changes can be made in their conditions. In that respect they are in a very different position from the employees of private enterprise and, indeed, in a different position from the servants of socialised industries. I hope no hon. Members on either side of the House will feel prejudiced against the case that has been put to them because they have been troubled by individual civil servants who have written to them recently.

I want to assure the Chancellor of the Exchequer that we all appreciate that there is a great deal of good in this Bill. There are welcome reforms, long overdue, which will cause a great deal of satisfaction to the Civil Service, but it is too good a Bill to leave unremedied a widespread feeling of injustice among civil servants who are suffering from the mistakes of Governments in the past in regard to the discount of their unestablished service for pension purposes.

If, for a moment or two, I may examine what the Chancellor proposes to do, I hope to submit to him some of the features of his Amendment which are bound in the future to cause difficulty, a sense of unfairness and a sense of injustice. The Amendment proposes to concede some improvement in the case of future entrants without going back to put things right for those who are already established. That is exactly what the Government did in 1935, and they employed a precisely similar device; because in 1935, civil servants established after the passing of the 1935 Act were allowed to reckon half their unestablished service from the date of the passing of that Act.

In 1949, under the Bill before the House, the Chancellor proposes that those established after the passing of this Bill shall be allowed to reckon in full their unestablished service from the date of the passing of the Bill. That is a device, employed in 1949, which was employed in 1935 when bringing about a change in the reckoning of unestablished service for pension. As one hon. Member has already said, the device employed in 1935 was not accepted by the Civil Service and agitation for a remedy commenced almost immediately after the Act was passed. I prophesy that trouble lies before the House on this question for precisely the same reasons.

After the passing of the 1935 Act, the Civil Service made it clear that those proposals were not to be taken as implying any abandonment of the general principle that unestablished service should be reckoned in full for existing personnel. A short while after the passing of the 1935 Act an all-party committee was formed in the House, composed of Members of all sides, to work for the amendment of the 1935 Act with a view to counting the whole of unestablished service for pension. That all-party committee made periodical approaches to the then Chancellor of the Exchequer. With the outbreak of the war that activity ceased and representations which were being made to the Chancellor of the Exchequer were held in abeyance. It was not until three years ago this month that the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Dalton) announced:

"It is my view that these men had a raw deal in the past, and it is the duty of this new Parliament and new Government to help them."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 28th May, 1946; Vol. 423, c. 992.]

That was the beginning of the remedy which was later incorporated in the 1946 Act.

May I contrast the position of an entrant established after the passing of this Bill with that of persons who have been established quite recently? A person established after the passing of this Bill will, under certain conditions, count one-half of his military service during the war of 1939–45, one-half of his temporary service up to the date of the passing of the Bill and his full unestablished service thereafter. An entrant who had been established before the passing of the Bill counted no part of his unestablished service in full; he counted only one-half. We might find this difference between two persons: one established in 1948, after 10 years' combined war service and temporary service, would count one-half, that is five years, whereas a man established in 1951, after the same period of combined service of 10 years, will count one-half up to the passing of the Bill and in full thereafter—a total of six years. Thus, between two men with precisely the same length of unestablished service and with only two years or so dividing their establishment in the Civil Service, there will be a difference of one year in their reckonable service for pension.

Turning to the older entrants who were established some years ago, in between the two wars, they were not allowed to count for pension purposes any part of their military service between 1914–1918 and many of them were not allowed to count any part of their earlier unestablished service. We find that a man who entered as a temporary clerk in 1920, say at 30 years of age, and who was later established in, say, 1934, when he was 44, has put in 14 years of non-pensionable service. Under the 1946 Act he is allowed to count one-half of that service. If he retires at 65 he will have served 35 years, but only 28 years of that will count for pension. For a clerical officer retiring on, say, a salary of £450, that deprivation of seven years unestablished service, which may not count for pension, will make a difference to his superannuation of about £40 a year. Under this Bill it will mean a smaller pension to his widow if he dies in the meantime. It may make a difference of possibly £13 to £14 a year on a small pension of between £50 and £60 a year which his widow might receive under this Bill.

6.30 p.m.

Those are anomalies which the Civil Service will examine with close attention and which will undoubtedly make many members of the Service feel more acutely the deprivation of the past now that some concession is to be made for unestablished service in the future. I do hope that my right hon. and learned Friend will carefully consider the appeals and representations which have been made to him from all parts of the House. This is a question of justice to the servants of the Crown, and a special responsibility rests on the House to see justice is done.

As hon. Members have mentioned, my right hon. and learned Friend did not seek to defend what has happened in the past on the merits of the case, but now refers to the considerable cost which the full remedy would entail. I suggest respectfully to him that if the cost of this concession were laid upon the Votes of the several Departments, savings could and should be made in other directions to meet the additional charge. I am sure that if he made a strong appeal to Departments to achieve that purpose the response would be complete, and that he would have no worries on the score of cost. I hope that, in all the circumstances, my right hon. and learned Friend will reconsider his previous decision, and accede to the wishes which have been so earnestly expressed from all sides of the House.

There is nothing very new or fresh which can be said about this matter. I do not think that, in the 20 years I have been in the House, I can recall such a unanimous desire for the Chancellor to meet the wishes of Members in all quarters of the House. Surely the right hon. and learned Gentleman must begin to have some doubts as to the rectitude of the position he has adopted when he finds that his only supporter is the hon. Member for South Nottingham (Mr. Norman Smith). Surely, if nothing else can shake the Chancellor that fact ought to have some influence with him. I think Members in all parts of the House have some legitimate sense of grievance against the Government for the way in which this matter has been handled. The procedure adopted by the Government has, in fact, invited hon. Members to take up matters of this kind and to introduce Amendments of the character of the one which was introduced into this Clause in the Standing Committee. The Government might perfectly well and perfectly reasonably have said, "This Bill represents an agreement reached between the official and staff sides of the National Whitley Council. As it represents an agreement, we for our part, as a Government, intend to stand firm on the agreement, and we are not prepared to go beyond or alter that agreement in any way." That would have been a perfectly reasonable attitude for the Government to have taken up. In pursuit of such a line they could then have drawn the Financial Resolution which governs the Bill in such a way as to have all Amendments out of Order that were designed to increase the benefits to be drawn by any class of civil servants. Had the Government followed that policy, all of us would have known exactly where we stood.

The Government, however, have not done that. At no time during the discussion of this Bill in Standing Committee or on Report have the Government taken a rigid stand upon agreement reached between the Civil Service unions on the one hand and the representatives of the official side on the other. In fact, about an hour and a quarter ago, when we were looking at Clause 32, which provides that where civil servants retire with less than 20 years' service on account of ill-health they shall receive pension as if they have had 20 years' service, the Government made a concession today which goes beyond the agreement reached between the two sides of the Whitley Council. They have made that Amendment apply not only to those who retire from the Civil Service after the passage of this Bill, but to people who are already upon superannuation, to persons who have already retired from the Service. The Government, by their own action, have shown that they do not stand pat upon the agreement, and that they are prepared to make concessions which go beyond the terms of the agreement reached.

When we come to compare what has been done under Clause 32 with what the Chancellor now proposes should be done, we see a most extraordinary contrast, because there is an additional benefit for civil servants upon superannuation, which is to apply to those who have already retired. Here we have an additional benefit, also affecting superannuation, but it is going to apply only to those who become established civil servants after the passage of this Bill. That is to say, in the average case, what the Chancellor now proposes in regard to this class will not and cannot confer benefits upon members of the Civil Service until 30 or 40 years hence. That. I think, shows that there is no principle involved here of any sort or kind.

In the Standing Committee we had speeches from every Labour Member who contributed to the Debates, in favour of the proposal which stands in the Bill as it has come back to us from the Standing Committee. I should like to quote one sentence—because I think it is a precise statement of the facts—from a speech made by the hon. Member for Gillingham (Mr. Binns). He said:

"It is just as well that the Financial Secretary should know that this is not merely a question of a pressure group or any special interest but that there is a genuine and unanimous desire on the part of the Committee that something should be done."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee B, 10th May, 1949; c. 164.]

That is a precise description of the feeling in the Standing Committee.

The one and only objection raised to this proposal is upon the score of its cost. At different stages we have been given different figures as to what this proposal would cost. When it was first raised in Standing Committee we were told that the immediate cost of this proposal, which is that unestablished service rendered after the year 1919 should rank in full for superannuation—we were told that the initial figure for the first year would be £2 million. Later on, in the Standing Committee the initial figure was said to be £1,750,000. Today the Chancellor tells us that the initial cost will be somewhere between £1 million and £2 million. Presumably his guess now is that it would cost £1,500,000. As regards the ultimate cost, in Standing Committee we were told it would be £7 million in 15 years' time, and today the figure has come down to somewhere between £5 million and £7 million in 15 years' time. So the longer we discuss the matter the lower the cost seems to get. Therefore, there seems to be a great deal to be said for continuing this discussion.

Let us assume that the cost is of the order of £1,500,000 at the outset, growing to £5 million in 15 years' time. Of course, what the Chancellor of the Exchequer now proposes is going to cost the Exchequer nothing at all; it cannot cost it a single penny for, at any rate, 11 or 12 years, and it will not really begin to cost anything at all for 30 or 40 years. Let us assume that the Chancellor is seriously frightened at the idea of adding £1 million or £1,500,000 to expenditure at the present time. I would only draw his attention to the fact that in the case of the Police Force, the Home Secretary announced the other day proposals which would cost between £3 and £4 million a year at the outset and increase as time went on. The Chancellor clearly is not determined to resist all demands for increases if he thinks they are justified, and this case, as we all know, is justified. There has been no suggestion of any argument against the merits of the case; the argument is based entirely upon the cost.

In Standing Committee we said that unestablished service should count in full rather than at any time after 1919. The Chancellor's proposal now is that unestablished service shall count only if it was rendered after 1949. If the Chancellor is really frightened on the score of cost, and he thinks that £1 million or £1,500,000 is more than he can possibly afford to add to expenditure at the present time, I should have thought he might have come forward with some proposal to choose some intermediate date between 1919 and 1949. There is a whole generation separating 1919 entrants from entrants in 1949. Let it be observed that the Chancellor's proposal of counting unestablished service rendered only after 1949 does have this particularly unfair effect. During the war from 1939 to 1945, all establishments to the Civil Service came to an end. No one was established during those years. Many of those who would normally have become established in 1939, 1940 or 1941 were precluded by war-time conditions from gaining establishment when they entered the Civil Service. It therefore seems that the Chancellor's proposal now is designed deliberately to prevent those people from securing any benefit from this new proposal.

What has happened? Many of these unestablished civil servants who were serving all through the war years have been selected for permanent establishment, and during the years 1945 to 1948 or 1949 very large numbers of excellent civil servants have been put on full establishment. These persons, by what the Chancellor proposes, are being deliberately prohibited from obtaining any benefit whatever from this proposal. I suggest to the Chancellor that, even if he is frightened at the idea of adding £1,250,000 or £1,500,000 at the outset, to £5 million in 15 years, it is only expedient to meet the cases of these people by choosing some intermediate date which would result in the cost being rather less and to do justice to those who rendered to the country excellent service during the war years. I think that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport has said—and I know how strongly he is in favour of this proposal, which he proposed himself during the Debate in 1946——

As the right hon. Gentleman has been good enough to refer to me, let me say that, having experienced during the 1930's some of the miseries to which our folk were subjected by the absence of any provision then, I have listened with a growing feeling of nausea to the remarks which have characterised many of the speeches today.

I hardly think that the observations of the hon. Gentleman are in keeping with the tone of the Debate this afternoon, and I do not think they merit any reply. I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will see his way to accede to the appeals which have been made to him from all quarters of the House.

With the permission of the House perhaps I may be allowed to reply to this Debate because I have been brought into a number of speeches and my arguments have been mentioned. I am a little surprised to hear the right hon. Gentleman complain that he was not gagged at an earlier stage in this Bill. I think it is the first time that I have ever heard a representative of the Opposition get up and suggest to the Government they they might have put down a Financial Resolution which would have resulted in no amendment being possible at all. We did not think that a reasonable thing to do. Despite the desires of the right hon. Gentleman, we refrained from taking such an action. We felt it reasonable, in a matter of this importance, for views to be expressed in the House, but that did not mean that we did not reserve to ourselves naturally as a Government the position as to what we thought we were right to express to the House as regards expenditure which was permissible for certain purposes.

Let me get two things clear. The first is the effect of the Amendment which I am moving, about which there seems to be some doubt. The Amendment will have immediate effect as regards every unestablished person in the Civil Service. As from the date of the passing of the Bill, instead of two years counting as one, two years will count for two, and in reckoning up their pensions, whenever they happen to come to be paid, they will get the benefit of that extra period of time. It is not right to say that 10 years' established service has to be served before a pension is payable. Ten years which will reckon for pension has to be served.

That is to say, we can count unestablished service as well as established service which has accrued before a pension becomes payable to an established person. Therefore we say: A person has 14 years' service before this, seven years of which count towards pension and subsequently he does three years after this which will make up the ten years that are necessary. I only put that in to correct what the right hon. Gentleman put forward. This will be an immediate benefit not merely for new entrants but for everyone not up to this stage established in the Civil Service.

A great deal has been said about justice and injustice. This is not a question of justice or injustice at all. The mere justice of the situation is that these people enter upon a service on certain conditions which have been carried out. It may be said that the conditions ought to have been better. Anyone can say that with regard to the miners, the railwaymen, or anyone else. But no one suggests that we should legislate retrospectively to alter the condition under which they were then serving. It is a very unusual situation to go back retrospectively and alter conditions of service of a large class of persons.

Therefore, it is not really a question of justice or injustice, but a question of whether it is right and expedient to go back and, at the expense of the community, alter the conditions of the service which ruled and under which the service was given of a certain class of people. It has been said that I have agreed that the conditions under which the service was then given was not as good as they should have been. Certainly I agree with that. But that applies to a host of other people in the country as well.

It is not only these people who were serving during that period under conditions which were not as good as they should have been. We must remember that if we do something special for these people others may come along and ask, "What about us?" What about, for instance, the servants of the National Coal Board, to whom exactly the same provisions have been applied as regards their unpensionable period of service before they came under the Coal Board; that is to say, they are to be allowed half the period of time. If this is done for civil servants, may it not well be suggested that it should be done for 75,000 people under the Coal Board scheme? What about the local government staff who under the 1937 Act were put on a similar basis to civil servants? That is to say, half their period of service, unestablished or without a pension scheme, was to be counted.

This is a matter which cannot be settled entirely in isolation. If we are to be retrospective with legislation as regards conditions of service we must bear in mind the fact that there are other people who will come along and say: "We are just as entitled to an extra share of the national wealth as this particular body of persons." Therein lies my great difficulty. Obviously, I should like, as we should all like—it is almost too simple to say "Yes" to all these quite reasonable demands of people who say that the conditions under which they served in the past were not as good as they ought to have been—we should all like to say, "By all means let us put them right. Let us now give you compensation for those bad conditions in the past." But when it comes to paying the Bill we do not all like it, and that is just the difference.

Hon. Gentlemen who press me today say, "Look how just. Why not do it? You are only trebling the cost of the Bill. That is all that we are asking you to do. You estimated that the Bill would cost £3¼ million. We are only asking you to raise it to £10¾ million now. How reasonable! Why not do it?" Well, I should like to do it very much indeed, but I do not think that my responsibility as Chancellor of the Exchequer permits me to do it. I have to look at this matter in the setting of the people who have got to pay the money as well as the people who have to receive the money, and of all the other competitive requests that may be made.

When we got out this Bill, in agreement very largely with the Civil Service, we came to the conclusion that we were justified in spending a certain amount of money on a superannuation scheme, although there were financial difficulties and stringencies, and so on. Having come to that conclusion we framed a scheme which would come within that ambit.

I am sorry to interrupt, but I do want to be clear upon the question of the cost of the Bill and the cost of this proposal. Just now the right hon. and learned Gentleman said that we were trebling the cost of the Bill, and that the cost of the Bill as introduced would have been £3¾ million.

Three and a quarter million increased to £10¾ million.

The Financial Memorandum on the back of the Bill as originally printed says:

"The total cost of Part III of the Bill is … unlikely to exceed £500,000 in the first year and will diminish thereafter. Parts I and II … will result in a temporary increase in administrative costs of about £20,000 a year."

I cannot square these figures on the back of the Bill, which total just over half a million, with the figure of £3¼ million which the right hon. and learned Gentleman has just given.

I do not know which document the right hon. Gentleman has got, but at the bottom of page iii the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum says:

"Thereafter payments will exceed receipts till ultimately, after twenty years, the net cost of these pensions may reach a peak of £3.25 million a year."

After 20 years.

Well, this other figure is after 15 years; it creeps up to £7 million, so it is, roughly speaking, a comparable period. There is nothing very much in it. What we have to try to do is by this Amendment to establish a system which will avoid the possibility of this kind of difficulty arising in the future. We have made that applicable to everybody who has unestablished service.

Some hon. Members have suggested, certainly the hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Hollis), that it is much better not to do this at all. Well, I do ask him to think again about that. It will not make the contrast any worse than it is today. It will obviously make the contrast better than it is today. If, as we all agree, this is an undesirable incident of employment by the State, surely getting rid of it is a benefit. I think that every sensible hon. Member would agree with that proposition.

I must say quite definitely that, having given this the very deepest consideration that I can, with every possible desire to help that very great body of persons, the Civil Service of this country, I regret that it is not possible to add this new burden to the burden that we are already undertaking for this purpose. I must also point out that in matters of this kind, the Chancellor of the Exchequer must take the responsibility of telling the House fairly and fully what he considers to be the capacity for further payment of this kind, and once having made up his mind that nothing further should be charged on this account he would be gravely neglecting his duty if, for the sake of popularity or appeasement, he were to give way to demands of this kind.

Would my right hon. and learned Friend deal with one point, which I think important, which he mentioned in his earlier speech at the opening of this discussion. It is certainly not completely understood by myself, and not, I imagine, by many hon. Members who were not Members of the Standing Committee. He made what I thought a very important statement indeed when he said that it was his intention that unestablished service should gradually become a thing of the past. I thought that he was going rather to abolish that, so that most civil servants in future would be established. If the Chancellor could give us any elaboration of that I should be grateful.

The figures were given in Committee, and I think they were mentioned a little earlier today. Last year 86,000 civil servants in all were established, and the objective is—and of course this Amendment will encourage the objective, because directly upon the passing of this Bill unestablished service will equally count for pension, and there will be no distinction between the two——

If the man becomes established.

Yes.

But not otherwise.

But not otherwise. The purpose, as we have stated, is to use unestablishment only as a stage, and not as a permanent method of employing people for the Civil Service.

Would the Chancellor answer the two points I raised affecting the two smaller grades, whether they could be settled departmentally?

That is a matter which can be discussed, but it has no relevance to this Amendment.

I am sorry to have to detain the House at this late stage, but I did attempt to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, before the Chancellor rose to reply to the Debate. I am intervening because I have been asked by civil servants in my constituency to support the Clause as it stands and to oppose the Amendment which the Government have now moved. A few weeks ago I received a letter from the Customs staff at Tilbury Docks, in which they say:

"Sir,

We the undermentioned members of His Majesty's Customs Staff, Tilbury Docks would be grateful for your support in the House when the Civil Service Superannuation Bill Amendments are discussed. The Joint Committee of the Civil Service have sent you a copy of the proposed three Amendments. We have on our staff men with 28 years' unestablished service who are now established, but only half of this service counts for superannuation purposes. Knowing your record we know your support is a certainty."

That was written on 14th March before my expulsion from the Labour Party.

7.0 p.m.

It is quite obvious from that, from conversations I have had with civil servants in my constituency and from what has been said on both sides of the House that there is deep feeling on this matter, and if this Amendment is accepted, grave injustice will be done to a fine body of public servants. As I understood the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, his fundamental opposition to the Clause as it now stands is that it will cost a sum of money which he cannot at this moment afford for this purpose. The hon. Member for South Nottingham (Mr. Norman Smith) put it in rather a different way when he called upon his right hon. and learned Friend not to give way to pressure groups. Incidentally, I regard it as an impertinence to call constituents of mine, who approached me constitutionally and democratically for my support, members of a pressure group.

Does the hon. Gentleman believe it an impertinence to apply the term "pressure group" to people when, in the case of my constituency, I had seven letters from different persons all couched in identical language?

I have no doubt that the way Nottingham approaches its M.P. is different from the way Thurrock approaches its M.P. The hon. Member requested the Chancellor of the Exchequer not to give way to pressure groups. In the case of one particular pressure group, I have no doubt there would have been no difficulty in allocating this money. I refer, of course, to the pressure group of the Foreign Office.

The hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. P. Thorneycroft) said that he hoped hon. Members on the Government side of the House would go into the Lobby to support the Conservative Party against the Government. The reason we have this Clause at all is that the Tory Government in 1935 made it impossible to do justice to civil servants. I would regard it as sheer hypocrisy for the hon. Gentleman or any of his colleagues to challenge the Government on this matter, because for many years they had it within their power to put right that which they are now asking the Labour Government to put right. It is for that reason, although I am in opposition to the Government Amendment, that I will not share in the hypocrisy of the Tories, and I will not

I beg to move, in page 47, line 35, at the end, to insert:

"'presumptively eligible for a life pension,' in relation to a person, means nominated under Part II of this Act after his period of childhood and full-time education or under a nomination which states that he is permanently incapacitated."

This Amendment inserts a definition for this class of pensioner. A definition was previously provided for them in Clause 17, but we there delete it. We want to put it in here slightly amplified.

I beg to move, in page 48, line 26, to leave out "1834 to 1946."

Subsection (1) of the Clause, without the Amendment, defines the Superannuation Act as "1834 to 1946," and the present Bill. The reference to the Superannuation Acts so defined is not required in the context of the proviso.

I beg to move, in page 51, line 35, to leave out paragraph 1, and to insert:

"1. Where any person to whom section thirty-five of this Act applies ceases to be a civil servant after making periodical contributions under section seven or section twenty of this Act, the period in respect of which contributions may be returned to him by virtue of paragraph (b) of subsection (2) of section eight or paragraph (b) of subsection (2) of section twenty-one of this Act respectively shall be reduced by the number of years of reckonable service which are taken into account under subsection (3) of the said section thirty-five or would be so taken into account but for the provisions of subsection (4) of section thirty-six of this Act.

2. For the purpose of computing any contribution to be made under section nine or section twenty-two of this Act in respect of a person to whom section thirty-five of this Act applies there shall be taken into account (notwithstanding anything in subsection (5) of the said section nine or subsection (5) of the said section twenty-two) any year of reckonable service which is taken into account for the purposes of subsection (3) of the said section thirty-five or which would be so taken into account but for the provisions of subsection (4) of section thirty-six of this Act."

This Amendment and the next make consequential adjustments in the provisions dealing with persons to whom Clauses 35 and 36 apply and are made necessary by the Amendments which we have made to Clauses 8 and 21, and to Clause 36 earlier this afternoon.

I should not like the Bill to pass without thanking the Financial Secretary for the new Clause which he moved earlier. I am sorry that I was not in my place to thank him then, but I did not appreciate that it would be taken on the recommittal of the Bill. I want to raise a small point about line 5, which says:

"if and so far as that service took place after the date on which he was declared successful in a competitive examination."

I understand that in 1914 and 1915 there was no declaration of success and the first intimation to the individual who was fortunate enough to survive the war, was his actual appointment to the Service. I do not believe that it is the intention of the right hon. Gentleman to sidestep this issue by using this wording to avoid the point which he has otherwise covered in the Clause. Perhaps he will be good enough to look at this later and give me that reassurance.

I beg to move, in page 8, line 21, at the end, to insert:

"5 In the case of a person who has been a member of the forces at any time after the passing of this Act, the last foregoing subsection shall apply so as to authorise the giving of advice on matters arising in the course of his service furth of Scotland as it applies in the case of a person who is a member of the forces."

A member of the Forces may at the time of his discharge still be involved in some legal question which has arisen overseas in the course of his service. It is reasonable that legal advice should be available in such cases just as if the ex-Service man were still a member of the Forces, and the Amendment so provides.

I beg to move, in page 14, line 11, to leave out from the beginning, to the end of line 16, and to insert:

"(3) The Court may, by act of adjournal or act of sederunt, as the case may be, restrict to such proportion of the fees for the time being applicable as may be provided therein the fees to be paid to auditors of court, messengers-at-arms, sheriff officers and shorthand writers in any case where such fees are payable in the first instance by or on behalf of a person receiving legal aid:

Provided that the imposition of any restriction under this subsection shall not affect the sums recoverable by virtue of an award of expenses in favour of a person who has received legal aid, or of an agreement as to expenses in favour of such a person which provides for taxation.

(4) The Court may, by act of adjournal or act of sederunt, as the case may be, make provision for the taxation by the Auditor of the Court of Session or the auditor of the sheriff court of accounts of expenses incurred in connection with the giving of legal aid and with respect to the remuneration to be paid to auditors in respect of the taxation of such accounts."

This Amendment falls into three parts. In the first place we provide that the court may either by act of adjournal or act of sederunt restrict to a proportion which they think requisite the fees normally payable to auditors of court, messengers-at-arms, sheriff officers and shorthand writers. The reason for this is that we feel that when counsel and solicitors are giving their services on a restricted fee basis, the court may think it desirable that these other officers of the court should do likewise. The question whether or not there should be such restriction is left to the court to decide. By the proviso we suggest that in taking into account these restrictive fees, we are only doing so in respect of the obligation by the assisted person to make payments to these officers of court in the first instance, but should the assisted person be successful in his litigation and come to tax an account against the unsuccessful party, that restriction would be ignored in the taxation of the account.

The new Subsection (4), which gives rise to the third point, provides for the court, by act of adjournal or act of sederunt, to make provision for the taxation by the appropriate auditor, either of the court of session or of the sheriff court, of the account of expenses which will be submitted by the solicitor to the Law Society in respect of the work which the solicitor has done in connection with the legally assisted person's case. At the present time the provision is only made for the taxation of accounts as between party and party, but manifestly there may have to be a taxation of accounts between the solicitors and the Law Society in respect of the fees due to the solicitor, and we take advantage of this provision to make it statutory that the court can enact by act of sederunt or act of adjournal that such accounts will be taxed by the appropriate auditors.

We have listened with interest to the Lord Advocate moving this Amendment. When I saw the Amendment on the Order Paper, I was a little mystified as to why it could be necessary to restrict the fees of these officers of the court and the shorthand writers. After all, the work which they are to do is to be the same whether they are employed in the case of an assisted litigant or an independent person, and it seems strange that there should be provision for this differentiation in their remuneration. In drawing up this Clause, which deals with an internal matter concerning the machinery and the administrative arrangements of the courts, did the Lord Advocate have consultations about it with members of the legal profession and those who are concerned in the administration of the courts? Will he tell us whether this meets with their approval?

I support what has been said by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for West Edinburgh (Lieut.-Commander Hutchison). No doubt what was specially in his mind was the fees to be paid in respect of certain officials of the court. Representing as he does one of the Edinburgh divisions, it is natural that matters affecting those employed by the High Court of Justiciary in Scotland would concern him most of all. I am concerned especially with those who work in the sheriff courts of Scotland. I know a little about the immense amount of work they now have to perform. I can assure the Lord Advocate that a great amount of drudgery is entailed for those who work in the sheriff courts of Scotland, particularly the shorthand writers. I know one very well indeed. He is a very old personal friend of mine. I have not consulted him about the Amendment because I did not know that it would be on the Order Paper until I arrived this afternoon. However, I know that if he were here he would bear out what was said by my hon. and gallant Friend in general and he would also testify to the accuracy of what I am saying, in particular with regard to the work done in the sheriff courts of Scotland in this respect.

I hope that the Lord Advocate will be in a position to tell us with regard to both the Court of Session and—if I may use the word without disrespect—the inferior courts, of which the sheriff court is the most ancient of all, whether there were full consultations with the very hard working and responsible people concerned about this desire to limit the fees or remuneration which they receive in these specially aided cases. I know just as well as my hon. and gallant Friend knows that the work which they will have to undertake in this sort of case will be none the less onerous and may indeed be more onerous than the work in the cases which at present come before them in the usual way. I hope the Lord Advocate can enlighten us further on this very important point.

There seems to be a certain misconception with regard to the purpose of this Clause, because it merely makes it permissive for the court to restrict the fees payable to the various people mentioned in the Amendment, namely, the auditors of court, messengers-at-arms, sheriff officers and shorthand writers. So the question of restricting the fees does not arise at this juncture, and it will only arise if the court thinks fit to do so. I explained earlier that the court may think fit to do so, because other people who give even more service than those mentioned in the Amendment, are doing so on a scale slightly less than the full scale. The final decision will rest with the court and not with the Government, and therefore I did not think it desirable to consult the representatives of these bodies at this stage. However, I consulted the legal profession in connection with this and the other Amendments.

And the sheriff?

No, only the Lord President of the Court of Session who is the titular head of the court in Scotland. It will be the Court of Session which will pass the acts of sederunt and of adjournal. It will be the appropriate time for these bodies to be consulted, if necessary, as and when the Court decides to pass the acts of sederunt and of adjournal restricting the fees. On the broad general policy, we thought it desirable to confer that power on the Court of restricting the fees to bring these people, if need be, into line with the other members of the profession who are giving their services on that restricted basis.

The learned Lord Advocate brings forward a rather difficult point here. He is quite entitled to speak for himself and the profession, and for those who were consulted in the matter, but this touches the rights of entirely different people—shorthand writers, for instance. Here is an example of the difficulties one gets into in regard to reduced fees. In the analogous case of the medical profession, the great surgeons and physicians gave their services free in the hospitals, but it was never suggested that the ancillary servants of the hospitals should give service at a reduced rate, and it is a dangerous precedent that we are setting here. The great lawyers, of course, give their services at a reduced rate, but, as the learned Lord Advocate will readily concede, they are acquiring skill in the practice of their profession. It is part of the responsibility and duty which they have taken on, but it also carries with it certain advantages. A young lawyer who has appeared in a great case is a man of greater stature at the end of it than he was at the beginning. The same cannot be said of the shorthand writer who has taken down a long and difficult case. The work of the technicians is of an entirely different kind from that of the high specialists who prepare and plead the cases.

Is this to extend to the printers who set up the recounts of the cases? Is it to extend to the typists who translate the shorthand into the documents from which the printers work? Where is this to stop? The right hon. and learned Gentleman said that the time to discuss this is not now but when the court has passed the acts to which reference was made.

Not "has passed"; "is considering passing."

Well, is considering passing, but that again puts the courts in a difficult quandary. The discretion then is put upon the court to negotiate one of the most difficult of all things, a cut rate for the job.

Does the right hon. and gallant Gentleman wish us to take this from the courts and accept the responsibility ourselves?

It is not a responsibility which should be put on the courts. At any rate the suggested Amendment might leave out the shorthand writers, the people directly employed in courts—the auditors of court, the messengers-at-arms, the sheriff officers. I am not one to dogmatise upon that, but the right hon. and learned Gentleman is venturing on to difficult ground in asking the court to do so. Nothing is more difficult than negotiation as to proper rates of wages, and the clerical unions concerned might find themselves in a difficult position when asked to accept a reduced fee in this matter.

I do not think that the Committee is being well advised in this matter by the right hon. and learned Gentleman and by the Secretary of State for Scotland, and I trust they will look further at this point. It is true that it arose in the discussion upstairs, but the Debate then turned largely upon the remuneration to be paid to the legal profession, and a strong case was made out by the right hon. and learned Gentleman in favour of the rate of 85 per cent. which occurs in the Schedule and to which reference is made in what is now Clause 6 of the Bill but which was originally Clause 5.

That, however, was an entirely different matter. Here we move out of the realms of learned professional men giving their services at a reduced rate in recognition of the duty they owe to the community and the admitted improvement in their skill gained from the practice of their art. This is a matter affecting people who are working upon well-recognised rates and who will be put in a difficult position if asked to reduce those rates, while those who are asking them to do so will be put in a still more difficult position. I beg the learned Lord Advocate to consider whether in the case of these technical people, he is wedded to the proposal now before the Committee. I hope he will say that he can meet us in this matter; otherwise we shall have to take the opinion of the Committee upon it.

May I try to get the Lord Advocate to clarify this by taking a case in which one of the litigants is aided and the other is not? If I understand this correctly, the officers referred to in this Amendment are doing the same job whatever is the result of the case, but if the aided litigant wins his case, these officers will be paid their full normal rates while, if the other wins, it appears that this Amendment makes it possible that the officers will not be paid their full rates. That is a peculiar situation to put before the Committee, for it seems to give the officers a vested interest in one side or the other winning the case. It is a most amazing proposition, and I would ask the Lord Advocate to think about it again.

I am afraid the right hon. and gallant Gentleman has forgotten that during the earlier stages of the Bill we had already agreed in principle to the court fixing the fees to be paid to these people, including the shorthand writers.

No.

If the right hon. and gallant Gentleman looks at Clause 13 (3), he will find that that power is already vested in the court; and no opposition was put forward during the Committee stage to that proposal. All we are doing in the Amendment is making it clear that in fixing these fees the court can, for the purposes of the legal aid provisions, make a restricted fee if it thinks fit. Accordingly, I do not think there is any point at all in the major objection put forward by the right hon. and gallant Gentleman that we are investing the court with the responsibility of fixing these fees.

The reason for giving this permissive power to the court is that which I have already explained; that if the court thinks it equitable that these people also should give their services at an abated rate, having regard to the fact that counsel and solicitors are already doing so, the court may decide to abate the rate payable to these various people. That is the beginning and end of the Amendment so far as that is concerned.

The hon. Member for Dumfries (Mr. N. Macpherson) asked what would be the effect. I thought I had explained that, although perhaps jejunely, in my introductory remarks on the Amendment. The position is simply this. If the court were to restrict the fees payable to a shorthand writer in the case of a legally assisted person, that person's solicitor would pay the restricted amount at the appropriate time to the shorthand writer—at the time, say, when the proof or jury trial was to take place. If at the end of the day the assisted person was successful, in putting in his account of expenses he would be entitled to charge the full rate, and not the abated rate, against the other party. There is nothing revolutionary in that, because we have already accepted this in principle with regard to the abated rate of fees for counsel and solicitors in Clause 6 (7); so that here we are only extending to shorthand writers and others the principle we have already accepted for solicitors and counsel. If, on the other hand, the unassisted litigant were successful, then in his account of expenses he would put in the amount which he had expended himself, which would be the full amount because he did not get the benefit of the provisions of the Amendment. He would put into his account of expenses the full amount which he had to pay to, say, the shorthand writer as his share of the shorthand writer's fees.

There is a difference, however, in that in the one case the counsel and solicitor for the aided litigant are, in a sense, getting a success bonus if finally the assisted litigant is successful and the fees are taxed at the full amount against the opponent. That is not the case with the officers of the court, who are completely impartial.

The hon. Gentleman is entirely wrong. The solicitor and counsel do not get any special bonus; they get only the 85 per cent. fee. If the full fee is recovered the balance will go to the Legal Aid Fund and not to the solicitor or counsel.

I quite see that point, and I think I did my best to indicate to the Committee that I accepted the decision which the Committee upstairs had come to upon the question of the 85 per cent. We argued against it, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman will remember, but it was finally decided against us and we accepted that decision. But this really is quite a different matter, and I would call the attention of the Committee to Clause 13 (3), to which the right hon. and learned Gentleman referred:

"Without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing provisions of this section, the Court may, by act of adjournal or act of sederunt, as the case may be, fix the fees to be paid to messengers-at-arms, sheriff officers and shorthand writers in connection with proceedings to which a person receiving legal aid is a party."

7.45 p.m.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is stretching it a bit when he says that, having accepted that in principle, we have thereby conceded this new point which he is making that a reduced proportion should be fixed. I am sure that anybody connected with making trade arrangements who read that would take it for granted that what was being fixed was, to use a jargon phrase, a rate for the job; that it would be fixed having regard to the ordinary fees and so on which were being paid elsewhere. Nobody would consider that we had in any way conceded the principle that a cut rate should be fixed for clerical employees like shorthand writers. The position of the professional man, whom we have discussed and whose position has been agreed, is something quite different from the position of the clerical employee. The right hon. and learned Gentleman went