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3
and it is still being kept with regard to widows' pensions
which commenced before the 1st June 1938. It was still being
held out in 1908, when the Government, proposing to take over
the fund and substitute a scheme guaranteed by them, asked
contributors for their consent. It was on the faith of that
promise, inter alia, that some of the contributors gave their
consent. Dollar officers were fully alive to the point because
their own pensions and leave pay were always linked to sterling.
The promise was repeated and confirmed in our own pension
papers at the date of our respective retirements. These papers
include a statement of our prospective widows' pensions, and
that statement amounts, we submit, to a definite undertaking
that the dollar pension would be paid in the United Kingdom at
the rate of 3/-. The following is a specimen of the wording:-
"The W.& 0. Pensions would be $1590.95 p.a.
@ 3/- (if paid in the United Kingdom) £238.12.10.
p.a. plus £354.0.8. p.a. making a total of
£592.13.6. per annum.
•
#!
It is, we submit, not possible now to withdraw the promise and
repudiate the obligation.
6. The Government took over the fund on the 31st December
1908, and undertook to pay the pensions under the scheme. This
obviously meant that the Government undertook to pay the
pensions under the scheme as then organised and that existing
conditions would be maintained. It may be well here to remark
that when the Government took over the fund compulsorily in
1908 they gained two advantages. They were released from their
capital liability in respect of the amount accumulated up to
that date, and they were enabled to treat all contributions as
revenue. They took over and extinguished a fund which was
growing rapidly, and which, if it had remained in existence
and had continued to receive the accretions of statutory
interest, would probably by now have reached such dimensions
as to justify, and indeed require, a considerable increase in
the pensions payable out of it. They took over a trust, and
they must, and no doubt will desire to, carry out that trust
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