CO885-5 — Page 144

FILIITI

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference:-

RC.O. 885/5

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

Definitions required as to nature of service.

Agents for

Colonies con

cur as to officers.

16

It is understood that any such officer taking civil employment under a Colonial Government would be allowed to receive the whole of his half-pay, retired pay, or gratuity, without restriction, and would count time according to existing regulations.

12. In deciding as to what are naval or military appointments and what are civil appointments, the principle of the War Office regulations should be adopted, viz., that an appointment giving an officer professional knowledge likely to be of use thereafter is considered to be a military appointment.

.

Specialists, like army engineer officers and torpedoists in the navy, &c., should be specially treated both in the navy and army, and considered to be in naval and military appointments however employed in connexion with their special attainments.

13. The above particulars have been fully gone into with the Agents for the Colonies who attended at the Admiralty, as explained in paragraph I hereof, and they cordially approve of these proposals, subject to the assent of their respective Governments; further, they have expressed their concurrence in the principle of the pension of men of sion of these the navy and army employed in Colonial service being shared by the Imperial and rules to men. Colonial Governments in proportion to the respective length of service in the Imperial

and Colonial services.

As to exten-

Colonies not

14. The foregoing refers to employment under the Colonies (mentioned in paragraph assisted from marked 3 in Treasury Minute of 25th September 1885) which receive no contribution from Imperial funds.

Imperial funds. We suggest that a list of these Colonies may be drawn up at the Colonial Office and communicated to the Admiralty and War Office. Other Colonies.

15. With reference to the employment of naval and military officers in civil appoint. ments, wherever they may be, paid from Imperial funds, and whether on half-pay or retired pay, we concur in the regulations proposed by the Treasury in their Minute to the War Office of the 17th December 1885.

16. The Admiralty and the War Office will take the necessary steps to amend their regulations on receiving from the Colonial Office intimation of the assent of the Treasury.

We are, &c.,

(Signed)

A. H. HOSKINS,

Vice-Admiral,

A Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty.

RALPH THOMPSON, Under Secretary of State for War.

JOHN BRÄMSTON, Assistant Under Secretary of State for the Colonies,

(Signed)

(Signed)

The Under Secretary of State, Colonial Office.

Canada

APPENDIX.

AGENTS for the Colonies who attended the Conference at the Admiralty on 2nd February 1886.

Cape of Good Hope

New South Wales

Victoria

Queensland

South Australia

SIR,

to

·

Sir Charles Tupper, G.C.M.G., C.B.

Sir Charles Mills, K.C.M.G.

Sir Saul Samuel, K.C.M.G.

Mr. R. Murray Smith, C.M.G.

Mr. J. F. Garrick, C.M.G.

Sir A. Blyth, K.C.M.G.

Enclosure 1 in No. 4.

Treasury Chambers, September 26, 1885.

I AM directed by the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury to forward you, for submission to the Secretary of State for War, the enclosed copy of a report to the Treasury by a departmental committee appointed to consider the rules under which non-effective pay should be issued to naval or military officers who accept civil employ. ment under the Crown, or are employed by Colonial Governments.

I am also to enclose a copy of a Treasury Minute, wherein my Lords have caused to be set forth the outlines of a settlement which they think would bring this difficult matter to an equitable conclusion.

• Not printed.

17

My Lords consider it to be a sound principle to lay down, that the State should derive a substantial pecuniary advantage when it selects for re-employment in the public service, although in another branch of it, an officer for whose retirement it has already made provision. An officer so circumstanced is perfectly free to decline the re-employ- ment if he pleases; the retired civil officer is not liable to be called upon to undertake military duty, nor the retired military officer to undertake civil duty; but if the latter chooses to do so, my Lords hold that the reason for continuing his retired allowance in full becomes qualified. The question is, how far does it become qualified, and how is this qualification to be measured?

My Lords cannot accept the conclusion that each case is to be discussed on its merits. They can agree to nothing but a rule of some kind.

In the meantime they invite the observations of the Secretary of State on this Minute.

The Under Secretary of State, War Office.

Enclosure 2 in No. 4.

I

am,

&c.,

(Signed)

R. E. WELDY.

TREASURY MINUTE dated 25th September 1885.

My Loans read the report dated 19th February 1885, of a departmental committee appointed to consider the rules under which non-effective pay should be issued to naval or military officers who accept civil employment under the Crown, or are employed by Colonial Governments.

The only Parliamentary enactment directly bearing on the subject is section 6 (4) of the

Appropriation Act, 1870 (Permanent Regulations as to certain payments), and this section is confined to the army and to half-pay.

Without at present raising the question how far this enactment has been out-grown, or become inapplicable in practice, it is at least valuable as showing that, up to the present time, Parliament maintains the principle that active civil pay and non-effective naval or military pay are not to be issued at the same time to the same person without regard to the total sum which they make up.

In respect of non-effective civil pay, Parliament has laid down a very precise rule in section 20 of the Act 4 and 5 William IV. c. 24, regarding the extent to which it may be issued with active civil pay.

Parliament has further declared in the Act 35 Vict. cap. 12, that the salary of any civil office in any British possession out of the United Kingdom is active civil pay for the purposes of the limitation contained in the section just referred to in the Act of William IV.

My Lords are not therefore prepared to concur in those recommendations of the Committee which would apparently abolish all statutory limitation, and would leave to the Treasury, in concert with the employing department, the fixing in each case of the proportion which should exist between non-effective military and effective civil pay.

The experience of my Lords does not lead them to undervalue the importance of a Parliamentary declaration in cases of this character.

They would be willing to concur in repealing section 6 (4) of the Appropriation Act, 1870, provided there were substituted for it provisions to the following effect, viz:-

If an officer entitled to or having commuted non-effective naval or military pay, is appointed to a civil employment of profit of which the salary is charged on the Consolidated Fund or on moneys voted by Parliament, or other funds of a public character, such salary shall be subject to abatement under the following regulations":

1. If the non-effective pay of the officer and the civil salary of the employment together do not exceed 4007., the civil salary may be issued in full.

2. If the non-effective pay of the officer and the civil salary of the employment exceed 400%., the salary shall be reduced to a point which makes the employment of the officer substantially more economical to the State than the employment of another person drawing the full civil salary at the same time that the officer is drawing his non-effective pay, or would have been drawing it, had he not commuted it.

In order to determine in an uniform and easily intelligible manner the reduction which is proper to be made, it shall be provided that no officer shall draw more than his non- effective pay, plus one-half of the civil salary :—provided that no abatement shall be

A

20539.

C