Not so long ago it was stated that no fewer than 10,000 civil servants had left public employ during the past 20 years in order to join in private business. The Minister who introduced the Superannuation Bill stated that within the past three years, 3,000 had voluntarily resigned from the service. It is hardly necessary to say that the men who do this are not the drones and the brainless ones, but the energetic and efficient, who see in a service only moderately paid, with compulsory retirement at 65 years, and no pension, little prospect of making a competency for their old age. They are debarred from doing anything to add to their incomes. I have even seen notices in the Gazette stating that an officer has been permitted to sing at a concert for a fee, an interpretation of the restriction which borders on the ludicrous. It is to stop this drift that the superannuation scheme has been introduced. It provides for a contribution to a fund by each official, such contribution being subsidized £1 for £1 by the Government. The amount of the pensions do not err on the side of extravagance, though I was amused to read some scare headlines in an. important morning daily described the whole scheme as a gigantic bribe and made it appear that it was going to cost the country nearly half a million a year. On looking into the actuarial report accompanying the measure, I found, however, that in the first year the_ Government would have to pay only £20,000, and it was not until the fortieth year that the public contribution to the fund would reach £476.000. If in 40 years these contributions have been found to stem the tide of desertion from the service and have made it really efficient and contented, the expenditure will have been fully justified,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.