When we were discussing this motion last week, I was pointing out the injustice meted out to certain special services in the Army because of adherence to the principle of pension on the basis of rank and service only. I do not think that any Deputy would take exception to a pension based on the two elements of rank and service if every officer and every soldier holding equal rank got equal pay or anything approximating to equal pay. Every Deputy will agree that where the pay for a similar rank varies by as much as 100 per cent. nothing but a grave injustice can be done by attempting to pension everybody on the same basis of rank and service. In fact, I would suggest that a close perusal of this particular scheme would make clear that what I am saying was recognised and admitted by the Minister and his advisers but, unfortunately—as is quite clear—recognised too late. That belated recognition of the injustice done to officers in the special services is evidenced by the introduction of a 20 per cent. added pension. You do not remove an injustice by reducing it by 20 percent. and the addition of that 20 per cent. to the pensions of certain classes of officers is merely an attempt to reduce the injustice by 20 per cent. If there is an injustice there, is not the obvious thing to reduce the injustice by 100 per cent. and not by 20 per cent.? In every service of this State and of every other State, persons are pensioned on the basis of their pay. No other form of pension matters one hoot to anybody. All over the world people are pensioned on the basis of pay and, if you depart from that standard, you might as well pension the members of the Army according to their height or might. Certain people would benefit; others would be very unjustly treated, but you would have a standard to which to adhere. In the same way, a standard has been adopted in this case and, when you apply it, it does justice in certain cases and very grave injustice in others. Meeting the injustice to the extent of 20 per cent. is not doing what officers and men would expect the Minister to do. He, in particular, has got to think for all —not just for those who are closest to his office. Is there any evidence in that document that there was any fair thinking for all the officers, including those at a distance from the Minister's office? Is there any evidence in that document that any consideration was given to the soldier on duty outside who had not the Minister's ear? When we come to the portion of the scheme dealing with soldiers we shall find that this adherence to rank and not to pay as the basis for pension carries the same injustice when applied to the soldier as it does when applied to certain officers. The Minister admits that fact when he adds 20 per cent. in cases where there is a difference of 100 per cent. in the pay. He adds 20 per cent. to the pension of the man who has twice as high pay as the other in order to reduce the injustice. I want to fix that in the minds of Deputies, and I should like to be appealing to people who were not rigidly bound to vote for things whether they approve of them or not. In certain sections of the House, at least, that is the position.
The backbone of this scheme is that an officer—I am dealing only with officers now—will be pensioned on the basis of rank. Let us see the effect of the application of that to different services in the Army. The pay of a regimental officer is—I am giving maximum pay and maximum pension in each case—£328 per annum in the case of a captain. The pay of certain special service officers of the rank of captain is £328 in one case and £730 in the other. In the case of a commandant—the next rank—the pay of the regimental officer is £438 and the pay of the special service officer is £857 per annum. Again, we have a two-to-one difference. In the case of a major, the regimental rate is £511 and the special service rate £1,000. Again, a variation of 100 per cent. The attempt to pension these two sets of officers on a common basis and then add 20 per cent. to remedy the injustice is a shirking of the responsibility on the part of the person on top to see that every man under him is pensioned according to his pay. The pip on an officer's shoulder strap does not matter the day after he leaves the Army. These symbols may count when he is in barracks. When he leaves the Army, what matters is whether his pension is in proportion to his pay or not. The world will judge the justice of a pension scheme not by application of the pip standard but by the relation of the pension to the pay standard. That 20 per cent. was introduced as an afterthought to reduce an injustice and, for the same reason but with less consideration, an alternative scheme of pension was introduced. Officers in the army medical service, if they so select, may be pensioned, instead of on this basis, on the basis of one-sixtieth of a year's pay for each year's service. Why that departure from the whole basis of the scheme? Why was that alternative pension system introduced? Has it ever been heard of before—two pension schemes and the individual given his choice? The reason that was introduced is that the Minister—I pay him this tribute—felt that a grave injustice was being done and an alternative scheme was thrown in—unfortunately, without any consideration.
Probably, somebody said that that was the Civil Service scale—one-sixtieth of a year's pay for each year's service. I do not say that it is a good scale—we are not discussing that now. But I say it is essentially the type of scale that can do the very smallest bit of justice only on the understanding it is a service that people join young and leave old. In the Civil Service, people can join at 18 years and serve up to 60 or 65.
If there is any service to which that standard is inapplicable, it is a service which people join late in life and must leave comparatively early in life. The fact that these men have to be qualified professional men before they enter the Army means straightaway that they can only enter late in life, and the fact that they are condemned by the necessities of the situation to junior rank within that Army means early departure from the Army. One-sixtieth of a year's pay for each year's service is the most unjust scale in the whole world, except when applied to a service where many years' service is guaranteed. Late in and early out—one-sixtieth is a hollow sham. It is offering nothing, and if it eases the Minister's conscience, I should not like to be walking around with his conscience. That is merely thrown in as a debating argument, as another leg for the Minister to stand on in defence of a very faulty document and very foul proposals; but if the Minister was supplied with as many legs as a caterpillar, he would not be able to stand over this document as a just and reasonable document when applied to the special service of the Army.
It may be argued that, these men being professional men, there is a possibility of their supplementing their pensions when they have left the Army after a lifetime of service in harness, that they might be able to pick up a pound or a guinea here or there. Is that the Minister's business? Is that the business of the Department of Defence? If an officer or a man can supplement a meagre pension so as to have a little modest comfort in his home, is that the latest argument in this State for clipping the pension of an officer or soldier? If the Minister would only look a little further afield into other countries, he would see that instead of that mean mentality, there is in every headquarters a man whose business it is to try to improve the circumstances of ex-soldiers and ex-officers. I am merely anticipating that that argument may be put forward. I hope it will not. I would be ashamed of the Department of Defence and ashamed of this State, if a Minister of State would justify the reducing of pensions because an individual might supplement his pension by earning a few shillings.
So much for the officers. We come now to the men, to the N.C.O.s and the soldiers, another group far away from the Minister's office, and men with very different rates of pay, with variations as great as those I have pointed out in the case of the officers, but men of equal rank because of the fact that they were tradesmen, mechanics or especially proficient as clerks, who worked, studied and passed hard examinations and got certificates. You have again in the case of men variations in pay by as much as 3/- and 4/- a day, but the sacred symbol of rank and service applies again. Here again in the case of pensions, we have no attention paid to the fact that private soldiers draw very different rates of pay and they are all to be pensioned, not on the pay basis, but on the rank and service basis. They are all to go out with a flat rate pension of 2/- a day, whether they are paid 2/6 or 6/-. Is the Minister or anybody else prepared to meet a group of those men who drew specially high rates of pay because of proficiency, or because of a trade or special employment, a month after they leave the Army and say to them: "Sorry; you are only getting 24 pennies a day because it was rank and service and not pay that counted with us and because rank and service was the thing we adhered to, you and your family can subsist on 24 pennies a day, less than you would get on the dole?" Are you going to have those people saying that there is justice in a rigid adherence to the rank and service element and in absolutely turning our backs on any relationship between pension and pay? It is trampling on the spirit that conceived pension originally.
With regard to the reduction of certain pensions, I suppose the same argument that applies to professional men will apply to these particularly proficient soldiers—the mechanics, the tradesmen and others—that because of their particular proficiency, of their particular trade, they will be able to supplement their pensions in civilian life when their service life is over. Is there any justification for the introduction of a means test? Those pensions are not things gratuitously given in the common sense of the word. They are pensions earned by long, hard, and loyal service, and neither the Minister nor anybody else has the right to reduce them because the individual, be he officer or soldier, may have a remote chance of supplementing his pension by earning money in addition, after his 20, 25 or 30 years of service in the Army. In certain respects, we hold up our heads as an example to others. In respect of this particular scheme, I should be sorry to see anybody following the example being set by the Department of Defence. Nobody who reads this scheme in its application to anybody, officer, or soldier, drawing a rate higher than the normal rate for that rank, can stand over it and nobody who reads this thing closely, and understands it fully, can claim that justice is being done to all the sections and all the individuals in the Army.
I understand that a pension scheme for the Army is more or less urgently required and I am sorry to hold it up, either by talking or by voting, but that should not be used as a lever to put through this House a regulation that is drastically unjust to very many people in the Army. The necessities or the demands of some should not be used to do an injustice for all time to others. Except some assurance can be given that this particular scheme will be revised, by giving full, careful and sympathetic consideration to those who are harshly hit by the application of the rank and service element, then I urge every Deputy to speak and vote against a measure that contains the injustices that this measure contains at the moment. It may be put through because of urgency. It will not be put through because of the amount of justice that is in it. I am not arguing that the rates are too high in any case. My argument from beginning to end is that the rates are too low in certain cases. If this document is studied in conjunction with the rates of pay of other people in various ranks there will be no necessity to argue at all. I suggest that if it had been studied fully before it was introduced it would never have been introduced here. It may go through without the Minister's assurance, but if it does go through without the assurance I ask for it will be only because the small voice of justice is dimmed and obscured by the crack of the Party Whip.
