I was coming to that. Obviously, some will take advantage of this provision; otherwise, there will be no point in putting it into the Bill. As I understood my hon. Friend's remarks, they tended to suggest that all civil servants and local government employees could take advantage of Clause r, and that the only people left out were the teachers. If I misunderstood or if I am doing him an injustice, I am sure he will say so; but I understood that that was the purport of his remarks, and that for that reason he thought some special arrangement should be made so that teachers would be placed in the same position as civil servants and local government officials.

Only a certain number of civil servants can take advantage of Clause 1. They are those who come into the Service at a fairly early age—16, 17 or 18. If they have started their service in the Civil Service before they are called up at 18 years of age, they can take advantage of this Clause and they can count towards their pension the service they have to give in the Armed Forces. There are, however, large numbers of people who enter the Civil Service not at the age of 16, 17 or 18, but at the age of 22, 23, 24, and even now in certain technical and professional grades at as high an age as 35 or 40. That has been one of our difficulties. Practically the whole of the administrative class will obviously come in at a later stage, and will be quite unable to take advantage of this Clause. Therefore, they are exactly in the same position as the teachers whose cause has been pleaded so well this afternoon.

If we included teachers here and gave them special treatment, we should be doing for them what, unfortunately, at the moment we are unable to do for other equally deserving classes. It has been suggested that the teachers who miss their service cannot count the extra year for pension. They have not lost it for good, although they have lost it at this end of their service. There is no reason why teachers should not be willing to continue for another year if they desire to make up that year and include it towards their superannuation. They retire at the age of 60, and nowadays 60 is looked upon as relatively young. My experience has been that even men of 65 feel that they have a grievance when they are asked to retire. Therefore, we cannot see any real grievance if a teacher, who is now able to retire at 60, is asked to continue for another year if he wants to, so as to make up this extra year towards his pension.