(1)Employment as an assistant registrar shall cease to be included in the expression " court service " as defined in section twenty-nine of the principal Act (which relates to the status as civil servants and pensions of persons in court service), and accordingly in section twenty-one of the principal Act (which relates to the pensions of registrars) there shall cease to have effect so much of the proviso to subsection (1) as relates to a whole-time registrar who, having immediately before his appointment as such been an assistant registrar, desires to remain subject to the provisions of the said section twenty-nine.
(2)The said section twenty-one, section fourteen of the Superannuation Act, 1935, and the Administration of Justice (Pensions) Act, 1950, shall apply in relation to whole-time assistant registrars, as well as to whole-time registrars, and shall have effect as if service as a whole-time assistant registrar were service as a whole-time registrar, and references to a whole-time registrar, to a person's appointment as such, and to the date on which a person became such a registrar, were to be construed accordingly.
(3)The following provisions of the principal Act, that is to say—
(a)section seventeen (which enables the Lord Chancellor to give a direction that a registrar shall be a whole-time registrar); and
(b)subsection (2) of section eighteen (which provides that before giving such a direction the Lord Chancellor shall take steps to satisfy himself as to the registrar's health); and
(c)subsection (2) of section nineteen (which relates to the retirement through age of registrars);
shall apply to an assistant registrar as they apply to a registrar, and for the purposes of this section the expression " whole-time assistant registrar " means an assistant registrar in whose case a direction has been given by the Lord Chancellor under the said section seventeen.
(4)Nothing in this Act shall affect the operation of the proviso to subsection (1) of section twenty-one of the principal Act in relation to a person appointed whole-time registrar before the date of the coming into force of this section; and, notwithstanding anything in subsection (2) of this section, service as an assistant registrar before that date shall not be taken into account for the purposes of the said section twenty-one or of the Administration of Justice (Pensions) Act, 1950, but in the case of a person who at that date is serving as an assistant registrar his period of service shall for those purposes be reckoned as from that date.