§ MR. DUNBARasked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether the Government have yet arrived at any decision upon the recommendations contained in the First Report of the Civil Service Inquiry Commission; and, whether, if they are not prepared to cause the early adoption of the proposed scheme in the Civil Service as a whole, they will apply it, as a tentative measure, to some one or two of the larger Departments?
§ THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER, in reply, said, the Government had been in possession of the Report of the Commission for some time. They recognized the extreme value of it; and he availed himself of this opportunity publicly to thank the right hon. Member for Edinburgh University (Mr. Lyon Playfair) and his Colleagues for the service they had rendered. The recommendations were of an important 1448 character, and the Government felt they ought to be carefully considered before any action was taken upon them, because they affected not only the public service as a whole, but largely the interests of a great body of persons. The feeling of the Government was that it would be desirable, before any decision was arrived at with respect to the application of the scheme, that the working of it should be tested by something in the nature of a tentative inquiry as to the mode in which it would accommodate itself to the wants of particular Departments. Special inquiries were now going on under the guidance of members of the Commission, assisted by officers of two Departments; he hoped inquiries would be conducted in another Department also, and that the results of those inquiries would be to enable them to judge more accurately what the actual working of the scheme would be. When the Reports of these inquiries had been received, the Government would be in a position to say what their proposals were.