§ MR. WOODSI beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury if he is aware that among the compositors and associated employers in the printing of London 771 there exists great dissatisfaction respecting the manner in which Government contracts for printing are let, some of which have been let to firms who neither pay the standard rates of wages, and work more hours than is recognised by the Employers' Printing Association and the London Compositors' Society; and whether, in future, the Government will give effect to the successive Resolutions passed by the House of Commons dealing with the subject of letting contracts, by inserting into all future Government printing contracts a clause making it imperative that the wages paid and the hours worked shall be those recognised in the Loudon scale?
§ * SIR J. T. HIBBERTI assume that my hon. Friend refers to the firm of Messrs. Eyre and Spottiswoode. I have already made inquiries, and the information at my disposal appears to show that, taken as a whole, the wages paid by the firm in question in their non-Union house are as liberal as those paid in their Union house and other Union houses, and that the normal hours are the same. As regards overtime (which, I am assured, is very limited in amount) and the alleged divergences from the London scale of prices, I propose to see a representative of the firm and to make further inquiries from him, and if the facts should constitute in my judgment a broach of the Resolution of the House, I should not hesitate to take action.