§ SIR HOWARD VINCENTI beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury if the War Office, the India Office, or any other Government Department, is able to obtain either paper or other stationery otherwise than through the Stationery Office; and whether he will consider if the Stationery Office might obtain its supplies more advantageously direct from mills and factories in the United Kingdom instead of from middlemen who may be only agents of foreign firms?
§ *MR. HANBURYUnless under exceptional circumstances all supplies of stationery required for use in the Public 25 Service and paid for directly from Public Votes are obtained throngh the Stationery Office. Supplies for use in India, which are paid from India funds, have now for some years past been commonly purchased by the India Office without the intervention of the Stationery Office. It is only under exceptional circumstances that middlemen can properly be excluded from the open competition which is the rule of the Office. Such a case arises for instance when, owing to a combination of firms, prices are run up unduly high. This I found to be happening with regard to certain classes of paper, and the tenders were therefore limited to the actual producers, with the result that we shall now obtain them at prices at least 25 per cent. lower than hitherto.