§ MR. SIMON (Essex, Walthamstow)To ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether his attention has been called to paragraph 120 of the Report of the Departmental Committee on Income-tax of last year, referring to the pressure under which claims for repayments are dealt with at Somerset House; whether he is aware that claims of this nature involve still more extreme pressure upon 1336 the local offices; whether he can state the number of first claims for repayment dealt with by local surveyors in the same period of pressure as is referred to in the above paragraph; and, if not, whether he will cause this information to be provided; whether he is aware that during this same period of pressure local surveyors have also to provide for the large expansion of work caused by the earlier delivery of schedules of unpaid amounts of Income Tax as provided in the new Regulations issued by the Board of Inland Revenue in 1904; whether frequent and heavy overtime without pay is performed by the clerical staff in these local offices during such periods; and whether it is proposed to take steps to relieve the pressure in these offices corresponding to the steps recently taken to relieve the pressure at the head office at Somerset House.
(Answered by Mr. McKenna.) The number of first claims for repayment received at Somerset House, after being dealt with by the local surveyors in England and Wales, between 1st March and 30th June, 1906, was about 40,000 (a slight decrease as compared with the number of the preceding year), an average of 163 such claims for each of the 246 surveyors' district. Speaking generally, it is a fact that the work in surveyors' offices is heavier in the winter and spring than in the summer months, but there is no reason to suppose that the clerical staff, which has been largely increased in recent years, is insufficient to meet the demands upon it, nor are there any good grounds for supposing that frequent and heavy overtime without pay is performed by the clerks at the busy periods of the year. The surveyors are in the habit of applying for overtime allowances for their clerks in times of pressure, and all applications received are fully considered and dealt with on their merits.