§ LIEUTENANT - COLONEL PHILIPPS (Southampton)To ask the hon. 540 Member for South Somerset, as representing the President of the Board of Agriculture, whether the order issued last year to the arsenals and dockyards, whereby in the case of reduction of the staff the men selected for discharge should be drawn from those with less than fifteen years service, is applied in the case of the Ordnance Survey Department; and, if not, the reason why the Government employees in the Ordnance Survey with long service should be treated with less consideration, especially in view of the fact that, owing to the nature of the work in the Ordnance Survey, it is practically impossible for an employee of long service to find suitable employment outside the department; and whether, seeing that amongst the employees in the Derby division of the Ordnance Survey who are now under notice of discharge, there are a number of employees of very long service in the department, ranging up to thirty-three years, and that there are between 400 and 500 men in the department who have less than fifteen years service, many of whom are performing duties precisely similar to those men now under notice of discharge, he will, when making such discharges, if any such discharges are absolutely necessary, undertake to apply to the Ordnance Survey the same principles in recognising long service as are now applied to the arsenals and dockyards.
(Answered by Sir Edward Strachey.) The order to which my hon. friend refers does not apply to the Ordnance Survey. It is, however, the general rule on the Ordnance Survey, when a reduction of staff becomes necessary, to select the younger men for discharge where possible, but the circumstances of each case have to be considered. In the case of the abolition of the Derby division it is not possible to make room elsewhere for all the older men in that office by discharging younger men from other divisions. There is a certain amount of work that must be done by youths, for which the older men are in no way suitable. Younger men and men with inferior records in other divisions have already been displaced, as far as possible, in order to retain the older men, but it is not practicable to do this in all cases.
541 Out of fifty-one men discharged within the last twelve months at least thirty-seven were young men with short service.