§ 24 Viscount WOLMERasked the Secretary of State for War (1) whether temporary officers of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps have been or are going to be selected to undergo the technical course to qualify them for permanent retention in the post bellum Army as administrative Ordnance officers; and, if so, why men who have risen from the ranks to be executive officers should be disqualified from such promotion;
(2) Whether it is proposed to continue the distinction in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps between executive officers and administrative officers; and, if so, will he say the grounds for this system which excludes merit rising from the ranks to the administrative ranks of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps; and
(3) Whether, in view of the fact that temporary Ordnance officers have had to be instructed in their duties by the executive officers of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, he will remove the injustice felt by executive officers of temporary officers being placed over their heads by enabling executive officers to compete for the administrative ranks by abolishing the age limit for admission to the Technical Ordnance course, which at present prevents their doing so?
Captain GUESTThe executive officers of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps are normally commissioned from among the warrant officers of the Corps itself. As the name implies, they are designed to superintend or carry out the executive work of the Corps, under the orders of the specially selected and technically trained 731 combatant officers who constitute the administrative or directing staff. During the War it was necessary largely to strengthen the numbers of this latter category, and recourse was had to "temporary" officers, whose previous business or professional training in civil life gave promise of their being able, after preliminary training, materially to assist in the administrative work of the Corps. The experiment has been attended with successful results. It has been found by experience in the past that officers well qualified for executive duties have not necessarily the qualifications for administrative employment of an important character, though the last few years have shown that there are exceptions to this general rule. In the future constitution of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps as a tentative measure, it is under consideration to extend to certain carefully selected executive officers the same facilities for acquiring technical and administrative training as is found practicable for entrants from elsewhere.