ESTIMATES COMMITTEE (REPORTS).

HC Deb 01 August 1922 vol 157 cc1362-416

Sir F. BANBURY

I beg to move, That the Report of the Select Committee on Estimates, be now considered. I desire, as Chairman of the Estimates Committee, to thank the Government for having given facilities for a short discussion on the five Reports which we have submitted to the House during the present Session. The House will understand that the powers of the Committee are limited to a very considerable extent. The Committee cannot deal with questions of policy. I do not make this statement because I disagree with the limitations of the powers of the Committee. I have always held that it would be very difficult to give powers to any Committee of this House to deal with questions of policy, inasmuch as it would take away the responsibility of the Government on a matter which concerns them. I desire to point out that, owing to the limited amount of our powers, we can only deal with the Estimates that come before us and make statements as to whether or not they are in proper form, and also to put before the House the results of our investigation. A recommendation was made four or five years ago by the Select Committee on National Expenditure, when Sir Herbert Samuel was chairman, to the effect that some of the reports of the Estimates Committee should be submitted to the House before the Estimates were considered in Committee. I made very considerable efforts with the Leaders of the Opposition to ensure that the Estimates, or some of them, should be taken after our Report had been circulated. I was met with very considerable courtesy by the Leaders in question, but owing to a variety of circumstances, it was found impossible to arrive at an arrangement. I trust that next. Session, if the Committee is re-appointed, that we shall be able to make some arrangement by which the Estimates which we are going to consider will not be taken until our Report is before the Committee.

We have presented five Reports, and I intended to take first the second Report, which deals with education, but I understood that the President of the Board of Education wished to fulfil an engagement which he had entered into before he knew that these Reports were going to be considered. I see the Parliamentary Secretary in his place, and I gather from that that the right hon. Gentleman is not going to attend.

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. Herbert Lewis)

My right hon. Friend will be here later.

Sir F. BANBURY

The Report, which deals with the Board of Education, states that the higher staff consists of 99 officials, whose salaries, including bonus, amount to £101,459, as compared with the same number of officials in 1913–14, with salaries of £62,972. In regard to that I should like to say, and I believe I am speaking for the majority of the Committee, that we thought that, undoubtedly, in the lower grades, some rise in salary should have taken place owing to the increased cost of living, but that when it came to the higher grades, people receiving from £1,500 to £2,000, or from £1,200 to £1,500 a year, there was not. the same necessity for increasing their salaries as there was for increasing the salaries of people with only a few pounds a week. There are an enormous number of people in this country, people with fixed incomes, people with small businesses, people whose business has been adversely affected by the War, who have had to bear the whole increase in taxation, and the whole of the increase in the cost of living, without any increase in their income, and it seems to me, and I think I am speaking for the majority of the Committee, that in regard to the higher-paid officials it would have been perfectly easy to make a very much smaller addition to their salaries than has been made. We go on to say; Other Grades consisted in 1913–14 of 160 persons with a. salary of £11,535, as against 160 persons to-day with a salary, including bonus, of £25,492. Sir Amherst Selby-Bigge informed the Committee that, in his opinion. the numbers of the higher staff of the Department should be susceptible of reduction, and that the Board look to make a saving in the number of higher posts, and your Committee hope that this reduction will be carried out as quickly as possible. With regard to the executive and clerical staff of this Department, the same witness informed your Committee that, in his opinion, the increase in numbers was necessary, and he gave as a reason for this that the whole work of the Teachers Superannuation Act, which is very large and very meticulous work indeed. had been thrown upon that staff. 1st Division. The witness explained that the Regulations as to hours and overtime were not laid down by this Department, but by the Treasury. We have later on in this Report various important statements as to the hours of labour existing at present in various Government offices. and therefore I will not deal with that. at present. The question of bonus arose, and the witness was asked whether the work of the administrative Department could be carried on if the whole of the bonus was done away with, and the Committee was informed that if the bonus was abolished through all Departments of the Civil Service, there might be some resignations, but the Department, out of loyalty to the country, would continue their work, though possibly there might be considerable dissatisfaction. Of course, there always is dissatisfaction on the part of people whose salaries are reduced. I felt considerable dissatisfaction when, owing to the very large increases in taxation, and perhaps some unfortunate investments, my income was considerably reduced. That is an experience which we all have, but civil servants, who have an assured position and not too much to do, ought not to be dissatisfied if some reduction is made in their salary. Coming to the question of the women inspectors, we say: The staff of women inspectors has been increased by nine since last year and their salaries have been increased in the same period to £25,765. When a salary is raised, even if it is only by a. small amount, what follows is that everybody in the Department says, "Because so-and-so's salary has been raised mine should be raised," and that goes on in the whole of the Service. Those points, though they seem to be small, are, in the total result, of considerable importance. We also say: The staff of women inspectors has been increased by nine since last year, and their salaries have been increased in the same period from £25,911 to £29,765. The chief woman inspector receives a salary of £925" rising to £1,000, in addition to which she receives a bonus of approximately £300. These inspectors are selected by a Selection Committee and are not examined, your Committee being informed that they were chosen from women beyond the usual examination age. It would appear that with one or two exceptions, in private schools, such as the head mistress of Cheltenham, these salaries are much in advance of the general run of salaries received by women in the educational world. The women staff inspectors are now paid, including the bonus, about £900. a year, that is to say, a bonus of £250 is added to the maximum salary. In the opinion of your Committee, these salaries could he reduced without inuring the work. In 1913–14 the salary of the chief woman inspector was £650. and the women inspectors received £200, rising by £15 to £400. There are also two inspectors of music: one with a salary of £1,150 a year, un-pensionable, and another, pensionable, with a salary rising to £900 a year. It cannot, be said that anybody is going to be made a better citizen because he has been taught music. The chief medical officer is in receipt of a salary of £2,500 a year, partly borne on the Education Vote and partly on that of the Ministry of Health, being an increase of £400 a year from the salary paid last year. There does not appear to your Committee any justification for the increase of salary. Is this a time to increase by £400 a year the salary of any man who has been receiving £2,100 a year? Salaries account for the greater part of the cost of education. In 1913–14 the salaries paid in public elementary schools amounted to £16,415,827, and the number of teachers employed was 163,640. In 1921 the amount paid in salaries was £38,885,000, and the number of teachers 167,205. While the number of teachers has increased by fewer than 4,000, the salaries have increased from £16,000,000 to nearly £39,000,000. To increase expenditure on education may have been a good thing when the country was prosperous and Income Tax was a shilling in the pound, but it is not a good thing when Income Tax is five shillings in the pound, and we have Super-tax and all the other taxes. The total cost of elementary schools in 1913–14 was £16,563,742, and the number of teachers was 164,868. The total salaries in 1921 were £39,335,060, and the number of teachers 168,758. Then there was an additional sum spent on technical and training college. A Paper was also put in by the Board showing the cost per unit of average attendance in public elementary schools for the salaries of teachers. In 1913–14 it amounted to 60s. 10d. per annum per head, in 1919–20 to 120s. 10d, in 1920–21 to 151s. 10d., in 1921–22 to 162s., and in 1922–23 it is estimated to cost 166s. 10d. while the average attendance has decreased from 5,397,450 in 1913–14 to 5,250,000 in 1921–22, and it is estimated that this will be the average attendance in the present year. So we have the fact that while the average attendance of children has decreased from 5,397,450 in 1913–14 to 5,250,000 in 1920–21, there is this great increase in cost. I have to thank all the officials of the Board of Education who attended before us for the way in which they gave every information. The President of the Board attended before your Committee and referred to the vast increase in teachers' salaries, which are now 70 per cent. of the total cast of education, and stated that if there is to he an improved system of education there must be better qualified teachers. To obtain these, better inducements must be offered. He did not hold out any hope of a reduction in expenditure under existing conditions. So much for expenditure on education. Now let me deal with the Ministry of Labour, which is another extravagant Department. The gross expenditure of the Ministry for the year 1922–23 is estimated to amount to£18,479,777.

Before the War we had no Ministry of Labour, and therefore this Estimate did not exist, with the exception of the amount which was due to the Departments of the Board of Trade, which dealt with these questions at a. cost of about £500,000. It must not be forgotten, however, that the actual expenditure of the Department will be about £23,000,000, of which no less than £4,340,560 goes in salaries and administration. It may be said that this Ministry deals with unemployment insurance and a variety of other things, but what would Mr. Gladstone say to the amount of £4,300,000 for salaries? I believe that the Minister of Labour is a devoted follower of his. I was in this House with Mr. Gladstone, and I can understand what his horror would have been if anybody had said that a Department like this was going to cost £4,340,000. At that time the total expenditure of the whole country was only about £90,000,000, and Mr. Gladstone said that if it ever went to £100,000,000, including the Army and Navy, we should be on the verge of ruin. A statement was put in showing that the Employment. Department of the Board of Trade in 1913–14 cost £541,364 gross for administration, as against £4,610,875 for the Ministry of Labour this year.

8.0. P.M.

The Ministry of Labour, however, administers certain services which the Employment Department of the Board of Trade did not administer, such as the Trade Boards Act, the Conciliation Act of 1896, the Industrial Courts Act, the collection and publication of labour statistics—I do not think they are of any use—the professional training of ex-service men, the industrial training of ex-service men, the interrupted apprentice ship scheme for ex-service men, re-settlement grants for ex-service men, and so forth. The number of persons insured under the Unemployment Insurance Act has risen from 2,750,000 in 1913–14 to 12,000,000 at the present time. Unemployment benefit, including dependents' grants, for 1921–22 is 267,000,000, compared with £530,000 in 1913–14. The amount for the present year is not yet available. The salary of the Minister is £2,000 a year, and that of the Permanent Secretary, £2,200, both inclusive. These are the highest salaries paid, with two exceptions, namely, the Chief Labour Adviser, whose salary is now £3,000 a year inclusive, and the President of the Industrial Court, who also receives £3,000 a year inclusive. I do not know why these officials should receive 50 per cent more than the Minister of Labour.

There is a salary mentioned here which I cannot think can be justified. I am certain that the same work could be performed for very much less. It is the salary of the Chief Labour Adviser. He was appointed in 1910 as Labour Adviser to the Home Office at a salary of 2500 a year, rising to £700. In 1912 he was appointed unestablished Commissioner, under the National Health Insurance Commission, at a salary of £1,000. In December, 1916, he was appointed Permanent Secretary to the newly created Ministry of Labour at a salary of £1,500 a year. That is a fairly good increase in six years. He had a bonus of £300 a year in addition, from 1st April, 1919, and this bonus was increased to £500 on 17th November, 1919. The Report goes on: In the year 1919 an attempt was made to combine the duties of Permanent Secretary with those of the Chief industrial Commissioner, and the salary was raised to £2,000 a year, plus bonus. It is stated that experience proved that, with the great increase in the volume of business, the work could not he done effectively by one officer, and, therefore, the work of the Chief Industrial Commissioner was separated from the work of the Permanent Secretary. A Permanent Secretary was thereupon appointed and the position of Chief Labour Adviser created. Therefore, you have two people to do what one man was doing before— The gentleman who had been doing the work which could now be done by two officials at the salary above mentioned, was transferred to the new post of Chief Labour Adviser, and, though his duties were diminished, he was appointed at a salary of £2,000 a year, plus £750 bonus. Subsequently his salary was raised to £3,000, plus £500 bonus. We see, therefore, that he was appointed in 1910 at £500 a year, and in 1919, or a little later, his salary had risen to £3,500 a. year. That is exactly seven times the salary that he received about seven years ago— Bonus ceased to be paid as from 1st September, 1921. The reason given for this last increase was that the Committee set up to advise on the emoluments attached to the principal posts in the first-class Departments of the Civil Service recommended that certain posts should he regarded as carrying this higher salary of £3,000 a year. That brings me to the question of what the Committee considered to be a very unfortunate practice at the Treasury, namely, that a post is created, and that it does not matter whether the work of that. post in the various Departments differs. We will call the post X. Everybody who is in a post called X, whatever the Department, has to get the same salary. The only justification for giving this gentleman £3,000 a year was that the Civil Service recommended that certain posts should be regarded as carrying this higher salary of £3,000. What does this gentleman do? He advises the Minister of Labour on labour matters. I do not know that the Department has been very successful in labour matters. I do not know what the trade unions think of it. Why, if the right hon. Gentleman is the most competent person to deal with these matters, should he have a person to advise him?

Sir E. BARTLEY-DENNISS

The adviser is a Labour man.

Sir F. BANBURY

Is not the Minister of Labour a laborious person? The Estimates Committee came to the conclusion that a gentleman competent to advise on labour matters might be obtained for a smaller salary than £3,000 a year. The most prominent Labour leaders that I know, the heads of the trade unions, do not get £3,000 a year with a pension. If I were in the position of the Minister I think I could do a deal with some Labour Members of this House for a considerably less sum than £3,000 a year. The only other post carrying a salary of £3,000 a year is that of the President. of the Industrial Court. A county court judge gets only £1,500 a year. The President of the Industrial Court has not a great deal to do. In 1921, 107 cases were dealt with by the Court. Practically all these cases were heard by the whole-time members of the Court. Generally one day was sufficient to take evidence in a case, but this was sometimes exceeded. In 1920 there were 534 cases heard, and the services of additional members paid by fees were utilised to a considerable extent. The personnel of the Court is also used in cases other than those referred specifically to the Court under the Industrial Courts Act.

The President of the Court acts as Chairman of the National Wages Board under the Railways Act of 1921. I do not think he has been called upon to adjudicate. The Estimates Committee consider that a salary of £1,500 a year paid to a county court judge would be sufficient for this post. In addition to the President. there is a Chairman at £1,500 a year, an employers' representative at £1,500, and two workmen's representatives, one at £1,250, and one at £1,000. Why should not Labour have one representative instead of two, and so save the salary of one post? There are other things in the Report on the Ministry of Labour which I propose to leave to be dealt with by other hon. Members.

I come to the Post Office. I am glad that the Postmaster-General is here, because the Post Office is one of the most liberally-conducted Departments that the Committee had the misfortune to come across. The Report states: From a paper put in by the Post Office it would appear that in 1913–14 the salaries in the metropolitan area amounted to £4,606,288; in 1921–22 they had risen to £13,266,146; and in this year's Estimates they are taken at £11,172,010. No wonder we had to pay 2d. for our letters, and could not get a Sunday delivery. The total salaries paid by the Post Office in 1913–14, apart from the engineering establishment, amounted to £14,785,433: in 1921–22 they had risen to £42,510,723, and for 1922–23 they are estimated to amount to £35,348,399. In the engineering department the salaries in 1913–14 amounted to 1½ millions; in 1921–22 they had risen to £5,200,000, and for the year 1922–23 they are estimated to be £3,674,880. It was stated that the figures for 1921–22 were approximate. The total staff employed on 1st August, 1914, was 229,489, and on 1st April, 1922, it was 225,835; so that the number of persons employed was less in 1922 than in 1914, though the salaries have increased from £14,000,000 to £35,000,000. It was further stated that of the staff of 225,835, 4,203 were employed on new work. The Post Office put in a statement of the work done in 1913–14 and in 1921–22. It is all in the Report and it makes very interesting reading. The business of the Post Office in 1921–22 showed a reduction all round with the exception of registered letters and parcels, and in telephones an increase in trunk calls, but a decrease in local calls.

As regards the extent to which salaries have been raised, the Estimates Committee were informed that in inner London a boy of 18 entering the service as a postman began at 45s. a week, including bonus at the present scale, and rose to 92s. a week, including bonus. The hours of work are 48 per week, and from these hours time is allowed for meals, so that practically the time worked is 45 hours a week. Postmen are paid overtime at the rate of time and a quarter. They receive uniform free, and free medical service. In 1913–14 in inner London a boy of 18 began as a postman at 19s. a week, and rose to 43s. That means that a boy of is now gets more than a mature postman received in 1913–14. Porters at entry are paid, including bonus, 56s. a week at 22 years or over. Cleaners who clean the headquarter buildings, wash the windows, etc., have a foreman who gets with bonus a salary of about £300 a year.

I find that there are also one housekeeper, five assistant housekeepers, and one cook at the Post Office buildings, and it would seem to me that that is a very large proportion of housekeepers. There are also sorter tracers who sort the telegraph forms so as to secure that for every telegram the necessary revenue is collected, and they are paid £5 10s. per week, or £275 a year. They receive this salary for sorting over telegrams to see that the correct stamps have been put upon them. A witness was asked whether women could not do that work, and he replied that the work was going to be transferred to women. Free medical ser vice is given to all employés up to £270 a year, and that, including health insurance, amounts to £144,316 in the year. Girls are taken on as probationers at 14½ years of age at 14s. a week, and when they are 16 years of age, if there are any vacancies, they are taken on to be trained as telephonists at 36s. a week, while they are, in fact, still being instructed. That means 36s. a week is being paid to a girl of 16 who is being taught. Many persons learning a trade or business are only paid a nominal salary, and perhaps have to contribute something themselves.

I should like to allude to the building operations which it is proposed to carry out at the Post Office in Threadneedle Street. It is proposed to spend £89,000 on the Post Office there. The Committee visited the Post Office and went all over it. It is a fine, substantial building of stone, but does not stand on a very large site, and it is quite impossible to extend the site. It is very dirty inside and a little paint and whitewash would go a long way to improve it. There are undoubtedly on the top floors arrangements which are not sanitary. There is a sort of restaurant upstairs and meals are cooked there, and the lavatories and the kitchens are on the floor together. I think that undoubtedly is not as it should he, hut whether it is worth while spending £89,000 in order that the people employed in that particular office should have their meals inside instead of going out for them, is quite another matter. In every other institution in the City, the clerks have to go outside and are not provided with meals inside. That certainly was so in my time. Even if this were necessary, it would be perfectly easy to provide the additional accommodation at a much smaller cost. The Committee was informed that as it was impossible to extend the site of the building it was proposed to increase the height, and it was also proposed to let off a portion of the additional storey to the adjoining insurance company. It seems to us that in these days of financial stringency it is hardly the business of the Post Office to enter into business speculations and to offer buildings to let. Your Committee did not think it was advisable to spend a capital sum of money to obtain a rental of 5 per cent., and they came to the conclusion that the additional accommodation could be provided at a cost very much less than £89,000. The Report states: The Committee have come to this conclusion with one dissentient. They are of opinion that a. slim of money should be spent upon improvements in the building but they are not of the opinion that Anything approaching the sum of £89,000 is necessary and they would suggest that an alternative proposal at a cost not to exceed £20,000 should be obtained. An extremely pleasant and agreeable Post Office servant showed us over the building. His zeal for the Post Office was beyond all praise, and his idea seemed to be that this should be a beautiful building. He said there were certain telegraph companies which had much nicer buildings, and he thought he would get more business if he had a better place in which people could hand in their telegrams. I think myself in the City the general practice is for the office boy to take the telegrams, and the em- ployer does not care twopence whether the office boy has a nice place to hand them in at or whether he has not. We now come to the Fourth Report, which deals with the Inland Revenue. The cost of the Department has risen from £784,633 in 1914–15 to £4,651,406 in 1922–3. The reasons which one witness gave for the great increase in the work of this Department from 1914 were that when taxation has to be raised at enormous rates, it becomes of primary importance to the State that the taxes should be collected with far greater equality than was ever aimed at before the War, and this task is rendered the more difficult because the incentive to the less scrupulous part of the community to conceal its liability, or, at any rate, to await discovery rather than to reveal liability, has enormously increased. I think that is one of the many disadvantages of the enormous burden of taxation under which we are suffering. Your Committee wind up by saying that they are of opinion that while reductions in the salaries paid should be made, the work of the Department is efficiently carried out.

I come to the last Report. The Fifth Report begins by saying that the Committee found, during the examination of several witnesses, that when inquiries were made as to the reason for increases in salaries and wages, the answer invariably given was that these were made in consequence of Treasury Regulations, and the Departments in question had nothing to do with the fixing of the rate of salaries or wages. We, therefore, asked representatives of the Inland Revenue to attend before us, and they put in the Report of the Civil Service National Whitley Council, dated 17th February, 1920, which recommended that the hours of writing assistants should be seven per day with a half-holiday on Saturdays except when the state of business renders this impracticable; that the luncheon interval should consist of three-quarters of an hour, but that it should be within the discretion of heads of Departments to allow one hour in special cases of difficulty, and that payment for overtime should be made when the hours of attendance exceeded 42 in any one week. The same recommendations were made in the case of the clerical and administrative classes, these, with the writing assistants, being the three main classes into which the Civil Service is divided. These recommendations mean that civil servants attend at 10 o'clock in the morning, have three-quarters of an hour for luncheon, and leave at 5 o'clock, with the exception of Saturday, when they leave at half-past one, and overtime is paid when the attendance is in excess of 42 hours a week. This arrangement, as far as regards London, means that the hours of work during week do not exceed 34¾ hours. These gentlemen, besides receiving very fair salaries, have a permanent berth. They are not like servants in a private firm, where the masters may perhaps decide to retire; or where they may have to enter the Bankruptcy Court and the employés are cast on the world; but these civil servants have fixity of tenure, and in addition a pension. The Report goes on: The witness stated that the Treasury had adopted these recommendations. He stated further that in the provinces the Treasury were arranging for an 8-hour clay instead of a 7-hour day for the clerical classes. Asked whether the 8-hour day in the provinces had yet come into force, he replied that it was coming into force by degrees; it is to some extent in force and is being enforced as the normal arrangement for the provinces.' In addition to this. it would also appear that thestaff are allowed holidays varying from three weeks to eight weeks according to the various grades.…Your Committee are of opinion that the hours of attendance are too short and compare unfavourably with the hours of attendance of clerks in civil employment, while the average holiday in similar employment does not appear to be more than two or three weeks, as against three weeks to eight weeks in the Civil Service. It is clear that if the hours of work were increased to a moderate extent, it would be possible to reduce the staff and so effect a reduction in the cost of the Civil Service. I have had a paper which was sent to me, as well as to other Members of the Committee, I suppose, from the civil servants, in which they say that at the present moment there are 900 more people employed than are required. I do not know whether that is true. We did not get any evidence on that point before our Committee, but this is a circular which I have had sent to me: Civil Service Clerical Association, 36, St. George's Road, Victoria, 25th July, 1922,—The administrative and executive classes are at present over-staffed; that is to say, there are more persons receiving the scale of these classes than there is work to occupy them. In the case of the executive class, the redundancy is estimated at 900, and will take a period of years to wipe out. Any further appointments to this class would be an unjustifiable waste of public money. This is signed by a gentleman called W. J. Brown. I do not know whether his statements are correct, but, if they are, they throw a very considerable light on the short hours which are worked. I ought to observe that the administrative clerks do not receive overtime, but work as long as is required, but the other classes receive overtime if they work more than 42 hours in a week, and the overtime runs up in some cases to double pay. Your Committee wind up by saying: In conclusion, your Committee cannot think that 34¾ hours, or 33½ hours if an hour is allowed for luncheon, should be considered to constitute a fair week's work in the Civil Service in London; and they are also of opinion that the practice of overtime payable to clerical staffs is uneconomical, is liable to abuse, and should be greatly restricted, if not abolished. I trust I have not kept the House too long, but in these days of financial stringency it is more than ever necessary to criticise these Estimates.

Sir DONALD MACLEAN

I am quite certain that the thanks of the House are due to my right hon. Friend the Member for the City of London (Sir F. Banbury) and his colleagues for the great industry and ability which they have brought to bear in the production of these Reports on the Estimates. The pity of it is, of course. that these Reports are presented after Supply is concluded, so that their interest is of quite a post mortem character, but we are very much indebted to the hon. Members for the very laborious task which they have undertaken. I only hope that next year the fruits of their labours will be apparent alongside the consideration of the Estimates on the Floor of the House. That seems rather a pious aspiration, but even with a Coalition Government in power, sometimes a modicum of the most modest hopes may come within the prospect of realisation. I do not intend to follow my right hon. Friend in going through the Reports, but while he has been speaking I have been collating one or two figures from the Reports which are in our hands, and I have risen now because it might be more convenient to the Ministers to whose Departments I shall make brief references, that they should, if they think it worth while, reply to me as well as to my right hon. Friend.

The first Report deals with the Labour Ministry, and it is a very large if not staggering figure with which the public is confronted. It is perfectly true, and the very greatest allowance must be made for it, that I think there is no real comparison between the work of the Board of Trade and the Labour Ministry at the present moment. We may make a comparison, but the difference in the duties is so great as to bring it outside the range of comparing Like with like, because, after all, you have here the following services which the Employment Department of the Board of Trade did not include, namely, the Trade Boards, the Conciliation Act, the Industrial Courts Act, the collection and publication of labour statistics, the National Roll for the Disabled, professional training for ex-service men, industrial training for ex-service men, interrupted apprenticeship scheme for ex-service men, and resettlement grants for ex-service men. It must be noted that, with regard to the last four of those items, the need for the work of the Labour Ministry will diminish as time goes on, but making every kind of allowance. and admitting that in a certain sense you are not really comparing like with like, I do think that when we find we have to pay no less a sum than £4,340,560 in salaries and administration, it raises the gravest possible doubts, and indeed, putting it conversely, makes it almost amount to a certainty that there is room for drastic economies in this Ministry.

Let me take another item which caught my eye as I hastily looked through the Paper. No less a sum than £169,000 goes in travelling expenses. I admit—again, I want to be as fair as I can—that the Labour Ministry is widespread in its activities, and, of course, there must be a large amount of personal communication between the country and the centre, but I really do think that such an item as that raises once more the question as to whether there is not room, not for mere economy, but for a Drastic revision of the charges which fall upon the public Exchequer for travelling expenses. Much use is made of the telegraph, the telephone, and postal services, but I speak with a little personal knowledge when I say—not about this Ministry specially, although this Ministry is inclAded—that I am certain there are a very large number of totally unnecessary visits paid to London by officials operating in the country within the ambit of these great administrative services which could well be dispensed with, and also, vice versa, visits from London to the country. I pass from that with a comment on what my right hon. Friend has said with regard to the Chief Labour Adviser. In the person of Sir David Shackleton, we have a public official of the very highest standing. I, and many other Members of this House, have had the privilege of his friendship for many years, but, at the same time, I do think that, great as are his attainments, wide as are his public services, I hope that full effect will be given to the note that this salary paid must be regarded as a salary special and peculiar to the present holder of the office.

I pass from that to a comment on the Second Report, which deals with the Education Estimates, and here may I say what a pleasure it is to anyone speaking from the Front Opposition Bench to see such a, 'splendid array of Ministers? I see them here individually very frequently, but. I now have an opportunity of a collective conspectus of members of the Ministry, which tempts me to make a very much longer speech than that in which I otherwise would indulge. However, I refrain from the temptation with all the strength I possess, lest it should overcome me at a later stage of my remarks. With regard to this Report on the Education Estimates, I do not propose to go into it in any detail, but only to make this one general observation, that I am certain that in the Education Department, as in other Departments, there is still much room for revision, reduction and economy. It has just occurred to my recollection—I hope it is correct—that in answer to a question the other day, the reply was given that at least two of the posts are regarded as redundant, and there is a reduction, therefore, in the headquarters' staff. I am sure the President of the Board of Education realises that those of us who oppose wild and sweeping reductions in the, educational services of the country, as I do, believing it is no real economy at all, at the same time we are very anxious indeed that the point of view which we take should be supported and strengthened by every possible economy in the administration of that great and most useful Department. I am certain that there is room for many economies still to be made.

Dealing with the Post Office Estimates, I admit that I am faced with a somewhat difficult figure on page 2, namely, that there were fewer people employed in the Post Office on the 1st April of this year than there were on the 1st August, 1914. There cannot be a very serious diminution in the services rendered, because there are many extra duties carried by the Post Office in 1922 to what there were in 1914. I think that position compares favourably with some other Departments of His Majesty's Government. I have no doubt at all that the criticism which was passed by my right hon. Friend the Member for the City of London with regard to new buildings is thoroughly justifiable. The mania of Government Departments for spending money on new buildings received a very salutary check last year or the year before last, and since then there has been some reduction. It just shows how necessary it is for the House of Commons to reassert its control over Departments, and here I believe that, in all probability, the Members of this Committee have rendered a very useful service by their recommendations, founded on evidence, because they took the trouble not to pass mere personal opinion. They as men of experience made an investigation, and they came to the conclusion that there was not any necessity this year to incur an expenditure of more than £20,000 compared with the £80,000 or £90,000 last year. If there be substance in that, as I believe there must be, it is a very severe criticism of the proposals of the Post Office with regard to expenditure on new buildings.

There is a very interesting paragraph on page 5 of the same Report and it brings in other Departments as well. It states there: The various Government Departments that are debited with the sum of £492,655 for telephone services, and a sum of £4,244,730 for postal services. The Ministry of Labour is debited with £471,150 for postal services, and £62,000 for telephone services. That is to say, this money has been spent. As the House will remember, on the Debate on expenditure, there was also the sum of £169,000 for travelling expenses. What I suggest is that the Government Departments should remember, just as the members of a business undertaking are constantly reminded, the fact that postal and telephone services cost money. In a business department a record is kept of these, as at the end of the quarter a cheque has to be drawn, so the Government Departments should have the same idea that every time they make unnecessary telephone calls, or send unnecessary telegrams or letters—and heaven knows the whole country is buried beneath a shower of unnecessary Governmental forms—every time they do that it is a cost to the Exchequer. The War Office is debited with £105,000 for telephone services, and the Admiralty with £82,000. The amount debited for postal services to the War Office is £229,900, and to the Admiralty £143,400. This is a most useful paragraph. If it were the only paragraph in the Report, it would be worth all the investigation and trouble which hon. Members have taken, because it is a flashlight into the methods of the Government Department. I am certain it is well within their capacity to effect a saving upon these items.

I come to the Board of Inland Revenue Report. There are some very striking figures there also. Of course, in what I have to say I make full allowance for the difference between 1914–15 and 1922–23. Here it is indicated that the cost of the Department in 1914–15 was £784,633, while this year it had risen to £4,651,406. In 1914–15 the number of persons employed was 4,216, while in the present year the figure is 12,733. Let us make a comparison of the sums raised. We have got the services given, which include death duties, stamps, Land Tax, House Duty, Mineral Rights Duty, Income Tax, Excess Profits Duty, and Corporation Profits Tax. You take the last two out and you find that the total raised in 1913–14 was £88,000,000, while last year the amount raised was £521,000,000. Speaking generally, it is quite safe to say that it does not cost very much more to collect £500 in Income Tax than to collect £50; but that sort of comparison should not be carried too far. While admitting there must have been a substantial increase in the staff—a great comparative increase—it does look as if that vast increase in the numbers alone from 4,000 to 12,000 requires careful examination and more explanation than we have already had on the Estimate.

The final point I want to take is in connection with the Fifth Report. I am quoting the penultimate paragraph on page 4, to which attention has already been drawn. It shows that before the War the Civil Service consisted of 283,000 people, costing £29,500,000, whereas now, excluding Ireland, it consists of 325,000 people costing, with bonus, £67,400,000. That is the sort of thing that the public and the ordinary Member of this House—with whom I include myself—can never get over. It cannot be necessary, with the constant stripping away of superfluous services left from the War, and the recent demand for economy in all possible directions, that there should he that still marked difference between these two sets of figures. While giving full credit for such arrangements as have already been made by the Government to meet this demand for economy, it shows that they fall far short not only of what they ought to do but what they could do. I repeat once more my sense of indebtedness to those hon. Members who have presented these very valuable Reports.

The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. Herbert Fisher)

The right hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London (Sir F. Banbury) has presented to the House a very lucid summary of the findings of the Select Committee on Estimates over which he presided with so much courtesy and ability. I do not propose, in the few observations which I shall address to the House, to deal with more than a small segment of his speech, that segment which is concerned with the Estimates of my own Department, nor shall I attempt to cover all the ground, even here, which was covered by the right hon. Baronet. He alluded, very naturally, to the great rise in the salaries paid to elementary teachers. He reminded the House that those salaries constituted 70 per cent. of the Estimates of the Board, and he compared the salaries which are paid now with the salaries paid at the beginning of the War. This matter of teachers' salaries has been so often debated here; the issues, social, economic and educational, which have led to this considerable rise in salaries are so familiar to hon. Members, the system of grants now being examined by an expert Committee of this House, which has enabled the local education authorities to make considerable advances in the salaries which they pay their teachers is so familiar, that I shall not occupy the time of the House in dealing with that important matter. I will confine myself to that part of the speech of the right hon. Baronet which was concerned with the expenditure of Whitehall.

In criticising the salaries paid to the Civil Service, I think that the critic is very often apt to be unduly influenced by the cost of a few of the higher salaries. I think that criticism of public Departments should be based on the realisation of the average salaries paid to the whole Department. The officers of all grades employed at Whitehall number 1,871, and the average salary, including bonus, is £422 per annum.

Mr. ROSE

Does that include charwomen?

Mr. FISHER

No, it includes the clerks. It is, of course, true that members of the higher staff do enjoy very much higher salaries. The number of the higher staff provided for in this year's Estimate is 99. My right hon. Friend the Member for Peebles (Sir D. Maclean) expressed the view that there might be room for considerable economy in the administrative Department of Whitehall. I agree that there is room for economy, and we are reducing our higher staff.

As I have not given the full figures before, I should like to inform the House what steps we have already taken with a view to reducing the numbers of the higher staff and its cost at Whitehall. The total reduction since the reorganisation of the higher staff in 1920 is 14, representing a salary cost of about £14,000.

This is made up as follows: One Principal Assistant Secretary, two Assistant. Secretaries, two Principals, one Senior Examiner, 5 Assistant Principals, one Assistant Estates Clerk, one Legal Examiner and one Secretary to the Juvenile Organisation Committee. By the end of October there will be a further reduction of three posts, namely, one Assistant Secretary, one Principal, and one Assistant Principal, making a total reduction since 1920 of 17 posts, with a salary saving of about £17,000. I hope the House will realise that we are endeavouring at the Board of Education to effect economy in our staff.

Lord EUSTACE PERCY

The right hon. Gentleman gave the average cost of the civil servant in his Department at £422 per annum. I see that in the fifth Report the average cost of the civil servant for the whole Government service is £207.

9.0. P.M.

Mr. FISHER

The average of £422 includes bonus. It is perfectly true that there has been an increase in the executive and clerical staff of 234 in 1922–23 as compared with 1913–14. This increase is due to the formation of the Pensions Branch, with a staff of 144, to an increase. of 52 in the numbers of the Accountant-General's Department. That large increase is due to a large addition to the work of the Department, owing to the paying of pensions under the School Teachers Superannuation Act, 1918; the assessment and payment of awards under the Pensions Increase Act, 1920, and the taking over from the Paymaster-General of the payment of the teachers' pensions under the Acts of 1898 and 1912; also the assessment and payment of grants to the local education authorities under the Act of 1918. I think these are very good reasons for the increase in the number of the headquarters staff. Recently I have been looking into this matter with a view of seeing whether any further reductions can he made, and though I cannot promise any immediate reductions, because the initial work is very great, I think in time we shall be able to effect further reductions there. Now I pass to the second point raised by the right hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London, and that was the salaries paid to women inspectors. Let me, first of all, remind the House that in May, 1920, this House accepted a Resolution to the effect that: It is expedient that women should have an equal opportunity of employment with men in all branches within the United Kingdom, and under all local authorities provided that the claims of ex-service men are first of all considered and that they should also receive equal pay. That is a Resolution of this House in May, 1920, but that attitude was to some extent modified on the 5th August, 1921, when the following Resolutions were passed: (1) That women shall be appointed to and continue to hold posts in the Civil Service within the United Kingdom under the same Regulations, present or future, as govern the classification and (in so far as regards status and authority) other conditions of service for men. (2) That, having regard to the present financial position of the country, this House cannot commit itself to the increase in Civil Service salaries involved in the payment of women in all cases at the same rate as men; but that the question of the remuneration of women as compared with men shall be reviewed within the period not exceeding three years. The decision of the House on the 5th August, 1921, was that men and women in the Civil Service should be paid equally. With regard to the salaries of the women inspectors, they bear the same relation to the salaries of the men inspectors as obtain between men and women in the Civil Service generally. They are lower, but they bear the same relation at the Board of Education as they do in other parts of the country. It would be perfectly impossible for us to obtain the services of the highly-trained and the highly-educated women we require for this particular kind of work at anything like the old rates of salaries. Many of the ablest women are now going into the study of medicine, some are taking to the law, while others are engaged in commerce, and, consequently, it is desirable that the Board of Education should be in a position to secure the. services of able, experienced, practical women who will command the confidence of the head mistresses of our women's colleges and our secondary schools.

If we are to do that, then we must pay them adequate salaries, and the reason for the increase in the salaries of women inspectors from a rate beginning at £200 and rising to £400 to a rate beginning at £300 and rising to £500 was that the Board found that the lower salary was quite insufficient to attract women for the requisite status, experience and qualifications. We have had the greatest difficulty in filling the posts of Training College Staff Inspector and Elementary School Staff Inspector. At the present moment we have in the ranks of our women inspectors women who have been headmistresses of secondary schools, and principals of training colleges and of technical schools. It is very desirable that we should have women of this kind. Woman's education is very important, and it is particularly important that headmistresses of girls' schools all over the country should receive advice from the Board, and that that advice should be given by women who command confidence by reason of their ability, their record, and their character. My right hon. Friend called special attention to the salary paid to the Chief Woman Inspector. What has the Chief Woman Inspector to do? She has to have an intimate knowledge of all sides of girls' education—university, training college, technical, secondary, elementary and domestic training. She ought to be one of the ablest women in the whole country. She has control of a staff of women inspectors, who are responsible throughout the country fur the inspection of every side of the education of girls. She must be able to select suitable women for the different sides, and she has to be well qualified to judge of their efficiency. I need hardly emphasise the special personal qualification which is desirable in such an officer. I submit that the salary paid to the Chief Woman Inspector—£850, rising to £1,000 subsequently—bears a proper relation to the salary of the Chief Male Inspector, which is £1,200.

If you compare that salary with the salaries drawn by women holding high academic positions in this country, it will be found that it is not exceptional. Let me give some of the salaries that are being paid to the heads of great women's colleges. £800, plus board and residence for the whole year, plus a pension allowance of £95 a year payable with interest at any time on leaving. £750 residerr. £800 resident. £800 resident, plus superannuation. £1,500. These are typical salaries which are now being paid to heads of important women's colleges. I submit, therefore, to the House that this salary paid to the most important woman in the Education Department is not excessive. My right hon. Friend passed on to refer to the Inspector of Music. I gather from what he said the right hon. Gentleman is not musical, and I shall not attempt therefore to emphasise to him that there is no form of art that has a snore general appeal than music. Neither shall I attempt to describe what has been done by our Chief Inspector of Music for music in our schools. We are extraordinarily lucky in having secured his services. He is a very eminent man. He is a great composer.

His salary is £1,000 a year without pension. I am referring to Dr. Arthur Somervall.

Sir F. BANBURY

He gets £1,150 without pension.

Mr. FISHER

£1,000 from us and the rest from Scotland, and I venture, to think that that is a salary which certainly ought to be paid.

Sir F. BANBURY

Do you not think we could do without, music altogether in these hard times?

Mr. FISHER

No. Then my right hon. Friend went from music to health, and referred to the very distinguished officer who advises the Minister of Health, as well as the President of the Board of Education. He suggested that he is unduly remunerated. The greater part of the salary is borne on the Vote of the Ministry of Health, and I will merely observe that there is no more distinguished public servant than Sir George Newman—no one to whom the public health of this country owes a greater debt. I am convinced that every penny of the salary paid to him is returned to the country over and over again. These are, I think, all the points raised by the right hon. Baronet in connection with the extension of the Board of Education at Whitehall. I will only conclude by assuring the House that I am fully alive to the necessity for economy. I am continuing my survey of the work of my Department with a view to seeing where retrenchment can be made without injury to the public service. So far from objecting to any kind of criticism with respect to the expenditure of my Department, I heartily welcome it, and I shall be only too glad to pursue any inquiry which is suggested by any hon. Member in this House with respect to further economies.

Sir PHILIP PILDITCH

As a member of the Estimates Committee, I am sure that we are all very grateful to the right hon. Member for Peebles (Sir D. Maclean) for the encomiums he passed on our work. I think we should be even more grateful to the Government for having turned up in such numbers on this occasion, and for having given us this opportunity for the discussion of our Report. It must he fairly clear that a Committee like the Estimates Committee, which sits in private during the whole year, dealing with the Estimates in detail, can expect to achieve very little unless opportunities are afforded for the discussion of its Reports. We should have liked to have had an opportunity rather earlier in the Session, when it might have been possible to deal more effectively with these matters we have to deal with, but we must be thankful for, the mercies vouchsafed to us, and the sight of so well filled a Treasury Bench is certainly very cheering to us to-night. With regard to the speech of the President of the Board of Education, I am a little regretful that he saw cause to speak quite so early in the Debate. I should have liked him to have spoken a little later. My right hon. Friend the Chairman of the Committee dealt very fully with various details connected with the salaries of the higher grades of officials in the Board of Education and in other Departments, but he did not refer very definitely or specifically to one point, with regard to the Education Estimates, to which I should like to refer. I shall not go into it in very much detail now, because I want to refer to it in a moment. I am rather sorry that the Financial Secretary to the Treasury is not here at the moment, because I shall also have something to say about it as affecting his Department. With regard to the Education Estimates, if the right hon. Gentleman will look at paragraph 9 on page 4 of our Second Report, he will find that it says: The undertaking by the Department to pay grants to the local authorities up to 1923 in London and 1925 in the country on the basis of the agreement entered into between the latter and the teachers, consequent upon the Report of the Burnham Committee, renders effective examination end criticism by your Committee of this part of the Estimates impossible. The real fact of the matter was that we found ourselves confronted with an Estimate of £44,900,000, but that, owing to the system which had been adopted, under which the teachers' salaries were, may I suggest respectfully, taken away from the purview of this House, and certainly out of the purview of the Estimates Committee, the only portion that we could consider was something like the odd £4,900,000. Practically the whole of the Estimate was removed from any possibility of examination by the Estimates Committee, owing to the method by which, under the Burnham Reports, the teachers' salaries had been settled. That was done some years ago, when the salaries themselves amounted to £16,000,000 a year. But, by the process of the system laid down in those Reports, whereby the increases have gone on year after year, we come finally, in this year's Estimates, to something which, so far as the Imperial Exchequer is concerned, is 60 per cent. of £39,000,000, instead of the percentage of £16,000,000 at the beginning of the War. That point, with regard to the ineffectiveness of the Estimates Committee in examining some of the Estimates, concerns not only the Board of Education, but some of the other Departments as well.

I do not propose to follow my right hon. Friend in his able criticism of the various details in regard to salaries; I shall leave that exactly where he left it. It is summarised sufficiently in the fact, which has already been brought out in answer to the Noble Lord the Member for Hastings (Lord E. Percy), that the salaries of the Civil Service have just doubled since the beginning of the War. I want to deal with one or two matters of principle, and, since the Financial Secretary to the Treasury has returned to the House, may I say that we regret exceedingly that he was unable to continue his attendances at our meetings, which he started at the beginning of this year? I offer that remark, not as a criticism but as a compliment to him, for there were very good reasons why he was unable to be present; but if, another year, it were possible for a representative of the Treasury to be present at the meetings of the Committee, I think it would be a great advantage to the work of the Committee, to this House, and to the Government. As our Chairman has told the House to-night, we have examined, one after the other, five Estimates, and in doing so we have become conscious of the fact that, as I have already indicated, large blocks of public expenditure have in effect, much in the same way as the Education Estimates, been so déalt with in advance that they are practically outside our power of examining into them. One of these is referred to at the bottom of page 3 of the Fifth Report, the Report on the Treasury, from which I will read a few lines: The witness further stated that the Treasury considered, from the financial- aspect, the question of transfers from temporary to permanent employment, which are productive of additional cost by way of superannuation and the like. Your Committee are of opinion that such changes as these, involving an increased expenditure over a period of years, should not be embarked upon without a proper report and estimate of expenditure in subsequent years, as well as in the current year, being made by the Establishments Department of the Treasury. We found that in matters of that kind there had been large increases of expenditure which had been practically settled in advance as far as principle was concerned, without, so far as we could ascertain, any Estimate being forthcoming as to what the cost was likely to be in the future. That is exactly the same thing which has happened with regard to the expenditure on teachers' salaries under the Burnham award, and. it is also, so far as we could ascertain, exactly what happened in connection with-the enormous subject of the re-grading of civil servants under the re-grading scheme. So far as one can make out, our financial system does not make provision for commitments of this kind, which are entered into in principle by proposals made to the House, and accepted by the House, without being at that time the subject of Estimates carried into the future as to what the cost is likely to be.

The principal contribution that I would venture to offer to the House on this subject is that I think it is very desirable that some such steps as that should be taken. There are the means by which they can be taken. The gem of the organisation by which it could he done is there. Within the last few years there has been set up in the Treasury what ought to be a very valuable Department, the Establishments Department, which is supposed to be in control of Establishments generally all over the Civil Service. In my opinion, if the duty were committed to the Establishments Department of the Treasury of presenting, I should say annually, and when such proposals are made on matters such as those to which I have referred, Reports and Estimates to the Treasury, and through the. Treasury to the House itself, the Government and the House would have taken the first, and in fact the principal, step that could be taken towards the handling and control of expenditure at the only time and place at which it can be thoroughly and effectively handled and controlled, namely, at the source. If I may be allowed to make a suggestion to the Treasury, I would say that our experience of the Establishments Department, and the help they gave us on the Committee in examining into details and Estimates, was such that it has led me to believe—the Committee generally have the same feeling—that it is on those lines that progress in ordinary, humdrum economy can be made. I do not mean the sort of economy which may be brought about by the Geddes Committee which, of course, can only be constituted once in a lustrum, and which achieves its purpose and cannot be repeated; but by the Estimates Committee of the House, which is a patient, humble, hardworking, laborious Committee, which goes on week after week and month after month, and is willing to go on year after year in the interests of the nation and the House. If the House and the Government would only back up the Committee, and if the Secretary to the Treasury would only back us up in using the Establishments Department in the way I have suggested, I think some extremely useful and lasting good might arise.

I have only one more point of principle to which to refer. The problem before the Estimates Committee is that of economy. That is what we are sent upstairs to do our best to achieve. That problem means this year that we have a gross expenditure of £950,000,000, and we have to help, so far as we can towards the reduction of that in the ensuing year. I have been very much struck as the work of the Committee has gone on—we have got to look these things in the face—with what appears to be the fact that almost the only large source of possible reduction which appears to be left consists in the extra emoluments, either by way of war bonus or salaries give subsequent to the War, superannuation, or whatever it may be, which all classes of persons who work for the State have been obtaining. Out of that £950,000,000 £364,000,000 goes in the Consolidated Fund, £167,000,000 in the Army, Navy and Air Force, and £346,000,000 is left for the Civil Services. War Pensions and the Old Age Pensions alone take £120,000,000 out of that £346,000,000. That leaves £226,000,000. On the Estimates Committee we had these different Departments to examine, and we tried to get to the bottom of what these extra emoluments really amounted to. We endeavoured to work it out. We have only had time to examine five Departments this year; we could not cover the whole field. Therefore I asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he could give me an Estimate, and he did so in answer to a question a few days ago. The result of the information which he gave me really came to this, that the bonuses of the Civil Service, including the industrial staff; the extra pay to the police; the extra pay to the fighting forces; the extra pay to the higher grades of the Civil Service under the right hon. Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith's) report, and the various increases which have automatically followed on those increases by way of superannuation—all of which have gone up, on the extra war emoluments—amount to something like £120,000,000 out of the £220,000,000 which is the residue left to the civil servants.

It is quite clear that it is very difficult to expect War bonuses to come down, except on the cost of living. Therefore we are faced, undoubtedly, with a great difficulty as to where serious reductions arc to be found next year. My hon. Friends on the Labour Benches are very keen about reducing the first item I mentioned, namely, the Consolidated Fund. Personally, believing that the economy which we were sent upstairs to try to help effect in some small way is of the essence of the matter for this nation at the present time, I think if all parties alike would agree to a reduction and if, in exchange for a reduction in advance of the established rate by all these Departments paid by the State, I, for one—though I do not think it would be desirable in any case to make a compulsory arrangement of this kind—would not at all object to endeavouring to carry out a, voluntary reduction of the £346,000,000, which is the sum paid in interest on Loans under the Consolidated Fund Act. However that may be, it is perfectly clear in regard to the £346,000,000, a part of which we had the honour of going into during the last year upstairs, it has been shown clearly by the Chairman of the Committee and by the Reports which he has signed and of which he, together with the rest of us, was the author—that in the points to which the Committee has referred in these Reports it is not only desirable, but in many cases absolutely essential, that considerable reductions should be made. It is quite clear that nothing which the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the House hopes for in the nature of economy next year, and of reduced expenditure and taxation can be forthcoming if savings of that kind are not effected.

The MINISTER of LABOUR (Dr. Macnamara)

I fully agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Sir P. Pilditch) as to the very great importance of the work that has been done, and is being done, by the Estimates Committee. Those of us who are responsible for the Departments feel that the least we can do is to be prepared to hear further questions which may be put to take careful note of all such questions, and to be ready to answer them. I am bound to say that my right hon. Friend the Chairman of the Estimates Committee dealt comparatively gently with me. I know his position, personally. He does not want a, Ministry of Labour at all. He thinks it is a wasteful and ridiculous excess, if not, indeed, positively harmful. He thinks it ought to keep out of industrial matters altogether, and if it ever does intervene, then it is not worth very much, if, indeed, it is worth anything at all. That being his view, I must say with thankfulness that I think the note he struck was one of remarkable tolerance, and I am very grateful to him for his fairness.

Sir F. BANBURY

I have been in an official position.

Dr. MACNAMARA

The right hon. Gentleman is in one, and I am grateful for his fairness. He looks back with a deep and happy sigh to the days when this organisation was a branch of the Board of Trade, spending £500,000 in a year on administration. At the same time he tells us we have had placed upon us a vast field of work which was not then in existence. He takes note of that. He recognises that very great field, a new part of our commission, which deals with the training and the resettlement of ex-service men. He recognises and tells us in his speech that whereas in the days to which he looks back with such regret there were only 2,750,000 persons under the Insurance Act, there are now 12,000,000. Above all, he points out—and it is a most significant fact—that whereas in 1913–14 that Department of the Board of Trade paid out £500,000 in unemployment benefit, the Ministry which I preside over paid out last year £67,000,000. My right hon. Friend takes careful note of all these things and says, there it is, although no doubt it would not be there if he had his way. I am grateful, but there are one or two "i's" I must dot and "t's" I must cross. He points out that the Vote this year for the Ministry of Labour is 218,010,604. Last year it was £22,137,405. Manifestly a very great deal of that reduction is due to what my hon. Friend opposite called humdrum economy day by day, watching the public purse and cutting our coat according to our cloth. I think my right hon. Friend might have given me a little word of encouragement, following so zealously, as I am, in the way he would have me go. Let me give a further example. I will not take last year's figures and compare them with this or the figures of the year before. I will take this year. On 1st January of this year, again showing continuous and careful regard to the necessity for economising wherever possible in a humdrum way, the staff of the Ministry was 22.750, excluding the industrial employés in the training centres for disabled men. On 1st July it had become 18,950. That is a saving at the rate of £620,000 a year—economies on previous economies. I hope that next year, if we are all spared, he will spare a word of thanks for the economies which will then come before him.

There are only three matters on which my right hon. Friend and the Select Committee made comment. My right hon. Friend dealt with two. I should like to say a word on the third. which he did not mention, although it is commented upon in the Report of his Committee. In the first place, the Committee pointed out that the staff of the Ministry included a Chief Labour Adviser at a salary of £3,000 inclusive, and expressed the view that it should be practicable to secure a Chief Labour Adviser at a lower salary. A reference to the printed Estimates for this year will show that this post is to be reconsidered. There is a footnote saying that there will be a reconsideration of that office and salary on the occurrence of a vacancy. I should like to say a word or two about that post and the person who fills it. The occupant of the post is Sir David Shackleton—a great public servant, one whose sagacity, knowledge, tact and patience I can testify to. It is difficult for me to over-estimate the value and importance of his qualities in the duties he has to perform. I do not think there is any doubt as to the abilities which he possesses in any part of the House. He became Permanent Secretary to the Ministry when it was formed at the close of 1916 at a salary of £1,500. There was then a Chief Labour Adviser under the title of Chief Industrial Commissioner—Sir George Askwith—and the salary at that time was the equivalent of that of a Secretary of a first-class Department—£2,000 a year. I mention this because my right hon. Friend seemed to think there was only one person at work at that time in the office of the Chief Commissioner. There were two.

An effort was made for a time to combine these two offices in one, but I think that, was a mistake, and experience showed that it was quite impossible to combine the two in one. There were two persons engaged from the beginning and not one. Therefore, in April, 1920, it was decided to appoint two joint permanent Secretaries to the Ministry at a salary of £2,000 a year each. Sir David Shackleton was one, and by the appointment of the other he was set free to discharge the important duties of Chief Labour Adviser. Then we had the Committee presided over by my right hon. Friend the Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith) and on the recommendation of that Committee it was decided that the salary attaching to the principal posts of a first class Department which this Ministry was held to be should be at: the rate of £3,000 per annum. That salary was paid to these two gentlemen holding what were held to he first class posts. My right hon. Friend did not go on to tell us that other facts were submitted to his Committee. When the then Permanent Secretary was transferred to the Colonial Office I took the following steps. I did not think the continuance of two posts at £3,000 a year was justified. The present Secretary was accordingly appointed as Permanent Secretary at a salary of £2,200, Sir David Shackleton retaining the office and salary which he had so far held. This post and the salary of £3,000 attached to it, as I say, and as is set forth in the Estimate, will be reconsidered on a vacancy. At the same time I decided not to continue beyond August, 1922, the post of Second Secretary, the salary attaching to which is £1,350, plus bonus, then at the rate of £750, and not to fill further for the time being the post, then £1,250, vacated by the new Secretary. Therefore, in the place of two posts, each carrying a salary of £3,000 a year, plus one post carrying a salary of £1,350 and another carrying £1,250, there is now one post at £3,000 and one at £2,200, which by a simple process of arithmetic appears to be a reduction of £3,400.

Sir F. BANBURY

Go on and do better.

Dr. MACNAMARA

I am very much obliged for that tardy word of recognition. That is the whole story. My right hon. Friend referred to the President of the Industrial Court with a salary of £3,000 a year. The Committee consider that the salary paid to a county court judge, £1,500 a year, would be sufficient for that office. The Industrial Court is to all intents and purposes a judicial body, practically independent of the Ministry of Labour, or of any other Government Department. The President of the Court is not in any sense a member of the staff of the Ministry of Labour, though, as the Minister of Labour is responsible for the administration of the Industrial Court Act, the cost of the Industrial Court is borne, including the salary of the President, upon the Vote of the Ministry of Labour. When the Industrial Court Act was set up by the present Chancellor of Exchequer, my predecessor in the office of Minister of Labour, it. was recognised that the office of President of the Court would be one of great responsibility, and that if employers and trade unions were to be expected to refer their differences to the Court and to accept the settlements, as they have done, with, I think, one exception, it was essential that the Government should appoint a highly-qualified gentleman as President.

The Committee admit that the President also acts as Chairman of the National Wages Board under the Railways Act, 1921, and he fulfils other duties in addition to the duties falling upon him as President of the Court. Only the other day, as the House will remember, the President of the Court sat in connection with the engineers' dispute, and I should like to pay a tribute to the way in which he carried out his difficult and responsible duty. The present holder is a distin- guished lawyer, with practically unique experience of industrial arbitration, and it could not be expected that so distinguished a member of the legal profession should have been asked to abandon his practice in the Courts for a remuneration less than that fixed for the office. Naturally, I attach the greatest weight to recommendations of the Estimate Committee, and I do my best to give practical effect to those recommendations, but with great respect I think that this recommendation is not a wise one.

The Select Committee made reference to the fact that the Appointments Branch of the Ministry which endeavours to find billets for ex-officers, have dealt with ex-officers when their temporary appointments have terminated, and have placed them back upon the list of persons for whom appointments are to be found. The Committee is rather critical of that procedure, and suggest that this must necessarily tend to prolong the existence of this branch of the Ministry. I offer no apology for placing at the disposal of these ex-officers the facilities of the Appointments Branch, and in trying to get billets for ex-officers who have only been appointed to a temporary job or who come back from service in Ireland. I do not think the House will disagree with me in this matter. We are not dealing with men who have permanent billets but with ex-officers who have had temporary jobs. The job is closed, the period for which it was filled is exhausted, and we have put them back on the list of the Appointments Branch. Considerable reductions have already been made in the cost of the branch. To-day, the cost is less than one-fourth of what it was two years ago, and the staff is far less than one-fourth of what it was two years ago.

The right hon. Member for Peebles (Sir D. Maclean) referred to the fact that the Ministry of Labour is debited with £471,150 for postal services, and £62,000 for telephone services. Of the first item, for postal services, nearly one-half or £210,000 is the charge against us by the Post Office for selling unemployment insurance stamps to the value of £25,000,000 or £30,000,000. Of the rest, ordinary postage amount to £118,820. Franked forms and envelopes amount to £161,500. There are also a few smaller items, such as commission on postal drafts and postal orders. With regard to the second item, £02,000 for telephone services, of course, every care must be taken in requisitioning trunk calls; but it would be penny wise and pound foolish not to requisition a trunk call in a case where industrial dislocation is threatened in a distant part of the country. That is the main purpose for which these trunk calls are used. In regard to calls in a particular area, they are used by the Employment Exchanges in connection with vacancies offered for men on the Employment Register.

There are not too many vacancies; indeed there are far too few vacancies for the men unemployed, and it very often happens that when we send a man off for a vacancy, the position is filled in the meantime. Rather than subject the man to the annoyance and irritation of finding that the job has been filled when he gets to the place, the telephone call is used for the purpose of ascertaining whether or not the position has been filled. These are the two things which constitute the greater proportion of the telephone charges. Early this year I set up a Departmental Committee to examine the whole of our postal and telephone services with a view to effecting still farther economies. The attention of the staff has again been called to the care which must be exercised in regard to all such matters, and particularly in regard to the control of franked forms and envelopes.

Sir D. MACLEAN

There is also the question of travelling expenses, which amount to £169,000.

Dr. MACINAMARA

If my right hon. Friend had given me notice that he intended to raise that point, I would have give him full details. If he will put a question down I will give him complete details with great pleasure.

Mr. AMMON

Everybody will agree that the exercising of proper economy should have the hearty support of all sections of the House. In the Reports under discussion we arc unable to consider policy, and in the main the proposals for retrenchment must turn upon salaries and wages. Speaking for my colleagues on these benches, we are not convinced that it is sound economy to economise only in regard to wages, and that in the long run that may prove rather a disaster than otherwise, particularly when those wages may originally have been very nearly the border line of sweating and starvation. The tendency one feels on the other side of the House is to attack the wages and conditions of civil servants and railway workers in the hope that it may stir up jealousy and ill-feeling among other workers outside. We suggest that it is good that there should be somewhere set up a good standard of wages, and surely the State should do it in order that its example may be followed by other employers.

The cost of travelling could be considerably decreased if all civil servants were to travel third class instead of first class. Members of Parliament travel third class, and surely it is not too much to expect civil servants to travel third class. But I am sorry that I cannot join wholeheartedly the right hon. Member for Peebles (Sir D. Maclean) in congratulating the framers of these reports, as I should like to do, because the Report on the Department, of which I do know something, is so misleading, and is couched in such language, that one is unable to get a real understanding of the facts of the case, and can only say that, either through gross carelessness or deliberation, it is misleading to Members of this House. The right hon. Member for the City of London, in introducing the Estimates Report, said that there was not such a strong case for people who were receiving very high salaries as for those who were receiving low wages. But we have to remember that No. 3 Report is, in the main, an attack on the wages and war bonus of that section of the Service which comprises more than twice as many as the rest of the civil servants. Out of the 325,000 people employed in the Civil Service, 225,000 are in the Post Office, and for the most part they are wage earners on a very low scale of payment.

The framers of the Report have put it in such a form as to be, though I do not suggest intentionally, misleading. They have quoted basic wages plus cost of living bonus without differentiating between them. And. they have also quoted, so far as the Post Office is concerned, the highest rates in the country, those for London, as though they were typical of the whole country. It is true that there is a small sentence spatch-cocked into the Report, which does suggest that in the provinces wages are substantially lower than in London. But in no place in the Report is it pointed out that the bonus is fluctuating, varying with the cost of living, and that in September next it is due to be reduced by no less than 4/26ths according to the figures for the cost of living. Therefore, since what we have to consider is that the bonus is proportionate to the cost of living above 1914, an adequate comparison of wages and a standard of living must be based on the basic rates of wages paid, and it is not fair to endeavour to arrive at it in any other way.

10.0 P.M.

The Select Committee say that the business of the Post Office in 7921–22 shows a reduction all round in Post Office work, with the exception of registered letters and parcels, and in telephone, an increase in trunk calls, but a decrease in local calls. A statement like that, left like that, is wholly misleading as to the facts of the case. The business of the Post Office consists not only of postal work and savings bank transactions, and telephone service, but of several other Government services, but only a passing reference is made to the very large amount of new business undertaken by the Post Office. since 1914, and no attempt is made to estimate its extent. The Post Office has to deal with war pensions, with allowances, with War Loans, with dividends on War Savings Certificates, with Entertainment Tax, stamps and Income Tax stamps, and many other things which must be set off against the decline in what is commonly known as ordinary postal work—that is, the mere posting and handling of letters going through the Post Office. No attempt is made to estimate its extent and size. All that is done is to suggest that there is a decrease in the work. The statement that there is a decrease has reference only to the ordinary items of postal and telegraph and telephone work. But it does not estimate the other things or give any estimate of what they involve. They are spread over the postal workers as an increased burden of duty. The Select Committee say: The net result is that while salaries have risen greatly, the number of persons employed has slightly decreased and the amount of postal work proper also shows a decrease. This is misleading, because it ignores the amount of work over and above the ordinary postal work. Then in paragraph C they say that in inner London a boy of 18 years entering the service as a postman begins at 45s. a week, including bonus at the present scale, and rises to 92s. a week, including bonus. The facts are that a postman 18 years of age in inner London receives a basic wage of 22s. and in outer London in class 1 he receives a basic wage of 20s. The framers of the Report include the whole thing. They would make it appear that that is the basic wage without mentioning that the bonus is fluctuating. A postman in class 2 has a basic wage of 19s. a week and in class 3 of 18s. a week. Pre-War the basic wage was 19s. a week as against 22s.; 19s. as against 20s.; 18s. as against 19s.; and 17s. as against 18s. The maximum basic wage in inner London is 46s. a week and the Committee have given the London figures as if they were a fair representation of the whole position in the Post Office service. In outer London in class 1 the basic wage rises to 41s. But it takes in inner London 14 years before a man gets the maximum of 46s. as against a basic wage which in 1914 was 43s.

Hon. Members opposite will not take into consideration the increase in the cost of living which bears so heavily on people whose wages were at the bare margin of existence before the War, and that the increase has simply kept pace with the increase, and is falling with the decrease, in the cost of living. If we have regard to that, we shall see that the rates are by no means excessive compared with the 1914 standard. In practice very few new entrants enter at the age of 18 at present. The majority of entrants now are ex-service men with families, and their basic starting pay is 28s. a week. The majority of them are above 20 years of age. Those are the actual facts, and they were not brought out as clearly as they might have been in the Report. The right hon. Member for the City of London (Sir F. Banbury) stated that postmen are paid overtime at the rate of time-and-a-quarter. The Committee did not comment on that. This rate is less than is generally paid in other callings. A good deal of emphasis has been laid on the free medical service and the free uniform. It is interesting to note that the free medical service costs about 13s. per head per year. The uniform is supplied, both as a protective and distinguishing mark, just as uniform is supplied to a policeman. The uniforms are supplied not wholly in the interests of the men wearing them, but in the interests also of the service. A postman, when in uniform, is subject to a good many restrictions of his civil rights, as other uniformed men are.

Mr. A. M. SAMUEL

It reduces his tailor's bill.

Mr. AMMON

An hon. Member says that it reduces his tailor's bill, but. a fair consideration of the question would cause us to remember that the man has to be dressed in this uniform, that it is part of his condition of service, and that it is in itself of service to the whole community. Paragraph (4) of the Report is the most misleading of all. It says that sorter-tracers are paid, including bonus, 10s. a week, and it adds: "The witness was asked whether women could do that work, and he replied that the work was to be transferred to women." That is all that is said about the transfer. One cannot wonder that the newspapers have made a good deal of capital out of this statement and have displayed it widely, to the great misrepresentation of the humbler persons in the Civil Service. The Committee must have known that women in the Post Office receive very much lower rates than men. The Committee made no reference to that fact; they simply made reference to the men, and to the highest salary received by them. The women sorter-tracers will receive considerably less than £5 10s. a week, but there is no explanation whatever of that to be found in the Report. The Committee must have known, also, that the sorter-tracer receives 55s. a week basic pay, and bonus, only after he has completed 16 years' service.

There is a legitimate ground for protest at having put before this House the maximum figures of the highest grade so as to leave hon. Members with the impression that those figures represented the standard conditions so far as these people are concerned. The medical service is not expensive, considering what has to be performed by the officers concerned, and it is protective so far as the Department is concerned. It is a provision which pays from the Post Office point of view. The Post Office maintains this service because it sees need for some protective measure and because it demands a very high standard of physical efficiency. To spend 13s. per head per year to attain this end is not a big outlay. Very often private medical certificates are discounted considerably. It should be noted also that the figure of £144,316 covers the health insurance employers' contributions, which have to he paid by employers in other industries.

A reference has been made to girl probationers. The Committee's Report states that girls are taken on as probationers at 14½ years of age and are paid 14s. a week. The basic wage of a girl under 15 years for inner London is 7s. per week, and for outer London 6s. per week. At 15 years of age she gets 8s. in inner London, 7s. per week in outer London, in Class 2 basic wage of 5s. a week, and in Class 3 a basic wage of 5s. a week. Surely that is not an exorbitant sum to pay? Any increase that comes to these girls is a proportionate rise to meet the cost of living. The statement of the Committee in regard to these learners is not a statement of fact. The Committee state that at 16 years of age girl probationers are, if there are vacancies, taken to be trained as telephonists, and receive, including bonus, a salary of 36s. a week. The Report adds, They are, in effect, apprentices being instructed in an employment, and during the course of their instruction they receive the above-mentioned salary. In ordinary life persons of that ages learning a trade or business would probably be paid only a nominal salary or would even contribute something towards their instruction. What are the facts? Telephone learners are paid a basic wage of 10s. a week in London and 8s. in the provinces, and they receive that basic wage only when they are fully qualified telephonists.

Sir F. BANBURY

That was not the evidence given. The evidence was that at 16 years of age they received 36s. a week, including bonus.

Mr. AMMON

I am informing the right hon. Baronet that telephonist learners receive a basic wage of 10s. a week in London and 8s. in the provinces, until they are fully competent to take a switchboard with 200 calls an hour.

Sir F. BANBURY

I do not know who told the hon. Member that. It was not the evidence given.

Mr. AMMON

I happen to know the facts from my own knowledge. A of 200 calls an hour is enough. The work is worrying and distressing, and the number of girls who break down from nerve trouble is considerable. The 36s. mentioned by the Committee is the London rate; it includes the bonus for; a fully qualified telephonist, and that wage will be reduced by 4-26ths in September next. The basic rate for, telephonists in London is 18s. a week, and in the provinces 16s., 15s., or 14s., according to the grading of the class of work. No appointments are made unless a vacancy occurs. In the last Debate in this House testimony was paid to the great improvement in the telephone service. The Post Office workers maintain it has been improved because telephonists are now being paid something approaching a decent wage, and discontent has been allayed. Regarding the higher grades, the Committee state that the salaries of surveyors have risen from a maximum of £900 to a maximum of £1,200, including bonus. After all, that is a rise of 33⅓ per cent. compared with the official figure of the cost of living, showing a rise of over 80 per cent. Again, there seems to be a. reluctance to face the fact that even in regard to the higher grades the 1914 standard should be maintained, and in the lower a margin over the cost of living must be maintained if people are to be kept from starvation. The only increase in bonus has been an increase to keep pace with the standard of living, and the bonus falls with the fall in the cost of living. That should be emphasised all along the line. The Committee say: The granting of a bonus, in addition to an increase in the salaries has resulted in a large increase in expenditure.

Sir F. BANBURY

I have the evidence here now regarding the telephonists. Sir George Evelyn Murray is the witness, and his examination is as follows: Mr. MARRIOTT: This salary is for a girl of 14½ years of age, and I presume these probationers are very soon passed on to something better?—They become telephonists, if they are satisfactory. Then they are learning a business and are really apprentices?—They are merely messengers while employed here. Then how do they get the skill which enables them to be telephonists?—If they ire appointed as telephonists, they are then trained as telephonists. Do they receive this wage while they are being trained?—No, they receive the wage for a telephonist in training. What is the wage for a telephonist in training?—At 16 years of age in London, she would get 18s. a week. Eighteen shillings a week as a telephonist in training?—Yes. The CHAIRMAN: Does that include bonus? —No, 18s. plus bonus. Then she would get 36s. a week?—Yes, at present.

Mr. AMMON

I have told the right hon. Baronet that the figures are as follow: The actual basic rates for London. A girl under 15 years of age gets 7s. a week; at 15 she gets 8s.; at 16, 10s.; at 17, 12s.; at 18, 14s. Those are the basic rates, and you have to remember that the present cost of living figures shows an increase of about 80 per cent.

The POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. Kellaway)

It is 105 per cent. at present.

Mr. AMMON

As I am reminded, we have to add 105 per cent. as the increase due to the cost of living at the moment. That will fall in September, I understand, by a considerable number of points, and I think probably 82.5 would be about the figure. There is a misunderstanding between the right hon. Baronet and myself. The figures I have given are the actual basic rates, and if you add 105 per cent on account of the cost of living, it will bring the figures to something near the figures which the right hon. Baronet has quoted. The Committee say that the granting of a bonus in addition to an increase in the salaries has resulted in a large increase in expenditure which could have been partly avoided without impairing the efficiency of the staff. That is the crux of the Report, and shows the underlying motive and object of the Select Committee. This is really an attack on the war bonus of the Post Office servants. That war bonus is simply paid to them to keep pace with the increased cost of living, and is on a sliding scale, so that it will fall proportionately with the fall in the cost of living. Is the House prepared to say, regarding the persons whose rates of pay in the days before the War was only 18s. a week in the case of postmen; where girls in the probationary stage are receiving only 8s., and sometimes 5s., per week—is the House prepared to endorse the suggestion that there should be no increase?

Mr. A. M. SAMUEL

Nobody said so. That is not in the Report. Read it again.

Mr. AMMON

The Report says: Your Committee are of opinion that the granting of a bonus in addition to an increase in the salaries has resulted in a large increase in expenditure. The increase in the salaries amounted to 3s. in the higher and only 1s. in the lower grades. What is there in it, so far as the basic wages are concerned, therefore? You would have these people absolutely starving and not even able to pay the rent for a couple of rooms unless they had this bonus.

Sir C. OMAN

Nobody said that no bonus should be given.

Mr. AMMON

This bonus was agreed to by this House, and surely it is fair to state that the meagre standard of living that these people had in 1914 should be maintained, and it can be maintained only if the figures march with the cost of living. That is our case.

Sir C. OMAN

The wages at present are £42,000,000, against £14,000,000 in 1914, or about three times as much. Has the price of things gone up three times?

Mr. AMMON

The hon. Member came in late and did not hear some of my former remarks, in which I dealt, with some of the points he has raised, and I do not propose to weary the House by going over them again. So far as wages are concerned, expressed in terms of the bonus, they have increased only in proportion to the rise in the cost of living and are falling with it, and it should he remembered that the increase in the cost of living far outstripped wages before the bonus was granted. The fact is that this Report is a carefully worked-up piece of propaganda attacking the bonus. That is what it amounts to, and it is a propaganda which enables the Press to quote instances which are very misleading. The net result is that as they have regard to the very large number of poorly paid servants in the Post Office, this is in effect an attack on the lowest paid people in the Civil Service. The cost of living bonus is as follows: It is revised every six months, in March and September, based on the average cost of living index number for the previous six months. In March, 1922, the revision was based on 105, and the forthcoming revision in September, 1922, will be based as follows: March, 86; April, 82; May, 81; June, 80; July, 84; August., approximately 80. That gives an average figure of 82.5, which involves a reduction in the bonus of 4/26ths on the present wages and bonus of those in the Civil Service. I submit that it is not put as fairly as it might he put before the public in quoting the maximum figures of certain persons and in not making it clear that the bonus is a fluctuating bonus, falling with the cost of living, and it is calculated altogether to give a wrong impression to the public as regards the actual position.

Mr. KELLAWAY

I think that the House is exercising one of its most valuable, as well as one of its most interesting, functions in the review of the Reports—the interesting Reports—which have been presented by the Committee over which the right hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London (Sir F. Banbury) presides. For my part, as head of the Department of the State, which employs more than half of the servants of the State of this country, I welcome from any quarter criticism which is based on a careful examination of the Department from an unprejudiced point of view. I understand that the Labour party had its representatives on this Committee. I do not know to what extent those Members availed themselves of their privilege of membership of that Committee, but it was very important that there should have been a member on that Committee who could have put to the Committee the points which have just been put by the hon. Member opposite, so that they could have been examined and tested. I am not sure that I agree with the hon. Member that the object of the Committee in presenting their Report was to attack the war bonus scheme. I have read this Report with great care, in order to find out whether the Committee take the view that the Government and this House are entitled to scrap, or seriously to modify, that engagement. I do not understand that they so do.

Sir F. BANBURY

indicated assent.

Mr. KELLAWAY

I think the right hon. Baronet, with whom I am not always in agreement, is the last man who would break a contract.

Sir F. BANBURY

indicated assent.

Mr. KELLAWAY

The House has got to realise the fact that the reason for the rise in the expenditure of the Post Office is overwhelmingly due to the War bonus scheme, and unless the Committee are prepared to say that they want seriously to modify or scrap the War bonus scheme then there is very little in their recommendation. We must. have the intellectual courage to face that problem, each for himself, and unless we are prepared seriously to modify or to scrap the War bonus scheme, then a great deal of what is said on this subject is very little more than hot air. Most of the figures given in this Report are figures which I myself gave when I moved my first Estimates as Postmaster-General. I then called attention to this sensational rise in the expenditure on the Post Office in salaries and wages. I did that over 12 months ago, and I took a step which, I think, mane me the most unpopular man in the country. I said this great rise in Post Office salaries and wages must be met, not by a subsidy from the Exchequer, but by the user of the Post Office. I am glad to say now that the cost of living bonus is steadily coming down. It has come down at a very rapid rate. It has come down from 165 per cent., which was the peak at which the Post Office and the whole of the Civil Service were paid, to the present figure of 105 per cent., and in September the War bonus will be paid on an average of 85 per cent.

I only put this point to the House, and I put it. with some confidence, that there is something to he said for an arrangement under which the greatest body of employés in the State have consented to reductions in their wages, totalling something like £9,000,000 in a year, without any disturbance of order or without any interruption of their duties. I think a good many persons in this country would be very glad indeed if they had got a scheme of that kind in operation. I think there was justification for what the hon. Member opposite said, that the Committee did not point out the fluctuating character of the bonus, which is really a very essential point. That bonus fluctuates with the cost of living, and the impression might very readily be gathered by a careless reader of this Report that the figures given represent in some way the basic wage. The whole of the War bonus may disappear if the cost of living comes back to the pre-War figure. The whole will then disappear, and you will get back to the basic wages which the hon. Member has given. The war bonus in the Post Office for this year, in spite of reductions, to which I have referred, amounts to £18,400,000. At its peak point it represents £26,000,000. If I could get rid of the war bonus I could go back to halfpenny postcards, penny postage, pre-War charges for telegraphs and telephones and earn a great profit for the State. It is a very attractive prospect. But there is one thing more important than a reduction in expenditure, and it is that this House should honour its obligation to this great body of public servants. Unless you are prepared to suggest—and neither the Committee nor the Chancellor dare suggest it—that that honourable obligation has to be broken then a good deal of the comment on the report of the Committee has been without substance and in fact has been misleading.

There was another point in what was said in regard to new work. The Post Office may complain that when giving the figures showing the reduction of postal series, the Committee did not give the figures of the new work put upon the Post Office. The figures were supplied to the Committee. I do not really understand why they were excluded. Here are the totals at very great length: War Pensions and Allowances paid represented £70,000,000—new work put upon a reduced staff since 1914. Postal drafts represented 28,400,000; War Loan dividends, £9,100,000; Savings Certificates issued—this is for one year, 1921–22, as are all the figures—amounted to £72,000,000, and repaid, £42,000,000. Entertainment Tax stamps sold, 2620,000; Income Tax stamps sold amounted to £714,000. I think it would have strengthened the Report of the Committee if these figures had been given as well as those indicating a falling off in purely postal work.

Mr. MARRIOTT

May I point out to the right hon. Gentleman that if he had got the evidence before him as well as the Reports of the Committee he would find all the figures to which he referred set out in Appendix III just as we received them from the Post Office.

Mr. KELLAWAY

I agree, but I have the Report circulated to the House, and which reached the Press, arid these figures are not there.

Mr. MARRIOTT

The evidence will reach the House also.

Mr. KELLAWAY

Very much after the fact. These criticisms have been based upon the Press report of the Committee. Still, I do not make that criticism in any acrimonious spirit, believe me, for I appreciate too much the industry that was displayed by the Committee. But it is only fair to this great body of public servants who reach something like a quarter of a million scattered throughout the country and in every constituency that the whole of the facts should be given whether favourable or unfavourable to them. If it is intended to suggest, as the hon. Baronet suggested, that the Post Office is a very generous Department, I am bound to say I disagree. As soon as you get down to basic wages, the right hon. Baronet will, I think, agree that you cannot say that it has been a generous Department. On the contrary, the history of the Post Office in regard to its staff has been one of cheese-paring, and since you will agree that you cannot scrap the War bonus or modify it, that being an honourable obligation, you have then to say that the basic wages, most of them were accurately quoted by the hon. Member, are generous wages. In my view they are not. You cannot in this country go back to the postman paid 19s. or 22s. a week. As for an attempt to enforce economy by the only way which it can be enforced, if you are going to stand by the War bonus, then by a reduction in numbers in your staff, then I think the figures by this Committee are not unfavourable. The reduction in the personnel between 1914 and 1922 is not a bad reduction to have been able to effect and still to carry on, as I hope, with great efficiency, the work of that great Department.

I will not go through the various basic wages of the different grades referred to in the Report. Those figures have been given with accuracy, as far as I can test them, by the hon. Member for North Camberwell (Mr. Ammon). I want, however, to make an observation with regard to a criticism in the Report, that the telephone girls receive wages whilst they are being instructed. The Committee suggest that in ordinary business this would never be heard of, and that, so far from being paid wages, some of them would have to make a payment for their instruction. That is not the fact. This practice of paying telephone girls who are being instructed was the practice of the National Telephone Company, which we have continued, and it is, in fact, the practice in nearly all organised industries. I know that in some un-organised industries it is not the practice, but in organised industries it is the practice to pay these girls. It is the practice even in the railway corn-panics in regard to their telephone girls.

There are one or two points, which the Chairman of the Committee referred to, which I will reply to very briefly. There was the cost of the foreman window cleaner, who was receiving a salary of £300 a year with bonus. They say that the cleaners, who clean the headquarters buildings, have a foreman with a salary of about £300 a year. I have made some inquiries about this foreman window cleaner, and I find That this man is in charge of all the male cleaners responsible for cleaning the headquarters buildings of the Post Office. He has under him a staff of 100 men, and they are scattered through all the headquarters buildings of the Post Office, and they are fairly numerous. You cannot administer a Department with a revenue of £56,000,000 without having a, number of buildings in which to do your business, and the building accommodation of the Post Office, as compared with any other undertaking at all approaching it with regard to the magnitude of its business, is very niggardly.

This foreman window cleaner gets £150 a year as a basic wage, and you arrive at the £300 by adding War bonus. Hon. Members agree that this bonus cannot be touched. I ask is £3 a week as a basic wage excessive to pay for a man in charge of a staff of this sort working at night, who has to exercise a good deal of discretion, and who is in a position to exercise large economies. One of the duties of this staff is to see that the supply of coal to the different rooms in the post office is not excessive, and this man can save his £150 a year basic wage in this way in the course of three months. I do not believe that it pays to pay men who are supervising others niggardly or in- adequately. On the contrary, I think those are the men who should be well paid.

Another point raised was in regard to the housekeeper and the assistant house, keeper, and the Committee said that they have not been able to ascertain the duties of these officials. I am not surprised that they did not succeed in ascertaining from the Secretary of the Post Office this information, because he is a man who is the permanent executive officer of far and away the biggest business in this country. Therefore I am not surprised that the Committee did not get from him any information as to the duties of the housekeeper and the assistant housekeeper. What I say is that if he had known this he would not have been fit for his job. I have had some experience of the people who keep their microscopic eye on petty details, and they very often neglect the larger things. I have made inquiries myself. I had to, for I did not know what the duties of these officials were. I found that they are in charge of the charwomen. We have to have charwomen to keep the buildings clean. They have to be supervised and these officials do the supervision. There is one confession I have to make to the Committee. The Committee say they were unable to ascertain what were the duties of one cook. I have been unable to make inquiry. I cannot explain what her duties are, but if a question is put down on the subject I will get the information and I hope to be able to satisfy the inquiring spirit of hon. Members.

Criticism was also made with regard to the surveyors. The organisation of the Post Office outside London is this: the country is divided into 13 areas, each area being under an officer called a surveyor. They cover the whole country outside the great cities. Their basic maximum salary has been increased from £900 to £1,000 with the current rate of bonus added—£300. I am going to put this with confidence to the Chairman of this Committee. Does the right hon. Gentleman say that men having the responsibility of representing the interests of the House of Commons over these 13 areas are excessively paid at a basic salary of £1,000? I will add this. More and more our policy is to divorce from headquarters the different areas of the country and to leave more and more to these men the responsibility of taking decisions in order to avoid sending these questions up to London to be dealt with You can compare the work and responsibility of these men with that of divisional superintendents on the great railways. What do these officials get paid? Not £1,000 a year plus £300 bonus, but sums twice or even three times as great.

Sir F. BANBURY

No.

Mr. KELLAWAY

Yes; I have made inquiries and they are thus paid, and these are the men who can effect real economies whether in the administration of great railway companies or in the administration of the Post Office.

Sir F. BANBURY

There may be some railway companies that pay such salaries, for some are much more extravagant than others, but it is not the whole of them that pay in that way. I should say the position of a surveyor in the Post Office and the position of a traffic manager on a railway are not to be compared. I know what the public is called upon to pay to the Post. Office surveyor, and I should say that £1,300 a year with pension and permanent employment is certainly more than is justified.

Mr. KELLAWAY

The right hon. Baronet says that some railway companies are more extravagant than others. My figures are taken from the most prosperous and most efficient companies These are the companies which pay large salaries to men with large responsibilities. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Peebles (Sir D. Maclean) referred to the value of the figures given in the Committee's Report with regard to the postal services rendered to the Government Departments, and I agree. I think it is essential that the House of Commons should know the value of the services which are rendered to the other Departments.

Sir D. MACLEAN

Is it the rule in the Post Office to give to a Government Department precedence over the call of a member of the public, or is it only done where there is a real emergency?

Mr. KELLAWAY

It should only be in a real case of emergency. A change has been made within the past 12 months, under which the Government Depart- ments pay in cash for their telegraphing accounts, and it is a subject of consultation between the Post Office and the Treasury as to whether that practice cannot with advantage be extended. Now let me refer to the subject of buildings. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Peebles said that there was on the part of the Government Departments a rage and a. passion for building. Let me give my experience in this House with regard to that. One of the commonest complaints that I get from Members of the House is as to the inadequacy and insufficient number of the Post Office buildings, and I hardly ever walk through the Lobby without some Member or other buttonholing me and asking me when we are going to have the Pest Office in his constituency enlarged and improved. The real fact is that, for something like seven years, there has been a complete cessation of building in connection with Post Offices proper, as distinguished from telephone exchanges, and there are great arrears to be made up; but I think the one point on which I differ sharply from the Committee is in regard to the Thread-needle Street Post Office, and here I hope I shall protect the constituents of the Chairman of the Committee from him.

This is the most important telegraph office in this country outside the Central Telegraph Station. The whole of the great volume of Stock Exchange telegraph business is transacted there. The number of telegrams for the year ending on the 30th June, from the Stock Exchange alone, was 2,473,000. It has been said that you can put this office right with a little paint and varnish, but that really is not the fact. Ever since 1909, the scheme has been in existence for the rebuilding of this office, and the quickest way in which I can deal with the matter is to read from the Report of the Controller of the Telegraph Service. I will read the essential passages. This is what the Report says of the basement of this place, in the centre of the banking world, where the whole of the Stock Exchange telegraphic business is done: There are five rooms in the basement. They are passages rather than rooms, and the whole arrangement could more appropriately be described as a cellar. The ceilings are very low: with no natural lighting and no natural ventilation. The mail despatch room, the batteries for the instruments, the urinals and W.C.'s, the inspector's retiring room, and the heating arrangements. are all accommodated here.…To convey the mails the officers have to stoop all the way. With regard to the ground floor, it proceeds: The Stock Exchange accommodation is separated, and the Threadneedle Street counter is too small for the work, the public is packed and cannot get at the counter when there is pressure, the safe conduct of money, owing to the cramped position of the safes, is very difficult, and the handling of the very important registered letters is dangerous (over 5,000 registered letters, mainly in the afternoon). Much artificial light is used even on this floor. On wet days the public office is positively offensive. With regard to the staircase, the Report says that it, is a narrow circular structure which has given way in several places and is shored up. It is used by the public to go to the public telephones, and artificial light is always in use. I have not the time, nor would the House bear with me, to go through the whole of the Report; and I have not touched the top floors, to which the Chairman of the Committee, I think, referred. What we said to the Office of Works was this: "Here is this work; it is a growing work now. We require this office to be made adequate for dealing with that work; will you make your plans for dealing with it?" They made their plans, and they said the most economical way of dealing with it was on this plan. The cost—the figures at the time the contracts were last asked for was £89,000—will now be reduced, I think, to more in the nature of £65,000. Therefore, if you consider the economy on its soundest basis, I believe you have to deal drastically with this building. In view of the Reports I should not be properly discharging my responsibility, either to the public or to the staff—and it is the public work in that office that I am chiefly thinking of—if I agreed to the cheese-paring scheme in regard to that office. The Committee wound up by criticising an arrangement that has been come to, by which we add three floors to this building, and let them out to one of the great insurance companies in the City.

Sir F. BANBURY

Two, I thought. If you are going to lease the whole thing, what is the good of building?

Mr. KELLAWAY

I can give the Chairman of the Committee some figures which—I have not read the evidence—I am not sure were put before him, but it is quite clear from his Report that the position has not been correctly understood or correctly stated before him. This is what the Committee say: Your Committee did not think that it was advisable to spend a capital sum in order to obtain a rental of five per cent.… I really do not know from where that comes. These are the facts. The terms of the agreement provide that the company shall take a repairing lease of the three additional storeys, at a rent calculated at 8 per cent. of the building cost (now estimated at £8,100), and 5 per cent. on £25,000, which is the proportion of the original cost. of the site. In other words, for an expenditure of £8,100, we are going to get an annual return from this insurance company of £1,900, a return on our capital for this purpose of nearly 25 per cent. I do not know whether that appeals to the right hon. Baronet as a good investment. I wish it were mine.

Sir F. BANBURY

I do not see the object. I understood the building was insanitary and not fit for the work. You cannot extend the site area, because you cannot get any outside grounds. You can only extend by going up. The three new storeys are to be let to somebody else. Why on earth, then, spend this money?

Mr. KELLAWAY

I have given the figures here, showing that for an expenditure of £8,110 we shall get an annual return of £1,900. There is this condition, that as work in that office grows—as it is bound to grow—we shall be able, under the lease, to take over the additional accommodation. The change made is right throughout the whole building. In those circumstances, I cannot agree with the Committee that the change ought to be made on the lines or within the scale that they recommend.

I have had very rapidly to deal with the very large number of points put to me, but I should not like it to be thought, in putting what is the other point of view, that I have not realised and taken advantage of the value of the examination which the Committee were able to make, though it was necessarily limited. It is to my interest, more than any other man in this House, that the Post Office should see its expenditure reduced, in order that the public can get its facilities at a lower charge. I hope, before I complete my tenure of office as Postmaster-General, that I shall see the postal charges get back to what they were before the War. It is on the lines on which we are proceeding, taking advantage of every suggestion of economy which is in sight, that I think we shall reach that ideal.

Mr. MARRIOTT

I know I speak on behalf of all my colleagues on the Committee when I say we are very sincerely grateful to the Leader of the Opposition for the remarks he made at an earlier stage of the Debate. But I wish the right hon. Gentleman had found it possible to give us even more material help at an earlier stage of our investigations. May I remind the House what were the circumstances under which this Committee was appointed and what was the work which we were intended to perform on behalf of the House as a whole? We were set up as an Estimates Committee to try to examine the Estimates for the current year before they were presented for detailed examination, or, at any rate, before the House of Commons was called upon to vote the necessary money in Committee on Supply. There was only one condition on which we could adequately perform that task. That was that we should work in the closest connection with the Leaders of the Opposition, or rather the Leaders of the Oppositions, and we ought, during the current Session, to have been in a position to examine, as I think, only one or two of the most important aspects, but to have examined those Estimates, and to have reported upon them before the House was asked to vote the money in Committee of Supply. But there was one other condition on which we could do that work. When this Committee was set up, all those who had experience in the work of the National Expenditure Committee laid very great stress on the point that we should obtain expert assist ante in that work, and that we should have the assistance of a regular official, who should play to this Committee the same sort of part which is played by the Comptroller and Auditor-General in the Public Accounts Committee for it was intended that this Estimates Committee should be parallel in its functions to the Public Accounts Committee. The Public Accounts Committee, of course, has post mortem functions. It can report to the House only that the money has been properly expended after the expenditure has taken place. The whole purpose of this Estimates Committee was that we should report to the House of Commons before the money was spent and before it was voted. That we have been unable to do, and the sole result of our investigation during the present Session has been this discussion on one of the concluding days of the Session. I hope the House, however, will think our labours—and they have been very considerable labours—have not been entirely in vain. We have, in the short time at our disposal, presented to the House no fewer than five, more or less detailed, Reports. These Reports have formed the basis to-night for a discussion which has been of very great public utility. The utility of the Debate has been acknowledged by the Leader of the Opposition and by the three Ministers who have spoken, but it. was not for the advantage of the Treasury Bench but the advantage of the House as a whole that this Committee was set up, and it will he for the House, I hope at a very early stage of next Session, to say whether this experiment is to he renewed. But I hope that if it be renewed it may be renewed under conditions somewhat different from those that prevailed during the Session now coming to an end. We could not have done our work at all, but for the very large experience and the untiring industry and skill of the Chairman. He has supplied in no small degree the lack of the permanent official whose assistance we were very anxious to obtain.

It being Eleven of the Clock, the Debate stood adjourned.