§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Colonel Leslie Wilson.]
§ Mr. MIDDLETONI desire to raise the question of the appointment of the Anderson Committee. This is the first opportunity which I have had of asking the Chancellor of the Exchequer to make a statement to the House on a matter of very great importance to a very large number of public servants, including, I believe, soldiers, sailors, the men of the 836 Air Service, civil servants, including the Post Office, and, for all I know, even dockyard employés. I would remind the House that the announcement which was made of the setting up of this Committee came to Members by means of question and answer on the day before the House adjourned for the Easter Vocation, and no opportunity has been taken by the Chancellor of amplifying the statement he then made as to the nature of this Committee, the scope of its inquiry, and the way in which it intends to conduct its duties. There are, I suppose, several hundreds of thousands of people who are concerned in this proposal, and I would like to ask the Chancellor why, in setting up the Committee, he confined it to representatives of the employing classes, and why he did not put on it at least one, two or even three members of the wage-earning classes, in order that the Committee, in doing its important work, might have the confidence of the people whose interests are at stake. The Committee, so far as we know, can draw up its own terms of reference, which means that it is possible that every grievance and every injustice which the Civil Service, the Army and the Navy consider themselves to be suffering from in the way of conditions of employment and remuneration will be hung up for the next four or five years. I say that is conceivable, because the Committee might decide to take service by service, class by class, grade by grade, and put all their claims and demands through the close sieve of patient investigation and inquiry, while, in the meantime, these injustices and grievances would be allowed to continue. I hope that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be able to tell us something of the scope of the committee's inquiry, and whether it is intended to be of a general nature or of a detailed nature.
I should like to appeal to him, even at this stage, to add to the Committee, if he insists on retaining it, one or two names drawn from the trade unions. The Committee would have been much more acceptable in form if, in addition to the three gentlemen he has nominated—with regard to whom I have no grievance personally—he had asked the Trade Union Congress to nominate three men, so as to have three and three, and not purely three representatives of the governing class. If he would do that it would go a 837 long way to allay the suspicion that has been caused throughout the Service; and to allay also the difficulties which will undoubtedly be created if he insists on the retention of the Committee in its present form. When we heard of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's appointment, the Civil Service felt it was going to get a square deal. The reputation of the Chancellor was such that Civil servants believed he was not capable of doing anything that would undermine their confidence. I should not like him to destroy the reputation which he has got by insisting on the very narrow form of the Committee of Inquiry which he has appointed. I hope he will be able to give the House and the Civil Service some assurance that the Committee will not be of the nature we fear.
§ Mr. AMMONI want to say that, almost without exception, throughout the whole of the Civil Service, irrespective of grade, this particular Committee is viewed with a good deal of alarm and even with hostility. This afternoon the Chancellor of the Exchequer made a statement with reference to bringing up certain questions before the Lytton Committee or before the particular councils already operating—the Whitley Councils, and others—in the Civil Service. This particular Anderson Committee is looked on as being a blow aimed at the Whitley Councils set up in the Civil Service. It is not so long since we had to come to the House and complain of the abolition of the Civil Service Arbitration Board which was set up by the right hon. Member for West Birmingham (Mr. Austen Chamberlain) when Chancellor of the Exchequer, as the complement of Whitleyism. Now it seems that here is a blow aimed at destroying the Whitley Council principle, as it operates in the Civil Service, altogether. The other point is that, judging by the only references that we have made to this Committee in this House, so far, it looks very much like a pilgrimage for life on the part of those particular gentlemen who have been appointed, and that the Civil Service will be kept in a position of uncertainty by not knowing whether or how the Committee is going to operate. There is no clearly defined line of action on one side in its operation, and it certainly appears that there is a bias largely aimed at the 838 rank and file of the Civil Service. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer be going to continue with this Committee, which I can assure him he will continue in the face of the opposition of practically every member of the Civil Service, from the highest grade to the lowest, surely he will give some measure of confidence by appointing to it someone who will be more or less representative of the services interested.
§ Mr. HANNONI have taken the opportunity, since the appointment of this Committee, to make inquiries of a very large number of civil servants whether they accepted the Committee as quite competent to deal with the reference made to them; and, of that very large number, not a single reply was against the Committee as now constituted. I protest against the interpretation put upon the attitude of Members of this Committee by the two hon. Members who have raised this question.
§ The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Baldwin)I am very glad indeed that the hon. Member fur Carlisle (Mr. Middleton) has raised this point, because I am quite aware that there has been a good deal of misconception about the creation of this Committee. It is not unusual for Governments to avail themselves of the work of special Committees to investigate special subjects, and in recent times we have had the Lytton Committee. Very recently there has been set up a Committee to inquire on behalf of the Home Office into certain circumstances affecting officers, and perhaps the most famous Committee of recent times was the Geddes Committee itself. What we call the Anderson Committee is really an offspring of the Geddes Committee, and hon. Members who are familiar with the Report of the Geddes Committee may remember that in Part 18 of their Report the Geddes Committee recommended the appointment of a Committee to continue their work, and to investigate the very subjects which are referred to the Anderson Committee for their particular investigation.
At this point, I should like to make a remark about what fell from the hon. 839 Member for North Camberwell (Mr. Ammon), because he is really under a misapprehension. There are two sides to any investigation of this kind, and I can quite understand that it may be possible that he, and perhaps many of his friends, think that this is a Committee designed entirely to beat down wages. It is not necessarily anything of the kind. It is a Committee to report, in the light of existing circumstances, how the scales of pay, work, and so forth are related to the scales throughout the country, and to see whether such scales as are in existence are, as compared with outside pay, fair or not. The reason that such an investigation is so necessary at the present time is two-fold. In the first place, we have had so many changes of recent years that it is very difficult to say what the inter-relationship should be; and, in the second place—and this I would commend particularly to my hon. Friends who have raised the question—in the very large world outside the Civil Service there is, and often has been, as they know, a great deal of thoroughly ill-informed criticism.
Many people believe, rightly or wrongly—I think very largely wrongly—that the Civil Service is a very privileged Service, that men have security in their posts, that their pay is high, that their work is not so great as work outside; and from that point of view the present is an admirable opportunity for getting the facts to put before people. I say without fear of contradiction, as far as the Civil Service is concerned, that the closest investigation will show they are not overpaid. I feel very confident of that, and from my experience of the Civil Service, I should say that most of them are not underworked. A Committee of this kind is appointed by the Government to collect and sift information, for the use of the Government. The question was raised at the time when the Geddes Committee was formed—a Committee which, by the time it had reported, had obtained a great deal, shall I say, of notoriety in this country. Their reports were quoted by all parties, and were used very largely as ammunition to do damage, and for the destruction of the Government for the time being. At the time the Geddes Committee was formed, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hillhead (Sir R. Horne) announced that that Committee was entering 840 on its work for the information of the Government, and as such the proceedings of the Committee would be conducted in private. But when the Committee had concluded its work, its Report was published. In the same way with regard to this Committee, when its work has been completed, a Report must be made to the Government, and it will be for the Government to decide whether it shall be published or not.
§ Mr. MIDDLETONDoes this mean that this Committee will sit in private, and will not receive evidence?
§ Mr. BALDWINI only mentioned the precedent of the Geddes Committee to explain what is the action generally of these Committees not set up by the House of Commons, but set up by the Government for their advice. The actual procedure of Committees of this kind is guided by the results of their own deliberations—they make their own procedure in that respect. My experience, apart from political experience, has always shown, not only that progress is much more rapid if the proceedings be conducted privately than it is if they be conducted in public, but also that you are very apt to get much fairer evidence, and come to a much sounder conclusion. When the report be made, whatever it may be, obviously it is for the Government to consider whether such recommendations, if any, as are made are recommendations that they wish to adopt, and if they do wish to adopt, then obviously no recommendations on any large scale could possibly under modern conditions, or I hope under any conditions, be put into effect without having the cognisance in some form or other of this House.
Having regard to the work that has to be done, all the Ministers have to do in appointing such a Committee is to try to choose the men, without fear or favour, who they believe will be able to accomplish the work in the least time, and with the utmost amount of skill. The danger is that if you once begin on a Committee of this kind to nominate anyone, whether it be man or woman, who would be looked upon as a representative of any particular branch of the service, or party in politics or any particular grade, you then obviously open the door for this, that having admitted one man or woman, you must 841 admit more. And, instead of a Committee that one hopes and believes will be absolutely impartial, you get a Committee consisting of a number of people who must be to a certain extent, shall I say, coloured by the predilections of those whom they are supposed to represent.
With regard to the three gentlemen who are chosen for this Committee, though I do not wish to say anything about them individually, none of them is connected with any questions which they have to investigate, with the solitary exception that Sir Herbert Lawrence, was for some years in the Army. But he has been for so many years connected with work outside, that he is certainly regarded among the men where he works rather as a civilian than as a soldier. I do not know whether it is quite a fair charge to make that these three gentlemen all belong to the employing class. Of course, in a way, I suppose, that is true, but at the same time they are not connected in any way to-day with any of the services which they propose to investigate, and from their wide experience I believe that they are the best qualified men whom I could get to examine these questions. And, while I am grateful to the hon. Member for Carlisle (Mr. Middleton) for the kindly words he used about me personally, I should regret exceedingly if anything that I am doing in this connection should undermine any confidence which he is good enough to say that any people feel in me. I feel quite certain that if people only have patience, and do not allow their minds to be coloured by prejudice, they will find that there is nothing in the action of this Committee to which they can take objection, and I am equally certain that, when the time comes to receive their Report, there will be nothing in my action with which they can find fault, on the ground of partiality, or on the ground of illegitimate interference with the members of a class for whom I have every respect.
Mr. HILTON YOUNGWill it be within the terms of reference of this Committee to inquire into the alternative between the continuance of the bonus system, and the substitution of fresh inclusive rates of pay, and to make a recommendation on that subject?
§ Mr. BALDWINI had not as yet considered that subject, but, obviously, that 842 would be within the terms of reference, if the Committee thought fit to deal with it.
§ Captain BERKELEYIn the case of a similar Departmental Committee which the Government has set up with very wide terms of reference to inquire into the wireless question, it has not hesitated to nominate a Committee representative of the interests of all concerned. It has appointed members of wireless companies, representatives of scientific institutions in the country, and Members of this House. If that is a correct decision to follow when setting up such Committee, why in view of the case put forward by the hon. Members for Carlisle and North Camberwell should it not be possible to adopt the same procedure in this case and allow these people to feel that their interests are being safeguarded by having to some extent their representatives on the Committee? Further, will the Chancellor of the Exchequer answer the hon. Member for North Camberwell on the point of not superseding the Whitley Council in the Civil Service?
§ Mr. BALDWINI should be the last man in the world to supersede the Whitley Councils, because I have always been a great advocate of them. I am glad my hon. and gallant Friend has referred to that subject, because I omitted to deal with it. I would remind the hon. Member for North Camberwell (Mr. Ammon) of a matter of which he is probably well aware—that I had the pleasure of receiving a deputation some little time ago on the subject of arbitration. I hope to receive them again before the end of next week, by which time I undertook to give a definite reply upon the subject upon which they came to see me. With regard to the first question mentioned by the hon. Member for East Nottingham (Captain Berkeley), I do not think that the subject of broadcasting and this subject are at all on all fours, or even on all twos.
§ It being Half-past Eleven, of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
§ Adjourned at Half after Eleven o'Clock.