§
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £1,500, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1929, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Department of His Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies.
§ The SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Mr. Amery)The additional expenditure on the Colonial Office Vote is due to two main causes. It is due, in the first place, to the increased effort which we are making to bring the Department itself in touch with the Colonies and the services outside, both by encouraging individual members of the Office to visit the Colonies as secretaries to commissions, and by attaching members of the Colonial service temporarily to the Colonial Office. Last year members of the staff of the Colonial Office were attached to the commission for closer union in East Africa, to my right hon. Friend the Under-Secretary on his visit to the eastern Colonies and Java, to the visit undertaken by the permanent Under-Secretary of State, Sir Samuel Wilson, to the West African Colonies; also the head of the Appointments Department of the Colonial Office attended the forestry conference in Australia as representing the Colonial forestry services and discussed with local education authorities and Governments in Australia and New Zealand arrangements for recruiting for the Colonial services. The expenditure in these directions accounts for an extra total of £1,700.
The other main item has been due to the reorganisation of the Office as a result of the Colonial Office Reorganisation Committee which reported in June last. The General Department of the Office has been greatly strengthened, and a great deal of routine work which used to be done by higher grade officials has been devolved from their shoulders on to clerical officers, greatly to the increase in the general efficiency of the Office. The strengthening of the clerical staff of the Office has been responsible for an increased expenditure of over £2,000. Against these increases there has been some saving in connection with the cost of living bonus and the temporary non-filling of one or two posts, leaving a net increase of nearly £1,500.
§ Question put, and agreed to.