CIVIL SERVICE (RECRUITMENT AND PROMOTION). (Hansard, 24 June 1930)

§ Mr. W. J. BROWN
I wish to raise a matter which I raised at Question Time many weeks ago. I refer to the position of some 6,000 temporary ex-Service civil servants who are in danger of dismissal. At the present time there is an extensive recruitment of the established grades of the Civil Service proceeding by means of open competitive examination from among boys and girls of adolescent age. As the result of that recruitment there is widespread insecurity among some 6,000 ex-Service temporary civil servants, and a considerable aggravation of the problem of promotion among other established grades of civil servants.
1108 To deal first with the temporary civil servants, when I last raised this matter in this House I pointed out that men were being dismissed from the Civil Service at the rate of some 450 per annum. When I made that statement I received from the Minister two replies. The first was that the dismissals to which I had referred were much more apparent than real, because in point of fact most of the men who were discharged were subsequently found employment in other Government Departments. I have tested that statement by means of a questionnaire addressed to very large numbers of temporary civil servants who have been dismissed from the Civil Service, and from the replies to the questionnaire which I have issued two things have emerged. The first is that it is true that the bulk of the men dismissed subsequently find employment in other Departments, but the second is that, on the average, between the date of dismissal from one Department and the date of re-engagement in another Department there is a gap of some six months in the employment of these people.
To put it differently, from time to time men who have done anything up to 15. years' service following a period of three, four or five years' military service, are liable to be thrown out at any time for periods averaging six months, and they are compelled to fall back either upon insurance pay or upon their own resources until they are re-engaged in other departments. If there were no alternative, we might shrug our shoulders in the House of Commons and say we regret it but cannot help it, but I make the assertion that there is no need whatever for the discharge of one mart from the Civil Service for six months, or even for a single day.
During the last five years we have recruited no fewer than 4,952 boys and girls direct from school after open competitive examinations. There have been 130 recruits in the executive class, 1,058 in the clerical class and 2,064 in the writing assistant class. Those figures total about 5,000, and if those 5,000 vacancies, which have been filled by the direct recruitment of boys and girls of adolescent years from school, had been utilised to give security to the existing temporary ex-service men, over 5,000 out of the 6,000 temporary ex-service men now employed could have been given 1109 the assurance of permanent occupation in the service of the Crown. Because that has not been done, we have 6,000 men who have served the State for periods up to 15 years who are liable to be thrown on the streets at any moment, either for good or for a period averaging six months.
Beyond that, the effect of this recruitment on the established trades of civil servants at the present time needs to be considered. There are thousands of writing assistants, typists and "P" class clerks eligible for promotion to the grade above, the clerical class, who are not promoted because boys and girls are brought in from the schools to fill the vacancies that arise. There are thousands of the clerical class who are qualified and fit for promotion to the executive class—the class above them. In many instances in many Departments men have been certified as fit for early and special promotion who remain unprompted because the vacancies in the executive class are filled by the recruitment of young boys and girls of 18 years of age from the secondary schools. Therefore, you get this position, that men who have done anything up to 25 or 30 years' service, and have been certified as fit for promotion, cannot be promoted and they are called upon to teach young boys from the schools the duties which they themselves are not allowed to discharge. At another stage you get executive officers who cannot be promoted to the administrative class because of direct recruitment from the universities of this country.
Therefore, we reach this position. The Treasury, and, in particular, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, has to choose between two classes of claimants for a certain number of vacancies available. On the one side there is the boy or girl leaving school at the age of 16 or 18 or 22, and on the other side there are two categories—established civil servants with very long years of civil service and, in the case of the men, in most cases, military service also and a residue of some 6,000 temporary ex-service men who have put in anything up to 15 years of civil service, following upon a period of military service in the Great War. And yet the hon. Gentleman and the Department over which he presides prefer to assess the claims of the boys and girls from school higher than they assess the 1110 claims of established civil servants to promotion, and the claim of the temporary civil servants to security of tenure in the Civil Service.
I put this to the House in no sense as a party issue. The Civil Service looks to the whole House of Commons, and not merely to the Government, as its employer. The established men and women who have been denied promotion in many cases where they were fit for it ask the House of Commons to prevent the recruitment of boys and girls to take the jobs that they can fill; and the temporary civil servants, ex-service men in practically every case, ask the House of Commons to say that they shall not be put out on the streets, either permanently or for long periods, in order to make room for young boys and girls coming in direct at the school-leaving age. I beg the Financial Secretary not to be guided so exclusively by the advice of his permanent civil servants. I shall be within the recollection of the House in saying that the last time that I raised this matter I received a completely inadequate reply. I hope that to-night the Financial Secretary to the Treasury will not endeavour to quibble about age groupings or about the fitness of men who have been employed for 15 years, or to take refuge in any of these things, but to announce to the House that until such time, firstly, as every suitable man and woman has been promoted, and, secondly, until such time as security has been given to the 6,000 temporary men in the Civil Service, no more boys and girls will be brought in from outside the Civil Service, as is done at the present time, with the result that that entails in terms of loss of promotion in the case of the established civil servant, and continued insecurity in the case of the temporary clerks on whose behalf I am pleading to-night.

§ The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Pethick-Lawrence)
The last time that this matter was before the House and I had an opportunity of replying, I dealt at some length with the history of the matter. I do not propose to repeat that to-night, because I believe that the majority of Members present are fully aware of what has been done; but the hon. Member who has brought forward this question to-night has reminded the House that it is a House of Com- 1111 mons matter, and not a party matter, and I think we are bound to recognise that fact. This question has been before the House on many occasions, and has been considered by committees, and the House of Commons has had to make a compromise between the claims of ex-service men on the one hand and the efficiency and suitable age distribution of the Civil Service of the other.
It may be that there is room for improvement. With a view to finding out whether there is room for improvement, or whether a change is desirable, a Royal Commission has been appointed, and that Commission is hearing evidence, including, I believe, evidence from the organisation with which the hon. Gentleman is connected; and they have had laid before them all these claims and all these matters which he has drawn attention to to-night. I do not think it would be desirable for me, acting on behalf of the present Government, to make a drastic and complete change in the whole method of dealing with this matter pending the finding of the Royal Commission. It may be that the Royal Commission will decide that the present method of dealing with the question is the right one. It may be that they will decide upon entirely different methods of handling the whole problem, and it would be obviously premature and unsuitable for me to institute any considerable change in the practice of dealing with these matters in the Civil Service until the report of the Royal Commission is before us. What I can do, and what I am endeavouring to do, is so to administer the existing rules that they work out with the minimum of hardship to everyone concerned. Let me give an illustration, because I think it bears out the case that the administration has been carried out so as to work the minimum of hardship. A good deal of feeling was aroused, rightly and properly, when it was said that there had been 89 dismissals of temporary ex-service clerks in the Department of the Ministry of Labour at Kew. Had that really meant that these 89 people were left without any work and put upon the streets, it would have been a very serious thing. What were the actual facts with regard to these 89 people? In the first place, 19 were retained in the Ministry of Labour in other 1112 branches, and 66 were placed in other temporary employment without a break. Of these, a very considerable number have now gone back to Kew, because additional work was required. That leaves only four people. With regard to these, one was over 64 years of age, one was found to be inefficient, and the other two, whose efficiency was slightly below the full efficiency, have been found work after a short break at simple duties, for which they were quite capable. That illustration disposes, so far as that is concerned, of the character of the general charge against the administration which has been preferred to-night. Over the last 10 years, when there were big alterations being made, I do not know how far there may have been intervals in employment at all corresponding to those mentioned by the hon. Member; but if he is speaking of what are known as pre-Guinness men, that is, men who are not really casuals but men with anything like substantial service, it is not in the least true that periods averaging six months now occur between periods of employment.
Perhaps I might illustrate it in this way. We are dealing with very large numbers of men, and it is the business of the Joint Substitution Board, when a man is discharged from his particular employment, to find him another. If it were true that there were hundreds of dismissals every year, and that the average period of unemployment was six months, you would find any large number of men at any one particular moment on the books of the Joint Substitution Board. What are the actual numbers at the present time? On the books of the Joint Substitution Board for dealing with the South-Eastern Division, which includes London, there is under notice but not yet discharged, one man. There is, under submission to other Departments, nil. There is, over 60, of low efficiency, one. There is, resident in the South-East area, not in London, five, and others in London, one. These are the total numbers of men whom the General Substitution Board at the present time are seeking to place in employment. When one realises the magnitude of the Civil Service and the necessary changes which are going on in every Department, I think that anyone who considers these numbers relative to the actual facts of the case will recognise that they are very small 1113 and do not represent anything like the picture put before the House by the hon. Member. You cannot consider the Civil Service as if it consisted of a certain number of posts of equal responsibility which you can fill with one man or with another. The Civil Service is a highly complicated organisation, and it is necessary to have men of certain types; and it is necessary, in spite of what the hon. Gentleman has said, in a business concern or a Government Department to have something like an accurate age distribution. With this large number of ex-service men, the normal age distribution has very largely been cut into in order to keep the ex-service men in employment, but it cannot be disturbed beyond a certain point.

§ Mr. W. J. BROWN
I want to put a question which will test the sincerity of what has been said. If it is true that a Royal Commission is to investigate the whole matter, and within a reasonable time will report, will the Financial Secretary assure the House to-night that, from now onwards until the time when the Commission reports, there shall be no dismissals from the Service and no lack of promotion by reason of the outside recruitment of boys and girls? If he will give me that assurance, he has met my case. If he does not, he destroys his own.

§ Mr. PETHICK - LAWRENCE
The point is this, that when vacancies have to be filled all the existing people, including the ex-Service men, are reviewed and any of them who are capable get promotion. If in any particular Department their job comes to an end, they come before the Joint Substitution Board, but it is not true to say that new entrants come in to take the place of the men discharged. The fact is that if the efficiency of the Civil Service is to be maintained, the jobs must be filled. After the figures I have given, the House will agree that there has been a considerable amount of success, as far as the pre-Guinness men are concerned, to see that they do not suffer unemployment. In regard to the post-Guinness men they are in the nature of casual work and the same meticulous care cannot be expected in their case, but even in their case a pledge has been given that they will not be discharged in order to find a place for the new entrants. New entrants are necessary in order to keep up the efficiency of the Civil Service. It is open to the Royal Commission to review the whole situation.