CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION (Hansard, 18 February 1947)

§ Viscount Hinchingbrooke (Dorset, Southern)
I hope that the Financial Secretary to the Treasury intends to vouchsafe us a little information about this Supplementary Estimate. I do not desire to go into the sub-headings but I should like the right hon. Gentleman to make reference to Item E and the meaning of the words set out at the bottom of the page: Additional provision required for advertising reconstruction competitions.… It is very satisfactory that the Civil Service should be advertising, and equally so that they should be having competitions, but what exactly is a "reconstruction competition"? Is it some relic from the late Ministry of Reconstruction? It raises ideas in one's mind that possibly these young men and women are being put into some esoteric conclave where they are called upon to devise plans for the brave new world on lines so much desired by hon. Gentlemen opposite. Is it to reconstruct the country according to some grandiose plan, such as Sir Patrick Abercrombie's plans for town and country planning? What are the examinations which these young men and women are called upon to undergo?

§ Mr. Osborne (Louth)
I wish to draw attention to the sum of £19,790 for salaries, etc., for additional staff required for the purpose of accelerating recruitment to the Civil Service. It seems to me that this item makes a good deal of nonsense of other Government publications, especially Command Paper 7018, which states that the country is very short of manpower and that we are in a grave economic position merely because of that. The money we are being asked to vote is for the recruitment of civil servants. We have half a million more civil servants today than we had before the war. We are short of people to carry on productive 1103 enterprise. Therefore, this money is being completely and utterly wasted. I understand that various Government Departments have received instructions to cut down their staffs and not increase them; why, therefore, are we being asked to vote £19,790, which we cannot afford, to accelerate recruitment to the Civil Service, which is already overstaffed? If the half million civil servants that we cannot afford to keep were producing at the modest rate of £400 a year industrially, the industrial turnover would be £200 million per annum, and we badly need it. I suggest that, instead of spending all this money on recruiting civil servants, there ought to be a much smaller item, not to recruit civil servants, but to get rid of them. I would like to have a promise from the Financial Secretary that this matter will be looked into.

§ Mr. Butcher
I entirely share the view of the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Osborne) that, in the present state of the country and in the light of the White Paper already issued, and the Government's desire to reduce the number of civil servants, it is a terrible thing that we should be asked to sanction a further expenditure of £102,000 for the expenses of the Civil Service Commission. There seems to be no business-like approach to these matters. Surely, the amount of overhead in regard to examinations does not arise in proportion to the number of people; surely, there is a certain overhead which ought to cover the expenses of these examinations. I cannot help feeling that the Government are being extraordinarily wasteful. It passes my comprehension how, having made an original Estimate of £146,000, that Estimate has been exceeded by more than half as much again, bringing the total up to £250,000 in terms of salaries. I feel that this is not a Supplementary Estimate that ought to be allowed to pass without the most careful explanation from the Financial Secretary. I am sure the Financial Secretary will endeavour to do his best, as he always does, but I believe this matter will tax even his well-known powers of explanation.

§ Mr. Glenvil Hall
I am afraid I was under the impression that hon. Members were more aware than apparently they are of the method which must be employed to bring in recruits to the Civil 1104 Service. In the old days, people entered the Civil Service because they happened to know a Member of Parliament or someone high up in the Civil Service. That method has now been abolished.
Everybody who enters the Civil Service on the establishment side by open competition goes through an examination. In recent years, at least two White Papers have been put before the House, to which the House agreed. The Treasury and Civil Service Commission are bound by the policy laid down in those White Papers. Reconstruction examinations have been set for young men, many of whom have been abroad in the Forces and who would not be sufficiently ready to take the type of examination which they were bound to take before the war. We are, therefore, having reconstruction competitions. That is another word for weeding out by the number of marks obtained people who enter as candidates and wish to come into the Civil Service.
That is my reply to the noble Lord the Member for South Dorset (Viscount Hinchingbrooke), who asked what these competitions are. If competitions and examinations are held, we must let people know that they are being held, and we must advertise them fairly widely. In addition, we try to hold the examinations in different areas, so that candidates need not come to London for them. In order to help people coming out of the Services into a career at the earliest possible moment, it is only fair to hold examinations at shorter intervals than would otherwise be the case. So we need examiners and various other things are needed for examinations. All that means extra salaries and expenses connected with the work. It does not mean, and I give the Committee this assurance, that we are going to increase the number of people coming into the Civil Service. It does mean that we hope some of those who are now temporary will become established by entering the competitions. It does not mean we are to increase the numbers, but that we are regularising the position by allowing those who want to come in to take the examination and, if possible, to qualify.

§ Viscount Hinchingbrooke
I am sorry to press this point, but I would like to know what "reconstruction" means. Is it a Civil Service term meaning postwar, or peacetime? What is the meaning?

§ Mr. Spence (Aberdeen and Kincardine, Central)
I was horrified to hear what has been said by the Financial Secretary. He does not appear to give any assurance to the Committee that the Civil Service is not being increased hand over fist by the recruiting campaign. He referred to the terms of the competition and examinations, but, as far as I could see, that only applies to new applicants. Will he take steps to weed out the rotters who are there at present, and to see that new blood is introduced by the inclusion of ex-Servicemen? Will he clear out the people who are no longer useful to the Service?

§ Mr. I. J. Pitman (Bath)
I would like to draw the attention of the Committee to two possible ways of finding a saving in this direction, which, as well as being a saving, would offer advantages from the efficiency point of view. As I understand it, the Civil Service Commissioners have not really made up their minds whether the new techniques of examination are better than the old. So, to a large extent the two techniques are running parallel. I happened to meet a young girl civil servant who had recently taken the reconstruction examination for admission to the administrative staff. She spoke very highly indeed of the examination, but confirmed what I had previously heard, that the relics of the old examination are still continuing. In other words, they have not really made up their minds yet whether or not they can jettison the old in favour of the new, and they are likely to, keep it going for some time. There is a considerable potential saving there.
Secondly, I think it would give the new technique a much greater acceptability throughout the Service, if they kept more fully to the basis of the War Office Selection Boards during the war, which was to plant firmly on the shoulders of the people who were to use the staff, the onus of responsibility for selection. It was an expensive mistake, although the man concerned is, in my opinion, extremely good, to have gone to the War Office Selection Boards for a president from the Army. The Army were quite right in having an Army man to select Army personnel. For the purpose of selecting personnel for the Civil Service, it would have been much better to have had a genuine full-time and experienced civil servant, who would have been acceptable to the Civil Service itself. That plan would be a definite improvement and an economy if it were adopted.

§ Mr. Butcher
I would say how grateful I am to the right hon. Gentleman, but I am bound to say that all the matters with which he dealt, namely, the discharge of young men from the Forces, the fact that it was desirable to arrange examinations for them as close as possible to their homes, the hope that some at present on a temporary basis would be put on the established scale, are not new considerations. Surely they must have been in the minds of the people who framed this Estimate a year ago? They were not new considerations which would account for the increase. I wonder if I might help the right hon. Gentleman? He suggested that now everybody is subject to an examination on entering the Civil Service, and that it is a great improvement on the days when certain things went by patronage. I would not disagree with him for a moment. All I ask is whether any of these examiners concerned in this Vote are to see that the Coal Board is staffed on a similar basis?

§ Mr. Osborne
The right hon. Gentleman has given as an explanation for this increase men coming out of the Services had to be dealt with, and that was why the money was being spent. Will this expenditure diminish proportionately, as and when demobilisation ends?

§ Mr. Glenvil Hall
Yes. We are now passing through a special phase, when much which, in the ordinary way, would occupy years to accomplish is being telescoped into a short period of time. It was the decision to do this which is largely the cause of the present Supplementary Estimate.