HC Deb 24 June 1947 vol 439 cc197-202
45. Wing-Commander Hulbert

asked the Prime'Minister if he is now in a position to make a statement on the result of the Government's review of the number of persons employed in Government Departments.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Attlee)

Yes, Sir. His Majesty's Government fully recognise the importance of limiting to a minimum the demands which civil administration makes on the manpower of the country and a constant check is being kept in order to avoid waste and make the most economical use of existing staff. But there are four reasons which forbid us to expect large reductions at the present time.

  1. (1) There is still much work to be done which derives from war conditions, such as work on war damage and resettlement.
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  2. (2) As long as there are shortages, rationing must continue and this entails a considerable staff.
  3. (3) Measures approved by the House, such as those dealing with the social services, education and civil aviation cannot be implemented without the necessary instruments.
  4. (4) There are large staffs who, without substantially changing their duties, are shortly to be transferred from outside the Civil Service to the Ministries of Agriculture and of National Insurance.
For this last reason there may even be some temporary paper increase in the size of the Service. I will circulate a fuller and more detailed statement in the OFFICIAL REPORT, but before I sit down I would say a word about Civil Service staffs themselves.

I think we all believe that our Civil Service is the best in the world and that it has in its ranks very many men and women of great ability whose devotion to the public interest is unsurpassed. The Civil Service has never failed to be a faithful servant, not only to successive Governments but to the country as a whole. But a good servant is better for having a good and understanding master, and I regret the fashion, now current in some quarters, of speaking slightingly of the Civil Service as though its members were less useful members of the community than other people. If attacks of this kind continue unanswered, we cannot expect to recruit energetic and able young men and women to the Service who will take a proper pride in their important tasks; we shall then fail to build up a Service which will be efficient, economical and responsive to the needs of the country as a whole. The research worker in a Government laboratory, the postal worker and the clerk in a labour exchange, or the administrator in Whitehall, all these are making their contribution to the common end. We shall not get the best out of the Service unless we give them the support and credit they deserve

Wing-Commander Hulbert

I think that the Prime Minister will agree that all Members will endorse what he has said about the high quality of the Civil Service and the hard work which they do. I would like to ask him whether he will not also agree that, if it were not for the fact that the Government of which he is the nead had introduced so much doctrinaire legislation, and transferred so much industry to public control, he could reduce the Civil Service very greatly?

The Prime Minister

I am afraid the hon. and gallant Member is quite mistaken, because those Measures which require the greatest increases of staff are precisely those which were planned originally by the Coalition Government.

Mr. Butcher

Will the Prime Minister, in paying the well-deserved tribute which he has done, see also that the conditions of remuneration approximate to those of private industry and the National Coal Board?

The Prime Minister

That is a very large question.

Following is the statement:

On Ist January, 1947, there were 722,000 non-industrial civil servants. 400,000 of these were in the Post Office and the Defence and Supply Departments. The 258,000 in the Post Office are carrying out an essential service similar to that of other nationalised industries. Those engaged in Service and Supply Departments are part of the machinery of defence and the civilian staffs of the Service Departments—whose duties are often identical with those performed by uniformed staffs—will in future be shown separately in the Staff Returns; they will come within the allocation of manpower made for defence as a whole. Of the remainder of the Service, over 92,000 are employed in Social Services. Departments; over 91,000 in Departments concerned with trade, industry and transport and 60,000 in the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise. These big blocks account for nearly 90 per cent. of the Civil Service.

The total of the non-industrtal Civil Service on Ist January, 1947, was only 8,000 less than it was at its peak in July, 1943

There are two main reasons why the decline has been so small. The first is that temporary work which will gradually come to an end still employs more than 100,000 civil servants. We have had to retain rationing and other controls which account for 44,000 of this number. The terminal work left over from the war, or connected with resettlement, accounts for another 60,000. It must be got out of the way at reasonable speed. Neverthe less there have already been noticeable reductions in the staffs engaged on wartime duties. The Defence Departments have already reduced their staffs by over 42,000 civilians from the peak war figure, and further substantial reductions, both in civilian and uniformed personnel, should be achieved as terminal duties are completed.

The other main reason why the total numbers in the Civil Service have declined little is that decreases have largely been offset by increases due to the imposition of new duties. These have grown enormously over recent years, irrespective of the party from which the Government in power was drawn. The right hon. Member for the Scottish Universities (Sir J. Anderson), who, as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Coalition Government, was responsible for the plans which formed the basis of the recruitment to the Civil Service in the immediate postwar period, stated to the House on 17th February, 1944: Whatever form our economy may take after the war, it seems reasonably certain that the complexity of administration will, at any rate for many years, be greater than it was before the war."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th February, 1944; Vol. 397, c. 336.] The days are long past when the State was no more than protector, law giver and tax gatherer. With the support of the nation, the State has shouldered many new duties in our social and economic affairs. Critics often ignore the fact that the size of the Service depends more than anything else on the jobs it is told to do.

Thus the acceptance of full employment as a prime aim of policy requires staff to plan our resources, in order to develop to the full the productivity of our industry. Great reforms are being realised in our social services. The Ministry of National Insurance, which was established in November, 1944, now numbers 12,000 and will rise to 32,000 over the next two years, though mainly by the transfer of staffs now engaged on similar work in the employment of the Approved Societies, and not by the withdrawal of labour from productive employment. Increases must also be expected in the Departments concerned with education and health as a result of the extension of these services.

Other new Departments dealing with civil aviation and town and country planning have been expanded to cope with the new functions imposed on them by Parliament. In civil aviation, further increases, numbering some thousands, will result from State management of civil airfields in this country. The Agriculture Bill now before Parliament will involve the transfer of 10,000 staffs from the county agricultural committees to the direct employment of the Ministry of Agriculture. This again will involve no real increase in numbers or withdrawal from productive employment.

I turn to the factor of efficiency. During and since the war the Service has worked under a very great pressure, and there has been insufficient trained staff and opportunities for that continuous control of the operations of Departments without which no large organisation can remain at the highest point of efficiency. Moreover, the normal methods of recruitment were suspended throughout the war years. Recruitment has now been resumed and is in full swing, and administrative economies are being pursued with energy over the whole field of Government. This will improve the already high standard of administration and will result in some reduction of the numbers required for a given block of duties. But I should be wrong if I were to lead the House to expect that any very large saving can result from improved efficiency over a short period. Time must be allowed for the new recruits to learn their duties, and for the new organisations created during and after the war to settle down.

The House will expect me to say what, putting all these factors together, I expect will be the trend of Civil Service numbers. At the end of last year I set on foot an inquiry into Civil Service numbers. The instructions were to examine staff numbers and also the need for functions and duties, and where possible to fix staff ceilings for each Department. As an interim measure. Departments were instructed that the numbers of their staffs at 1st January were a maximum, which was not to be exceeded without special permission; they were instructed at the same time to lose no opportunity in making reductions where possible below this ceiling. The first-fruits of that instruction are now shown in a reduction of over 5,000 over the first quarter of the year. But while the upward trend has been checked, the decreases likely to be achieved over the next twelve months may well be more than counterbalanced by the large increases in the Ministry of National Insurance and the Ministry of Agriculture, which, however, as I have explained, involve no fresh drain on the manpower otherwise available for productive purposes.

But against this, a substantial reduction —amounting, as I have said, to over 100,000 people—can be expected when war-time terminal activities are completed, and rationing and the controls are relaxed or removed. We intend to press forward to this objective with all possible speed, but in the end the last word remains with Parliament, which settles the broad scope of the duties which the Service has to carry out. Some decrease in numbers can also be looked for from increasing efficiency when the Civil Service has had time to adjust itself after the disturbances of the war years.