§ 16. Mr. Moonmanasked the Minister for the Civil Service if he will give details of the guidance he is giving to departments in staff development and training until such time as the Civil Service College is available.
§ Mr. George ThomsonI have been asked to reply.
We shall be more than doubling the number of student course weeks in the next 18 months, and discussions will shortly take place with departments about the development of their own training in the light of the increased central facilities.
The Civil Service Department is examining in conjunction with other departments how they can most effectively increase the already considerable effort devoted to staff development.
§ Mr. MoonmanI am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that statement. As we shall have to wait until September, 1970, for the inauguration of the Civil Service College, would he not give further stimulus to the use of management training and the appraisal techniques which are very much in evidence in British industry and no doubt would be of great help?
§ Mr. ThomsonPending the establishment of the Civil Service Staff College, my right hon. Friends are giving the maximum stimulus to these forms of training. For example, in the present training year, which runs from August of last year to July of the current year, we are providing about 1,200 student course weeks of management training. In the coming training year, beginning in August of this year, we hope to provide over 3,000.