§ 29. Mr. Jesselasked the Minister for the Civil Service what is the number of civil servants at present; and what were the numbers one and two years ago.
§ Mr. Charles R. MorrisThere were 719,145 civil servants in post on 1st October 1975, of whom 540,172 were non-industrial staff and 178,973 were industrial staff. The total numbers of staff at the same date in 1974 and 1973 were 687,182 and 695,092 respectively.
§ Mr. JesselAlthough, like the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell), I admire the British Civil Service, may I ask the Minister what possible justification he has for increasing the number of civil servants by 32,000 in the past 12 months in view of the national economic crisis and the crippling levels of taxation in this country? How much has all this cost?
§ Mr. MorrisI note the comments of the hon. Gentleman. He said that he was an admirer of the Civil Service; occasionally, I should like to see some of the admirers of the Civil Sevice expressing their admiration in a slightly different form.
The Civil Service must be directly related to the work that it is given to do by Parliament.