§ Mr. R. YOUNGasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty what percentage of the contracts of an engineering character placed by the Admiralty during the past six months have been referred to the Technical Costs Branch; and what was the number of contracts and the amount of the original quotations upon which £350,000 was saved since the branch was attached to the Admiralty?
§ Mr. AMERYI can assure the hon. Member that the services of this staff have been utilised in all cases in which it appeared that any advantage would thereby be gained. I am unable, however, to quote a percentage, and if I could, it would probably be misleading, as there are many cases in which the existence of keen competition has made it unnecessary and inadvisable to resort to cost investigation, and many others in which the expert officers of the various Technical Departments, owing to their special knowledge of the costs of particular classes of work, have performed analogous functions to those of the Technical Costing Staff. As regards the second part of the question, the number 389W of contracts was about 1,290, and the original quotations amounted to about £2,280,000.