§ Mr. HOGGEasked the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department why the office of the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police is regarded as being outside the scope of the Lytton recommendations concerning ex-service men; and whether he is aware that girl clerks and boy messengers are still employed in this Department to the prejudice of unemployed and disabled ex-service men on the pool of the Joint Substitution Board?
Mr. DAVIESThe office of the Commissioner of Police is not technically a Department of the Civil Service and does not, therefore, come within the scope of the recommendations of the Lytton Committee, but the principles laid down by the Committee are being progressively applied, so far as the exigencies of the Service will permit. No girl clerks are employed and the few women retained are mainly employed on work for which women are, by general consent, regarded as more suitable than men. The boy messengers are mainly boys taken from the Police Orphanage,i.e., boys whose fathers have been killed or died while serving in the Metropolitan Police Force.