§ Sir C. OMANasked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury if he is aware that none of the men appointed to the administrative class in the Home Civil Service after a selective test under the Third Interim Report of the Gladstone Committee were below 22 years of age when their selective examination took 822W place, and that a large proportion of the ex-service men who took the open competition of 1921 were too young for admission to these Gladstone reconstruction tests in 1919 and 1920; and if, seeing that a certain number of appointments have been given to one body of ex-service men, he will grant equally considerate treatment to an essentially different body of younger men who have taken a much more severe academic test?
Mr. GUINNESSUnder the reconstruction scheme of recruitment to the Administrative Class of the Civil Service recommended by the Gladstone Committee, candidates were required to have attained the age of 22 on the date fixed for the written examination preliminary to the competition, the object being to afford to men who had spent in the forces all or most of the time which they would normally have spent in completing their education at a university a special opportunity of entering the Civil Service. I am unable to agree that any such special arrangements were necessary in the case of younger men entering for the open competition of 1921, which, as I informed the hon. Member on the 28th May, was not an ex-service competition.