HC Deb 19 February 1931 vol 248 cc1480-2W
Mr. WHITE

asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury how many Government Departments are at present recruited on a system of nomination or by selected entry; how many additions have been made during each of the last five financial years to the staffs of each of these Departments; and what proportion of vacancies in each case was filled by entrants from Oxford and Cambridge Universities?

Mr. PETHICK-LAWRENCE

All the Government Departments have grades which are filled by nomination, or by limited competition among persons selected by the Department who are usually already in the employment of the selecting Department. The numbers of persons appointed in each calendar year, and the manner of their appointment, are stated in the Annual Reports of the Civil Service Commissioners. In the year 1929, the latest for which complete figures are available, the numbers of persons appointed by the agency of the Civil Service Commissioners otherwise than by open competition were as fallow:

By competitions limited to candidates selected by the Departments concerned 1,080
(Of these, over 600 were girl probationers in the Post Office competing for posts of sorting assistant, and outdoor officers (postmen, etc.) competing for posts on the indoor staff.)
By promotion of established civil servants 665

Civil Service 9,176
(Of these, over 6,000 were telephonists, postmen and skilled workmen in the Post Office; over 500 were promotions of P class ex-service clerks to the established clerical classes; over 300 were artificers in the War Department Factories and Naval Dockyards.)

Record has not been kept of the educational history of these persons in 1929 or other years. Probably very few would be university men or women, except one or two medical officers, a chaplain, and some of the established civil servants. Posts in the Civil Service which are appropriate to candidates of university educa- tion are almost entirely filled by open competition.