HC Deb 12 October 1939 vol 352 cc552-3W
Sir A. Southby

asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Information on whose authority the information departments of the War Office, Admiralty, Air Ministry, Foreign Office, Board of Education, Home Office and Ministry of Agriculture are still housed at the Ministry of Information; how many persons from each of the departments named are employed; and whether, as regards any of these departments, the work is being duplicated?

Sir E. Griģģ

The decision whether the information departments of any particular Government Department should be housed at the Ministry of Information or not is for that Department. In regard to the second part of the question I would refer my hon. Friend to the answer which I am giving to-day to my hon. and gallant Friend, the Member for Carlisle (Brigadier-General Spears). The answer to the third part of the question is in the negative.

Briģadier-General Spears

asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Information how many of the 60 persons transferred from the staff of the Ministry of Information to other Government Departments are filling new posts; and how many have returned to posts they were filling before they were employed by the Ministry?

Sir E. Griģģ

Of the staff of 60 referred to 48 were acting as specialists in the News Division of the Ministry and 12 were clerks or typists. When the News Division of the Ministry was set up, 23 specialists were transferred from the Press Relations Sections of existing Departments to it, but it was necessary to obtain the services of 25 others in order to provide the 24-hour service required in the Ministry. The 23 specialists have been returned to their posts which they were filling before they were employed in the Ministry.

Now that the Departments have become responsible for this issue of news, it is for them to decide, with the approval of the Treasury, what staff they will require in their news sections under wartime conditions and I am not therefore in a position to say how the remaining 25 persons will be employed.