§ Mr. Julius Silvermanasked the Under-secretary of State for Air what is the nature of the duties now being performed by the personnel in the clerks, special duties, trade group; what is the rate of demobilisation of this group, as compared with the rest of the Service; and what is the reason for the delay in their demobilisation.
§ Mr. StracheySome special duties clerks are employed, as they were in wartime, on work connected with the routeing and plotting of aircraft. Of course, the volume of this work has greatly declined (although there is still a large and growing volume of such work in Transport Command). It has been thought fair, therefore, to use the surplus of special duty clerks for other clerical 565W work, where there are shortages. This helps to even out the release rate for clerks as a whole, including the accounting trades. The release rate of special duties clerks is kept in line with that of general duties clerks. For November they will be two groups behind the average. At the present rate of release, this means about one to two months' delay for them.