It will not have escaped notice that when Sir Horace
Wilson, Permanent Secretary of the Treasury and Head of the Civil Service, vacates those offices in August on reaching the retiring age of 60, he is to be succeeded in both by Sir Richard Hopkins, who is 62. Into what underlies that anomaly I do not seek to probe, but I hope some Member of Parliament familiar with the. Civil Service— there are several of them—will raise the question of the status and powers of the "Head of the Civil Service." There was no such office till Lord Baldwin created it for Sir Warren Fisher. Mr. Chamberlain continued it for Sir Horace Wilson, and a great many people hoped that on Sir Horace's retirement it would lapse. It has not lapsed, and it ought to be discussed. In the past the Head of the Civil Service has seen fit to intervene arbitrarily in the matter of appointments to other Government departments than the Treasury, and his powers of patronage and recommendation for honours are - considerable. Whether such powers should be exercised by a civil servant at all, and not by a Minister, is highly questionable. * * * *
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