DEPARTMENTAL EXTRAVAGANCE.
WE wrote last week on the general issues raised in the second Report of the Select Committee on National Expenditure. This week we propose to deal with some of the details of Departmental extravagance on which the Committee lay stress. We purposely use this phrase so as to exclude from our review of the Committee's Report such questions of military policy as the maintenance of a large Home Service Army. The condemnation of this expenditure, if it is to be condemned, must be based not on economic or administrative considerations, but on the question whether the Navy is by itself sufficient to render futile any prospects of an invasion in force. In a totally different category is such a question as that raised by the Committee in dealing with the staff of the War Office. The figures given are startling, for they show that during the period of the most rapid expansion of the Army the War Office staff grew much more slowly than it has grown since the Army settled down to approximately its present dimensions. During the first two years of the war the number of military officers serving in the War Office increased from 218 to 588. In the third year this number increased from 588 to 1,311. These certainly are figures requiring explanation.
While dealing with the War Office staff the Committee call attention to a defect in our system of administration which runs through every Department of the Government. It is this, that though Treasury sanction has to be obtained before any new official can be appointed, there is no machinery at the Treasury for systematically reviewing from time to time past appointments, to ascertain whether they are still necessary. Nor is there any such machinery within the Departments themselves. On the contrary, most Depart- ments are much more anxious to expand their staff than to cut down, partly because the dignity of the Department in comparison with other Departments is increased by the expansion of its numbers, and partly because of human reluctance to get rid of officials who have once been appointed. It is worth while noticing that this fundamental defect of our system of administration only applies, in the case of the War Office, to the civil side. To quote the Committee : " In the field it is the duty of the General Staff to review establishments from time to time, but in the War Office there is in present conditions no such review."
In dealing with the Admiralty perhaps the most interesting point touched upon by the Committee is the question of national shipyards. On this question, which has already been dealt with more than once in the Spectator, the Committee make a very illuminating statement. After declining to express an opinion as to the policy of establishing national shipyards while private shipyards still have incompletely utilized resources, the Committee go on to express their surprise "that the scheme was embarked upon without any estimate of the cost involved. Although we have pressed for an estimate, no particulars have-up to the present been furnished to us." No better proof than thiscould be furnished of the light-hearted way in which the Government have em- barked upon a policy condemned by men who are most competent to express an opinion.
Passing to the Board of Apiculture and Fisheries, the Committee quote figures, which will certainly startle the country, showing the amount of public money that has been granted by the Treasury with the idea of placing women on the land. That it was, and is, of the utmost importance that more women should be employed upon the land, in order to replace men, everybody is agreed ; but it is difficult to see how such an enormous expenditure as that incurred can possibly be justified. Take, for example, one item, "Boots for part-time workers, L91,500." Side by side with this item are two items—one, "Outfits for sale to part-time workers," £75,000; the other, " Outfit " without any qualification, £80,000. Then there is £55,020 for transport, £78,500 for maintenance, £20,000 for maintenance
luring unemployment, and so on. The total is £476,500. In return for this expenditure what has the country got ? The answer is necessarily confused, for it is impossible to know how many women now working on the land have abtained employment apart from any Government organiza- tion. As a matter of fact, in many country districts a large 'lumber of village women are being employed by farmers direct, and, it may be added with great regret, are being paid extremely low wages. Many farmers, in fact, prefer village women because they are cheaper. No doubt the Department can claim full credit for the Women's Land Army, but that only numbers seven thousand women. Looking at the matter as a whole, one is driven to the con- ilusion that money has been wasted at headquarters on a -needlessly expensive organization.
In dealing more generally with the work of the Food Production Department of the Board of Agriculture the Committee touch upon the question of overtime, and give credit to the Department for the reduction it has made in the monthly cost of overtime work. This question of over- time throughout the Civil Service was dealt with by the Public Retrenchment Committee which sat in 1915 to try to reduce wasteful expenditure in Government Departments. The Retrenchment Committee passed a strong resolution in favour of the total abolition of overtime payment throughout the Civil Service. The officials concerned were strong enough to prevent this resolution being put into operation. Yet the abuse is an old one and a notorious one. Some Depart- ments are better than others, but in most Departments it is alleged, on authority which it is difficult to doubt, that a considerable number of the subordinate officials waste their time during a large part of the day, in order that they may get overtime employment in the evening at an increased rate of pay per hour. It is said, indeed, that sub- ordinate officials will deliberately come late to their work in the morning, without any check from their superiors or any loss of pay, in order to secure overtime pay in the evening.
Another Department to which the Select Committee devote special attention is the Employment Exchange Department of the Ministry of Labour, hitherto known as the Labour Exchange Department. Figures are given showing the very expensive scale upon which the central office is run. For example, an official of the L.C.C., who bad been in receipt of a salary of £450 a year, was given an appointment in this Department at £700, "the duties being to supervise under the Director the placing of women on the land, and in other places where they could take the place of men called up for service in the Army." This appointment is a permanent one, although it is not clear what functions will appertain to it when the war ends. In passing, it may be noted that in addition to the cost above cited, which has been incurred by the Women's Branch of the Food Production Department el the Board of Agriculture for placing women on the land, a very considerable coat not here specified has been incurred for the same purpose by the Employment Exchange Department.
Similar duplication of services goes on between the National Service Department and the Employment Exchange Depart- ment. As a particular example a the way in which this latter Department squanders public money, the Committee report that men are sent long distances to do work which only takes a few days to complete. For example, men were sent front Liverpool to a Southern dockyard town for a job which would take only four days to finish. The nation paid the coat of their removal and the cost of mainte- nance allowances. Another matterreferred to is the practice of the Employment Exchange Department of angling for Trade Union support by offering rooms free of rent, or at a nominal rent, for Trade Union meetings. The Department now actually proposes to constitute a Central Exchange in London for the building trade. The Committee emphatically say that this proposal is unnecessary. In any case, it is clearly improper that the general taxpayer should be mulcted in order to provide meeting-rooms for Trade Union Committees. The Trade Unions are in possession of large funds, which they can increase at will, and they ought to provide for their own expenditure. The Committee conclude their remarks on the Employment Exchange Department with the following comments "Your Committee consider that the tendeacy of the officials is- to increase the work of the Department without due consideration as to whether such work is necessary." This comment, though scathing, Is in reality a very temperate criticism of a Department which, over since it was Galled into existence by Mr. Winston
Churchill, has been persistently scheming to add to its own importance without the slightest regard to the public interest. Its officials have even gone to the length of demanding that they should be given an absolute monopoly in the distribution of labour, for the reason—as frankly stated by themselves— that without compulsory powers- they cannot induoe either employers or workmen to have recourse to their organization.
The Report contains several appendices dealing with special matters. Among these the most important is the appendix describing the methods taken by various Depart- ments to deal with what is called "profiteering." This appendix, and especially the section of it which deals with shipping, ought to be widely read. Enormous mischief had been done by the way in which the present Government have pandered to the Socialistic outcry against" profiteering."
In the above summary it has only been possible to deal with a few of the points brought into publicity by the Report of the Committee on National Expenditure. The Committee have already done most valuable work, and we are glad to see that they are continuing their labours.
Previous page
