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19 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
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CROWN AGENTS' ENQUIRY COMMITTEE:
Sir E BLAKE.
12 June 1909.]
shipping documents to the Colonies. There is an enormous crush; thousands of documents pass through that department, and they have all to get out by the mail day, and therefore it must be a very big staff, but distinctly an inferior grade of man is equal to doing that work,
135. (Sir Rulph Moor.) Of course, you want some higher class material-Yes, and we put those at the
top.
136. But it does not seem from your system that you have got a method of encouraging it to come into the office-Suficient unto the day is the evil thereof; you must trust the Crown Agents in their own in. terests to look after the interests of the office. So long as the personal responsibility of the Crown Agents is kept up, and the Secretary of State judges by results, you may be sure the Crown Agents will have an ade- quate staff. I am sure that any attempt to deal with the Crown Agents' Office on doctrinaire grounds is wrong; you must look at it from a practical point of view.
137. (Chairman.) To sum up about the appoint- ment, what you say is that you propose in the future to appoint all at the bottom to the fourth class 7-Yes
138. And the method will be by appointing those who are recommended to you from outside by those in whom you have confidence, but one thing I do not quite understand in your otherwise very clear state- ment is how you get your board school boy? We get them from the Civil Service Commission. The Civit Service Commission have a very large number of lads, boys beginning about 16, on their list, and we have simply to notify to the Civil Service Commission that we want one of these boy clerks, or any number of shem, and they immediately send them to us.
We try them, and if we do not find them suitable we snd them back.
130. Do they send you a boy or a list ?—They send us a boy, and if we do not like him we send him back until we get a boy who seems suitable. Some of these boys have turned out well and some have not turned out well.
140. I think the Committee would like to know, roughly speaking, how many you want each year It all depends; when we took over this fresh work the number increased very rapidly. Now we have got very much to normal, and it will all depend upon vacancies now. So far we are only increasing com- paratively slowly; we are increasing, but still we are not increasing with the fearful rapidity with which we were formerly.
141. You will want perhaps 10 every year at least? --Not so many.
142. Supposing you find by experience that you want eight recruits for your office. We understand how they come there, but how do you settle of that eight how many shall be the sons of Governors, people recommended by the Colonial Office, or public school boys, and how many will you write to the Civil Service Commission and say, "Send us a boy", for?— That is a
matter entirely of accident; it depends entirely on circumstances. The Colonial Office" may sometimes ask us to take in two or three people, but they may go for a long period without asking us to take in anyone. Similarly one of our heads of depart. menta may say to us, "I know a particularly smart lad will you give him chance? And if he will youch for him that he is a smart Ind we will give him a chance.
ever
1:43. I
surprised then that there should be any necessity at all to write to the Civil Service Commission, because the number of people who know of sinart ladis is so enormous; for instance, since I have been in office quite 1,000 people have been recommended to me?-I do not accept the word of any outsider, but the head of a department would incur a very severe responsibility if he said that he had a very smart lad he knew and that lad did not turn out smart.
141. But there are so many smart lads.-You must please take it that this office is worked just as a big commercial business would be worked. It is quito open to the Secretary of State to turn it into a Government office, but it is not a Government office at
present, and it is not worked on Government office lines. You are looking at the question from a Government office point of view. We look at it not from a Government office point of view.
145. I want to know what sort of staff there will ultimately be under this scheme?—The strongest security is that the Crown Agents are responsible for the proper discharge of their duties, and it is their interest to have a good staff.
146. (Sir Albert Spicer.) You mentioned that a certain number of your young fellows get Colonial appointments?—Yes, they do.
147. Do many go from your office into ordinary commercial life-Not very frequently. One lad left us recently for commercial life, and he has asked to be taken back again. He went to an engineering firm, and he has now asked to be taken back again, and as he was a particularly good, smart boy we have taken him back.
148. So that you have very few leakages to go into ordinary commercial life?-Very few.
149. (Mr. Gibson.) May we have a return from the Crown Agents of the method of appointment-take these 65 men, where they come from, how appointed, and what has been the efflux of the last few years to the Colonial Service?-From these lower division clerks, do you mean?
150. (Chairman.) Take the existing 85?—That could be given you.
151. And also whether they were from the Civil Service or whether they were recruited from the out- side without examination and the age on appoint- ment?--Yes; they are all youngsters.
152, (Sir Albert Spicer.) Do you often take fuily- trained man on to your staff!--In the old days it was frequently done, but now the office has become so large that we are training our own men,
163. Have you during the last four years found you had not got any men fit for certain vacancies ?--Oi course we have in the case of our technical people. If you will turn to the organisation of the office under the heading of Works Department, you will see there that we have four technical assistants in the Works Department, live practically with the Engineering Department, and those have all been recruited from the outside.
154. They have been recruited as trained men ?--- They have come to us as absolutely trained men; having all of them passed through the engineering workshops. They are mechanical engineers.
155. That is about the only department for which you would in the ordinary way recruit trained men? Quite recently we have appointed a new inspector of clothing. He was a technical man, he was an old Army Clothing Department man.
156. Under your present system do you feel that any of these younger hands will gradually work up through these departments and become eficient?-- Not in the works and engineering, because that is special; but in the clothing it may in the future be so. The clothing inspector has either three or four sub inspectors, but they are merely clerks, and whether they will in time qualify time alone will prove; but supping this clothing inspector died to-morrow we should replace him from the outside.
157. You have it in view to try to recruit as little from the outside for trained men as possible 7-Yes. except for these purely technical appointments.
158. (Sir Ralph Moor.) Do you pass any of these works and engineering men on to the Colonial Service 7-Yes, we passed on two quite recently.
159. And then you go outside and get fresh men?-- Yes. One of our men was with us here, and then he went and became assistant manager to Stephenson s Locomotive Engineering Works, and now he has come back to us as one of our deputy chief inspectors of engineering,
160. (Chairman.) Is it your idea ultimately to be able to recruit all from the bottom 1-All except the engineering men.
MINUTES OF EVIDENCE.
Sir E. BLAKE.
181. How many would there be of those 7-You will find that on page 4 of the Urganisation. Take the Works Department, the head of the Department is a Royal Engineer, a sapper.
162. And always will be?-He will always be au engineer of some kind, not necessarily a sapper.
143. He will not have to come in at the bottom?— No. The deputy head is also an outside trained man. The four section heals are all outside trained men. Then the clerks, of course, although they may be excellent as clerks, will never rise into these higher appointments because they require technical qualifica- tious. If you take the Engineering branch, the section head is also a trained mechanical engineer.
16. Then there is the Engineering Inspection branch-In the Engineering Inspection branch the chief inspector was formerly the head of our Works Department; he had been one of Sir Alexander Reinlel's chief inspectors, but he preferred this work. so that when we constituted this Department_we agreed to make him head of the Department, and he has been a very great succESS. His two deputies are both trained outside men. Then we have two clerks of the fourth class, and all the others are merely tem- porary they could go to-morrow They all depend on the fluctuations of work.
165. You engage them from time to time?--They are simply temporary clerks; we go so far as to say: ** You are merely engaged by our chief inspector, and we do not have anything to do with you. We want fo maintain the principle that we should not keep them on ourselves, and if the work fell off these men wonil go.
10. You do that because the engineering inspection branch is so variable?—Yes, it may fluctuate to any extent.
167. About what proportion of the actual staff in the office at any one moment is on those permanent lines and what proportion are temporary like those we have just heard of?-Practically the whole of those 200 we should have to ask the Secretary of State to put on the establishment.
168, How many more will there be?-That depends on the work that is sent to us.
169. On an average?--Nothing is more uncertain in our work than averages; it all depends upon policy. For instance, as you know, we are building railways very largely in Nigeria, and that makes a great in- crease of work to us, but another policy might be adopted, or there might be great difficulty in getting moriey, and all this night le stoppel.
170, So that it is the problem of all businesss to know how much should be permanent and how much tem- porary - Yos. All these copyists we could dispense with tonerrow; they are merely Civil Service boy clerks, and we could get rid of them to-morrow if we liked.
171. What would become of them? They would go back to the Civil Service.
172. By copyists, which do you meau-You will find them under class V. I could go back to the office and give them a week's notice.
173. And they would be absorbed in the Civil Ser- vice elsewhere ?—Yes.
174. (Sir Albert Spiter.) I do not exactly understandi what you mean by taking them from the Civil Service ?
-The Civil Service Commissioners have a list.
175. Would they actually be given employment at once?—No, they would go back on to their list again; they are qualified. Of course we shall always want Popyists.
158, (Chairman.) That is a fresh branch of your staff; the 32 copyists do not come in at the bottom?— Thuy are a class by themselves.
177. They are on the Civil Service list? Yes, and when they reach the age of 20 the Civil Service Com- missioners say to them. "Good-bye, we have done with you."
178, (Mr. Bailey.) That is a class which is common to all Government Departments?--Yes.
170. A sort of floating population which can be in- creased or decreased when necessary ?--Yox, anel these
• Page 2 of Appendiz la
[12 June 1908.
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boys are constantly trying to pass examinations to qualify them for other appointments,
180. (Chairman.) You get these 52 by arrangement with the Civil Service Commissioners?--Yes, we simply ask them to send us a boy. They are very glad indeed to give these boys employment, and it is very conve nient to us.
11, (Sir Ralph Moor.) With regard to the inspec- tors, you said you had a certain number of inspectors attached who were permanent, and that some were sperialists bright in from outside?--They are all specialists.
182. I thought you said some of them were trained like the Inspector of Clothing?--Yes, these are young-
sters.
183. You train one or two of thein and the others are specialists brought in, but beyond that you said you had a number of inspectors outside who were not on your staff 7-Quite so.
184. How do you employ them? Are they employed on commission-They are simply employed on the job they are consulting engineers and inspecting engineers.
185. Are they paid on commission ?—They_either have a fee or a rate of so much per ton. Take this case, a case that will appeal to you; supposing you wanted a vessel, a launch or anything of that kind, a specification for it is got out by a marine engineer and he does the inspection.
186. During construction?—Yos, and is paid a cer- tain sum for his services. We can employ him one
day, and perhaps not employ him again, depending on whether we consider he does his work well or not. That is our outside inspection system.
187. (M), Badley,) In fact, you keep inspectors for what I might call your stock work, work of which you imagine there will be a sufficiency to keep the men gemig permanently, and then yod employ occasional uspectors for casual work? That is so. Our In- spection Department is comparatively newly consti- tuted, and it has been a very great success. The work is being done very efficiently and very well, and that will gradually absorb a considerable amount of work hitherto done by the job.
1898, (8ir Ralph Moor.). It is only creating a perma nent Inspection Department; you are in process of creating it-Yes, the nucleus of that department, if you will look under Engineering Department, merely consisting of one chief" inspector, two deputy chief inspectors, and two clerks." Everything else can be cut away instantly.
189, (Sir Albert Spicer.) But you are aiming at gradually building up an inspection department ?— We are building it up, but we do not intend that wo should over have a large permanent staff. The out- side inspectors are paid merely salaries, or something of that kind.
190. Do you intend to try to obviate the necessity of employment of such ontside inspectors as much as possible? -No, we do not contemplate ever having a large ermanent establishment. It is much better that the men should be recruited as the chief in- spetor may require them. Of course you have raised a point that will undoubtedly trouble the Crown Agents in the future. There is no doubt that many of these outside inspectors may be thoroughly good fellows; they may practically serve for many years without any permanent tenur, and then the Crown Agents, no doubt, will say that, as a matter of grace, These men onght to be given some small charitable allowance when they get past their work, but they have also- hately no right to it.
191. When you receive complaints which really are the faults of the inspectors, do you draw any distine- tion between the inspection of your permanent depart- ment and the outside inspectors ?—Î'ndoubtedly,
102, Because in one or two cases in this correspond- ence I notion you say that, as Crown Agents, you not responsible, but it was the fault of your inspectors. --Exactly.
Were
193. You nwan there an outside inspector?—That is so. That was, of course, before the Inspection Depart- ment started. Now, for instance, if a Colony made a complaint of work inspected by our own inspector, we should consider, if the complaint proved welf found 3,
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