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political

their vieorists and individual civil servants who have wishes 66

submit their views to the Committee. There is a list in Appendix 30we have also received written evidence from various sources, including information about the practice of the Commonwealth Governments and of other countries overseas, and the views of Local Government Associations in England and Wales; the names of those who have provided us with such memoranda are given in Appendix 2. We take this opportunity of recording our gratitude to all those bodies and persons who have kindly assisted us in the discharge of our task.

II. PRESENT POSITION

5. The Civil Service is made up of many grades engaged on a great variety of work. The non-industrial Civil Service at present numbers approximately 450,000 members of the Administrative, Executive, Professional, Scientific, Technical, Clerical and Typing grades, together with some 275,000 classified as members of the Minor and Manipulative grades. The great majority of the latter are employed in the Post Office, many of them as postmen and telegraphists, but some of them on Counter Clerk duties. The Industrial Civil Service numbers about 400,000 persons; it includes skilled and unskilled workers in the naval dockyards and Royal Ordnance Factories, building operatives, printers, drivers, and labourers, as well as the staff of the Engineering and Factories Departments of the Post Office, and many other manual grades. A detailed analysis of the various classes is given in Appendix 3.

6. The existing rules governing the political activities which may be under- taken by all these staffs are as follows:-

(i) Parliamentary candidature and service

7. Civil servants are generally disqualified by statute from sitting in the House of Commons. Since the Succession to the Crown Act, 1707, Parlia- ment has passed a series of enactments to avoid the conflict of duties which might be expected to arise if members of the House of Commons occupied positions as servants of the Executive. The law on the subject of "placemen" and "offices of profit" is complicated and in many respects obscure. It is, however, clear that Parliament's consistent policy has been to prevent members of the House of Commons from holding posts of the kind usually filled by civil servants. This principle has long been accepted as a fundamental feature of the British constitution.

8. Apart from the rules which Parliament has laid down regarding its own composition, the Civil Service also has its disciplinary regulations pro- hibiting Parliamentary candidature without prior resignation. These regula- tions have not always been comprehensive. A Treasury Minute of 1884, arising out of questions in Parliament at that time, said that the usage of the Public Departments had been for a civil servant seeking a seat in the House of Commons to resign his office as soon as he issued an address to the electors or in any other manner announced himself as a candidate ; and it declared this usage to be binding in the Treasury and in all other Departments which depended upon the Treasury for the regulation of their discipline. Later, in 1910, the rule was embodied in an Order in Council applicable to all His Majesty's civil establishments. In 1924 the Chancellor of the Exchequer appointed a committee under the chairmanship of Lord Blanesburgh to inquire into the position. The Blanesburgh Committee unanimously recommended that the existing ban on Parliamentary candidature