[Continued.

2019. Do you function for the Post Office now in respect of Class 2 Engineering Offices?-We function for the Post Office for all furniture required in their Class 1, Class 2 Engineering and their Survey Branches; in fact all the furniture required for the Post Offices is supplied by my Department.

2020. That has happened since this Report was published?—Yes, as regards In addition, Class 2 since the Report.

as a matter of interest, we have quite recently, as you will notice from the Estimates, taken over all the furniture and stores which previously had been purchased by the Home Office themselves for prisons. That all comes over to us and we issue out of our bulk contracts. This has happened quite recently, and you will see an appropriate note under "Public Buildings " in the current year's Estimates.

had no executive powers, they had to report to the War Office.

is

Chairman.

2027. But the Technical Co-ordinating Committee committee technical a the three Service representative of Departments; and you are also represented on it, are you not?-No, we are not represented on it.

2028. Do you mean to say you are not represented on the Technical Co-ordinating Committee on General Stores ?As this matter regards particular which we were discussing, furniture: we had no representation on the Committee. I was called in. They wrote to the Office of Works and asked whether somebody could attend to answer questions about furniture, and I was sent and had a long meeting with them.

a

2029. But are you referring to special ad hoc Technical Committee set up during the Mond-Weir Inquiry, or are you referring to the Standing Technical Committee which appointed on one of the recommendations of this Inquiry?-I am referring to the Inter-Departmental Technical Committee on General Stores.

was

were

2030. That is one of the five Technical Co-ordinating Committees which definitely established as the result of the recommendations in this Report?-Yes.

2031. Do you mean to tell me that the Office of Works is not represented on that Committee?-I have an idea that we had on the subrepresentation, but not Committee which dealt with furniture. 2032. It still exists?-Yes, it does. If you will excuse me a moment, I think I have a letter here which will clear that There point up. I have a note here. was an official letter addressed to the War Office by the Office of Works in November, 1923, in which it states: "With reference to your letter relative. to the formation of a Buildings and Fitments Sub-Committee of the InterCo-ordinating Departmental Technical

Committee on General Stores, I beg to nominate Mr. MacIntyre." It seems to me that the position then is that this Committee which you have just said was set up as the result of the Mond-Weir Committee, has no representative of the Office of Works, but a Sub-Committee of theirs, on Buildings and Fitments, has. Sir Arthur Durrant has just corrected

23 June, 1926.]

me; my impression is that we had no representation, but Sir Arthur thinks we had. (Sir Arthur Durrant): Sir Frank Baines, I think, is on that.

2033. Sir Frank Baines is Chairman of a Co-ordinating Committee, just as you are Chairman of a Co-ordinating Committee, but none of those, I understand, are technical Committees. They were two other Committees which were set up in reference to Works and Buildings? -I think myself that this must be a SubCommittee appointed by Sir Frank

[Continued.

the Committee meets.-Yes, I will. The reply to Mr. Bennett's question I think is this: The Technical Committee, which the Chairman has just referred to, did definitely recommend that the Office of Works should purchase furniture for the Service Departments. The War Office, to whom I understand that recommendation went, did not agree and they gave as their chief reason that the imposition of the administrative charge of 7 per cent. altered the whole complexion of the business. I ventured to disagree with that on the ground that it was purely a paper transaction, but in spite of that disagreement the position since is the same as it was in 1924, and that is, that we are, strangely enough functioning for the War Office on furniture matters, in so far as we equip for them all their residences for General Officers Commanding throughout the country; but we do not buy the furniture which they need for their buildings, their barracks, their offices and their hospitals.

2037. But you do for the Air Ministry and the Admiralty?-For the Air Ministry we do not buy all their furniture, but we buy very large quantities. They do give certain orders, I know, to the War Office. What the reason is I have never inquired. As regards the Admiralty, we supply very small quantities of standard office furniture.

Mr. Bennett.

2038. Do you charge a 7 per cent. overhead for the work you do for the War Office?-Yes; every service which we carry out, whether for the War Office or any other Government Department is subject to that charge.

2039. What makes the War Office distinguish between certain work and other work? That is a matter I prefer you would put to them, if you do not mind. I do not know.

Mr. Ramsden.

2040. I suppose really the War Office could go to the same manufacturers and buy exactly the same articles that you would buy and they would be debited to them in effect at 7 per cent. less?-The answer to that is, I think, that if the War Office go to Messrs. X. for, we will say, 100 tables and if we go to Messrs. X. for 100 tables, it is extremely probable that the prices will not be so good as if

we or the War Office go to Messrs. X. for 200 tables. Therefore it does not follow that if they went to the same contractor for the quantity of furniture which they needed, they would get a price lower than ours by 7 per cent.

2041. There are many other articles, are there not, where they would pay exactly the same price?-There are certain proprietary articles where there would be no difference. Certain firms, as you know of course, would charge the same to us as to the War Office, but the articles we have in mind in going into this question of furniture are not proprietary articles.

Mr. Bennett.

2042. Really the point is that economy would come more through standardisation ?-Standardisation and unification of design, unification of inspection, and so forth, and increased quantities, of

course.

Captain Bourne.

2043. Do you supply furniture for the War Office itself?-Headquarters,

yes.

2044. And the Horse Guards?—Yes, we do. The Horse Guards comes, I believe, under the Eastern Command. The Eastern Command are very often coming to us and asking us to supply furniture under, I presume, their local purchase powers. I have a note here of certain goods we supplied them with quite recently. That is interesting in view of your question. We have supplied them with £430 worth of furniture during the last year; we have conducted a removal for them; we have carried out certain repairs of furniture for them, and we have supplied them with complete equipment for a Committee Room at 14, Grosvenor Gardens.

Sir Fredric Wise.

2045. And in each case you have added on 7 per cent. ?-Yes, that follows every time. We always put that on automatically.

Chairman.

2046. That 7 per cent. I find on looking at your Estimates is shown as appropriations in aid, receipts in respect of salaries and expenses of staff engaged

[Continued.

on recoverable services during the war, £71,900. Is that the item you are referring to?-Yes, that is the item.

2047. Is that, roughly speaking, supposed to cover the cost of your Supplies Division? No, that would cover the whole Department.

2048. There are other receipts in respect of establishment, clerks of works, are there not? That is so, but I think you will find that that £71,900 would not be amounts exclusively due to my Division.

2049. But it would be primarily due to that? Yes.

Mr. Bennett.

2050. Are you on the Clothing and Textile Committee?-I think you asked a question of Sir Frank Baines about it, and I have brought the reply. You wanted to know whether we were represented on the Co-ordinating Committee for Equipment and Textiles; yes, I have a representative on that. And you also asked whether cloth purchases are made in co-ordination with purchases of cloth made by other Departments. My reply to that is no, for this reason, that the small quantity of cloth which I purchase is for the Ministry of Labour Training Centres, and is not in any sense service cloth. It is ordinary cloth such as ex-service men can work up into suits and so forth. It is very cheap tweed.

Chairman.

2051. How about Government messengers? Do you supply the cloth for Government messengers?-No; the supply for messengers is done by the Post Office.

2052. Why?-I think the real reasonand I think it is a pretty sound oneis that the Post Office had a very large contract for postmen's uniforms and when the question cropped up as to which Department had better supply the messengers' uniforms I think it was felt they might just as well add it on to their own contract.

2053. Is it the same blue cloth ?-It is very similar. I am not quite sure it is the same.

2054. If it is the same obviously there might be a saving, but if it is different there is no possible reason why they should purchase it at all?-Except that, of course, they must have tremendous

[Continued.

contracts for making up, and that is where the advantage, I think, would come. I think it is perfectly sound.

Mr. Ramsden.

2055. You said you bought cloth in certain quantities. Do you buy that from the manufacturers?-No; generally from factors, because the quantities would be so small that you could not go to the manufacturers.

2056. What quantities do you buy; can you give me an idea? We might buy half a piece of one quality or we might buy as little as two suit lengths of another, and so forth.

2057. Never in large quantities?—No. As a matter of fact when we started we got out a very comprehensive specification when the Ministry of Labour training centres were booming, and we tried to induce manufacturers to come in, but the difficulty was that at these training centres they wanted to courage people to go in and order suits to encourage these people to make up something useful instead of making up something which was going to be destroyed; and the result was they had to have a fairly wide selection of tweeds suitable for ordinary everyday use.

Chairman.

en

2058. Are you talking about training centres for disabled men?-Yes, the Ministry of Labour ex-service men training centres.

Mr. Bennett.

2059. Are your clothing purchases entirely confined to that?-Yes.

2060. Then it is not worth troubling about?-No.

Chairman,

2061. Have you bought any cloth for men who are training as agricultural labourers?—No, we buy the clothing made up. I am just buying at the moment corduroy trousers for them to wear for use in the field, but they are all bought as made up articles.

2062. It must be a very small thing? Yes. There are only about 100 men and we buy at very low prices, because we are picking up, wherever we can, Government surplus goods.

2064. You do not supply furniture for the War Office for abroad, do you?-No. 2065. Or for any of the other Service Departments?-No. If this thing went through we should.

2066. You do not supply even for the Air Ministry abroad?—Yes, we send to Iraq; we are just sending at the moment some wardrobes in steel.

2067. Only in Iraq?-Yes.

2068. Not any other places where the Air Ministry may have people?-It would be wrong of me to say no, because I do not know. My own impression is that if the Air Ministry want furniture for any of their stations they would come to us.

2069. But not the Admiralty nor the War Office?-No.

2070. And you could easily undertake that work, I take it?-It would sandwich in of course with our ordinary diplomatic work. We are furnishing diplomatic buildings all over the world and there is no reason why we should not do so for other stations.

[Continued.

2084. In your experience are these Coordinating Committees really doing any good? Yes, I think they are. I think there is a very useful scope before them as standing Committees for all time, because things are changing so rapidly in the commercial world that unless you have some useful medium for comparing notes and so forth we shall never be up to date.

2085. In your experience are there not too many of them overlapping?—No, I do not think so. I think the division as regards the articles covered is pretty sound.

no.

Chairman.

2086. There is no Co-ordinating Committee as regards the purchase of coal, is there? I would answer that, yes and It is yes in this respect: In the early part of this year the question cropped up as to co-ordination of fuel, and I sent my Chief Technical Officer for Fuel to a meeting which was attended also by representatives from the War Office, the Admiralty and the Air Ministry; and a certain report was made of the proceedings, and I have the notes on my table at the moment to peruse. There is something in co-ordination on fuel, perhaps not much, in fact nothing like so much as on furniture, but there is, I believe, room for unification of purchase in certain districts.

2087. But there is not anything in existence at the moment. You mean something is being considered ?—Yes, there is something coming along.

2088. Would you tell us on whose behalf you purchase coal and coke?— You mean to say which are the Departments?

2089. Yes. Do you supply all Government offices, for instance ?-Yes, we supply all Government offices throughout the country, and of course the charge is on our own Vote.

2092. And it is shown as a sub-head in their Votes?-Allied Services, it would be.

2093. Do you supply the local offices; for instance, do you supply local Labour Exchanges of the Ministry of Labour? -Yes.

2094. Or is that done by local contract? -We are responsible for it, but in many cases it would be done by local contracts made by us.

2095. You make them, not they?-Yes. we make them. Local contracts are