Number of Land Forces.

Part of Orders of the Day — Supply. – in the House of Commons at on 15 March 1926.

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Photo of Mr Worthington Evans Mr Worthington Evans , Colchester

We have had a very interesting Debate, which has ranged over an unusually large number of subjects, and I have been given enough material, if I were to reply to every question in anything like detail, to keep the Committee for a longer period than the Committee would willingly remain. I rather fancy that that is a tribute to the form in which the Estimates are presented this year, which has apparently enabled hon. Members to dig out from the pages of the Estimates all these questions, and to speak with an amount of information upon the subjects they have raised which has been sadly lacking in previous years. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ince (Mr. Walsh), my predecessor, opened the Debate with copious quotations judiciously extracted from a. former volume of the OFFICIAL REPORT, and he was kind enough to add to his quotations at my request. When he was dealing with the form of the Estimates, he, of course, quoted the fact that I had urged him to come to a decision upon this subject. I asked him to add to those quotations, and he pointed out that what I had said, at the moment when I was speaking two years ago, vas that there were two systems of accounts running in the War Office—there was the so-called unit system or cost accounting system, and there was the Vote-head system.

These two systems were quite separate systems, quite different and incompatible with each other. They were run side by side in the War Office, and, because they brought out totally different results, there was a still further section in the Finance Branch of the War Office engaged in nothing else but reconciling these two irreconcilable systems. Whatever happened, I felt that it was utterly and absolutely impossible to justify the continuance of that process, which certainly involved a great expenditure for no useful purpose. Being much attracted, and I am going to say so, by the unit or cost accounting system, after the experience I had had in the Ministry of Munitions, where the cost accounting system undoubtedly saved enormous sums of money in the manufacture of the various articles that were required in the War—being much enamoured of that, I said, "No, I will not scrap the cost accounting system; we will have it thoroughly inquired into by the strongest committee that I can design," and, as Secretary of State for War, I appointed the Lawrence Committee; and I do not wonder that the right hon. Gentleman or anybody else takes me to task and asks me, when I was in favour of it, and when I set up a committee which finally reported in favour of it, why on earth I apparently changed my mind, and—as the right hon. Gentleman said, wrongly—scrapped the system and apparently made a. complete volte-face. Let me tell hon. Members exactly—