Orders of the Day — Growth of Bureaucracy

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 29 January 1968.

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Photo of Mr Eustace Willis Mr Eustace Willis , Edinburgh East 12:00, 29 January 1968

I do not necessarily accept that. There is an enormous amount of waste in industry, just as there is anywhere else. All large-scale organisation is inevitably prone to this.

What we have to ask ourselves is not so much whether we have increased the Civil Service as what are the nature of the jobs that it is doing and whether certain jobs are necessary. Having had some experience at the Scottish Office, I would say that the jobs are necessary. On one occasion there was an examination of the number of civil servants employed by the Scottish Office, the number having risen since we took office. We wanted to ensure that the increase was justified. I found that the biggest increase in my Department was in the prison officer staff. Do hon. Members opposite say that we should reduce the number of prison officers? The fact is that we require more prison accommodation and more prison staff. All prisons in Scotland are overcrowded. Indeed, speeches were made at the weekend about young offenders not having proper accommodation.

Another big increase that I found was in respect of office cleaning. We had taken over a big block of offices in Edinburgh in order to give the civil servants proper working conditions and to enable the work of the Government to be conducted more efficiently than it was being conducted in a dozen or more offices scattered about the city. It is necessary to examine these things and look at the numbers employed.

There has been a big increase because of the setting up of the Land Commission. But the electorate voted to have something done to prevent exploitation in land values. It might be that the policy that we put forward was not the right one, though I think it was. At all events, it was something that the people supported. If we had not done it, hon. Members opposite would have condemned us. That is the kind of double talk that we have from them.