asked the Minister of Public Building and Works why an extra £425,000 has been allowed in his Department's Estimates for 1963–64 for increase of staff.

When the Service Departments transferred to the Ministry of Public Building and Works the staffs directly engaged in works services, they were unable to transfer all the people concerned in supply services, accounting and other ancillary operations. The latter were occupied for only part of their time with works services. £452,000 was the estimated cost of filling the gaps left in the organisation.

Surely the point of amalgamation was to make more efficient use of staff and to make economies in staff. In that case, would it not have been better to have had a much smaller increase in the Ministry of Works and to use those people in the military Departments later rather than make them redundant?

I do not think any redundancy is involved in this. These are non-industrial staff. This is, in some ways, in the nature of a bookkeeping transaction because any economies will be shown in the Estimates of the Service Departments.