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i ‘1561 Former Foreign Office "fo the first division of the Civil Service. There is difficulty in attracting all the officers we need for the Armed Services, i There is difficulty in staffing the local “government services. We cannot get sanitary inspectors, and we cannot get the specialists such as tax inspectors for the Civil Service, because industry and commerce are booming and offering far betier prospects. That is the difficulty behind the whole question of staffing. That_will be immensely emphasised for $the Foreign Service once we link the | Foreign Service with the Civil Service as a whole, coe ct oe What I wanted to talk about was not js much that general problem which the public services in general are facing as [: result of the present economic situa- tion, but rather the intake of the uy branch of the Foreign Service. - They are, of course, university recruits like those for the first division of the Civil Service. Like my hon. Friend the Mem- ber for Coventry, East I was struck by the articles that appeared recently in the “Manchester Guardian.” One of the points they made was the extreme variety ‘of interests for the Forcign Service now. They used a phrase like “Atoms, oil, internationa) payments” to illustrate the new and highly technical interests that the Service now has to deal with. Again, like my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East, I was struck by the fact that the reforms of the war years had destroyed a number of sources of expert knowledge — wilhout . replacing om Properly.- But, in general, we have been oducing rather more of these experts in Janguages and the affairs of particular regions, and these experts in matlers of “atoms, oil and international payments,” than we formerly did’ Since the war the universities have given fat more attention to these things, with the estab- lishment and development of the schools of African and Oriental Janguages—at London ‘University, for instance—and more attention to the Slav Janguages and cultures elsewhere. We have far more People who can be considered as replace- menis thao we had formerly. .-; ." - There is, however, very little sign that the Foreign Office has been making use of these new sources. Since the wat Fecruitment to Branch A seems to have been exactly of the sort that would justify the accusations of inbreeding and so on ube Officials LPoppearonce 1562. 7 NOVEMBER 1955 that are currently being made. J have not the figures for this year, but from 1945 © ~~ to 1954—up to and including last year’s - intake—426 appointments were made to the senior division of the Foreign Service. Leaving aside figures and turning to centages, I find that 77 per cent. of those - appointments were to graduates cf Oxford or Cambridge; 3 per cent. to graduates of London ; S percent. to Scot- tish graduates; 1 per cent: fo graduates ~~ > of all provincial universities; a very . -- small percentage 10 graduates of uni- versities outside this island —Ireland and New Zealand, for instance—and & Per cent. to candidates who had no uni- versity education at all i. icy ec. iceuje . Me. Godfrey Nicholson (Farnham)! To - - esent a fair picture, perhaps the hon lember would give similar figures of the candidates? sass” Loe Pa areas ‘Mr.’ MacPherson: That * point wai made previously, and the Joint Under- Secretary answered it in a way which ~~~ completely destroyed his own case. He said that the high Oxford and Cambridge figures reflected the high number of appli- cants from those universities, but the figures he gave for 1954 proved exactly the opposite. In 1954, of 30 vacancies in the senior branch, 28 were filled -by Oxford and Cambridge graduates. The hon. Gentleman stated that there were 287 applicants, of whom 221 came from Oxford and Cambridge, Now, 221 is aot to 287 as 28 is'to 30 but as 23 is to 30.° To other words. the proportion of Oxford and Cambridge appointments in the one year for which we have figures was very much greater than the proportion of - Oxford and Cambridge applicants, 1 think that that answers the hon. Member for Faroham,, 1,0. juytgcge tes neve 1 mention those figures because they - give some shadow of backing to the suge gestion that the Foreign Offic: is a kind of club, that there is a certain exclusive- ness about it After passing through « university one assumes that one will be thrown among psople of all sorts of . -- different types of education and coming from other types of universities. In the Foreign Office, however, appoiniees come from Oxford and Cambridge and are put =~ - Fight into the middle of a group of people | -- who also come from those two institu. tions. That must lead to some possibility of iobreeding, of narrowness of interest, | -. ae ed ‘ae meee eee Se a ae ee rts eee