etc., for terms of one year and upwards should be advertised without any obligation as to acceptance of the lowest tender, and that the less important should be decided by a more limited competition under special invitation. 17. It has been the practice of the Stationery Office almost from its establishment to divide the contracts between bookwork and jobwork, bookwork being the printing of books, pamphlets, etc., and jobwork the more miscellaneous printing of forms, notices, etc. Bookwork printing has throughout been the subject of separate contracts, and the same system applied to jobwork until the year 1855, when the jobwork printing was divided between several firms, working under verbal agreements only, at a common rate of payment based on that which had been allowed under the previous general contract. This practice continued until 1875, during which year all the forms in use in the various Departments were revised by the Stationery Office, with the co-operation of the Departments concerned. After the. elimination of expensive forms of type and reductions in size, the revised matter was divided into groups which were submitted to competition between printing houses, the contracts being placed with the lowest tenderers. 18. Until 1886 printing for the Houses of Parliament was not done through the Stationery Office although the bills for payment had been examined by officers of the Department from the year 1882, but in that year a resolution was passed in both Houses condemning as inexpedient the employment of a separate printer for each House working independently of, and without reference to, other Government contracts, and directing that the practice should be discontinued at the first convenient opportunity. Arrangements were made accordingly for closing all the important Government bookwork printing contracts, with the exception of that for Bills and Acts, at the close of that year. The work was then divided into groups including, without distinction, printing for Parliament and for the various Departments, and tenders were invited by public advertisement. Considerable savings were effected as a result of this amalgamation. 19. On and from the same year (1886) it was arranged that the paper required under all the various printing contracts would in future be supplied by the Stationery Office and not, as heretofore, by the printing contractors. 20. From 1886 to the period of the late War the only modifications of moment in the contract methods followed by the Stationery Office arose from steps which were taken in 1896 (in accordance with the findings of the Departmental Committee on Stationery Office Contracts) with a view to dividing the printing work amongst a greater number of contractors and to give provincial contractors opportunities of competing on equal terms with the London printing houses. To effect this, the work was broken up into smaller groups, in order that the work under any contract might be within the capacity of any printer of standing. It was on the occasion of this revision that the Fair Wages Resolution of the House of Commons in 1891, which in previous contracts had been printed on the face of the contract with only a note drawing attention to it, was made a specific condition of the enjoyment of the contract. 21. Very substantial additions to the State's expenditure on printing were caused by the social legislation of the first two decades of the present century, such as Old Age Pensions, Health and Unemployment Insurance, which required the issue of vast quantities of literature, cards and stamps. 22. The outbreak of the War in August, 1914, occasioned a great increase in the volume of work falling on the Stationery Office. In addition to the enlarged scope of the existing Ministries the requirements of entirely new services, e.g., the Ministry of Food, the Ministry of Munitions, had to be met. The increase in the volume of the work of the department during the war period may be gauged in a measure by the following comparison of demands received : Year 1913-14 157,059 715,296 These figures, however, do not give a complete picture, since during the war period the demands contained many more individual items, and the quantities of these individual items were greatly increased as compared with the pre-war period. 23. The issue of Treasury Currency Notes, for the manufacture of which the Inland Revenue Department was made responsible, was taken in hand during the first week of the War. These Notes have been printed from the commencement in the works of private firms; from time to time reductions in the prices paid for their production have been negotiated with the contractors. The issue of War Savings Certificates (now known as National Savings Certificates) led to additional printing. 24. With the exception of stamp and security printing, the cost of which is borne by the Post Office and the Inland Revenue respectively, the main State expenditure on printing appears annually in the Stationery Office Vote, which, with the gradual extension of the number of Departments served by the Stationery Office, and of their requirements, has increased as follows :— 25. The work of the Stationery Office and the Government printing works established during the War came under the review of a Committee on National Expenditure in 1922-23. The Committee stated in their Report that the increase in the Stationery Office Vote over pre-war expenditure represented far more than the rise of prices and the normal growth of Departments during the intervening period; new Departments had been created mainly in connection with social legislation whose requirements were "from the nature of their functions and organisation much heavier than those of the older Departments"; the partial substitution of State printing for contract work was effected by the establishment by the Stationery Office of its own printing works, "though, unlike a commercial firm, its business is to restrict output within the smallest possible compass"; new items of expenditure had arisen, e.g., printing under the Representation of the People Act, 1918 (estimated to cost £500,000 in 1922–23); and there had also been a large increase in the volume of Parliamentary records consequent on the extension of the Committee system in Parliament. 26. The Committee on National Expenditure were of opinion that economies in the various Departments, as recommended in their Reports, would effect a reduction of £150,000 in the Vote for Printing and Stationery for 1922-23. Actually, it was found possible to reduce the estimate by £220,000. The Committee also suggested a modification of the procedure under the Representation of the People Act, 1918, which, in their opinion, would, whilst retaining the principle of a half-yearly register, lead to a saving in expenditure on printing of some £85,000. This recommendation was duly considered but was then not adopted by the Government.j 27. From 1922-23 onwards the Vote for Stationery and Printing has been as follows: 28. A detailed estimate (under the Subheads of the Stationery Office Vote) of the amount required during the year 1925-26 to defray the costs of providing stationery, printing, paper, binding and printed books for the Public Service and for sundry miscellaneous services, including Reports of Parliamentary Debates, is given in Appendix I. The total provision under Subheads E to H of the Vote for 1925-26, which cover the costs of paper, †The Economy Act, 1926, has since substituted an annual register for the half-yearly register. printing, binding, books and maps, for each of the principal services for which the Stationery Office is responsible, was as follows: * The amounts included in these totals in respect of services executed by the Stationery Office on a repayment basis were estimated as follows :— 29. As will be seen from the above table, the provision for printing in the Stationery Office Vote for 1925-26 was £1,078,000. This figure includes, however, £309,000 for the Voters' Lists and excluding this amount the total estimated expenditure is £769,000. The corresponding figure for 1913-14, after allowing for expenditure on Irish services, was £470,000. The increase over the pre-war figure is 64 per cent. Having regard to the great increase in wages which has taken place in the printing trade in the period, roughly 120 per cent., and to the considerable extension of Government activities, the increase shown is unexpectedly small. 30. A review of Government printing would be incomplete without reference to the alternative methods of production by duplicating; but for the adoption of these methods by the Stationery Office during recent years the State's printing bill would be of larger proportions than is the case at present. (ii) Summary of Present State Printing Requirements. 31. The sum of £1,078,000 allocated to Subhead F, Printing, includes the estimated cost (£31,000) of the production of charts (dealt with in Chapter VII of our Report); excluding this item, the net sum estimated to be expended by the Stationery Office in 1925-26 on general printing was, therefore, £1,047,000. (In addition to this sum, an expenditure of approximately £28,000 per annum is incurred on general printing by minor Departmental presses, some £13,500 is spent by the Stationery Office on an agency service basis and miscellaneous items account for a further £33,000.) 32. The cost of producing stamps, Currency Notes and other forms of security printing is borne on the Votes of the Post Office (approximately £80,000 per annum) and the Inland Revenue Department (about £167,000 per annum). An analysis of this expenditure is given below, showing the nature and approximate annual cost of the State printing at the present time, with the exception of maps and charts which are dealt with in Chapter VII of our Report. We are informed that exclusive of the cost of paper and the cost of compilation which covers editorial expenses, the cost is approximately £1,368,500 per annum; the chief items included in this expenditure are as follows: (1) Stationery Office. (An analysis of the approximate net expenditure Department by Department of the Public Service is given in Appendix I) Work executed on an agency service basis (2) War Office. (i) Ordnance Committee Press, Woolwich (ii) Instructional Press (R.E.), Chatham (iii) Miscellaneous Military Presses (3) Admiralty. Ship and Station Presses (4) Post Office Savings Bank Press (5) Museums and Galleries. (Catalogues, Picture Postcards, etc.) (6) Board of Trade. 11,000 2,000 13,000 |