IN THE CHAIR.

Chairman.

2. Our first business is an Excess Vote of the Board of Trade which requires a Report to the House before it can be dealt with. If the Committee will turn to the Civil Service Appropriation Accounts, they will find mention of this matter at the top of page viii in the Comptroller and Auditor General's Report. The details are shown on page 167, and it refers to an over-spending by £1,850 108. 8d. Will you tell us, Mr. Mead Taylor, how this arises?-(Mr. Mead Taylor.) It arises mainly from our inability to foresee the increase of backruptcy business. I have made a note here, for the Committee's information, of the number of Receiving Orders made in the last three years. In the year 1921

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there were 3,495 Receiving Orders; in 1922 there were 4,806; in 1923 (the year in question) there were 5,099. That increase, as a matter of fact, is 6 per cent. on the year 1922; and the increase of expenditure is 1.24 over that estimated.

3. In which of the sub-heads of the Account would these Receiving Orders be shown? The Receiving Orders indicats the volume of business which the Bankruptcy Department had to deal with; in other words, it had to deal with 1,400 more Receiving Orders in 1922 as compared with the preceding year, and it had to deal with 293 more in 1923 than in the preceding year.

4. The chief excess seems to be under Sub-head G: Stationery and Printing, £4,200. Has that any direct relation to the

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number of Receiving Orders?—That has, because printing has to be done in every case of a bankruptcy; forms have to be printed and circulated, and so forth, and that stationery item has a direct relation; but I ought to tell the Committee that, to a small extent, that excess was due to arrears of stationery charges which we received from the Stationery Office; but, in the main, the stationery and printing line moves up and down with the number of Receiving Orders.

5. Has there been any increased revenue from fees?-Yes.

6. Which was not foreseen?—There was an increased revenue from fees to which attention is drawn by the Comptroller and Auditor General in paragraph 16, page viii: "There was a considerable increase during the year in the revenue from fees consequent upon the volume of bankruptcy business."

7. Are any steps taken by the Board of Trade to keep in touch with the local conditions as to printing, so as to make sure that the probable expenditure will be provided for in the Estimate?-We keep in touch in this way: that the expenditure every month is reported to me personally, under all Votes, and under this Vote too; and that expenditure month by month, as it accumulates, is brought to my notice, but, if I may use the expression, at the end of the year one has to rake in all the charges; and it was only when those charges came in that this excess was discovered.

8. Was it not possible to go a bit slow on this printing towards the end of the year, or was it that you did not have proper notice?-Every case has to be dealt with under the Act; that is to say, notices to creditors have to go out within so many days, and meetings have to be convened, and all that work has to go on.

Sir Henry Craik.

9. I do not understand this Account at all. What is the meaning of subhead K. Appropriations-in-Aid? I presume that is fees, is it? (Sir Malcolm Ramsay.) Yes.

10. Does that mean that your Estimate was realised down to £1: £149,486?Parliament authorised the Board of Trade to appropriate in aid of the expenditure only £149,486 out of the fees received, and they had no power to apply fees received in excess of the amount specified in the Appropriation Act in reduction of

expenditure. There were, as a matter of fact, fees realised in excess of that amount, but they cannot be brought into the account as Appropriations-in-aid.

11. What is the meaning, then, Sir Maleclm, of saying, in paragraph 16 of your Report, "As stated in previous Reports, however, the income of the Bankruptcy Fees Account had, in recent years, been insufficient to meet the whole cost of bankruptcy administration "?That is so. This Vote does not show the whole cost of bankruptcy administration. There are enough fees to cover the whole of the expenses charged against this Vote, but other expenses connected with bankruptcy administration are incurred

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other Votes, and the fees were insufficient to pay those.

12. But this does not show us how that is. We have not the material here for comparing the total amount of fees with the total amount of expenditure?—There are statements in the Appropriation Accounts which will be before the Committee, and which are before the Committee now, which show the total position in respect of fees.

13. Can you tell me what it is that guides you in this Appropriation-inAid of £149,486?-The account, of course. is fixed by Parliament in the Appropriation Act; and the Estimate, which Mr. Taylor will explain better than I, is framed on the assumption that you will have directly charged against this Vote, so much gross expenditure, and the practice is to appropriate out of the fees received, which usually exceed the gross expenditure, so much as will meet the gross expenditure, leaving a token sum to be voted by Parliament.

14. The theory, I suppose, is that the total expenditure should not exceed, but should be covered by the fees. You do not propose that the Bankruptcy Court should be a charge on the Exchequer?No, and by and large, I think Mr. Taylor will bear me out, the cost of bankruptcy administration has been met by fees. Latterly, owing to special causes, there has been a falling off, and the Bankruptcy Department is still in debt, on balance over the last few years, to the Exchequer; but some progress has been made towards wiping it out.

15. You think it will not be necessary to increase the fees; that you will be able to do this without any increase of fees?(Mr. Mead Taylor.) That is what we anticipate.