ALLEGEND FRAUDS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 75, 25 September 1941, Page 10

ALLEGEND FRAUDS

WAR PRODUCTION

FALSIFICATION BY CONTRACTORS

INQUIRY IN BRITAIN

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.)

(Rec. 2 p.m.) LONDON, Sept. 24.

Scotland Yard is investigating alleged widespread frauds by builders carrying out Government contracts for the war and damage repairs for local councils, and a number of prosecutions are pending. The "Daily Telegraph" says that some contractors who are working on a guaranteed profit of 10 to 12J per cent, on cost are said to have shown in their books as employees the names of dozens of men who do not exist, and that many cases are reported of builders obtaining council contracts although they have only one gang who work a few hours in each district, the employers receiving payment for fulltime gangs in each area. Architects checking up on repairs for which builders have claimed payment have found that they have been shoddily carried out or that they have not even been started. I Collusion between builders and j householders to obtain excessive payment from the War Damages Department is also being investigated. ■ "It is an unpleasant truth that war | production in the engineering indus- j tries, measured by the square foot of j factory space and by pound weight of, products per man, has declined," said Mr. E. Gordon England, chairman of the Engineering Industries Association, j at' a special meeting of war production engineers in London. "The. principal cause is the lack of a comprehensive plan for the-full use of productive capacity during, every available manhour, both" managerial and operative, and the result is inefficiencies and muddles. We urgently need a new conception of relationship between the Government and industry with a. view to an all-embracing plan for production." NEED FOR PROPER BALANCE OF LABOUR. Mr. England said that from his knowledge of Government Departments and the difficulty of getting equitable financial arrangements it was astonishing that small businesses were able to contribute anything to production, yet half the country's production force consisted of units of fewer than 250 persons. He suggested that the fighting services showed the same lack^ of knowledge* of the science of production as the production departments. The services held the erroneous idea that constant change of design was a military necessity. The military must be made to know that a man with a gun •was vastly superior to a man with only a promise of a,gun. In the near future the same, argument would be applied to those responsible for aircraft design. Production would languish until the Government realised the need for a proper balance of labour. It was the Rardest thing in the world to get anything, done for the benefit of men and women in industry and for the improvement of working conditions.