AIR MINISTRY

Waikato Times, Volume 92, Issue 14256, 6 January 1920, Page 3

AIR MINISTRY

DISCLOSURES OF FRAUD. Startling disclosures are made in the latest report of the Britsih Select Committee on National Expenditure which was lately issued as a White Paper. It deals principally with affairs affecting the Air Ministry. Some twenty-nine witnesses were examined, and as the result of the investigation the report says;— ‘‘Your committee are of opinion the I a very unsatisfactory state of affairs has been revealed. In their opinion, when cases of negligence or of fraud have been discovered, action should be taken against the offenders regardless of whether they are officials of the Department or not.” Evidence of a remarkable character was given by Sir John Hunter, Administrator of Works and Buildings. He told the members that, speaking generally, no man of the 70,000 engaged on the work of the erection of the aerodromes had earned the money he received, and he went on to give details of a specific case in which, he alleged, there had been a conspiracy. This was at Renfrew, and he charged Government Ba«n and contractor’s men with regularly drawing money as wages for men who did not exist. He had four men arrested, but the Lord Advocate declined to order a prosecution, on the ground that, the evidence available was not sufficient to afford any strong probability of obtaining a conviction. The men were accordingly freed. The letter from the Lord Advocate’s secretary put forward the following additional reason for not taking action;— “Further, a prosecution would reveal what appears to be inefficiency and absence of control on the part of the representatives of the Ministry on the spot.” Sir John Hunter went on to state that from the investigations made.by a firm ■ of measurers it appeared that there j was “a sum of about £60,000 charged j by the contractors to the job which t cannot be accounted for,” and that he had applied to the War Office asking them to court-martial an officer employed by the Air Ministry on the same contract whom he suspected of fraud, but that they refused to take any action, and informed him that he ought to take criminal proceedings. Revelations of an equally eitraordi- ” r'Ty character are made in the report j r-lating to a clothing contract for the j Women’s Royal Air Force. Briefly, the j story told to the Committee by Miss: O’Sullivan, the Clothing Controller of] the foree, was that a contract for] 60,000 garments was given to a Manchester firm whose patterns had been rejected in favour, of those of another establishment; that the deliveries were not up to sample; and that she found that the coat-frocks were being cut on the bias, instead of on the straight, a eonrse which, if pursued, would have resulted in a saving to the advantage of the contractor of three-quarters of a yard per garment. The committee’s comment regarding the Lord Advocate is that “they regret very much that he should have taken up the position that he did.”