asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury whether service in C.D. or the N.F.S. will be reckonable towards the present two years' qualifying period required of recruits for established posts in the Civil Service.

No, Sir. The primary requirement is two years' experience of actual Civil Service work; but while service in the Armed Forces, the corresponding Women's Services, the Merchant Navy or the Mercantile Marine intervening between two periods of actual Civil Service work is being allowed to reckon towards the qualifying period, I am sorry to say it is not practicable to extend this arrangement more widely.