I think this question of fees is one that gives the Commission some little difficulty. Part of the object in charging the fee is to recoup, to some extent at any rate, the expenses of the Commission. Another is really to reduce the number of candidates to those who are really serious. If you had no fee at all in certain cases you would have a great number. Even with the fee, if anybody will look at the lists he will see that there are great numbers of people who enter and who are quite hopeless. Without the fee the costs would be put up, and not only the costs, but the number of papers to be examined. The number of people to be accommodated in examination halls would go up enormously, and not only would increase the expenses, but waste time, and, to some extent, would tend to interfere with the efficiency of the examinations. While very little is stated in the advertisements about the qualifications for a post, because advertisements are costly, I think that when a candidate applies for the conditions and for the particulars he does receive a good deal of information before it is necessary for him to pay the fee. I shall give the Deputy a list of the fees for Civil Service examinations. For an officer in the Customs and Excise the fee is £2, and the salary scale £110 to £350; the same fee is charged for the junior executive examination, where the scale is £90 to £350; £1 is charged for the clerical officers examination, where the salary scale is £70 to £200; 10/- is the fee for shorthand typists, whose scale is from 24/- to 38/-; 10/- for writing assistants, where the salary scale is 17/- to 34/-, and 2/- for Post Office learners and boy messengers. Some of these fees seem relatively high, but of course the posts, as posts go in this country, are valuable enough, and even with these fees there is a very big entry, and, of course, there is a considerable entry of people who are not at all in the running. A reduction, while it might be justified from one angle, would cause loss in revenue. Perhaps you might make it up by getting larger numbers, but that would be hardly a good thing, because it is hard enough to get the papers dealt with at present in a reasonable time and by a reasonable number of people, and an enormous spreading out of the number of candidates, especially those who are not serious candidates, would increase the difficulty.