TNA MT 40 36 Pt 2

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10 June, 1941.
The Secretary,
Ministry of War Transport.
Sir,
The Committee appointed by authority of your minute
of the 7th June, 1940, to deal with claims arising out of the
Operation "Dynamo", has now finished its work, subject to the
exceptions mentioned at the close of this report.
The Committee has met on nineteen occasions, and,
with the exception that Mr. G.J. Allen succeeded Mr. W. Robson
as Chairman in July on the latter's departure for Blackpool,
Juny every
has retained its original membership throughout. The Committee
also dealt with claims arising from operations "Cycle" and
"Aerial". The statement appended shows the number and character
of the cases dealt with, and the expenditure authorised.
The claims received fell roughly into three major
classes:-
1. Hire and expenses
2. Repairs and Replacement
3. Compensation for Total Loss.
So far as expenses other than total loss were concerned
the procedure of the Committee was to authorise the Secretary
to deal with clearly defined and straightforward cases, in
consultation with technical or other competent officers of the
Department, payments made being scheduled and reported to the
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Committee for covering approval. This procedure prevented the
Committee's agenda being crowded by masses of items on which
no question of principle arose and enabled claims to be met
expeditiously. It was also arranged, in the hope of avoiding
delay in the settlement of claims of this nature from fishermen
whose boats were ordered to prepare and stand by for the
Officers of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries should be
subsequent operations "Cycle" and "Aerial", that the Fishery
authorised to settle them on behalf of the Department. But the
experiment was not so successful as was hoped, owing to some
reluctance, on the part of the officers concerned, to deal with
claims without specific authority; and it was some time before
the scheme came into full operation. In the end, however, it
worked well and enabled claims to be considered with the minimu
of correspondence, by officers who were in the best position
to deal with cases where decision often depended on
circumstantial rather than direct evidence.
In cases dealt with by the Committee direct, it was
generally possible to obtain evidence of payment in the case
of wages and stores and the process of dealing with claims was
comparatively simple. AB regards the loss of equipment, howev
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