The Press Friday, September 5, 1930. Ministerial Authority.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20025, 5 September 1930, Page 10

The Press Friday, September 5, 1930. Ministerial Authority.

The Pnblic Petitions Committee's favourable report on the petitions of the five Post and Telegraph employees, dismissed last December, provoked the House to a long and occasionally astonishing discussion, to which the Postmaster-General's contribution in one way and Mr Vincent Ward's in another were the most remarkable. Mr Ward told the House that his father, when Prime Minister, had reviewed the case and discovered that the Postmaster-General had "no control "over the staff" of the Department, control being vested in the Secretary. The Solicitor-General, according to Mr Ward, had borne this out. If this is true, it appears to be a consequence of the Post and Telegraph Department Act, which removed the Department from the control of the Public Service Commissioner, and, in an immensely long clause, gave the Gover-nor-General wide powers of regulation by Order-in-Council. One part of the clause provides for the issue of regulations governing the investigation of misconduct and its punishment in various ways, including dismissal, so that, if the Postmaster-General has no authority, this can only be because the regulations in force allow him none. The regulations do, in fact, make the permanent head of the Department the absolute judge of the penalty to be inflicted for an admitted offence, or, after enquiry by his appointee(s), for one held to be proved. The amending Act of 1919 provides for the right of appeal to the Post and Telegraph Appeal Board; but the Minister i 3 nowhere endowed with, or assumed to have, even a limited power to review the evidence or the decision in any case at all. The permanent head's independence is nowhere modified by so muob aa a hint that he acts for the Minister and in the Minister's name. Of course authority which has been surrendered by one set of regulations can be resumed by another; but it will astound most people to find that a departmental officer, responsible to the Minister, has been armed with a weapon, for the use of which he is not responsible to the Minister, and which the Minister himself does not possess. This is a quite different matter from the safeguarding of appointments from political influence, for which object, with others, the Public Service Act, 1912, was passed, and the Commissioner made responsible only to Parliament. The question is one of Ministerial authority, and of the extent to which it has gradually slipped into official hands. Even if it turned out that Mr Ward was mistaken, and that the Postmaster-General is not so helpless, that would indicate that Mr Donald did not know where he stood; for if Mr Ward was wrong and Mr Donald knew that he was wrong, he could not have left the mistake uncorrected. One of the weaknesses and dangers imported by the growth of bureaucracy and government by regulation is that Ministers do not ahvaj's know where they stand, a fact which makes it all the easier for the officia.s to take and keep the initiative; and it was for this reason that Mr Atmore's remarks, soon after taking office, were useful and memorable. He said that he intended to assume full personal responsibility and to use his officers and advisers, not to be used by them. Whether the play has been worthy of the prologue is anothei thing; what i 3 important just now is that a Minister should have drawn attention, publicly and boldly, to the fact that Ministerial authority has been weakened and can only by a special effort be reasserted and fortified. Our own legislation ia now full of clauses which delate to bureaucracy an extensive power to regulate with the force of law, if not to over-ride the law; and this signifies what is most alarming in modem democracy, the breakdown of Parliament's supremacy. A little before his death Lord Halsbury contributed to the Sunday Times [Feb. 3rd, V 1929] an article in which be denounced the tefldeney to delegate "the powers, the "rights, and'... the duties of Parlia- " ment to an ever-increasing bureau"cracy" He pointed out that "legislation by rule" might mean a complete change of practical legislation, on a change of Government, without any reference to Parliament;.he showed that the Electric Supply Act, 1926, appointed a Board of irremovable members, endowed with virtually absolute powers, which they were authorised U delegate to other agents, still further remote from parliamentary and from popular control; and he justly condemned the outrageous breach of Parliamentary authority threatened by the Local Government Bill, a clause in which empowered the Minister to set aside any of the provisions of the Bill, .if he thought fit. Instead of facilitating these bureaucratic encroachments, in their carelessness or haste or laziness, Parliament and Ministers must steadily resist and refuse them; and perhaps they can be most effectively awakened to. a sense of "their duty by sudden illustrations, like Mr Ward's, of what happens when it is neglected.