The Press SATURDAY, AUGUST 15, 1942. Ministerial Responsibility

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23717, 15 August 1942, Page 4

The Press SATURDAY, AUGUST 15, 1942. Ministerial Responsibility

The South Island tour of the Hon. W. A. Bodkin, Minister of Civil Defence, has produced some very cheering comments on E.P.S. organisation, which, for example, he described as “ well on the way ” to perfection. Such an opinion is sure to be better sustained in some places than in others and better sustained anywhere in some respects than in others; but on the whole it is safe to say that Mr Bodkin has been too easily pleased. A recent statement by the Chief Warden and District Controller in the Christchurch area may be accepted as a sound corrective, because the extensive transfer of personnel from E.P.S. to Home Guard, which has seriously disorganised the Christchurch. services, must have had similar effects everywhere else. This, in fact, Mr Bodkin admitted; he reported the “general “ complaint ” that E.P.S. units have been “ sadly depleted.” But he touched this important issue without saying anything precise about it. Personnel was “coming up for “consideration”; the question was “ felt to be bound up with the “whole question of manpower”; and this whole question would “ have to be surveyed before any “ action can be taken.” Mr Poison, Mr McLagan, and Mr Bodkin, each with a diflerent field of service in mind, have all within the last week or two made references of this sort to the need for a survey of demands and for a classification of manpower to meet them. The public is perhaps entitled to assume that this task is at last to be done, comprehensively and not piecemeal. But the three Ministers who have spoken about it are not responsible for it. The Minister of National Service, who ought to be, has said nothing about it whatever. The uncertainty to which this fact points is, however, characteristic of a situation in which ministerial responsibilities so overlap that it is almost impossible to divide *Snd define them; and that situation is dangerous or absurd, or both. For example, apparently referring to the Mayor’s recent disclosure that the National Service Department had ordered continuous firewatching and that the order had not been obeyed in Christchurch, partly because men were not available, but also because the order Was considered unnecessary, Mr Bodkin said that the changing of the present policy in Christchurch would not be considered until the Government’s expert advisers had visited Christchurch and discussed the question. But the order which raised the question was not issued on Mr Bodkin’s authority but on Mr Broadfoot’s. It is not a matter of form but a matter of central responsibility whether it is in Mr Bodkin’s or in Mr Broadfoot’s province to open the issue again and decide it. The National Service Ministers Emergency Regulations of July 15, in a series of references to previous regulations, prescribe the functions of the Minister of National Service, the Minister of* Industrial Manpower, and the Minister of Civil Defence; but the complicated relations of these Ministers and of the Ministers of Defence and of War Co-ordination besides are not better organised by regulation than they were explained by the Prime Minister a fortnight earlier.