BRITISH MINISTER RESIGNS

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27408, 22 July 1954, Page 11

BRITISH MINISTER RESIGNS

Alleged Bureaucracy In Department • (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 7 p.m.) LONDON, July 20. Sir Thomas Dugdale, the British Minister of Agriculture, today announced his resignation after a controversy over civil service “bureaucracy” in his Ministry.

The Minister made his announcement after delivering his opening statement in the House of Commons on Crichel Downs, 725 acres of land in Dorset requisitioned by the Government before the war and subsequently withheld from its original owners in spite of efforts to regain it.

Sir Thomas Dugdale said that any departure from the long-established rule that a Minister took responsibility for his civil servants was bound to bring the civil service ‘‘right into the political arena. We should deprecate that most rigorously,” he said.

Parliamentarians believe the obvious choice of a man to succeed Sir Thomas Dugdale would be Major G. Lloyd George, Minister of Food, as the main functions of his department decreased sharply in importance with the end of food rationing.

The history of the Crichel Downs controversy began in 1937 when the Air Ministry requisitioned 725 acres for a bombing range. The Ministry did not return the land to the owners after the war, but instead turned it over to Ministry of Agriculture management. A group of officials was given the task of deciding its future, and decreed it should become a model farm involving the spending of £20,000 of public money to equip the land. The story was revealed recently when after a petition by many farmers

and landowners. in the Crichel Downs district, a government investigator reported that the officials misinformed the Minister. They displayed “a most regrettable attitude of hostility" towards .one of the former owners of the land, and seemed "irritated that any member of the public should have the temerity to oppose or even question the acts or decisions of government officials," he said.

Finally 725 acres were sold to still another government department—the Commissioners for Crown Lands. They in turn gave tenancy to a Christopher Tozer over the heads of all other applicants. Sir Thomas Dugdale said he regretted the mistakes and errors of judgment over Crichel Downs, but added that it was not now practicable to sell the land back to the original owners. The disclosures caused alarm among Parliamentarians, some of whom saw in’this case a bureaucratic challenge to the rights of the individual. Conservatives who attacked the Minister said he should either resign or discipline the criticised civil servants, who, they contended, had entirely disregarded the public interest.

Sir Thomas Dugdale told the packed House that he agreed, from an agricultural point of view, that the land should be equipped as one farm. He thought that the right course to take and took full responsibility for the decision. But he said he made no attempt to excuse tfye way certain officials dealt with the application of the owners for the return of the land. "I admit it was most regrettable.” he said. Before announcing his resignation, Sir Thomas Dugdale drew cheers by saying that one of the civil servants severely criticised at a public inquiry was being transferred to another post. However he denied that any civil servant had wilfully misled him in the matter.