THE MENACE OF WHITEHALL

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 81, 30 December 1929, Page 8

THE MENACE OF WHITEHALL

LORD CHANCELLOR’S COMMITTEE Dominion Special Service. London, November 7. The appointment by the Lord Chancellor of a committee to consider what safeguards are necessary to secure the sovereignty of Parliament and the supremacy of the law, makes peculiarly appropriate tjie appearance of Lord Hewart’s “The New Despotism.” Lord Hewart’s views on the encroachments of bureaucracy are well known. He hits, indeed, become the leader, among the members of the legal profession, of the movement to eradicate the autocratic methods of Government Departments. His book is the best introduction to the subject which has yet been published. It should enable laymen to appreciate the serious bearings of the Whitehall menace on the constitutional rights of the subject, as well as the authority of Parliament. While acknowledging that the Civil Service is free from the vice of corruption, Lord Hewart urges none the less that, if there are any great extensions of the system of giving uncontrolled and arbitrary powers to public officials, we “might be cursed with the corrupt bureaucrat.” In passing, he condemns the proposal to turn the Lord Chancellor into a Minister of Justice somewhat on the Continental method. A Minister of Justice, he says, might be a politician, a mere bird of passage, with no.special acquaintance with law or lawyers. Under the existing system, on the other hand, we possess, so he holds, both a strong guarantee of independent personal knowledge and something like continuity. Lord Hewart suggests that each House of Parliament should have a committee, “not too large,” with the solo task of examining every Bill as it is introduced for the purpose of observing whether, and in what respects, its provisions may increase the power of bureaucracy, and whether by what contrivance that power can be made irresponsible.