WRONG BOTH WAYS

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 104, 29 October 1925, Page 6

WRONG BOTH WAYS

The weakness of the "wagesraid " charge made against the Government is fully demonstrated by the misleading statements now being used to bolster up the allegation. Mr. Holland at first attempted to make capital of the " loud silence" of the Minister of Labour. Now that the Minister has replied, the Labour leader disputes his statements. Mr. Holland is reported as stating—

Every member of .Parliament was fully aware that departmental reports were submitted to the Minister for approval and for presentation to the House, and no Minister would permit a proposal for legislation to be included in such report unless he approved the proposal. ■ ' ■ •

In the first place, it is misleading to refer to the statement of the Secretary for Labour as a " proposal." It is merely a .tentative suggestion. In the second place, while reports are first submitted to Ministers, their presentation to Parliament no more indicates the Ministerial approval of all their contents than does the Parliamentary acceptance of the reports. The statement that no Minister would permit the inclusion ; of a proposal (or suggestion) unless he approved it is wholly inaccurate. More than once departmental officers have made suggestions,and recommendations upon which Ministers have neither taken nor proposed to take action.. We believe that Ministers should permit their responsible officers a certain latitude in this respect, and that they do. Evidently Mr. Holland holds that no departmental officer should be allowed to place before Parliament and the country any proposal which does not meet with Ministerial approval. This is censorship with a vengeance. It shows what we may expect under a Labour Government—that Departments will be directed what they shall not propose. The next step is to instruct them what they shall recommend. And from censorship and suppression of recommendations it is but a short step to suppression of facts, so that members may be told only what the Goverurueut. of the Day deems it expedient that they should know. In any circumstances, if Mr. Holland and his followers were convinced that the Secretary's suggestion had the Minister's endorsement, what were seventeen Labour members doing that they made no protest, nor any reference upon any of the occasions when the Labour Department's report could, have been discussed'? Was it because they knew that discussion would promptly have drawn a disavowal of Government responsibility, so that this choice little electioneering titbit would have lost its full flavour %