INEFFICIENCY IN GOVERNMENT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 16 June 1932, Page 4

INEFFICIENCY IN GOVERNMENT

A CHANGE NEEDED ' “We have heard much talk of industrial inefficiency in our midst,” said Sir James Lithgow, president of the Federation of British Industries, in a recent speech. “Such inefficiency can take many forms: inept directors, selected for reasons other than knowledge of the business; faulty organisation leading to redundant staffs; superfluous sections for the performance of functions outside the proper scope of the concern; unnecessary and unwanted schemes for the comfort of staff, employees, or shareholders; lax control, and a standard of individual value below that enforced by competitors. In industry such inefficiency leads to bankruptcy. It is inevitable that each that each one of these elements of inefficiency should enter into democratic government to some extent. That they do enter into our present administration is obvious from a comparison of the cost of government to-day with that of a generation ago. If we. place these figures alongside such dividends as international respect and national contentment, we have difficulty in finding value for our money. Expansion of expenditure has been stopped —a great achievement. Severe curtailment of purchases is being enforced, but it is impossible to feel confident from the published returns that a real change of heart has been effected in the minds of those who conceive their function is to regulate rather than to govern. The, task before this country, if it is to enable its industry to reap the full benefits of the new policies already laid down, is to bring about such a change of heart.”