PUBLIC EXPENDITURE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20962, 27 August 1931, Page 10

PUBLIC EXPENDITURE.

The lack of real control of public expenditure was emphasised by Sir Charles Harris, lato permanent head of the finance department of tho War Office, in addressing the Institute of Public Administration at University Collego, Oxford. One fact, he said, stood out: In Great Britain more than any other constitutionally governed nation Parliamentary control of expenditure had sunk to a farce. The president of tho institute,. Sir Austen Chamberlain, with 40 years of Parliamentary life to his credit, recently told a committeo that the real work of financial control was, and must be, dono not by the House of Commons and its committees, but by thof spending departments and the Treasury. But that put the permanent head of the Treasury in a falso position; for though among clerks ho was an authority, among authorities he was a clerk, without tho power the guard of an express train had of clapping on the brake without tho driver's leave when he thought the pace too hot. Sir Charles Harris added that to cliinb out of the pit into which they had fallen, they wanted a rope of three strands: modern accountancy, decentralisation, and more reliance on audit. Another speaker at the conference, Mr. S. Larkin, city treasurer of Coventry, described democracy as '-the control of intricate and important public affairs by people selected by the least intelligent section of the community from a small number of selfnominated candidates." Tho only recommendation in favour of such a system was that it did succeed in deluding the people, but it was bound to happen that the weakness and fatuity of democracy must siiow itself in financial trouble.