A MINISTER FOR COLONIES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20988, 29 March 1930, Page 19

A MINISTER FOR COLONIES.

SEPARATE FROM DOMINIONS. MR V. HARTSHORN MENTIONED. (From Our Own Correspondent.) ~ LONDON, February 13. Mr Vernon Hartshorn, M.P., is to be appointed to a Government office, carrying with it Cabinet rank, as soon as the bimon Commission, of which he is a membor, has presented its report. .V Th ? l >ri , me Minister, I gather,” says the political correspondent of the Daily telegraph, ‘has decided that the duties attaching to the post of Secretary of btate_ for Dominion Affairs and th<=* Colonies, now-discharged by Lord Pass_he divided between two Ministers, In other words, he considers that there should be a Secretary of State lor Domimon Affairs and a Secretary of state for the Colonies. “It is proposed that Mr Hartshorn should become Secretary for the Colonies and continue to sit in the House of Commons, but a final decision has yet to be made concerning the choice of a new Secretary for Dominion Affairs. DESIRE TO BE RELIEVED. Lord Passfield desires to be relieved trom office, and his successor must be a peer, or Mr MacDonald will again infringe the statute by having one too many Secretaries of State in the Lower House . This is the ‘ fly in the amber, 5 as the Prime Minister is credited with a wish to place at the Dominions Office a MinistGr \vho Sits in the Commons without Cabinet rank. A post in the Government has also to be found for Major Attlee, the other Socialist member of the Simon Commission, who, howeVer, is not destined to have a seat in the Cabinet”