PARLIAMENTARY POWER

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17231, 24 December 1923, Page 10

PARLIAMENTARY POWER

IMPORTANT PRECEDENT INVOLVED. By Telegraph—Press Association—Oopvright Australian and N.Z. Gable Association. LONDON, December 22. Mr Richard Jebb, author of “The Imperial Conference," writes to the “Morning Post" commenting upon General Smuts’s and Mr Massey’s claim that British Ministers! promises of preference, made at the Imperial Conference, must be honoured even by a new Government. Mr Jebb says: “The suggestion that Ministers are competent to bind P-ir-Lament in advance, and not only the current but succeeding Parliaments, is new to the dominions where Parliament’s authority over Ministers has been more closely guarded than m Britain. Hitherto the dominion doctrine has been that Ministers attending an Imperial Conference were not empowered to commit their countries until their Parliament had approved of iLe proposals when they returned. “Empire economic co-operation is impossible until Britain abandons her obsolete trade policy in favour of national protection modified by a preterence which would be common to the dominions. Britain must cive no either P ree Trade or the Empire. If the British Parliament exercises its clear right to stultify the recent conference then the conference system may as well be abandoned." THE OTHER WAY ROUND. Australian and N.Z. Gable Association. LONDON, December 23. Mr Harold Cox, writing in the “.Sunday Times,” says: “It is absolutely certain if the Imperial Conference. instead of proposing to tax the people or Britain, had proposed to tax the people of South Africa, or New Zealand both General Smuts and Mr Massey would have indignantly challenged the suggestion that the Conference had any right to demand such taxes without consulting the will of the people of the. Dominions concerned.”