Parliamentary Government in England (Works of Harold J. Laski): A Commentary by Harold J. Laski

Author:Harold J. Laski [Laski, Harold J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Communism; Post-Communism & Socialism, Democracy, Political Ideologies, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781317586623
Google: URMhBQAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 23530762
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

3.

After the Prime Minister, the vital Cabinet positions are, as a rule, those of finance and foreign affairs. It is inevitable that this should be the case. Finance is the key to administrative and legislative possibilities; and not a little of the success of the British civil service has been due to the fact that, under the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has exercised, through the Treasury, a general supervision of the departments. The special position of the Foreign Secretary is due to different considerations. In part, it is the outcome of an old and dubious tradition of secrecy. In part, again, it is due to the fact that busy heads of departments cannot hope to concern themselves with more than a small part of the area of activity with which the Foreign Secretary must deal. They have no time to read more than the vital dispatches; and they cannot even attempt any detailed supervision of his policy. Action, moreover, has only too often to be immediate; and ministers must be content, in general, to trust to the discretion of their colleague to act within the framework of the policy they have laid down in the Cabinet. They will not always do so; the resignation of Lord Palmerston in 1851 shows what a strong personality may do when he takes the bit between his teeth. They may even approve; and may then be compelled by public opinion outside the Cabinet to repudiate their approval. The resignation of Sir Samuel Hoare, in 1936, is an instance of this kind. But since, as a rule, the Foreign Secretary is working in the closest liaison with the Prime Minister, since, also, the major outlines of policy will be discussed in the Cabinet, his colleagues will know in a general way what the Foreign Secretary is doing; and they have at least the right to exact information even if, as Mr. Lloyd George has suggested, it is sometimes only grudgingly forthcoming.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Foreign Secretary apart, Cabinet ministers broadly stand upon an equal footing; or, rather, the differences in the influence they exert will depend less upon the offices they hold than upon the kind of persons they themselves are. A Cabinet consists of two kinds of posts. There are the departments with heavy administrative functions, and there are those, like the Privy Seal and the Presidency of the Council, to which no serious burden of administration attaches. In general, every Cabinet functions better if it contains two or three ministers of this sort. It enables the counsel of men to be made available who do not wish to be loaded, for one reason or another, with administrative duties. It sets them apart for assistance in the legislature to a colleague who is pressed with the burdens of a great bill that he is seeing through. They are useful, also, in committees of Cabinet and in general discussion because, like the Prime Minister himself, they

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