BOOK REVIEWS
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1957.tb01196.x |
| Published date | 01 June 1957 |
| Date | 01 June 1957 |
BOOK
REVIEWS
The
Ministry
of
Works
By
SIR
HAROLD
BMMBRSON.
George
men
and Unwin Ltd. for Royal Institute of Public
Administration,
1956.
Pp.
171.
15s.
(11s.
6d. to Members of the Institute ordering
from it direct).
ALTHOUGH
I
have had
the
advantage, fvet
as a Ministry of Health official and, later,
as
an employee
of
a building employed
federation, of working closely with the
Ministry of Works since its inception
as
the Ministry
of
Works
and
Buildings,
I
had not fully appreciated the wide scope
and variety of
the
Department’s functions
until
I
read
this
book in the New
Whitehall
Series
by one who was its Permanent
Secretary for ten years.
It
will,
I
hope, be widely read and
I
commend it,
in
particular, to any, whether
they are members of the general public or
employed in other Government Depart-
ments, who may
still
have any doubts
about the continued existence
of
the
Ministry
of Works as a first-class Depart-
ment. And the book will,
I
am
sure, be
of great help not only to new recruits to
the Ministry, including Ministers who
change more frequently
than
their
per-
manent advisers, but to those already
in
the
Department who would not otherwise be
able readily to get a bird’s-eye view of its
varied activities.
No
better author could have been chosen
for
the task than Sir Harold Emmenon,
who came to the Ministry after spending
the greater part of his career at the
Ministry
of
Labour to which he has
recently returncd as permanent Head.
If a change is as good as a rest, he must
have found it very pleasant after dealing
with problems
of
manpower and industrial
disputes to turn occasionally to such
subjects as the Royal Parks, public build-
ings and works of art. He was fortunate
in
two widely different respects. First,
because by the time he arrived at the
Ministry the dust of the many conflicts
which had raged rcgarding the functions
of the Department had largely settled
down and he could, therefore, concentrate
on its organisation
on
a peace-time basis
;
and secondly, because he was able
to
play
198
an important part
in
perfecting the
arrangements which were made
for
the
Coronation
in
1953.
As
regards the conflict over functions,
I
have always thought that housing and
town and country planning should
be
dealt
with
by one Department, preferably
that responsible for local government, and
that it was therefore wrong to transfer
one without the other either
to
the Ministry
of Works, or, as happened later, to a
separate Department.
I
welcomed, there-
fore, the decision to return town and
country planning
to
its original home,
now
known
as the Ministry
of
Housing and
Local Government. There is, of course,
much to support the view that one
Department should be responsible for
all
building matters, but as there are many
more good reasons why one Department
should be responsible for all
the
building
work carried out directly on behalf of the
Government, it is unfortunate that recent
decisions by the Government, e.g.,
in
connection with atomic power, have not
been in favour of increasing the Ministry’s
powers.
The Ministry has been
of
grent help to
the building industry largely because it
has recognised that co-operation is
a
two-
way street and because it has increasingly
shown that its policy is to encourage, and
not
to
supplant, activities which the
industry itself should undertake. This
policy may not have produced either
spectacular or speedy results, but progress
has been sure and solid. That the
Department has gained the confidence of
the industry is clear from the fact that the
industry regards the Minister, when
ditficulties arise owing to the policies of
his
colleagues, e.g., petrol rationing, as
their ambassador at the
10
Downing Street
Court.
STANLEY
IIBARDm
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