Book Reviews
| Date | 01 December 1966 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1966.tb01602.x |
| Published date | 01 December 1966 |
Book
Reviews
The Member
of
Parliament and the Administration
:
The Case
of
the Select Committee
on
Nationalized Industries
By David Coombes. George Allen
&
Unwin Ltd.,
1966.
Pp.
222.
32s.
The House of Commons has experience
of
three permanent committecs
of
inquiry: the doyen is
of
coursc the
Public Accounts Committee; the second
in age is the Select Committee on
Estimates, and thc youngest, although
by no mcans least effective, is the
Select Committee
on
Nationalized
Industries.
David Coombes, who did the original
work
as
a
thesis
at
Oxford, and now of
the University of Reading. has made
a
painstaking study
of
the background,
the history and the impact of the
Nationalized Industries Committee.
He
traces its origin to the disquiet felt
in
the House
of
Commons about the
supposed difficulty of obtaining
information about the nationalized
industries and the arguments that
went
on
as
to
the degree of parlia-
mentary control over them which was
possible or desirable.
There
is
no doubt, however, that
the Committee owed its actual birth to
the hostility
of
some
Conservative
Members to the nationalized industries
as such,
so
that the incoming Con-
servative administration
of
1951
felt
impelled to take
some
action. Ncver-
theless, as Mr.Coombes points out, the
Conservative attitude was ambivalent,
because during the passing
of
the
nationalizing legislation of the
1945-50
Government they had opposed the
extent of the powers which those Acts
gave
to
Ministcrs on the grounds
that they would interfere with their
commercial freedom.
They thereiorc proccccled with
caution and initially set
up
a
com-
mittee, in the session
1951-2,
to
study the question
of
Parliamentary
Questions.
A
second committee, which
was set up in the session
1952-3,
came
out in favour of the proposal for
a
permanent Select Committee to
investigate the nationalized industries.
This committee reported unanimously,
although when its report was debated
in
the
House
of
Commons in
I954
the official Labour Party Opposition
opposed its conclusion. The Govern-
ment went ahead and in
1955
set up
what was intended to be
a
committee
to inquire into and report on the
nationalized industries, but this com-
mittee was stillborn because its terms
of
reference were far too narrow.
As
a
result the present committec
was first
set
up in
1956
with very wide
terms
of
reference indeed and has
since cxamined all the nationalized
industries, some
of
them more than
once.
It
is
at
present examining tho
G.P.O.
at
a
time when the Postmaster
General has announced that the status
of the Post Office will be changed from
that
of
a
government department to
a
public corporation, and it
has
recently
been granted the rare privilege for
a
Select Committee of taking evidence
abroad.
There is no doubt that
a
great
responsibility lay on the members of
the first committecs and especially on
their chairmen and
on
one or
two
long-serving Labour Mcmbers. The
483
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precedents which they had to establish
were largely to determine the success of
what was felt to be an experiment.
It
was important to decide from
the beginning from which side the
chaii-man should come. In the Public
Accounts Committee he comes from
the Opposition, in the Estimates
Committee from the Government side.
In
this case
it
was decided that
the chairman should come from the
Government side and there is
no
doubt that, apart from the quality of
those who have held the post, this has
been
a
factor in damping down
partisan attitudes which would have
destroyed the value of the Committee’s
work.
With very little precedent to guide
it,
the Committee has established
a
pattern of working and
a
balance of
judgement which has won
for
its
reports what was originally reluctant
approval. The press, which was
at
first almost uniformly hostile to the
idea
of
Members
of
Parliament
questioning members of commercial
boards, now reports their findings with
approval. Members of the Labour
Party, in opposition, used these reports
extensively in debate. The present
Government did not hesitate to move
to set up the Committee when it came
into office in
1964.
When the committee of
1952-3
took
evidence from the Boards’ chairmen
all,
except Lord Hurcomb, an ex-
civil servant, expressed themselves
horrified at the idea that
a
committee
of Members of Parliament could cross-
examine them and their colleagues, and
at
least one of the first chairmen to
appear before the committee examining
his industry spoiled
his
evidence
by
the defensive niaiiner in which he
presented
it.
Since that time chairmcn
have come to recognize
that
the
Corn-
mittee, although frequently making
searching inquiries into their
pro-
cedures, their investment policies and
so
forth, was not doing
so
in
an
inquisitorial way. The inquiries In
fact gave the chairmen opportunities
to present their points of view to
Members
of
Parliament, which they
had never had before and, as
it
turned
out, the Committee’s reports were
often as critical
of
the responsible
Ministers’ relationships with the Boards
as of the Boards themselves. This was
possible because of the Committee’s
wide terms
of
reference, which have
enabled it
to
overstep the usual
barriers between administration and
policy, which were supposed under
their orders
of
reference to restrict
other committees of inquiry, although
of course this had to be done with
circumspection.
The value of MrCoombes’ book
derives not only from its careful
factual analysis, but also from his
recognition that
a
committee is not
a
mere constitutional device
but
is
a
living organism dependent on tlie
experience and personality
of
its
members, and the chapters which deal
with these matters make
a
valuable
contribution to an understanding
of
why the Committee has succeeded.
As
a
contribution to the current
discussion
on
the reform
of
Parliament
this book is invaluable.
Greater
London
:
The
Politics
oj’Metropolitan
Reform
By Frank Smallwood. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill
Co.,
1965.
Pp.
324.
$6.00
(cloth),
$2.95
(paper).
London, for long the world’s first city of local government structurc. The
and still its second
or
third, has twice first occasion was in
1888
and
1899,
led the way in developing new forms the second
in
1963.
The main feature
of
484
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