Ministries and Boards: Some Aspects of Administrative Development Since 1832
| Published date | 01 March 1955 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1955.tb01632.x |
| Date | 01 March 1955 |
Ministries
and
Boards
:
Some Aspects
of
khinistrative Developnient
Since
1832
By
F.
M.
G.
WILLSON
This survey
of
an important aspect
of
the administratire history
of
the
past
120
years reveals the big change in the attitude
of
Parliament towards
the use
of
Public Boards with a high degree
of
independence. It raises
the question whether the change
is
due solely to the character
of
the new
State functions
or
whether there has not also been a significant retreat
from
the Victorian view
of
what the House
of
Commons could inanaxe
as
the main organ
of
popular control.
HE
history of the executive side of British Central Government during
T the last 120 years-and indeed during earlier modern periods-has
so
far received comparatively little attention. The constitutional historians
have discussed in detail the evolution of the supreme organ
of
administration,
the Cabinet, and have traced the whole idea of collective ministerial respon-
sibility. The development of the control of administration and public
expenditure by Parliament has also attracted research workers, as has the
history of the Civil Service, though most of what has been written on the
latter is concerned with the years of and since the Trevelyan/Northcote
Report. Apart from these and the great contemporary commentaries on the
British system of government, there are only a few biographies
of
outstanding
administrators, scattered references to administrative arrangements in the
standard histories and biographies of statesmen, and a few specialised studies
of particular administrative institutions. There is, with the exception of
Professor Smellie’s
A
Hundred Years
of
English Government,
nothing
sub-
stantial available on the history
of
the whole structure and working of the
central administrative machinery, or on the relations between that machinery
and other parts of the constitutional system.
The neglect
of
this huge field of administrative history hitherto
is
the
more remarkable in view
of
the immense amount of information readily
available in the pages of Hansard and Parliamentary Papers alone, not to
speak of the documentary material lying in the Public Record Office and
elsewhere. No doubt the most obvious way to begin the charting
of
so
great an area is to tackle institutions piecemeal, to fill the learned journals
with close studies of every governmental agency, and thus to provide a mass
of evidence from which a pattern of narrative and motive wil! in time emerge.
But to adopt this method exclusively would postpone for an indefinite time
any study of the machinery
of
administration as a whole and of the general
influences at work in shaping it. Some reflection on institutional patterns
faintly discernible cannot but help, however slightly, those who choose
the harder road of interpreting smaller patches of the mosaic. This article
contains such reflection, based on factual information which may help to
establish, or at least to confirm, certain mileposts in administrative develop-
ment.
It
deals mainly with two related strands
of
constitutional evolution
-the acceptance
of
individual ministerial responsibility as a cornerstone
of the modern framework
of
administration, and the varying importance
of boards as administrative instruments.
It
will be seen that in these aspects
43
PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION
at
least recent administrative history falls into the same periods as does
its
political counterpart. Before beginning, however, some terminological
issues must be resolved and something must be said about the choice
of
1832
as the starting point.
By the word
ministry
is meant a Department of State whose powers are
vested, either by law or convention, in a single person who sits in one or
other House of Parliament and is responsible to Parliament for every act
performed by that Department-i.e., a Minister of the Crown. Ministries
have often, particularly in the 19th century, been called Boards
:
the Treasury,
the Admiralty and the Board of Trade are examples still with
us,
the Boards
of Ordnance and of Health retained those titles until their abolition, the
Boards of Education and of Agriculture and Fisheries were renamed Ministries
during the earlier parts of their careers.
The word
board
is meant to indicate an authority composed of more
than one person which meets and deliberates and which is not itself directly
responsible
to
Parliament, though some Minister may be answerable for
all or part of its activities. The boards which have been reviewed for the
purpose of this article are restricted to those whose functions have been
or are mainly administrative. Advisory bodies and administrative tribunals
have been excluded. Nor is any board with a jurisdiction over an area less
than the whole
of
the United Kingdom or of one of its four component
national parts considered.
Of
the boards not eliminated by these tests only
those at least half of whose members are directly appointed by the State-
i.e., by the Crown, by Parliament or by Ministers-have been included.'
This latter provision excludes guild authorities such as the Agricultural
Marketing Boards, to which only a few members are nominated by the State.
Another preliminary point concerns geography rather than terminology,
but has a definite bearing
on
the latter. The pattern of administrative
development since 1832 was different in England and Wales from what it
was in Ireland and Scotland.
It
was not until late in the 19th century that
a notable Scottish administration began to take shape in Edinburgh. By
contrast Irish domestic administration tended to remain in Dublin throughout
the period of the Union from 1801
to
1922. In both countries the national
administrative authorities were nearly all boards, with the important exceptions
of the Irish and Scottish Offices. The use of boards was favoured because
of the difficulties of communication between Dublin and Edinburgh and
London, and the consequent need to have a high degree of administrative
independence in the two smaller capitals.
It
seems
to
have been felt that
the concentration of all Scottish and Irish administrative powers in single
Ministers was undesirable when those Ministers spent at least half their
time
at
Westminster. Indeed the problem is still, perhaps, not entirely
resolved
so
far as Scotland
is
concerned.
It
is misleading, therefore, to speak of
British
administrative develop-
ment
:
a review of the use of ministries and boards must take account of
national differences. While Scottish and Irish experience is mentioned,
what follows is mainly related to authorities dealing with England and Wales
or to those with jurisdiction over the whole
of
the United Kingdom. The
administration
of
Northern Ireland since 1922
is
largely the concern of the
Parliament at Stormont, and
no
account of
it
is attempted here.
44
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