The Principles of Regulation
| Date | 01 October 1926 |
| Author | Garnham Roper |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1926.tb02263.x |
| Published date | 01 October 1926 |
The
Principles
of
Regulation
by Public Authorities
of
Privately Operated Utility Services
HE
title of
T
tion has
attractive one.
By
GARNHAM
ROPER,
C.B.
Late an
Assistant
Secretary, Board
of
Trade
I
the Paper which the Institute of Public Administra-
been good enough to invite me to write is
an
It has
a
happy and bright sound,
a
sort of
-__
“
blessed Mesopotamia
”
resonance. It suggests that when services
necessary to the community are rendered by individuals or companies
trading for profit, those rendering them are subject to more or less strict
regulations by public authorities, and that those regulations are based
on
principles, the nature and extent of which are to be considered
in
this
Paper. The matter, however, is not quite
so
simple as it sounds.
“
Utility Services
”
is a pretty wide term, and might be held to cover
almost anything arising in the course of our daily activities and needs,
while the expression
“
Public Authorities
”
is
also
not altogether clear.
When
I
sought light on these difficulties of interpretation,
I
Feceived
not so much elucidation
as
a
sort
of
carte
blanche
to treat the matter
as
I
might deem most convenient, with the title
of
the Paper
as
a
rough
guide to what was desired.
I
propose, therefore, to take the term
“
Public Utility
”
as applicabIe to any undertaking that meets the
needs or convenience of
a
considerable section of the public, and
that places the undertakers
in
a
position justifying the imposition of
control in return for monopolistic or other special privileges, and
I
shall
treat the term
“
Public Authorities,” for the purpose
of
my
Paper,
as
covering Parliament, which attaches conditions
to
the granting
of
privileges,
in
addition
to
the particular Department of the State or
Local Authority .which is entrusted by Parliament with powers of
regulation and supervision.
Before considering the regulations applying to the various Public
Utility Services, and endeavouring to deduce the principles on which
they are based,
I
may, perhaps, be allowed to offer
a
few general obser-
vations
on
the evolution of those services. In tracing our gradual
advance from more or less primitive conditions of life to the complicate
and specialized form of
our
present state,
it
is
only fair to bear in mind
the debt we owe to individual efforts. In early days, even
our
fighting
287
20
Public
A
dm
inis
t
r
at
io
n
forces, our armies and ships, were largely organized
and
sustained by
individuals, impelled, no doubt, by motives
of
self-protection and private
gain as much
as
by regard for the public weal, and similarly with our
earlier colonial enterprises. As our Government gradually developed
its
powers and machinery it tended to take over such matters as affected
the nation as a whole, and to meet the cost, not out of spoils, but by
properly adjusted methods of taxation. At first we had the efforts
of
indlviduals or associations of people trading in a go-as-you-please way
and mainly for profit
;
and then
as
the bearing of these matters on the
general welfare became more. apparent there was
a
tendency
fo;
the
Government to step
in
and exercise control, in greater or less degree, and
for Municipal Authorities
also
to take
a
hand.
The extreme example of such intervention is afforded by the
General
Post
Ofice.
In early days letters were camed by special messengers,
and later by common carriers and
a
system
of
post-horses
;
in the sixteenth
century
a
post office was started in London, dealing with the con-
veyance
of
letters to ports abroad, but the first inland post was not
established till
1635,
and there appears for some years to have been a
system
of
fanning-out of the posts by the Government, who exacted
heavy rents for the privilege. Fifty years later the management
of
the Postal Service became completely the business
of
the Crown, and
though
various
private enterprises were started from time to time,
especially
in
London, for carrying letters and parcels, these were invari-
ably taken over by the Government, with or without compensation.
The
running
of mail-coaches in
1784
marked
a
great step forward, after
which, in due course, came rAways, and in
1840
Sir Rowland Hill’s
great scheme of penny post. Since then the G.P.O. has made great
strides in its activities, buying up private telegraph
and
telephone under-
takings, and initiating numberless schemes for the convenience
of
the
community.
The story of the
Railways
is
somewhat different. After
“
Puffing
Billy
”
in
1813,
and the
“
Rocket
”
in
1829,
had shown the way, there was
in
this country
a
wonderful development of railway enterprise. The
Government was not
disposed
to
take
a
hand, and when it was suggested,
in
1830,
that they should appoint engineers to lay out four or more main
lines, the Duke of Wellington, who was Prime Minister, said that he did
not like railways, and refused. There were, however, plenty of private
capitalists who were more eager, with the result that not only trunk lines,
but an enormous nuinber of smaller undertakings linking up with them,
soon
arose
all
over the country. The tendency
in
recent years has been
for the bigger companies, besides developing their
own
systems, to absorb
the smaller ones. In August
191.4,
the Government,
in
pursuance of
their powers under the Regulation
of
the Forces Act,
1871,
assumed
288
So,
too, with Public Utility Services.
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