Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am ar 29 Gorffennaf 1926.
I think the hon. Member for Woolwich East (Mr. Snell) said a very true thing just now when he asked the House to believe that the scanty attendance this afternoon was no indication of the real interest taken by the House in Imperial affairs. My own conclusion is that there never has been a time when so much interest has been shown in Imperial affairs, or when that interest was so widely diffused amongst Members of all parties. I think it is the fact that so much that is in our discussion is uncontroversial which has led many Members to take the opportunity of absenting themselves. I had hoped when the joint Colonial and Dominion Estimates were brought before the Committee last year that in future we should be able to discuss the affairs of these two separate Departments separately, and not have any more of those discursive Debates, ranging from our relations with the great minions and the problems of Imperial affairs to minor matters of administration in the Colonies. Unfortunately, my hope has been, to some extent, frustrated; but I, at any rate, will confine my remarks in the main to those subjects which come within the scope of the Dominions Office, and leave it to my very capable colleague the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies to deal afterwards with Colonial questions.
My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Dartford (Lieut.-Colonel McDonnell), in a very suggestive and, if I may say so, helpful speech, expressed the view that the division of the two offices was more a matter of theory than of practice. I think he is a little mistaken in that. Except for the fact that the two offices are held by the same individual in his capacity as two Secretaries of State, they are entirely different offices. There are separate Parliamentary and permanent Under-Secretaries; and perhaps the best test of the reality of the separation is that when the Secretary of State himself is away, each office has its own separate head, and there is no direct connection between them. He also went on to say we ought to take a further step in the division of the Departments by separating the persons of the two Secretaries of State. When I think, not so much of the work I have to do—I am not complaining of its being too little—but when I think of the work that I ought to be doing but leaving undone, I am inclined to feel that there is a great deal to be said for the contention of my hon. and gallant Friend in view of the growing development of the importance of our relations with the Dominions and the ever-growing complexity of the great administrative and developmental machine of the Colonial Office.
He also put forward a number of suggestive views as to the organisation of the Colonial Office itself. He contrasted the medical equipment of the Colonial Office with the generous provision made by such a body as the United Fruit Company, whose territory is not as large as that of one of our smallest Colonies. It may be as he says, hut he is comparing a centralised administration, where a great deal of the specialist staff is necessarily at headquarters, with a decentralised administration with separate Governments, each with its own technical staff, and with an office in London which is not so much an administrative centre as a directing and controlling centre. I do not think he ought to push the comparison too far. At the same time, I do agree that the purely geographical division will gradually have to be complemented, not substituted, by an organisation dealing with subject matters of the greater importance. I have, of course, as my hon. and gallant Friend knows, a legal adviser dealing with the many legal problems that arise, I have a medical adviser to deal with the immensely important question of public health throughout the Dominions, and I think that, in substance, at any rate, through the Education Committee, I have an adviser on educational matters. No doubt we shall gradually have to build up a more specialist organisation in the office to deal with these problems.
We shall also want, and there I entirely endorse, the suggestion made by my Noble Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Viscount Sandon) to bring the office in London itself into much closer and more direct intercourse with the Colonies. I think a great deal more has been done in recent years, under the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby (Mr. Thomas), and also more lately, towards getting members of the Colonial Office staff out to the Colonies on various missions. There are really very few members of that staff who have not seen something of the Empire at first hand, but I agree that we ought to go further, and that it ought to be an essential part of the career of any civil servant in the Colonial Office that part of that career should be spent in actual work in a Colony. I can inform the House that I have laid it down, as one of the conditions of entry into the Colonial Office in future, that no candidate can be accepted who is not prepared to spend one or more periods of his official life—periods of two years or so—in the service outside.
There is just this one other point before I leave the subject of the Colonial Office, and that is the criticism of the right hon. Member for Derby as to my not continuing the work of the Southborough and Islington Committees. I hope he will not accuse me of being indifferent to the desire to continue good work which he initiated, or of wishing to exclude the element of co-operation by members of other parties. He knows very well that in overseas settlement affairs I have, from the very first, since the War, endeavoured to enlist the help of, and have secured very valuable help from, colleagues of his who are now in the House of Commons. I also hope, when occasion arises, and it may arise very soon, to follow the example which he set in appointing a Parliamentary Commission composed of members of each party to look into East African affairs, by appointing a. similar Commission to look into other problems of development in the Colonial Empire. I believe fresh minds from the House of Commons can give the same stimulus, looking upon things with a new eye, that the Commission which my right hon. Friend appointed gave to affairs in East Africa. With regard to these particular Committees, I would remind him that they sat for some considerable time, that the Ormsby-Gore Commission went out with the very same terms of reference as the Southborough Committee, and brought back an immensely full Report, and that after this the need in the opinion of many members of the Committee, as well as my own, was not for further discussion by a Committee, but for action by the Government and the Colonial Office. As the Hous knows, in the matter of transport communication I did establish a more specialist and, I think for that purpose, a more useful Committee, in the shape of the Schuster Committee.
7.0 P.M.
So much for Colonial matters. I will now turn to problems concerning the Dominions. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Derby for bringing out in his speech, not so much for the instruction of this country or of the Dominions as of the outside world, something of the essential features of our inter-Imperial relations, of that unity in complete independence which is the characteristic of the relationship of our partner Governments in the Empire. They are independent, just as we are. The character of their independence is the same as ours, an independence that is qualified only by the self-imposed responsibility of mutual loyalty, mutual helpfulness and mutual co-operation in all matters making for the welfare of the Empire as a whole. From that point of view it is right now and again to remind the outside world that we do not interfere with each other's independence. In such a matter as that to which my right hon. Friend alluded, the action of the Crown or its representative in a particular Dominion, no member of the British Government here would either be competent, so far as having a knowledge of the facts, nor be constitutionally justified, in seeking to interfere with his advice or suggestions. Matters of that sort, as I have declared in this House before, fall within the constitution of the part of the Empire concerned, and we are no more entitled in these days to proffer our advice with regard to their internal constitutional problems than they would be entitled to proffer their advice in a constitutional crisis, say between the two Houses, in this country.
The right hon. Gentleman also touched upon another matter lying entirely within the sphere of authority of a particular Dominion, I mean the Indian question in South Africa, but yet of considerable interest, in the first instance to another part of the Empire, India, and in a more general way to the Empire as a whole. He very rightly reminded the House that he made a suggestion in South Africa that the very real difficulties, which he knows so well, having been on the spot, might, perhaps, be eased by some form of conference between the parties concerned. Well, without any intervention upon the part of the British Government, the parties themselves, the Government of the Union of South Africa and the Government of India, have been in correspondence and communication. They have put their difficulties to each other. The Indian Government sent a deputation to South Africa, which by the moderation it displayed and the wisdom it exhibited made a very good impression. I understand that as the outcome of the discussions which took place in South Africa, a conference is to be held in South Africa at the end of the year, and I also understand that a deputation of leading members of the South African Parliament, members who were, as a matter of fact, closely concerned with the study of these particular legislative measures, which have aroused criticism in India, are going to visit India. The whole atmosphere is a better one because we have avoided all interference and because the parties directly concerned, each with its sense of responsibility, first of all to its own people and then to the common interests of the Empire, have got into closer touch with each other.
The right hon. Gentleman raised, very rightly, the question of the Imperial Conference which is to meet next October. That Conference is the one permanent organ of inter-Imperial consultation which helps to frame a common policy of the Empire. Its growth and development have been modified in the course of the last 30 years, and undoubtedly we are bound, as the right hon. Gentleman suggests, at each Conference, to consider its work, and to consider how far its procedure and its mechanism can be improved. I was very much interested in what the right hon. Member said about the consequences of the last Imperial Conference. Like him I will say nothing about the merits of the particular items of policy that were agreed upon at that Conference, and then felt to be impossible of execution by the next Government which followed in this country. They might equally have been thrown over by changes of Government in one or more of the Dominions. I know no one was more disappointed at the fact that the work of that Conference seemed to have been in some measure undone than the right hon. Member, and he has given a great deal of thought as to whether those difficulties could not be overcome by some change in the composition of the Conference itself. He suggested that the Conference should become one not merely of members of the governing party but should also include members of the Opposition. It is an attractive idea, but he knows very well that, as communicated by telegraphic despatch, it did not commend itself to the Governments of the Dominions. There is a very real difficulty. A great part of the deliberations of the Imperial Conference deal with executive policy which is being carried on from day to day, in respect of which only the Government of the day can undertake responsibility and in respect of which it cannot divide or share its responsibility. At the same time it is true that a great deal else is discussed at these Imperial Conferences Which for its success depends upon the co-operation of future Parliaments, and in respect of which it would be better if we could find some method of getting some general assent, as well as the assent of the Governments immediately responsible.