Clause 1. — (Substitution of Departments for Boards of Health and Agriculture and Prison Commissioners for Scotland.)

Part of Orders of the Day — Reorganisation of Offices (Scotland) Bill. – in the House of Commons am ar 9 Gorffennaf 1928.

Danfonwch hysbysiad imi am ddadleuon fel hyn

Photo of Mr Archibald Skelton Mr Archibald Skelton , Perth

On the Second Reading of this Bill, it fell to me to make one or two observations and I also spoke in the Standing Committee on Scottish Bills, and, therefore, I do not propose to detain the House at this stage for more than a minute or two. I do not find myself in the position of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ross and Cromarty (Mr. Macpherson), who gives the Bill a general approval, but disapproves of one of its most important features. I am afraid that my disapproval remains practically unaltered, and is quite complete. I see no substance in the argument that boards are inefficient. With slight alterations, the fact is that in the Board of Admiralty here we have one of the most efficient Departments, although the Board of Admiralty may not be exactly on the same footing as the Scottish Board which it is proposed to abolish. This is a proposition which cannot be maintained, in face of the fact that the Government Departments which are most efficient, namely, the Revenue Department and Admiralty Department, are boards. Even if it were true that you could not get efficiency with boards it would only be of very small assistance to the whole question which is here involved. The question which is involved and the question which is at the back of this Bill is whether or not it is wise under the peculiar constitutional relations that exist between England and Scotland to have your central government of Scotland based on a purely departmental method. With the fullest consideration I can give, reinforced by many views from many quarters of Scotland where one did not expect support, I remain of opinion that there has been for Scotland a very great advantage in a system which brought into direct contact with its administration a considerable number of people drawn from various sections and districts in the country.

It does not matter in England, with your Parliament sitting in London. A Department, from that point of view, is all that is required. The situation is not the same in Scotland, and it is to my mind a matter of more than doubtful wisdom to take away from the government of Scotland, even although it only be on its administrative side, certain features which link up a large and widespread body of opinion with the work of the central administration of Scotland. No argument has been put forward, it seems to me, which touches that point. I am confident that you will find, as a result of these changes, that the interest in Scottish administration will become less, that the Scottish administration will throw a much less wide net over the population, and that you will get a real loss of connection between the popular mind and central administration. It may be said, and indeed it can almost be said with force, that as a connecting link between the popular mind, it cannot be of great importance that you have a Board of Agriculture with three or four heads and a Board of Health with three or four heads and so on.

But that is not the end of it. The other aspect of it is, that your Departmental men are necessarily men who from their youth have been trained in the Civil Service. I do not think that they have become purely denationalised, but I do say, and I believe I am saying it in truth, that they have lost, by being members of that great body of general civil servants, a certain degree of their Scottish turn of mind and their Scottish habits of thought and their intimate contact with Scotland. That is the point. That is what you gain by your Board system. You draw into it from time to time men eminent in other fields in Scotland, lay Scotsmen as opposed to civil servants. I am sure that by that method of drawing into the administration of Scotland from time to time, men not from mere boyhood but from adult manhood who have been doing devoted work in Scotland, you get far greater connection between Scotland as a whole and its administration than you will do if you rely entirely upon the Civil Service. The importance of that, as I see it, is vital.

I am not one of those who believe in the benefit of Scottish Home Rule to Scotland, to England or to the Empire. Other hon. Members will not agree with me. My view is, and I claim to know something about the situation as well as other Scotsmen, that in the present stage of Scottish development or Empire development Scottish Home Rule is not a desirable thing in itself; but I am certain that it is a good thing to keep contact between Scotland as a whole and its administration, and I am very loth from the point of view that I have mentioned, namely, the feeling that the time has not come for Scottish Home Rule, to take away from Scotland just now in any department of government any special Scottish features which exist. It is along that line of thought that I have never been able to give the proposals of this Bill my personal approval. I cannot deny that at the back of my mind there is a thought that here is a step which looks very reasonable, which appeals to a Member of this House with so much experience as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ross and Cromarty, who argued about the efficiency of the Department headed by one man, and about slow methods and so forth. That is an argument of far less specific gravity in the subject we are discussing, namely, the administration of Scotland under a united Parliament, and I am sure that it is an argument of far less vitality and force than the argument that it is most important to keep some contact between lay Scotland and its government.

I was amazed at the way in which my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross and Cromarty dealt with the question of the Board of Agriculture. He said that it spent, approximately, £430,000 last year and only brought into existence 125 small holdings. Surely he must know that a great deal of that £430,000 is earmarked for other purposes, and it is not fair to a Board which in adverse circumstances——