BOARD OF TRADE BILL. (Hansard, 20 September 1909)

§ THE EARL OF CREWE

My Lords, this is another Bill which is concerned with the reorganisation of a Government Department. It is one of some little importance, but I think your Lordships will not expect me to explain it at any great length. The Office of the Board of Trade still remains what it was when appointed in 1786. The Board includes various high personages; it includes the Archbishop of Canterbury, Secretaries of State, Mr. Speaker in another place, and also the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. The salary of the President—and consequently according to custom of the other officials of the Board—was fixed in the year 1826, and has not been changed since then. Since those days the work of the Board of Trade has grown enormously, as your Lordships know, and various new duties have been thrown upon it. When the salary was fixed there was no suggestion of the existence of a railway, and all the railway work has been thrown upon the Board of Trade. Also, its purely commercial work has vastly increased since those days. New duties have continually 19 been thrown upon it by such Acts as the Patent Act of two years ago, and now a still further extension has been made in its duties by the relations in which the Board of Trade enters with the Foreign Office in respect of the work of our Consuls abroad. Then the two Bills which have been brought up this year—the Bill which has just been read a third time and the Labour Exchanges Bill—also increase both the work and the responsibility of the Board of Trade. This Bill is the outcome of a Committee which sat, I think, in 1904, under the presidency of the noble Earl, Lord Jersey. That Committee recommended that the Board of Trade should become a first-class Department, that the salary of its President should be made equal to that of the heads of first-class Departments, and that fact will also, as your Lordships know, carry some additions of salary to the secretary and others in the Department. The annual increase of cost worked out at the mean of the scale of salaries will be something under £3,000 a year, and the immediate increase will be somewhat less than that. The only other point to which I have to call attention is that the provisions of this Bill do not come into operation during the tenure of office by its present occupant. That carries out a rule which I am bound to say I think is one more of sentiment than common sense, because if the status of the Department ought to be raised the postponement of the operation does not seem to be altogether rational. Still it has been the custom, and on the whole I think a laudable custom, that such increases should not take place in favour of those who are partly responsible for bringing them about, and it has been the particular wish of the present occupant of the Presidency of the Board of Trade that the change should not take place during his tenure of office. I beg to move that the Bill be read a second time.

§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

My Lords, as your Lordships well know, we on this side of the House could have no manner of objection to the Bill which has just been submitted to your Lordships for Second Reading, because it had been our intention, had we survived long enough, when we were in office to pass a precisely similar measure. But it is, as the noble Earl has intimated, more than a purely departmental question. 20 It has, of course, a departmental aspect, because, as the noble Earl has justly said, the work of the President of the Board of Trade has increased, is increasing, and is likely to increase still further, and it has become, if the holder of the office is willing to undertake the burden, one of the most laborious offices under the Crown. But there is more than a departmental aspect, because owing to the fact that a smaller salary attaches to the office of President of the Board of Trade a lower status is supposed also to attach to it. I do not imagine that any of your Lordships, whether in office or likely to come into office in future, would shrink from public duty on any such ground as that; but some difficulty may arise in getting the best man to occupy the position of President of the Board, because, even if he does not regard it in that light, his friends often think that if he has held the office of a Secretary of State he is going down in the official hierarchy in accepting the Presidency of the Board of Trade. Therefore, great difficulties may arise in putting the best man into this position because of its alleged inferior status. What the public require is that the best man should fill the office, and I am sure it will be much easier for a Prime Minister forming a Government not to be hampered by such considerations as those to which I have called attention. Therefore, on these general grounds, as well as on the grounds put forward by the noble Earl that the weight and burden of the office have greatly increased since it was established, this measure can receive nothing but hearty support from those Members who sit on this side of the House.