§ MR. LABOUCHEREsaid, he rose to move—
That, in the opinion of this House, all sums required to defray the expenses of the Diplomatic Service ought to be annually voted by Parliament, and that Estimates of all such sums ought to be submitted in a form that will admit of their effectual supervision and control by this House.This Resolution was precisely similar in its terms to one which had been proposed in 1853 by the hon. Member for East Sussex (Mr. Dodson), who then went to a division, but failed to obtain a majority in favour of his Resolution. As he understood that the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary intended to oppose the present Resolution, he should briefly reply to the reasons which he presumed would be advanced against it. The late Lord Palmerston seemed to have been under the impression that the less the House of Commons had to do with foreign affairs the better—particularly in regard to all matters of detail. It was said that the statement of the sums spent in the Diplomatic Service was, to a certain extent, brought before the House in the financial accounts. The object he had in view was to bring all the expenses 928 of the Department before the House in the Estimates, to enable any hon. Member to ask for explanations. There appeared to him to be no reason why hon. Gentlemen should not be afforded the same facilities with respect to the Foreign Office which they enjoyed with respect to the other Departments. An objection urged to the Motion by the hon. Member for Southwark (Mr. Layard) was, that if it were carried it would produce a greater expenditure than now existed; but it was a strange doctrine that the control exercised by this House would produce an increased expenditure. If the hon. Member was right, then they ought to introduce a system of contracts, and say to the head of each Department that they would give him so much for the payment of salaries. The sum allowed was £180,000; and, if the Foreign Secretary contracted to pay all the diplomatic expenses with that sum, it might produce economy; but there was no such contract, for when any further sum was wanted the Foreign Secretary asked for and obtained it. The right hon. Member for South Lancashire said in 1853 "that all his prejudices and prepossessions were in favour of such a Motion;" but he did not vote for it, because he considered that the salaries of these gentlemen should, like those of the Judges, be placed beyond all uncertainty. Now, he contended that the present system produced the greatest uncertainty, and therefore he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would support his Resolution. The salaries of the Judges were charged on the Consolidated Fund; but there the analogy ceased, because the Home Secretary was not given a sum of money and told to pay such and such a Judge as he liked; but the Foreign Secretary was given a sum en bloc, and told to spend it on the Ministers abroad. So far from the salaries being certain, the noble Lord would bear him out when he said that applications were being constantly made to the Foreign Office for an increase. The Foreign Minister was entirely dependent upon an irresponsible body at the Foreign Office, and surely that House was a more independent and responsible body than the permanent officials at the Foreign Office, who practically settled the whole matter. Another objection urged by Lord Palmerston was, that that House might be actuated by some sudden impulse, and might withdraw a mission from a Foreign Court. But any Government which might be in 929 power had, as a rule, a majority upon the Estimates, and the case must be a very strong one indeed when a private Member was enabled to defeat them upon such a question. He believed that, if the Motion were carried, it would promote a greater economy. He had taken extracts from a list of Ministers who received pension, which had been published by the Foreign Office, and he found in many instances they were not old men, but gentlemen who had not the slightest objection to being employed. The Foreign Office, however, had got into the way of putting Ministers upon the retired list when they wished to put some one else forward or entertained any personal dislike. There were, for example, Sir James Hudson, with £1,300 a year; Sir Henry Bulwer, with £1,700; Mr. Christie, with £900, and several others in the position of retired Ministers who were very anxious to be employed. Out of the £180,000 taken out of the Consolidated Fund, £40,000 was charged to pensions. There were a great many Legations which, with great advantage, might be suppressed—for instance, that of Wiirtemberg, which had cost the country for several years £3,050; the Netherlands, which cost £4,700; and Switzerland, £3,800. He had been at n great many of those Missions; he knew what was done in them; and he could assure the House that it was absolutely nothing. It was supposed that a Minister did a great deal of good by asking important personages to dinner; but at those wretched German Courts where we kept Missions it was not important personages, but some chamberlains, that were asked to dinner. Let the noble Lord only look into the archives of the Foreign Office and say when he had received an important despatch from Wiirtemberg. He had asked a friend of his who was Minister at one of those Legations, one time, what he was doing? And the reply was, "Doing? what do you think is to be done in such a place as this?" Another reason why the present system should be done away with was because, as some portions of the expense were charged in the Estimates, and some taken out of the £180,000 granted to the Foreign Secretary, the House was never able to know what was really spent upon any particular Mission, and, not having the facts before them, no proposals for reduction could be effectually made. Among the items of expenditure last year were, for Embassy houses, £64,920 in China and 930 Japan, £8,000 in Teheran, and £2,135 in Paris. Then there was an item of £26,500 for messengers and couriers, which might be very much reduced. Half of the foreign messengers were sent abroad simply because they had been sent in past years. There was another item of £6,000 for Telegrams, and an item of £56,000 for Extraordinary Expenses, and £15,000 for Special Missions, which might be put a stop to. Now, when it was thought well to give a foreign Sovereign the Gaiter he did not see why some nobleman politically unknown, but socially very important, should be sent out at considerable expense when the thing might be done as well by our Minister on the spot. He had made inquiries, and found that when the Toison d' Or or other foreign order was conferred it was not usual to send Special Missions for that purpose. There had recently been some newspaper attacks upon the Foreign Office, which were rather unfair and greatly exaggerated. That Office was well conducted in the main, and it contained honourable, hard-working, painstaking men. The noble Lord at the head of the Department should answer such attacks by giving the greatest publicity to everything done in the Office, because at present there was an impression that the Foreign Office was not subjected to the same control as the other Offices. One cause of those attacks was the abominable system of agencies. The gentlemen employed in the Diplomatic Service were paid by the head clerk of the Foreign Office, and all of them were virtually obliged to appoint a clerk in that office as their agent, and to give him a percentage of 1 or 2 per cent. Some of the clerks received as much as £2,000 a year from this source. He did not accuse those gentlemen—who were wise to profit by the system; but a certain number of permanent officials who were allowed to levy this species of blackmail ought not to be permitted to pot up a claim to control the Estimates—and the mode in which the money was spent and the salaries received by our Ministers abroad. The head clerk had to decide whether any extra expenses were legitimate or not, yet he was allowed to receive a percentage in order to urge the claims of any gentleman against the Office. He could see no reason why the Foreign Office should be exempted from the control exercised over other Departments; and he hoped the noble Lord (Lord Stanley), who had done his best to keep down the expenses, would exercise his own judgment in this matter, and would 931 not be influenced by the permanent officials. He hoped also that his Resolution would be supported by the Secretary to the Treasury, who, on a previous occasion, spoke in favour of the proposal. The House, as the guardian of the public purse, ought to have the control of this expenditure, and ought not to hand it over to gentlemen who, though highly honourable, were prejudiced in favour of every sort of abuse, and being a kind of administrative Brahmins believed that everything which existed was right.
MR. W. LOWTHERsaid, he thought the hon. Gentleman the Member for Middlesex (Mr. Labouchere) had rather exaggerated the abuses of the Diplomatic Service. Having been long connected with the Foreign Office himself, he might state his conviction that no Department was better or more efficiently administered. The evidence given in 1861, before the Diplomatic Committee, by Mr. Cunningham, the then chief clerk, and Mr. Hammond, permanent Under Secretary, showed that this sum of £180,000, fixed in 1832, was admirably administered, there having frequently been a surplus, while the amount had never been exceeded. Were the control transferred to the House, he believed the expenditure would be considerably greater, for the House was excessively amiable in money matters. Would any gentleman's private garden of the same extent cost £7,138, as was the case with the garden at Hampton Court? If the Foreign Office had any fault it was in being too stingy. Ministers, for instance, were sometimes removed to a different post after two years, and were thereby put to great expense, in some cases losing a great deal of money which they had expended on their houses, in the expectation that they would be permanently located there. Their successors felt themselves under no obligation to compensate them, and if they applied to the Foreign Office, the noble Lord and the Under Secretary not having time to attend to such details, the matter was probably decided by some crusty, gouty gentlemen, who objected to paying anything which they could avoid. It was true Ambassadors had an allowance for outfit; but this did not meet the expenses of removal, since they could not travel about with a carpet-bag or portmanteau. He thought the longer a system which worked so economically was continued the better.
LORD STANLEYsaid, the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Labouchere) in his by no means unfair, but somewhat desultory observations, had travelled over a wide range of subjects, fully to discuss which would require considerable time. The first point he had touched upon was the subject of Diplomatic pensions; and he had said that those pensions amounted to £40,000. If the hon. Member would look at the list, however, he would find that instead of £40,000 they were only a little over £24,000.
§ MR. LABOUCHEREexplained that what he meant to say was, not that £40,000 was paid for pensions, but that that sum was set apart for the purpose, and it encouraged the giving of such pensions. Even £24,000 was too much to give to gentlemen who were capable of active service.
LORD STANLEYsaid, a large number of those upon the retired list were of a very advanced age. One of them was Lord Stratford de Redcliffe—another, a gentleman who retired thirty years ago. Similar allowances were given under various names in all branches of the public service; and he did not think the rate exorbitant. Only the last three names upon the pension list, however, had been placed there by him; and those, supersessions rendered necessary by the recent alterations and amalgamations in foreign countries. With regard to the question of agencies, that was a large and important subject; and he had not concealed his opinion that the system was not, in principle, a satisfactory one, nor one which ought to be continued in any public Department, though he did not believe it had led to much abuse. It was, however, not correct that any gentleman could make £2,000 a year by the percentages he received. The gentlemen concerned had accepted the agencies which they held with the full sanction and knowledge of their superiors in office, and in his opinion it would not be fair to take those fees away without granting compensation. Referring to another subject, the House would recollect that nearly all the German Missions—about which so much was said a few years ago—had been abolished, and that we had at present only the Embassy at Vienna, that at Berlin, and minor Missions at two other South German Courts. Those Courts were now in a state of transition, and the present would not be a favourable moment for withdrawing the Missions. There might be cases where 933 Missions became vacant, in which they might be reduced in rank or in pay, or possibly in which they might be suppressed altogether; but the time, he thought, for considering cases of that kind was when vacancies actually occurred. Nor did he believe that any considerable saving could be effected by those means. He was much struck by the fact that every one of those points in which the hon. Member complained of the expenditure of the Foreign Office came under the direct control of that House; while it was precisely in that portion of the Foreign Office expenditure which did not come under the direct and minute supervision of that House that the greatest degree of economy had been practised. He hoped, however, no one supposed that question ought to be regarded as a matter of controversy between the House on the one side and the Foreign Office on the other—the one desiring to obtain greater control over the expenditure, and the other desiring to evade it. That was not, in the slightest degree, the state of the case. He admitted—and he believed that every one who held his Office would be prepared to admit—the full and indisputable right of the House to cheek, control, and supervise the expenditure of the Foreign Office. There was no doubt upon that point. The House found the money, and the House had a right to know what was done with it. It was only a question of means; and it was for the House to decide, for its own convenience, in what form and to what extent that supervision should be exercised. There was no need to go back to the origin of the present system. The House was aware that the Diplomatic expenditure was formerly defrayed out of the Civil List; and it was in the year 1831 the present arrangement first came into operation. That arrangement was not made on the sole responsibility of the Government; it was made on the recommendation of a Committee of the House of Commons sitting at a time when zeal for economy and reform was stronger, perhaps, than at any subsequent period. That Committee recommended—he presumed upon grounds of economy—that there should be a lump sum of £180,000 provided for the Diplomatic Service, rather than a number of separate items placed in the Votes. That question had been again and again discussed in subsequent years, and the arrangement had invariably been supported by the highest authorities among the 934 Liberal as well as the Conservative party; and he was not aware that an unfavourable opinion had ever been expressed upon it by any considerable petition of the House. They all knew that the cost of the various branches of the public Administration had greatly increased within the last thirty or forty years. That increase was owing partly to an augmentation of business, and partly to the fact that the value of money had diminished during that period. The pound sterling did not go us far, in the way of purchasing power, as formerly; and he believed they would not find a single branch of the public service, except the Diplomatic Service, in which the expenditure had not of late years increased. He had gone over the items of that expenditure more than once, and he would venture to say that they would not find it easy, as a matter of general policy, to effect in it any reduction. He sometimes heard it said—although the hon. Member had the candour not to avail himself of such an argument—that under the arrangement of the year 1831, the mode of disposing of that money was wholly removed beyond the knowledge or control of that House. That was, he believed, a common impression out of doors; but it was one which was wholly unfounded. Any one who referred to the financial accounts which were published yearly, might see in the minuted detail how that money was expended; and it was competent for any hon. Member, who thought that the Diplomatic expenditure was too great, to point out the particular items to which he objected. The hon. Gentleman had drawn a distinction between that Diplomatic expenditure and that precisely parallel case of the expenditure on account of judicial functions. He (Lord Stanley) was bound to say that he did not think the distinction drawn by the hon. Member, however ingenious it might be, could be practically sustained. The basis on which the hon. Gentleman rested his argument was that all public expenditure should come into the Estimates, so that it might be criticized item by item in that House. But if they laid down that principle, he did not see upon what possible ground they could refuse a similar investigation into judicial salaries. He did not attempt to decide whether such an arrangement would be right or wrong. He had not himself that horror of investigation which seemed to exist in some minds. He did not believe that it would 935 be attended in that case with the advantage which some persons anticipated from it; but, at all events, he saw no reason why a distinction should be drawn in reference to that subject between the salaries of Judges and the salaries of members of the Diplomatic Service. It was not true, as some persons appeared to suppose, that the salaries of individual diplomatists were, or according to usage could be, arbitrarily cut down by the Secretary of State. There was no such thing in the service as cutting down salaries without notice, and without assigning a reason. He was not aware of any such case. There was, undoubtedly, no legal security for the permanence of Diplomatic salaries any more than of the salaries of officers of the Civil Service; but who ever expressed fear lest these latter should be arbitrarily reduced? They were regarded and treated as permanent, though not made so by law. He objected to the Motion of the hon. Gentleman, because he did not believe that if it were adopted it would lead to greater economy. Every one knew that there was nothing more popular in that House than advocating economy in general term, while there was nothing more unpopular than carrying out the principle of economy in detail. He did not remember an instance in which any material reduction had been effected in the Estimates by discussions upon the separate items; and he believed that these discussions had often rather contributed to an increase of expenditure. He believed it was becoming pretty well known, as a matter of Parliamentary experience, that if any one thought the expenditure in a particular branch of Administration was too high, the only chance of getting it diminished was by insisting on some general reduction, and then leaving it to the Minister of the Department to decide in what manner that object was to be attained. He had stated briefly his reasons for opposing the Motion; but he did not pretend to speak of it as one in which the interests of the Foreign Office were deeply interested. He believed that the House of Commons, if called upon, would be ready to vote the money that might be wanted. The question was really one for the House itself to settle with a view to its own convenience. During the last forty years they had supported the present system under which a lump sum was placed in the hands of the Foreign Minister, and he was told that he must do 936 the best he could with it, but that he must not exceed it. The practical working of the system, in his opinion, had been to keep down the expenditure. The House, in taking that course, had imposed upon the head of the Foreign Office a certain responsibility of which he had no right to divest himself, except upon a deliberate intimation of the judgment of Parliament. He should have no great fear of the result if that Motion were carried; but he saw nothing to induce him to believe that the House was dissatisfied with the present arrangement; and it was therefore his duty to support it. Before he sat down he would once more remind the House that nearly every one of those items of expenditure to which the hon. Gentleman had referred as subjects of criticism were items not included in the £180,000 a year which, were placed at the disposal of the Foreign Office, but were items which passed the scrutiny of the House, and with respect to which, therefore, if any extravagance had been committed, the House must be considered not to have exercised the power placed in its hands.
§ MR. CHILDERSsaid, he was rather disappointed at finding that the noble Lord did not feel himself in a position to accede to the Motion, and the more so as he had understood from the statement of the noble Lord last year that he was in favour of that change. The Foreign Office expended annually about £640,000, and out of that amount £180,000 was the sum for Diplomatic salaries and pensions, which formed the subject of his hon. Friend's Motion. What he wished the House to consider, and what the noble Lord had not justified, was this—why that £180,000 should be handed over as a lump to the Foreign Minister to be used in that particular way, whereas all the rest of the £640,000 was included in the regular Estimates laid every year on the table of the House. If the whole of the Foreign Office expenditure were placed in the hands of the Minister, and he were tied down as to its amount, there might be some sense in laying that charge on the Consolidated Fund. But that was not what happened. What practically occurred was this, that a certain part of the Foreign Office expenditure was taken out of the usual review of Parliament; whereas if the expenses connected with foreign affairs fluctuated up and down that fluctuation appeared in the Estimates. The services for China and Japan appeared on the Estimates; but our 937 Ministers for those countries were in much the same position as our Ministers elsewhere; and he could not see why the salaries of our Ministers for China and Japan should be put on the Votes of that House, while those of our Ministers in South America were not. So with regard to many of the appointments which were half Diplomatic, half Consular. It had always been matter of controversy whether a particular class of public servants abroad were to be called Diplomatic agents performing Consular functions, or Consular agents performing Diplomatic functions; the salaries of those that belonged to the one class coming upon the Votes of the House, and the salaries of the other class being charged upon the Diplomatic fund and not coming upon the Votes. Then there was the special case of the third Secretary, whose case nobody would contend was on a different footing from that of any other of the attachés. There was not a sufficient balance to charge the salary of the third Secretary on the Diplomatic fund, and therefore a Vote for it was annually taken in the House. Again, while a Minister's salary was charged on the Diplomatic fund, the expenses of his outfit and his establishment were placed upon the annual Votes. The truth was that £180,000 was put at the disposal of the Foreign Office within certain limits to use as they liked; if they wanted more they came down to the House for it; if they saved anything, which they rarely did, the House did not hear much of it. Therefore, the noble Lord's argument broke down. Then the noble Lord had said that the Judges were in one respect placed in a parallel position to that of our Diplomatists; but he (Mr. Childers) did not think there were any grounds for that statement.
LORD STANLEYsaid, that what he had stated was not that the individual Judges were in a parallel position, but that the sum appropriated to the payment of the Judges was in a parallel position.
§ MR. CHILDERSsaid, he did not think that the cases were at all parallel. The Judges of the Superior Courts held their offices during good behaviour, and it was perfectly right that their salaries should not be cut down by the vote of the House, but should stand in the same position as persons whose salaries were charged on the Civil List. But Her Majesty's Ministers abroad did not hold their offices during good behaviour, and there was no reason 938 why they should not be dealt with in the same manner as the Secretary of State or a permanent Under Secretary in the Foreign Office. It was very unfortunate that when they were year by year getting rid of the idea that any of our public servants required to have their salaries kept out of the view of the House, the Government were not in a condition to accede to the adoption of the same rule as regarded the Diplomatic Service. Precisely the same objections as those urged by the noble Lord had been urged for many years past against every successive step that had been taken for transferring from the permanent fund to the Votes of the House the salaries of public officers. The expenses connected with the Courts of Justice, excepting the Judges' salaries, were now charged on the annual Estimates, and the other evening a question arose as to a particular appointment. A Vote was brought before the House, and after an explanation from the Attorney General as to that appointment, the House naturally criticized the rate of the salaries of that particular class of officers. But they could not have done that a few years ago, because those salaries did not appear in the Estimates. He entirely dissented from the opinion that no good was done by discussing the Estimates. Every discussion in Supply on a particular item of expenditure, though it might have no immediate effect, afterwards stirred up the Department that was concerned, and also the Treasury; and in the following year the result of the Motion made the year before was seen. On these grounds, he did not think sufficient reasons had been given for refusing that Motion; and he hoped that next year the whole of the Diplomatic expenditure would be borne on the Estimates, and not a part of it merely.
§ MR. DARBY GRIFFITHsaid, he was glad to hear the noble Lord (Lord Stanley) express himself in terms which did not imply an intention of offering any serious resistance to the views of the House on this subject. The existing system was a direct infringement of the constitutional maxim that the public purse was in the hands of the House of Commons. The noble Lord, he might; remark, was not responsible for the system, which on former occasions had been most strenuously supported by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Lancashire, and also by the late Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, with his 939 usual warmth of temperament. Under the circumstances, he trusted the noble Lord would agree to the Motion of the hon. Gentleman.
§ MR. KINNAIRDsaid, he could bear witness to the great care with which the noble Lord watched over the expenditure connected with his Department. A great principle was involved in this question, and nothing whatever had been said to prove that this particular item ought to be withdrawn from the immediate control of Parliament. He believed that the noble Lord had defended the system in such a manner as he would have done if he had entertained very strong convictions on the subject; and he hoped, therefore, he would accede to the Motion before the House.
§ MR. ALDERMAN LUSKsaid, that as the salaries of Ministers of the Crown came before the House in the Estimates, he did not see why those of the Diplomatic Service should not also be stated clearly in the Estimates.
§ MR. LABOUCHERE, in reply, observed that both the present and former Secretary to the Treasury—who might be supposed to know what was the best for economy in conducting the finances—were in favour of his proposition. He hoped the noble Lord would not put the House to the trouble of a division.
§
Motion made, and Question put,
That, in the opinion of this House, all sums required to defray the expenses of the Diplomatic Service ought to be annually voted by Parliament, and that Estimates of all such sums ought to be submitted in a form that will admit of their effectual supervision and control by this House."—(Mr. Labouchere.)
§ The House divided:—Ayes 76; Noes 72: Majority 4.