HC Deb 21 March 1905 vol 143 cc665-6
COLONEL WELBY

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he will consider the advisability of proposing an addition to the Imperial Committee of Defence, in equal numbers to political members now of it, of members of the Opposition who have held office in the Departments of the Admiralty, War Office, Colonies, or India, with a view to non-Party union in laying down and carrying out continuous principles of defence by sea and land.

THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,) Manchester, E.

In answer to my hon. and gallant friend, I must say that in my judgment no mechanical arrangement will secure the absence of Party in dealing with any great question. There are questions which are dealt with without partisanship, but that is due to the good feeling and patriotism of hon. Members on both sides of the House. But there is no way of securing that, and it would not be secured by the particular machinery which my hon. friend's Question provides. There is another point to which I would call attention. It is this. Continuity of foreign policy has intrinsic advantages altogether apart from the nature of the policy which is continuous. I mean it is a positive, though sometimes a necessary, evil for one Government to reverse the foreign policy of its predecessors. I do not think that is the case with regard to defence. I think each Government, during the course of its tenure of office, has nothing whatever to think of except the actual merits of the case before it. The only way to secure continuity is that there should be a common view as to what the merits of the particular question are. We have secured that, as far as it can be secured, under the existing system of the Committee of Defence by keeping records fairly ample of the conclusions at which we have arrived, and the grounds on which we arrived at them. These records will be in the hands of our successors, and if they are convincing we shall have continuity of policy; if they are not convincing no arrangement of membership of the nature proposed will produce that result. On the whole, therefore, I do not think it would be desirable to introduce so anomalous an addition, so strange to the ordinary arrangement of a body more or less responsible for giving advice to the Cabinet, which would contain not only members of the Cabinet, but members violently opposed to it. I am not disposed in these circumstances to accede to my hon. and gallant friend's suggestion.