APPOINTMENT OF AMBASSADORS AND OTHER PUBLIC SERVANTS (Hansard, 14 June 1977)

§ Mr. Dennis Canavan (West Stirlingshire)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for a democratic system of appointment of Ambassadors and other public servants; and for connected purposes. An alternative short title for my Bill might have been "The Anti-Patronage Bill", because it is my intention to curb the powers of patronage of various Ministers. It is no coincidence that I tabled this motion on the very day that Mr. Peter Jay was announced as our new Ambassador to the United States of America.

Following that announcement, there was what to my mind was a foreseeable outrage throughout the whole country, particularly within the Labour movement. There were allegations of nepotism. In answer to these allegations, we were told that Mr. Jay, despite the fact that he is the Prime Minister's son-in-law, also happens to be the cleverest man in Britain. However, his cleverness seemed to escape the Labour Party selection conference in Islington, which rejected him as a parliamentary candidate. Nevertheless, I still maintain that Mr. Jay has certainly shown an odd streak of cleverness, particularly in his opposition to the Common Market. I only wish that his father-in-law showed the same intellectual commitment.

A few years ago, Mr. Jay, in one of his frequent predictions, stated that democracy in this country would be suspended by 1980, give or take a few years. It may be coincidence or otherwise that, only two and a half years away from 1980, there seems to be a significant suspension or absence of democracy in the method of the appointment of Mr. Jay to a post with a salary of more than £18,000 a year plus expenses of more than £40,000 a year. Although Mr. Jay's appointment received a lot of publicity, it is by no means unique. The undemocratic method of his appointment to the post of ambassador is by no means unique in British politics.

Just before the Whitsun Recess I tabled a Question to every Government Department asking the Ministers responsible to 253 tell me what public appointments they were responsible for, who were the current holders of those appointments and what were their salaries, allowances and expenses.

Many of the replies were evasive, to say the least. Nevertheless, I managed to glean enough information to state categorically that there are literally thousands of jobs for the boys which can be given out by Ministers.

Top of the league comes the Lord Chancellor, who is in charge of 800 full-time appointments and, believe it or not, the magnificent total of 35,000 part-time appointments. That makes the Secretary of State for Scotland's total of 700 paid appointments and 4,000 unpaid appointments seem very modest by comparison.

Some Departments were very coy about giving me full detailed information. The following Departments—Northern Ireland, Employment, Trade, Education and Science, Transport, Environment, Social Services, the Foreign Office, the Welsh Office and the Department of Prices and Consumer Protection—attempted to hide behind that favourite ministerial face-saver, that the appropriate full and detailed information could not be arrived at except at disproportionate cost to public funds.

Let us look at some of the disproportionate cost to public funds. For example, the Department of Prices and Consumer Protection—by no means the worst example—has listed for me 104 salaried appointments with an aggregate salary of £232,393 per annum. I should not mind a quarter of a million pounds being spent if I thought that the money was going to a good cause and that those appointed were helping to control and keep down prices in the interests of the consumer. But I doubt whether our poor housewives, who are faced with an inflation rate still over 17 per cent., would agree that that is public money well spent.

It is difficult to estimate allowances to any great degree of accuracy, because many of the posts are not salaried as such. Instead, the people holding those appointments receive attendance allowances, travelling allowances, subsistence money, and so on. However, it would be interesting to know exactly how much it costs the Department of Employment to fund the members of the Coffin, Furniture 254 and Cement-Making Wages Council and how much it costs the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to pay the expenses of the members of the Plant Variety Rights Advisory Panel on Rhubarb.

Not all appointments are salaried, but, whether they are salaried or not, they are all positions of great importance and they require a democratic method of appointment. Without a democratic method of appointment, it is doubtful whether we get the best-qualified people for the jobs. For example, I am sure that the hard-working, conscientious students and staff of Stirling University in my constituency would be more than a little surprised to know that a good Socialist like my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council is apparently in favour of the appointment to the University of Stirling Conference a man who, frankly. I know to be one of the most Right-wing reactionary Tory backwoodsmen in the whole of West Stirlingshire.

I should like the system of appointment to be improved. When considering methods of improvement, we could do worse than look at the promised land to which Mr. Jay has been sent by his father-in-law. I do not maintain that the United States of America is a perfect democracy—not by any means, but, in the appointment of people to public posts, it is at least two centuries ahead of us. Article 2, Section 2, of the American Constitution lays down that the President can propose nominations, but the Presidential nominations for public appointments must be approved by the Senate.

I want to introduce a similar system for public appointments in this country. I suggest that we should require the approval of the House of Commons and, in appropriate cases—such as the appointment of the chairmen and members of nationalised industry boards—of the appropriate trade unions, thereby introducing an element of parliamentary as well as industrial democracy. For example, Sir Richard Marsh, who was a former Chairman of British Rail, did not, by his own confession, believe in public ownership. Similarly, Sir Frank McFadzean, the Chairman of British Airways, has also been critical of public ownership. I think that if workers in industry and Members of Parliament were more involved in the selection of 255 such people, we should not have some of the poor appointments which have been made in the past.

I suggest that the Minister responsible would still be able to put forward his nominations to a Select Committee which would have the opportunity of scrutinising the nominations and of making recommendations to the House of Commons. That would be a fairer system of appointment than we have now and would reduce or eliminate altogether the possibility of abuse. It would avoid the nasty allegations of nepotism against the Prime Minister. Above all, it would be a gigantic step forward for democracy.