HL Deb 08 June 1961 vol 231 cc1326-32

7.42 p.m.

Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.

Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Mills.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

House in Committee accordingly.

[The EARL OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE in the Chair.]

Clauses 1 and 2 agreed to.

Clause 3 [Officers, remuneration and expenses]:

THE EARL OF LISTOWEL moved to add to the clause: () The Director-General of the Departmenl of Technical Co-operation shall have the status of a Permanent Secretary.

The noble Earl said: I think I should explain why this Amendment is on the Order Paper. During the Second Reading of the Bill noble Lords opposite will remember we said that in order to expedite the passage of the Bill we would put down no Amendments at the later stages. Subsequently I was informed that the Government had decided that they did not wish to take all the remaining stages of the Bill at one Sitting, presumably because they were not able to set up the Department as speedily as they had hoped. That I took to release us from the obligation to spend as little time as possible on the subsequent stages after the Second Reading. For that reason I felt it was not inappropriate for myself and my noble friend to put down an Amendment on a very important point which we raised on Second Reading

The point is this: can the Government justify the treatment of this new Department as the Cinderella among the Departments in Whitehall? Why should this Department alone have as its senior official an official with the rank of Deputy-Secretary and not Permanent Secretary? This Department, certainly in the eyes of the outside world, in the eyes of the under-developed countries which it is going to serve, and most of all in the eyes of the under-developed members of the Commonwealth, will be regarded as at least equal in importance to any home Department. Why should it be treated as being less important than home Departments which have a Minister of Cabinet rank without a Cabinet Minister at their head? There is one other Government Department with a Director-General at its head and not a Permanent Secretary, and that is the Post Office. But the Director-General of the Post Office has the status of a Permanent Secretary; he has the salary, £7,000 a year, of a Permanent Secretary, and he has the pensionable rights of a Permanent Secretary, and that is what we are asking for in the case of the civil servant who will be head of this new Department. It seems so anomalous to put a Minister who has Cabinet rank, and is therefore the equal of the Minister of Fuel and Power and the Minister of Transport, at the head of this Department and to make his senior official subordinate in rank to senior officials in other Government Departments.

Apart from the matter of principle, there is an obvious practical difficulty. The senior official in this Department will be arguing matters at the official level with senior officials in the three Departments—the Foreign Office, the Commonwealth Relations Office and the Colonial Office—with which this new Department will be closely connected. He will always argue at a disadvantage because he will not be on the same level as the officials with whom he will be talking; whereas the Minister will be on the same level as other Ministers and, as the noble Lord made plain during the Second Reading of the Bill, at the discretion of the Prime Minister he can be called to Cabinet meetings to put his point of view when he disagrees with other Ministers. We all regard this Department as extremely useful in providing more technical assistance for Commonwealth and foreign countries that are under-developed, and we feel that the Government must justify treating this Department, which we regard as being so vital and so important, in a way in which no home Department has been treated. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 2, line 22, at end insert the said subsection.—(The Earl of Listowel.)

BARONESS SUMMERSKILL

In view of the fact that the name of this Department may be changed, and that it has been decided that more time should be taken about establishing the Department, I am optimistic enough to think that the Government have had a change of heart. I am hoping that those impassioned speeches, that rhetoric that was poured upon the Minister opposite on Second Reading, has had some effect. The purpose of this Amendment is once more to emphasise that change to which I addressed myself on the Second Reading of the Bill and which I feel is necessary if this Department is to be as powerful as we wish. I would remind the House that this is a very important Department, coming at a time when it is very necessary for Britain to make her impact on many countries throughout the world; and, indeed, if we do not send technical help, then inevitably other countries will. In fact, other countries have done so in many fields, and I am told that very often the countries who think they will benefit have expressed the desire that Britain could do it better if only she had the technicians to send there. I would just say this: that there has been a tremendous delay.

I want to emphasise that even if, finally, this Department comes into being, there will still be a delay if the machinery of the Department is geared to a slow tempo. The machinery of the Department, as I see it, is greatly dependent upon the Minister and his staff, and of course the first person in the staff of most Ministries is the Permanent Secretary. That is why in this Amendment we have attached tremendous importance to the status of the first civil servant in the Department. I would say, with my experience of administration, that nothing can be more calculated to defer a decision than a division of responsibilities resulting from the powerlessness of the Minister or his chief civil servant.

I do not want to repeat everything, but I would remind the Minister that as it stands to-day, the Bill gives this poor Minister three masters. In another place the Financial Secretary to the Treasury said that he anticipated that this particular Minister would be out of the country a great deal of his time, examining the demands for help which have been made by various countries. Consequently, the man upon whom a great deal of the administration will fall, when he is out of the country, is the Director-General. I must say that the title "Director. General" is a complete misnomer. This particular civil servant will certainly have no power of overall direction, for he is simply to be a Deputy Secretary subject to the decisions of three or four other Permanent Secretaries.

We are told that Sir Andrew Cohen is an able and a strong man. I do not know anything about that; I have never met Sir Andrew Cohen. What I do know is that in the Civil Service hierarchy strength is often assessed according to grade. To grade is attached a great deal of importance, and it seems to me that to make the chief civil servant a Deputy Secretary is a suspiciously Machiavellian way of ensuring that he will obey the various views of his three or four masters. I think that those who have knowledge of administration are fully aware of this. I understand now that more time is to be given to the establishment of this Ministry, and I can only hope that this means that the Government are giving second thoughts to the human machinery which is to be set up. If that is so, then I am sure that both sides of the House will welcome the delay.

7.53 p.m.

THE PAYMASTER GENERAL (LORD MILLS)

I should like to thank the noble Earl for his courtesy in explaining why this Amendment has been put down. I am sure that the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, intend by their proposed Amendment to give the greatest emphasis they can to the importance of the work of technical co-operation for the benefit of under-developed countries; and I am sure all of your Lordships would also desire in any reasonable way to facilitate the functioning of the new Department. So that the real point at issue is whether the proposed. Amendment is necessary for this purpose.

The Bill of course makes no mention of the office of Director General but gives power to the Minister, the Secretary for Technical Co-operation, to appoint such officers and servants as he may, with the consent of the Treasury, determine. My honourable friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, on the Second Reading of the Bill in another place, announced that the permanent head of the Department—the chief civil servant—will be known as the Director General and his rank will be equivalent to that not of Permanent Secretary but of Deputy Secretary. This followed his announcement that the Secretary for Technical. Co-operation would have a rank equivalent to that of a Minister of State. It should be borne in mind that the new Department will in fact not be among the largest Government Departments and will not have quite the same broad political responsibilities as the major United Kingdom Departments of State.

I should like to suggest that the noble Lady was not quite right in saying that the Secretary for Technical Co-operation Will have three masters. It is true that these three Departments of State settle the policies, but the actual carrying out of those policies is a matter for the Department itself. It would, I suggest, be the normal expectation that a Department of this sort, under the charge of a Minister of State, should have a permanent head with the rank not of Permanent Secretary but of Deputy Secretary.

I pointed out, in our debate on the Second Reading of the Bill, that the major purpose of this new Department would be to achieve an improvement in our Governmental machinery in dealing with requests for technical assistance. I said that to say that this is just an organisational change is not to decry it. It is a measure of the increasing importance which the Government attach to technical assistance that they are proposing to appoint a Minister and a senior official to devote their full attention to the work. It is, I think, quite clear that there will be a purposive and creative job for the new Department to do in the field of technical assistance. But that does not mean that the status of officials concerned should be any higher than is really required. It is intended that the Director General shall have the rank of Deputy Secretary. I do not share the fears of the noble Earl and the noble Baroness that that will in any way interfere with the job he has to do. He will be the permanent head of the Department, responsible to the Minister for the work of the Department, and he will be the accounting officer to the Department.

We gave a great deal of thought to this matter. We came to the conclusion that the position is adequately met by the proposal which was announced in another place, and the Government regret that they cannot accept this Amendment, which goes further than they deem necessary in the circumstances. I hope and trust that the Amendment will not be pressed.

THE EARL OF LISTOWEL

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his speech, which was much as I expected it would be. But I still cannot see how it is that the Government can regard a Department which will be dealing with technical aid to the United Nations, Commonwealth countries and foreign countries and which in the eyes of two-thirds of the world's population will be infinitely more important than most Departments in the home field, as being less important than the Ministry of Works. I only hope that the time will come when the Government will change their minds; and when that time does come, then, of course, the appropriate alteration can be made, as the noble Lord pointed out, by administrative action without legislation. I realise, of course, that this Amendment is a completely inappropriate way of doing what we wanted done, and I put it down merely in order to be able to express the view I have expressed and which my noble friend has supported me in expressing this evening. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 3 agreed to.

Remaining clauses and Schedule agreed to.

House resumed.

Bill reported without amendment.