There is a third reason for dissatisfaction with the composition of the
House of Commons, which has become more prominent in recent years. It is
that, increasingly, organised interests are making use of the
deficiencies of our electoral system to secure representation for
themselves. If I may take as instances two men whom, in themselves,
everybody would recognise as desirable members of the House, Mr. J.H.
Thomas plainly is, and is bound to think of himself as, a representative
of the railwaymen rather than of the great community of Derby, while Sir
Allan Smith as plainly represents engineering employers rather than
Croydon. There used to be a powerful trade which chose as its motto "Our
trade is our politics." Most of us have regarded that as an unsocial
doctrine, yet the growing representation of interests suggests that it
is being widely adopted.
Indeed, there are some who contend that we ought frankly to accept this
development and universalise it, basing our political organisation upon
what they describe (in a blessed, Mesopotamic phrase) as "functional
representation." The doctrine seems to have, for some minds, a strange
plausibility. But is it not plain that it could not be justly carried
out? Who could define or enumerate the "functions" that are to be
represented? If you limit them to economic functions (as, in practice,
the advocates of this doctrine do), will you provide separate
representation, for example, for the average-adjusters--a mere handful
of men, who nevertheless perform a highly important function? But you
cannot thus limit functions to the economic sphere without distorting
your representation of the national mind and will. If you represent
miners merely as miners, you misrepresent them, for they are also
Baptists or Anglicans, dog-fanciers, or lovers of Shelley,
prize-fighters, or choral singers. The notion that you can represent the
mind of the nation on a basis of functions is the merest moonshine. The
most you can hope for is to get a body of 700 men and women who will
form a sort of microcosm of the more intelligent mind of the nation, and
trust to it to control your Government. Such a body will consist of men
who follow various trades. But the conditions under which they are
chosen ought to be such as to impress upon them the duty of thinking of
the national interest as a whole in the first instance, and of their
trade interests only as they are consistent with that. The fundamental
danger of functional representation is that it reverses this principle,
and impresses upon the representative the view that his trade is his
politics.
But it is useless to deplore or condemn a tendency unless you see how it
can be checked. Why has this representation of economic interests become
so strong? Because Parliament is the arena in which important industrial
problems are discussed and settled. It is not a very good body for that
purpose. If we had a National Industrial Council charged, not with the
final decision, but with the most serious and systematic discussion of
such problems, they would be more wisely dealt with. And, what is quite
as important, such a body would offer precisely the kind of sphere
within which the representation of interests as such would be altogether
wholesome and useful; and, once it became the main arena of discussion,
it would satisfy the demand for interest-representation, which is
undermining the character of Parliament. In other words, the true
alternative to functional representation in Parliament is functional
devolution under the supreme authority of Parliament.
But still more important than the dissatisfaction aroused by the
composition of the House is the dissatisfaction which is due to the
belief that its functions are very inefficiently performed. It is
widely believed that, instead of controlling Government, Parliament is
in fact controlled by it. The truth is that the functions imposed upon
Parliament by increased legislative activity and the growth of the
sphere of Government are so vast and multifarious that no part of them
_can_ be adequately performed in the course of sessions of reasonable
length; and if the sessions are not of reasonable length--already they
are too long--we shall be deprived of the services of many types of men
without whom the House would cease to be genuinely representative of the
mind of the nation.
Consider how the three main functions of Parliament are
performed--legislation, finance, and the control of administration. The
discussion of legislation by the whole House has been made to seem
futile by the crack of the party whip, by obstruction, and by the
weapons designed to deal with obstruction--the closure, the guillotine,
the kangaroo. A real amendment has been brought about in this sphere by
the establishment of a system of committees to which legislative
proposals of various kinds are referred, and this is one of the most
hopeful features of recent development. But there is still one important
sphere of legislation in which drastic reform is necessary: the costly
and cumbrous methods of dealing with private bills promoted by
municipalities or by railways and other public companies. It is surely
necessary that the bulk of this work should be devolved upon subordinate
bodies.
When we pass to finance, the inefficiency of parliamentary control
becomes painfully clear. It is true that a good deal of parliamentary
time is devoted to the discussion of the estimates. But how much of this
time is given to motions to reduce the salary of the Foreign Secretary
by £100 in order to call attention to what is happening in China?
Parliament never, in fact, attempts any searching analysis of the
expenditure in this department or that. It cannot do so, because the
national accounts are presented in a form which makes such discussion
very difficult. The establishment of an Estimates Committee is an
advance. But even an Estimates Committee cannot do such work without the
aid of a whole series of special bodies intimately acquainted with the
working of various departments. In short, the House of Commons has
largely lost control over national expenditure. As for the control of
administration, we have already seen how inadequate that is, and why it
is inadequate.
These deficiencies must be corrected if Parliament is to regain its
prestige, and if our system of government is to attain real efficiency.
For this purpose two things are necessary: in the first place,
substantial changes in the procedure of Parliament; in the second place,
the delegation to subordinate bodies of such powers as can be
appropriately exercised by them without impairing the supreme authority
of Parliament as the mouthpiece of the nation. I cannot here attempt to
discuss these highly important matters in any detail. In regard to
procedure, I can only suggest that the most valuable reform would be the
institution of a series of committees each concerned with a different
department of Government. The function of these committees would be to
investigate and criticise the organisation and normal working of the
departments, not to deal with questions of broad policy; for these ought
to be dealt with in relation to national policy as a whole, and they
must, therefore, be the concern of the minister and of the Cabinet,
subject to the overriding authority of Parliament as a whole. In order
to secure that this distinction is maintained, and in order to avoid the
defects of the French committee system under which independent
_rapporteurs_ disregard and override the authority of the ministers, and
thus gravely undermine their responsibility, it would be necessary not
only that each committee should include a majority of supporters of
Government, but that the chair should be occupied by the minister or his
deputy.