THE GOVERNMENT DEFEAT
SIR, Perhaps you will permit an admirer to express his regret that The Spectator should have lent itself to the exaggerated campaign of ballyhoo about the recent vote on equal pay. You give your great authority to the argument that the Government must not be hampered in its conduct of the war. Of course not ; but if it chooses to hamper itself, no one, I suppose, can prevent it.
The Government have chosen this as the time to introduce a great measure of educational reform and to put in charge of it a Minister who has nothing to do with the war effort. They must be prepared to accept the corollary—a proper Committee stage, in which there are real debates, real differences of opinion, and real divisions. Supporters of a Government have always claimed a reasonable independence of choice on minor committee points. If the Government do not like the amendments made by the House they can always reamend on report stage or (with some limitation) in the Lords, and such changes reasonably -proposed are seldom refused. If they fear the effect of a " defeat " they can always put down a straight vote of confidence which will put their position beyond doubt.
The immediate cause of the clash was a slightly unconciliatory speech by the Minister who, as he himself admitted, has no reason to complain of the way in which he had been treated by any section of the Committee. If he had announced an enquiry into the general issue he would not have been beaten, and it is my view that the amendment would have been withdrawn. Even after the vote there would have been no trouble if it had not been decided to tie the, question of confidence in a War Adminis- tration to the question of the rates of pay of female teachers after it The arguments used to support this action, carried to their- logical length, would deprive Parliament of all reality in life. The only circum- stances in which it would be permissible to divide against the Government would be when one had previously ascertained that the Whips had sum- moned a sufficient majority to defeat the proposal.—Yours, &c.,
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