THE PRIMARY BUSINESS OF PARLIAMENT. T HE old. conventions with regard
to the sitting and rising of Parliament have been so completely upset by the action of the present Ministry that the general public is perhaps hardly aware that the session of 1912 still continues ; that it is expected to end on March 7th ; and that a new session will begin on March 10th. At the moment we are not concerned with the prospective con- troversial work of the new session, which must, of course, include a hasty re-passing of the Home Rule Bill and of the Welsh Disestablishment Bill. The point to which we wish to direct attention is the scandalous manner in which the present Government proposes to neglect what is the primary business of Parliament, namely, the consideration of how the nation's money is to be spent. Between March 10th and March 31st, when the financial year ends, it will be necessary for the House of Commons to consider the Address in reply to the King's Speech, to pass a Vote on Account for the Civil Services, and to vote men and money for the Army and Navy respectively. These votes when passed must be incorporated in an Appropriation Act which will have to pass through all its stages in both Houses and to receive the Royal Assent before the financial year closes. This would be an enormous piece of work for any ordinary twenty-one days, but it has to be remembered that between March 10th and March 31st Easter falls, with an almost inevitable interruption of Parliamentary business. There thus remain, after Saturdays and Sundays are deducted, only about fifteen days for this mass of highly important work. We see it is suggested that the debate on the Address should be cut down to perhaps a couple of days. That, to begin with, is a monstrous suggestion. The debate on the Address now forms one of the very few opportunities which members of the House of Commons have of criticising the Executive Government. Since the practice arose of Ministers annex- ing the whole time of the House for the discussion of Government measures, the private member has on most days of the session nothing to do but to wait till lie is called upon to vote for or against some Government proposal. LThe debate on the Address, on the other hand, gives him an opportunity of airing his grievances or the grievances of his constituents, and this is one of the most important purposes for which the House of Commons exists. Other considerations of equal or even greater importance apply to any proposal for curtailing debate on the Army and Navy Estimates. At the present moment the country is more interested than probably at any previous period for at least a generation in military and naval problems. The whole question of our relative naval strength as compared with Continental Powers, the question of how immune against Dreadnoughts and submarines can render us against attacks by aircraft, and a multitude of other political and technical questions all are involved in the Navy Estimates. In the case of the Army Estimates, the country is concerned to know whether the Regular Army is as efficient as its official sponsors habitually claim, and whether its strength is sufficiently supple-
mented by other forces such as the Territorials and the National Reserve.
It is monstrous that Parliament should be deprived of a reasonable opportunity of discussing questions such as these, which are of supreme national import- ance. Yet unless the debates on the Army and Navy Estimates are cut down by some closure resolution it will be practically impossible for the Government to get through the necessary financial business of the year before March 31st. We have purposely omitted to lay stress on the vote on account for the Civil Services, though this necessary vote affords properly a very useful occasion for a review of the conduct of the Civil departments of the Government. In particular it is most desirable that there should be some discussion at a very early date upon the administration of the Home Office, both as regards the suffragettes and as regards trade unionists, and also that some effort should be made to bring Mr. Lloyd George to book for the scandalous manner in which the valuation for his land taxes is being conducted. Such discussions enable the House of Commons to exercise some slight control over the conduct of the Executive Government, and it is impossible to avoid the suspicion that one reason for com- pressing the important financial business into a few days is the desire of the present Ministry to avoid Parliamentary criticism. The old theory that the redress of grievances should precede supply is naturally objectionable to a body of men who maintain themselves in power with the assistance of Nationalists and Socialists, and exercise that power largely in defiance of the traditions of English liberty. We willingly admit that every Ministry in turn is anxious to escape Parliamentary control, but never has a Ministry so completely succeeded in reducing the House of Commons to a subordinate position as the present Cabinet.
Moreover, in addition to preventing the discussion of grievances the present Cabinet has effectively destroyed the control of the House of Commons over finance One of the most serious evils of the present time is the enormous increase in public expenditure. The facts are all the more striking because the Liberal Party came into power pledged to economy. Instead of carrying out their pledge Liberals have allowed the expenditure of the country to increase by leaps and bounds. Partly this is due to policy. This Ministry more than any previous Ministry has discovered, or thinks it has discovered, the political expediency of bribing the electors with the tax- payers' money.
But the policy of doles in which the House of Commons has been involved by its persistent neglect of the problems of national finance, though immediately attractive, brings no permanent benefit to the wage-earning classes. It has the further grave disadvantage of being uneconomical in the sense that it involves serious waste. In order to administer these doles a vast number of officials have been appointed, and their salaries eat up resources which otherwise would have been available for the remuneration of labour. In addition there is a loss far more serious than the mere financial loss, namely, the loss of liberty. Only the other day there was issued to the press a series of rules which insured persons are called upon to obey when they apply for medical relief. There are eight or nine rules with various elaborations, and if the insured person "is guilty of a breach of any of these rules or of any of the provisions of the Act relating to medical benefit or of the regulations or of any attempted imposition in respect of medical benefit," he may be fined by the Insurance Committee at their discretion. The fines may be as much as 10s., or in case of repeated breaches of the rules, 20s. Those persons who are fortunate enough not to come under the operation of Mr. Lloyd George's Act will have difficulty in fully grasping what this new code of penalties involves. Wherever a man employs his own doctor and pays the doctor's fees, they are free to make such arrangements as they choose between them, but the moment a sick person accepts insurance under the State he must necessarily be subjected to constant supervision by external authority to see that he is not acting in a fraudulent manner or unnecessarily wasting the time of the doctor. Thus a large part of his liberty disappears.
The same consideration applies mutalis mutandi8 to such a comparatively well-established form of State dole as free education. Not only has the Free Education Act of 1891
increased the burden placed upon the taxpayer, but it has diminished the liberty of the working-class parent without probably in the least improving his economic position. The mischief is that each of these doles is put forward as a separate proposition without regard to its bearing upon the general finances of the country or upon the general economic position of the working classes. No doubt it is impossible to hope for any complete remedy as long as the tendency of opinion in both parties remains in the Socialist direction, but at least the House of Commons ought to have the full opportunity of looking at financial problems from the point of view of finance. That it no longer has. The primary business of Parlia- ment is rushed through without regard to the serious issues involved, in order that the Ministry of the day may have more time for vote-catching legislation or for complying with the demands of exigent allies.
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