Government Information
Accustomed though it is to make publicity for other Government departments, the Central Office of Information stood last week in need of a little publicity on its own behalf. The two points raised in the House of Commons by Mr. Boyd-Carpeauer on the adjourn- ment on Friday were, first whether there is in peace-time any need for a department such as this to exist, and second, whether it has succeeded in remaining untainted by political bias. In theory the Central Office acts as publicity agent for any Ministry or Govern- ment department which calls on its services ; it can produce news- papers, pamphlets, articles, posters, speakers, films, exhibitions, and so forth. In practice, it is the rump of the old Ministry of Informa- tion, shorn of staff at top and bottom, and drained of the respect and initiative which comes from ministerial status. No doubt it does Most of the work required of it with efficiency, though the Ministry of Information never earned a reputation for being the nursery of administrators, and, as it is spending at the rate of L4,500,000 a year, presumably it has a considerable achievement to boast of. The accusation that it tends to act as publicity agent for the Labour Party is not an easy one to answer and was not conclusively answered by the Government Speaker (Mr. Gordon- Walker) on Friday. We have a Labour Government pursuing a Socialist policy ; explanation of policy is inevitably a defence of policy. Does explanation justify the money, manpower and paper that is being spent on it ? There are rather strong grounds for the belief that the C.O.I. is pursuing its own possibly quite 'useful but certainly pretty expensive way without any adequate super- vision at Ministerial level.
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