Modern Changes in the Cabinet
I do not think any one will deny that the Cabinet has in a large degree lost these four features which we have laid down as requisite for full efficiency. The process has been going on for a long time, but during the last six years it has been accelerated so greatly that the Cabinet of to-day is almost unrecognisably different from what it was fifty years ago. To begin with, it has grown enormously in size, owing to the increase in the number of departments of government. This growth has markedly diminished the sense of responsibility for national policy as a whole felt by the individual members, and the wholesome practice of resignation has gone out of fashion. It has led to frequent failures in the co-ordination of the various departments, which are often seen working at cross purposes. It has brought about a new formality in the proceedings of the Cabinet, in the establishment of a Cabinet Secretariat.
The lack of an efficient joint Cabinet control has encouraged a very marked and unhealthy increase in the personal authority of the Prime Minister and of the clique of more intimate colleagues by whom he is surrounded; and this is strengthened by the working of the new Secretariat. All these unhealthy features have been intensified by the combination of the two strongest parties in Parliament to form a coalition; for this has deprived the Cabinet of homogeneity and made it the scene not of the definition of a policy guided by clear principles, but rather the scene of incessant argument, bargaining, and compromise on fundamentals. Finally, the responsibility of the Cabinet to Parliament has been gravely weakened; it acts as the master of Parliament, not as its agent, and its efficiency suffers from the fact that its members are able to take their responsibility to Parliament very lightly.
All these defects in the working of the Cabinet system have been much more marked since the war than at any earlier time. But the two chief among them—lessened coherence due to unwieldiness of size, and diminished responsibility to Parliament—were already becoming apparent during the generation before the war. On the question of responsibility to Parliament we shall have something to say later. But it is worth while to ask whether there is any means whereby the old coherence, intimacy and community of responsibility can be restored. If it cannot be restored, the Cabinet system, as we have known it, is doomed. I do not think that it can be restored unless the size of the Cabinet can be greatly reduced, without excluding from its deliberations a responsible spokesman for each department of government.
But this will only be possible if a considerable regrouping of the great departments can be effected. I do not think that such a regrouping is impracticable. Indeed, it is for many reasons desirable. If it were carried out, a Cabinet might consist of the following members, who would among them be in contact with the whole range of governmental activity. There would be the Prime Minister; there would be the Chancellor of the Exchequer, responsible for national finance; there would be the Minister for Foreign Affairs; there would be a Minister for Imperial Affairs, speaking for a sub-Cabinet which would include Secretaries for the Dominions, for India, and for the Crown Colonies and Protectorates; there would be a Minister of Defence, with a sub-Cabinet including Ministers of the Navy, the Army, and the Air Force; there would be a Minister for Justice and Police, performing most of the functions both of the Home Office and of the Lord Chancellor, who would cease to be a political officer and be able to devote himself to his judicial functions; there would be a Minister of Agriculture, Industry, and Commerce, with a sub-Cabinet representing the Board of Trade, the Board of Agriculture, the Ministry of Mines, the Ministry of Labour, and perhaps other departments.
Ministers of Public Health and of Education would complete the list of active administrative chiefs; but one or two additional members, not burdened with the charge of a great department might be added, such as the Lord President of the Council, and one of these might very properly be a standing representative upon the Council of the League of Nations. The heads of productive trading departments—the Post Office and the Public Works Department—should, I suggest, be excluded from the Cabinet, and their departments should be separately organised in such a way as not to involve a change of personnel when one party succeeded another in power. These departments have no direct concern with the determination of national policy.
On such a scheme we should have a Cabinet of nine or ten members, representing among them all the departments which are concerned with regulative or purely governmental work. And I suggest that a rearrangement of this kind would not only restore efficiency to the Cabinet, but would lead to very great administrative reforms, better co-ordination between closely related departments, and in many respects economy. But valuable as such changes may be, they would not in themselves be sufficient to restore complete health to our governmental system. In the last resort this depends upon the organisation of an efficient and unresting system of criticism and control.