NATIONAL EXPENDITURE.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 898, 18 August 1910, Page 4

NATIONAL EXPENDITURE.

« ■ The House of Representatives will begin this week tho consideration of the ' Consolidated Estimates. There is no reason to suppose that there will this year be any material departure from the customary careless voting away of the public's money by sleepy members in a thin House, the usual dragging in from the lobbies of the squad of absentees to nullify criticism by their votes, which do not count any the less for being cast in utter ignorance of the facts and merits of the case. Our legislators may' claim that in this respect they are following, if at a distance, and in a way peculiarly' their own, the custom of the House of Commons. It may therefore be profitable to say that there are signs of a growing discontent in Britain with a.system that is every year making for ever greater increases in the" national expenditure. Leading newspapers on both sides in politics have- been printing tables to illustrate this point, and although tho increases, reduced to p6rcentages, would probably strike Sir Joseph Ward as being unworthy of attention, they are yet considered alarming by the more timorous folk at Home. On July 1 a brief debate took place, upon, the-reports c>f the Public Accounts Committee in the louse of Commons, and .this 'debate, and the newspaper comments upon it, are of much interest and significance. The Public Accounts Committee in Britain does very good service in investigating expenditure, but its investigations are only post-mortem examinations. It has nothing whatever to do with the framing of the Estimates or' the revision of them, and this is what the great growth of public expenditure is inclining people to think this Committee, or some other Committee, ought to have something to do with. Modern legislation, it was pointed out by the Chairman of the Committee,. is accompanied by a tendency to withdraw expenditure from the control of Parliament, and leave it wholly in the, hands of Departments. Mr. Gibson Bowles showed the value of the Public Accounts Committee, which he said did "the true work" of the House, which is "to pontrol expenditure and .to control the_ Ministers responsible for it." , This certainly is the proper business of the House, but, as the Daily. News points out, a Committee that only holds post-mortems does not do tho work. The essence of effective control is that it should bo exercised before the money is spent, and in determining.how the money is to be spent. . Nothing else can really secure Parliamentary control of expenditure and the spending . Ministers. The commehtsof the Neivs, which, in feeling anxious about the growth of the national expenditure, is on the same side, for once, as the Spectator, are so sound as to deserve extensive quotation. ' Every word of the following passage is perfectly true of New Zealand:

How does the House of Commons really control expenditure and the Ministers responsible for expenditure? In theory tnrough. the Estimates. Every Department prepares Estimates ; which must be passed by the.House. The House is sunposed to have the opportunity of discussing each and every item and approving or rejecting as .it pleases. We say supposed, because the whole procedure, so far as control is concerned, is purely farcical. In the first place, there is no time allowed for adequate discussion. Millions are put down to be voted' in a few hours, which, of course, means that thorough examination of the Estimates is a physical impossibility. In tho second place most of the' time allotted is frittered away in general ■ discussion. In the third place, a committee of the whole House is the last body that any business man would select for investigating estimates; thoroughness and efficiency are impossiblo except with a small committee. In the fourth place a reduction of any estimate would be considered a vote of censuni, and in most cases in. volvo the resignation of the Government. The House of' Commons, in short, could hardly exercise its theoretical right of revising tho Estimates without, under our existing conventions, cutting the thread of a Government's Hie Control through the Estimates is illusory, and it is illusory becnuso our Parliamentary procedure, handed down from an age of small Budgets and ample leisure, is today thoroughly antiquated.

What, then, is the remedy? Obviously, an Estimates Committee, or, as the Americans caU it, a Cow mittee 'on Appropriations; We have a Labour Bills Committee to shape industrial,legisktion, a Lands Committee to revise the Government's land proposals when it musters up its courage to have any. •Why not an Estimates Committee? In many of the. Continental Parliaments there are- Committees to .revise the Estimates of the various Departments. Each Committee goes carefully through .the Estimates submitted to it; it examines the Minister and the Departmental officials, and it has to be satisfied both as to tho policy submitted to it and as to ■ the efficiency with which the Department is doing its work. It then prepares a report, which is laid before the House and there discussed. No valid reason exists why the same system should not be adopted in New Zealand, and there arc millions of pounds' worth" of good reason why it ought to be adopted. There is a valuable article upon the subject by Mr. Toulmin, M.P., in the London Nation of July 9, which wo recommend to the' notice of every member who is seriously concerned about the terrible growth of the cost of government. In 1899 the Departments of the Dominion cost £2,696,405. In ten years the cost rose to £5,5'75,483, an increase of over 100 per cent! And <16 per cent of the increase took place in the last three years of the decade! Of course any attempt to have an independent Estimates Committee sot up will be met with all the opposition of a Ministry that lives by wasting money. But the Government cannot use its stock argument about "Ministerial responsibility," at any rate. For it docs not take responsibility. When a vote is reduced, as it has been reduced against Ministerial opposition on .several occasions,, the Government does uofc resign at aIL