PARLIAMENT AND LAW

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 809, 1 November 1929, Page 9

PARLIAMENT AND LAW

POWERS OF MINISTERS SAID TO ENCROACH COMMITTEE TO INQUIRE United P.A.—By Telegraph—Copyright LONDON, Thursday. Lord Sankey, the Lord Chancellor, after consultation with Mr. Philip Snowden, Chancellor of the Exchequer, has appointed an all-party committee of Parliamentary lawyers under the chairmanship of the Earl of Donoughmore, “to consider the powers exercised by Ministers and by the Crown through delegated legislation and judicial and quasi-judicial decisions.” The committee will report as to what safeguards are necessary to secure Parliament’s sovereignty and the supremacy of the law. The appointment of this committee is a sequel to expressions of opinion, especially by judges, that Ministers and officials are encroaching upon the spheres previously allotted to Parliament and the law courts. There have been frequent protests against alleged bureaucratic usurpations. CHIEF JUSTICE’S ATTACK It is stated in reference to the appointment of a committee by the Lord Chancellor to inquire into the powers of Ministers and the encroachment on the domain of Parliament that attention was first focussed on the subject by a book written by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Hewart, entitled “New Despotism,” in which he strongly criticised the bureaucracy.

One of Lord Hewart’s strongest irotests was directed against the inertion in new Acts of a clause giv- “ j n g Government departments power to interpret their provisions. The “Daily Telegraph” says it is unusual for a Lord Chief Justice to write a book which is so much more than * criticism as to be

a most damning and crushing indictment of a welldefined feature of the existing system of Government. Indeed, it is so unusual that the motive must not only have been strong, but overpowering. % His cause is nothing less than the liberty of the subject and his challenge must be answered without delay.