GOVERNMENT BY COMMITTEES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3124, 26 February 1909, Page 4

GOVERNMENT BY COMMITTEES.

An article on "A Labour View of the House of Commons" is contrithe "National Review" by Mr F. W. Jowett, M.P. It is an uncompromising attack on the ancient machinery of the House. "It is obsolete and beyond repair," says Mr Jowett in his attempt to show "why the House of Commons fails to keep pace with public opinion in regard to legislation." Mr Jowett's remedy is the substitution of committees for Ministers. He writes:~"ln recommending, as I do, emphatically the overthrow of the present system of single Ministerial control, supported as it is by joint Cabinet" responsibility, and the in its place of a system of committee government, similar to the system which prevails in county and local government, I am making no unsupported recommendation, though if I were the only one to protest I should persist. The alternative, therefore, that I wish to submit for the present system of single Ministerial control is committee government, I believe that a development of the cummittee system would be equally effective both for legislative and executive purposes. The majority of serious legislative proposals would emanate from the executive committees concerned. These proposals would be submitted as committees' findings, and if accepted by the full House of Commons the propositions would be referred to another committee, which should, with the help of competent 1-gal draughtsmen, frame the neces sary clauses to bring the propositions into the form of good workable laws. The full House of Commons should meet in the morning at, say, 10 a.m., and do its work during the day; but the whole business should be so arranged that the meetings of the full Assembly should not clash with the meetings of committees. With the exception ot a reasonable interval duriner the summer or at other times for holidays, the sittings should continue the whole year through, and always during the day. K.C.'s company directors, and others with business in the city or elsewhere, would not like it. but no matter; it would ba a great advantage to be rid of them. I do not suppose the scheme I have roughly outlined wil! meet with the approval of old Parliamentary hands. Of one thine, however, lam eure, and that is of the utter failure of the present system.