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HELLO
PECORD OFFICI
Reference -
C.O.882/12
| PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
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contained in both Reports was prepared and placed before the Board immediately. The Board decided to invite the Officers of State and Executive Committees to examine forthwith the cadre recommendations, but to retain in their own hands the recommen- dations relating to salaries for discussion with myself before introducing resolutions in the State Council embodying their conclusions on this aspect of the Reports. Schedules of the cadre recommendations were accordingly prepared and issued and on the 21st November, when consideration of the salaries recommendations was resumed, the Ministers decided that some statement from the official side on the recom- A joint memorandum, mendations, fuller than the classified summary, was necessary. copy annexed, by the Financial Secretary and the Chief Secretary was accordingly prepared and issued to the Board on the 17th December. Meanwhile your despatch No. 620 of the 14th November had been received and in accordance with the request of the Board was tabled in the State Council on the 17th January. The outcome of this was a motion of protest by Mr. G. K. W. Perera, already dealt with in paragraph 3 of my despatch under reference, and the early preparation by Ministers of certain resolutions which did not differ in first principles from those which have now been adopted. The Ministers no doubt felt that it was undesirable that the Council should debate the protest motion without any knowledge of the fact that the Board had already framed proposals to meet the situation arising from your despatch, and they desired that these resolutions should be introduced on the 14th February when Mr. Perera's motion was debated. On the representations of the Chairman, however, that it would be proper for the Board at least to consult me before publishing their inten- tions the Board decided provisionally to place the resolutions on the Order of the Day on the 28th February, and to seek an opportunity in the meantime of discussing them with me.
I met the Board on the 20th February and although the resolutions appeared to me to go further in some respects than was warranted by the terms of your despatch, I did not feel that I was justified in opposing the desire of the Board to put them forward as concrete recommendations for your consideration. I explained my views and made it plain that I could regard them only as recommendations, and that I was not in entire agreement with their terms.
3. The resolutions were duly moved on the 28th February and opposition developed along the line of the Board's omission to deal with the main recommenda- It was contended that in tions affecting the existing members of the Public Service. accepting these resolutions the Council would be abandoning the right it had always as the passage claimed of contesting the propriety and validity of such terms of service concession and commutation of pensions, and of enforcing its views on all salary questions through the budget; that the Council, in effect, was being asked to consent to the adoption on their side of exactly that attitude towards existing members of the Public Service adopted by the Secretary of State in his despatch, against which they had recently protested, and that the moral effect of having secured the appointment of a Commission to investigate and make recommendations in regard to the salaries and conditions of service of existing members of the Public Service, a Commission which, incidentally, had cost not less than Rs 38,000. should not be thrown away This opposition culminated in a motion by the Member for Colombo Central (Mr. A. È. Goonesinha) to refer the resolutions back to the Board of Ministers for the addition of further resolutions affecting existing members of the Public Service. This motion was accepted by the Speaker as a motion for the adjournment of the debate for the purpose of referring it back to the Board and was carried by 24 votes to 19. The Board of Ministers met the next morning and decided that they could not accept the reference back and succeeded in obtaining the resumption of the debate on the same afternoon. After a warning by the mover of the importance which the Board would attach to the rejection of their policy by the Council, the first resolution was passed by 31 votes to 11, three members declining to vote. The second resolution for the appointment of a Select Committee and for interim action regarding the terms of engagement of Ceylonese, pending the report of the Select Committee, as passed without a division after an amendment, widening its scope to include the whole contents of the report but with a term of special reference to the conditions of service of future entrants, had been accepted by the mover.
4. Before passing to a consideration of the terms of the motions, I must refer to one or two incidents of the debate. The Board of Ministers had included the Judges of the Supreme Court in the first clause (relating to the future recruitment of officers from abroad) of the first resolution. The Board had taken this course quite independently of the question of maintaining any particular ratio between the number
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of Ceylonese Judges and those appointed from abroad, and upon this question the Board expressed no opinion. Ministers recognized, however, that as long as it remained necessary, for whatever reason, to appoint any of the Supreme Court Judges by selection from abroad, the application to these appointments of the procedure which they proposed for others might result in a discussion in the legislature of the claims and qualifications of Ceylonese candidates embarrassing to those gentlemen and entail- ing the many dangers inseparable from the political discussion of judicial appoint- ments. An amendment to omit the Judges of the Supreme Court was proposed in the course of the debate, but was withdrawn after the Attorney-General had stated the considerations which had influenced the Board of Ministers, and had added that the maintenance of any particular ratio in the making of appointments to the Bench of the Supreme Court was unaffected by the passing of the resolution as it stood. The only other incident of the debate to which I need refer is the claim made from more than one quarter, and even from the Ministerial bench, that the State Council is the final arbiter in the determining of the salaries and conditions of service of future entrants to the Public Service.
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5. To return now to the terms of the resolutions themselves, 1 have already indicated that they cannot be regarded as anything more than recommendations, and that, although they purport to be based on your despatch of the 14th November, they do in fact go further in certain directions than the terms of the despatch itself warrant. It had been intended that a statement to this effect should be made by the Chief Secretary at a suitable opportunity, but as debate developed it became clear that the position was fully recognized by the Council, and that à caveat of this nature was not necessary. The Chief Secretary was moreover aware of the grave importance which the Board attached to the passing of its resolutions by the Council, and it seemed essential to avoid the introduction of any element into the discussion which might jeopardize the acceptance of the Board's policy. I need not therefore spend much time in discussing the question whether the Board of Ministers and the State Council, or its Executive Committees, have or have not authority to "determine salaries and conditions of service. In your despatch you have stated that you do not contest that it is very desirable that rates of salaries for new entrants should be fixed at a scale with which the State Council would concur, but since I can find no indication in the Order in Council of an intention to divest the Secretary of State or the Governor of their responsibility for the maintenance of an efficient public service, or indeed to alter in any way the relation which had existed in this regard between the Secretary of State and the Governor on the one hand and the legislature on the other prior to the introduction of the new Constitution, 1 must assume that any claim that this responsibility has been transferred to the State Council would be ill-founded. Articles 86 and 87 of the Order in Council are conclusive against such a claim, and moreover I can attach no meaning to the inclusion in the Second Schedule to the Order of the two subjects of the Public Services and Establishments allotted to the Chief Secretary and Financial Secretary respectively, unless it is to mark the fact that the Secretary of State and the Governor are still rested with this responsibility.
6. The principle which it is sought to establish in the first clause of the first resolu- tion purports to take its rise from the statements in paragraph 5 of your despatch of 14th November that in existing circumstances you anticipate that the recruitment of European officers will be confined to the filling of a limited number of posts for which special experience or qualifications are required; and that in general you could not approve of the engagement of a European officer until you were convinced that satis- factory provision had been made by the State Council for the salary and conditions of service of the post. I would remark in the first place that the context of these state- ments is the discussion of the adequacy or otherwise of the scales of salary proposed by the Commission for officers hereafter to be recruited from abroad, and I take your despatch to refer to the future recruitment of officers from overseas and not to the case of officers already serving in the Island. It will indeed be clear that the terms of your despatch have been taken out of their context in relation to the recommenda- tions of a particular Commission on salaries and cadres, and have been made, in this and subsequent clauses, the foundation for principles to be followed by the Governor and the Secretary of State in the exercise of their powers under Article 86 of the Order in Council and Article IX of the Royal Instructions in regard to the making of appointments. I have already referred to the instance of the Judges of the Supreme Court, but I think it is at least conceivable that other instances will arise in which the recruitment of an officer from abroad will become necessary, and that in such a case the State Council might decline to make adequate provision for his salary and
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