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JUUBLIC

PECORD OFFICE

Reference -

NC.O.882/12

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COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

BF

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-

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Council Your Excellency's adviser in these two matters is the Public Services Com- mission and the Chief Secretary only comes in as Chairman of the Public Services Commission. With this position I have no quarrel. Other equally important divisions of the subject are the strength of establishments and the, salaries, allowances, and con- ditions of service of public officers. The position tacitly accepted at present is that the Financial Secretary is Your Excellency's adviser in these matters, and that the Chief Secretary has no say in them at all, except where he comes in,.like any other Head of Department, in the preliminary stages, where his own departments (Civil Service, General Clerical Service, and Defence Force) are concerned. The only matters in which the Chief Secretary passes orders, or advises Your Excellency direct, in regard to the Public Services as a whole, are the grant of leave and the allocation of Government quarters. It is obvious that his position as the Officer of State in charge of the Administration of the Public Services" has been reduced to a farce. I have said that I have no objection to the way in which one section of the Administration of the Public Services has been allotted to the Public Services Commission. On the contrary, I consider the position in this regard thoroughly satisfactory, and I consider that it will be even more satisfactory when it becomes possible to include a non-official element in the Public Services Commission. But I cannot regard with equanimity the control over the other sections of this subject has been taken completely out of the in which way hands of the Chief Secretary and handed over to the Financial Secretary. I have hitherto acquiesced in this state of affairs simply because I could see no practical way of giving effect to the recommendations of the Donoughmore Commission, and because I did not wish to add to the difficulties of initiating the new Constitution by creating difficulties between myself and the Financial Secretary. Had we not had the good fortune to have a Financial Secretary with an exhaustive knowledge of all the depart- ments of Government, and in addition a breadth of vision and political acumen beyond the ordinary, I should have felt compelled to take a different line. But we cannot expect always to be equally fortunate in this regard, and I do not consider that complete Treasury control over the Public Services, to the extent to which it prevails in England, is suitable for Ceylon. Such a position is certainly not in accordance with the recom- mendations of the Donoughmore Commission. Let us examine those recommendations again. They speak (page 68) of the Chief Secretary's "responsibility for matters of establishment and personnel," and propose (page 70) that the Financial Secretary should be entrusted with the financial supervision of all departments and their estab- lishments, much on the lines of the Treasury in Great Britain.' I find their intentions very difficult to interpret into practice. One interpretation would be for the Financial Secretary to be responsible for seeing that authorized cadres and salary scales are not exceeded, and that allowances are not improperly paid, or privileges with any financial implications misapplied, and for advising the Chief Secretary in regard to any new proposals affecting cadres or salaries, &c., and for the Chief Secretary to be the direct adviser of Your Excellency in all these matters. This would have meant, in effect, that as regards these subjects, the old relations between the Treasurer and the Colonial Secretary would continue as between the Financial Secretary and the Chief Secretary. Such a position would have been open to the serious objection that it would have placed one Officer of State, in respect of subjects and functions allotted to him, in subordination to another Officer of State. I am reluctant to recommend a reversion to this position; at the same time I consider it necessary that the Chief Secretary should be in a position to give parallel advice on these matters, from the point of view both of the efficiency of the administration and of the contentment of the services, and that his advice should carry at least equal weight to that of the Financial Secretary.

So much (and I fear it has been a great deal) for one aspect of the Chief Secretary's duties. There are two other aspects.

He is to be (page 68 of the report) the Chief Adviser and Coadjutor to the Ministers individually and collectively, and for this purpose he must be the general principles, but with the details of every important problem which may come familiar, not only with up for solution.' This latter is a counsel of perfection which cannot be altogether fulfilled. Such familiarity with the details of all important questions would involve a reduplication, in the Secretariat, of an enormous mass of correspondence on depart- mental files which is now seen only by the department and Executive Committee con- cerned. As regards the Ministers individually all that is possible to secure is that the Chief Secretary is aware of the general nature of all subjects coming up for discussion, and has facilities for acquainting himself with the details of these should it appear necessary for him to do so. That is the existing position, and it is satisfactory. The Chief Secretary's presence at Executive Committee meetings is, generally speaking, welcomed, and his views listened to with attention. But I have always made it my

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practice to avoid any appearance of dominating a discussion in Committee, and to assist them in expressing their own views in what appears to me the most practicable form rather than to oppose too strenuously views which I consider not quite so sound as my own. After all the responsibility is now theirs. As regards advice to the Ministers collectively, the Chief Secretary, as Chairman of the Board of Ministers, has ample opportunities of advising them, and the position in this regard is entirely satisfactory.

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The third aspect of the Chief Secretary's duties is that he is (page 150 the political adviser to the Government." As regards his advice to the Board of Ministers and the Executive Committees the position is satisfactory. As regards his advice to the State Council, the position is very difficult. The Attorney-General and the Financial Secretary are recognized as the Council's expert advisers in their own respective lines, and advice and criticism of them is expected. But the Chief Secretary is not an expert in the same sense of the word. He is inevitably regarded to a far greater extent than the other Officers of State, as a relic of the old bureaucracy, and there is a distinct tendency for his advice and criticism to be resented. In fact, unless he can help to clear up points of fact, or unless it is necessary for him to express views which he knows. to be strongly held by the Governor, I am inclined to think that the less he intervenes in Council the better. There remains the other element in the Government, namely, the Governor himself. As regards the relations between the Chief Secretary and the Governor the Donoughmore Commission Report is singularly reticent. Obviously he is the Governor's political " adviser, and the Governor should take his advice on the political aspect (whatever that may mean) of all important questions. But the Report does not suggest that he should be the Governor's Chief adviser. In fact, it says that “although second only to the Governor in status, and administering the Government during the Governor's absence, the duties that have hitherto fallen on him as adviser to the Governor will in future be shared by all his fellow Ministers."

I am not aware of the precise nature of the duties of the Chief Secretary, Pro- vincial Secretary, or Colonial Secretary, as he is variously styled in the different Governments of the self-governing Dominions. In any case they could not afford an exact parallel to Ceylon, and in none of them, except in the two cases where he is also Premier, does the Chief, Provincial, or Colonial Secretary occupy the high position as regards pay and precedence held by the Chief Secretary in Ceylon.

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But it appears to me if the Chief Secretary is really to be the Governor's" political adviser" he must be in a position to advise the Governor with regard to the political aspect of all questions which come before the Governor, whether from a Minister or from an Officer of State. I think that the adjective held to connote not only

political" in this sense must be politics" but policy. The Ministers and the other Officers of State are in a sense all specialist advisers. policy in the sense of administrative În so far as they advise on policy, it is policy in a limited sense-financial policy, legal policy, agricultural policy, railway policy, and so on. But it seems to me important, now that Your Excellency no longer has the assistance of an Executive Council, that the co-ordination of the various special policies should not be left entirely to Your Excel- lency, or rather that, when Your Excellency has to decide whether advice tendered to you on one specialist policy "clashes with, or should be influenced by, another specialist policy" already determined upon, or under discussion you should have someone to consult (other than the Board of Ministers, whom Your Excellency might occasionally consult in such matters in spite of the limited extent to which they have collective responsibility) and that someone must be the Chief Secretary. In other words the Chief Secretary even if he is not the Governor's Chief Adviser (and I am by no means convinced that he should not be) must be what I will call, for want of a better term, his general adviser. That is my position at the moment in practice, to this extent that Your Excellency does consult me freely on matters submitted to you by Ministers or other Officers of State. But I am not at all sure that that position is fully recognized by the other Officers of State. Still less do I feel sure that they would agree with my further contention that it is desirable not only that Your Excellency should be quite free to consult the Chief Secretary, but that the latter should be free, and in a position, to proffer his advice without being asked for it. I do not mean to imply that there are occasions on which Your Excellency should consult the Chief Secretary but does not, but occasions may arise on which the desirability of consulting the Chief Secretary may be apparent only to the Chief Secretary, by virtue of special information which he possesses, and not to Your Excellency. It is for this reason that I say that he should be in the position, so far as possible, to proffer this advice. He cannot be fully in a position to do so unless all papers submitted to Your Excelleney go through him, which is clearly impossible.