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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

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19 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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CROWN AGENTÉ ENQUIRY COMMITTEE:

Sir M. F. QuMASSEY, G.C.M.G., K.C.R., 1.8.0-

1991. But as a matter of fact during your period nothing was done in that direction to give heal pro- ducers i am not speaking of the local merchant) the opportunity?—Prodineers 7′′

1915. Liky engineering firms or contractors" firms, I mean?—No, nothing would have been done from this side; 1 should have expected, as I have said all along the Governor to take the initiative in a matter of That art, because he would be in a far better position. than we, even with such casual knowledge of those people as your suggest could have been.

1915, (Sir Ralp';_Moor.) I think there is some official disemmatent also as well as unofficial with regard to the system of the Crown Agents?—Yes.

1917. Would you consider that difficulty to, any ex- ten due to the more or less dual control, that is the control exercised by the Secretary of State over the Crown Agents, and the control presumed to be existing as btween principal and agels between the Crown Colony and the Crown Agents?—I can understand that the Colonial Government might prefer to be in a posi. tion to deal directly and independently with its Agent, but whether that should be permitted or not is a question for the Secretary of State.

1918. Would it, on the other hand, perhaps obviate the difficulty if the Secretary of State carried his con- trol further in the affairs as between the CrowIL Agents and the Crown Colony? What I mean is this, that the Secretary of State approves of the Crown Colony estimates of the works that are to be carried out: he approves of the money that may be expended on each specific work; his responsibility or control then apparently ceases, and it is between the Crown Colony and the Crown Agents to spend that money The Crown Colony tries to to the advantage. dietate to the Crown Agents, and perhaps the Crown Agent to some extent dictates to the Colony, and some discontent, or perhaps friction, arises; would it not hether if the Secretary of State carried his control further and acceptail_absolute responsibility right through for the Crown' Agents, that is to say, in effect that the Crown Agents would become a department of his al dutely?--I do not think myself that it would tend to efficiency.

1919. (Chairman.) Will you tell us why?-I think there has been too much done in that direction of late years. I have noticed a great many of these questions pase through so many hands that it has become a matter of extreme dileulty to say actually where the responsibility nests, and one further very grave disadvantage is that there is an infinity of reporting and unter reporting, so that the progress of the work and the transaction of the business is very much delayed. I do not want to see actual practical work. financial mercantile, or constructional, delayed by having too many cooks with, their fingers in the pie. The Crown Agents can act either under the instruc- tions of the Colonial Government as regards all these matters of detail or under the instructions of the Secretary of State. but for goalness sake lo not give them two sets of masters if you want the work done.

1920. (Sir Halph Mour.) But the feeling rather in some Crown Colonies is that the monster in the Crown Agent, whereas they are the principals, and they ought to be the master? They ought to be the masters no doubt, and if the Crown Agents transacted their business with any degree of judgment they would never let the Colonial Government feel that they were attempting to dictate to them. It was the one thing I was always most anxious to avoid.

1921. It is really a matter of tact in the transaction of the business? I think so, and think it must You can make suggestions to your always be the case. principals; you can say: "We think it would be wiser to do this or to do that, but after all we are your agents, awl if you tell us to transnet the business in a certain way, of course, we shall do it, subject to the general regulations which the Secretary of State has laid down for the guidance of the Crown Agents' business. The principals, as well as the agents, are lesund to conform to them, but within those lintts my feeling always was to give the utmost possible weight to any expression of opinion from the Colonial Govern- ment on any question with which 1 had to deal. If

I was not able to agree in the view which the Colonial Governor took, I always tried to give him chapter and verse and the reason, and I always found people extremely ready to accept one's advice and one's view in these matters. I do not recall as between the Crown Agents and Colonial Governments, with ono or two exceptions, any material friction. The ditli- culty always arose with the unofficial community.

1922. You think the giving of the orders and the execution of the orders should be between the Crown Colony and the Crown Agents?—Yes.

1923. Subject to a general control which must always exist from the Secretary of State --Yes, just the same as in the case of tendering for public works; if a Governor wrote to me and said: "We are sending home an order for so and so, and we think that Messrs. So and So would be very good firms to invite to tender," unless I knew something very strongly against Messrs. So and So 1 should most certainly invite them to tender, but 1 shuuhl say to the Governor: “I do not know very much about this firm; it is not a firm we have admitted to our list, but as you think they are competent to tender, I shall ask them to tender, but you will have to take some share of the re- sponsibility." You would not call that dictating to a Governor, would you?

1924. (Mr. Gibson.) Following up that one point, you were saying that the Crown Agents must be regarded as strictly business people, and therefore subject to more or less hard and fast rules. Do you not think, as Sir Ralph Moor was just saying, that if they were more closely associated with the Colonial Office, there would be less danger of a somewhat cast- iron rigidity, and that there might be more elasticity generally? I can only answer that question by refer ring back to the past history of the office. The olice in its present form was largely organised by the late Sir Penrose Julyan, who was essentially a man of business: his object was to make the office as much like an ordinary financial mercantile house as possible, and to have as little red tape about it as might be.

1925. (Chairman.) When was this-about?-The late fifties.

1926. That was the mercantile house of that day Yes, but in their humble way his successors have endeavoured to keep the office up to the mark and to make it at all events a competent competitor with the great banking and mercantile houses of the day.

1927. Your plan has been to keep it up to date as a mercantile house of the present day -Yes, but we have never endeavoured to `organise (at least I never did. I do not know what has been done since) the Crown Agents' Ulice on the model of a Government I wanted it to be a thoroughly Department at all. practical house of business with as few regulations and as few forms and as few steps in the transaction of its business as possible. To give you a sort of general instance of the way in which the business was trans- acted there, nolssly ever communicated by minutes. Now you cannot conceive a Government Department existing without sheaves of minutes. We transacted our business exactly as a great merchant does, that is to say, that when the letters came in in the morning they were all opened before me; I went through them, and put a note in the corner of the number of the man 1 wanted to see in the particular department, two or tive, or whatever it might be, and when he came to me, I said: "Draft me an answer to that letter in such and such terms," and the letter and his answer in my time were the only record; we had none of these magnificent sheets of foolscap covered with mutes which fill all the upper storeys of this bikling, but we did our business exactly as a mer- chant does his, and the saving in labour and in time was immense. You see we were dealing with business which had to be transactol day by day and which could not wait--a great deal of it, especially the money business, because delay leads to the loss of

money.

1928, (Mr. Gibson.) My poini 18 that you are deal- ing with a considerable number of Crown Colonies varying very much in wealth, and other conditions, whereas, I take it that, generally speaking, your transactions were more or less governed by the samo

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE.

Sir M. F. OяMANSEY, G.C.M.G., K.C.B., 1.8.0.

rules?There were certain guiding rules, no doubt, but I think you would have in any case, however large or small the Colony might be, certain principles on which you conducted your business.

1920. If the Crown Agents were more closely asso- cinted with the Colonial Office I think it would by possible to have much more elasticity and consider ihe circumstances of individual cases much more asily than that can be done at present. Take the case of Ceylon or the Straits Settlements, where they have large Public Works Departments and all sorts of capable officials, and so on. You might deal very ferently with them compared to the case of a West Intan island, and you could allow them more latitude with regard to obtaining their stores and placing their rders Certainly, as regards placing their orders for works, they ought to be in a position to furnish us with some useful competitors with the English tenderers, but you would not, in the case of Singa- pore or Ceylon, exclude the Colony from the advantage of the enormous field of contracting ability which England presents. You would not place your orders for railways and harbour works exclusively with local firms, would you?

1930, No? --All you would ask in any case is that they should be admitted to compete ?

1981, (('Lairman.) And you would give a slight pre- ference on the Indian plan? - Yes, so long as the publie interest did not suffer.

1982. (M». Harris,) The Chairman referred to the feeling of hostility in the Crown Agents, and you have explained how you have laboured to make the Crown Agents a sort of mercantile firm. Do you not think that the mere fact of emphasis being laid on the mer- cantile idea really invites the hostility of the Colonies? I daresay it does, but at the same time I cannot conceive how its business could be transacted efficiently in any other way.

1933. Do you think the Crown Agents conduct their business then more efficiently than the Works Depart- ment of the India Office, which is organised on Civil Service lines?---1 should be very sorry to draw any comparison and I am not sufficiently acquainted with the working of the India Public Works Department, which, after all, is an enormous thing, but I do know this, that the Indian Public Works Department has elaborated a most complicated system, and that if you take an Indian Public Works Department man away from the system under which he has grown up he is like a fish out of water. I do not want to draw any comparison, but the two things are absolutely different.

1934. I was following up Mr. Gibson's point alsout conding nearer into touch with the Government Department, and there I will ask you one more ques: tion. You said. "Do not give us two sets of masters." lant are you not wrong in suggesting that the nearer touch gives two sets of masters! Is not the Secretary of State, in fact, one with the Crown Colonies as against the Crown Agents 7–1 hope the Secretary of State is nover, 'so to speak, "as against the Crown Agents."

18835. I used the term "as against "in distinguish- ing the Crown Agents as agents from their principals the Governments; and is not the Secretary of State one with the Government of the Crown Colonies for This purpose?~My own opinion for what it is worth, based on a gost imany years' experience, is that the more you make the Crown Agents' Office approximate tra Public Department the more you will fetter it with the bands of red tape, and the less it will bw able transact its business according to ordinary mercan- ule and commercial principles, I can eontevive nothing more absolutely calculated to make the Office useless than it should have to conduct its business, mr to speak, under the same sort of regulations which the Treasury lays down as regards such questions as tendering and inspection and matters of that kiml. They are regulations which I suppose the Treasury has had to adopt Lu Reference to Parliamentary opinion, but I do not think that on tio whole they consluce towards the efficient transne- tion of business or that any mercantile house carries 1ts business uueler that system. Take, for instance, the more question of absolutely open competition

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which, of course, is one of the dogmas laid down for the transaction of business of that kind by our Govern- ment Departments, what durs it ́result in! You in- vite all and sundry to tender for your work, and during the earlier years of your experience you accept the tenders of a great many perfectly incompetent people, and you gradually have to establish something which amounts to a kind of black list, that is to say, by a very costly system of exclusion you arrive at exactly the same point that an ordinary house of busi- ness starts from. I quote that as an iustance of the difficulty of carrying on practical business under the trammels of ordinary departmental regulation. Most departments are departments of supervision and criti. cism, but that is quite another thing.

1936. I am afraid I am getting near another set of questions the Chairman may wish to take, but I will just ask one more: do you see any necessary opposition between such a business system as you suggest and a staff organised much more upon ordinary lines of con- trol? I canno

Be Any necessity for altering the Crown Agents' system as regards their staff. I dare say the Chairman is to ask me something about that by-and-bye, but at present that is my view. I do not think there is anything to gain by changing it.

1937. (Mr. Gibson.) There is only just one point with regard to what Mr. Harris said just now. We were informed by Major Cameron and Sir Ernest Blako that their system of competitive tenders is very much the same as that in force at present in the Navy anul Army; you have selected firms on your list --Yes. We started where the other Departments have left off, so to speak. The Crown Agents put upon their list tho names of firms who can satisfy them that they are in A position to carry out the sort of work which the Crown Agents desire to let, and they are very anxious to make these lists as inclusive as possible. That is a very different thing from starting with open competi- tion, and, as I said just now, by a costly process of exclusion, arriving at a list. It is far better to start the other way on.

1938. I rather wish to point out that open competi- tion is not the system in force in the Government Departments; the system of the Crown Agents is pre- cisely the same as that in force in the Army, and that is limited competition; the War Office only put firms on which are selected and competent -f "course. I am speaking from an experience of a great many years back. Certainly, when I was in the War Office in 1961 and 1865, absolutely open competition was tho rule. No doubt it has very much changed since then, but it always struck me at the time as being a most cumbersome and troublesome system.

1939, (Chairman.) During the course of the ques- tions round the table you have answered some of the matters which I had put down to ask you from the Chair on the subject of the staff, because you say in your view it is inadvisable to change it. With regard to the whole organisation and whither it should be brought nearer to Civil Service lines or to stay as it is, or to be taken further from them. I would first ask you, you wont from the Crown Agents' Oflies to this Office?--Yes.

1910. With an experience of the two coming so closely one after the other, do you consider that you could not organise the Crown Agents' Department so thoroughly if it were more completely a Department of the Colonial Offier? Is that your" view?—That is very strongly my view.

1911. Will you tell us why, because you have had great opportunities for making this Office more busi- uslike?—It was the feeling of my predecessors in the Crown Agents Office, a feeling 1 entirely shared, and which grew stronger every year I was there, that at is essential to the efficiency of that office that their staff should feel that they have no masters except the Crown Agents, that the Crown Agents should be abso- lutely masters in their own house so far as the staff is vane med. I think they should have their appoint ment and that they should be able to dismiss any man they want to dismiss, just in the same way as à mer- chant would. at a month's notice if necessary, and that their staff should look to them and nobody else.