CO885-11 — Page 510

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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference :--

C.O.882/11

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

IALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-

COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

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conviction that the grant of passages to overseas officers is unjustifiable, that influenced the majority of the members who spoke against the Vote. In short, the refusal of the Vote, if the speeches made against it give a correct indication of the motives of those who formed the majority in the division, was a gesture of protest against what was represented as contemptuous indifference to a perfectly reasonable decision of the late Legislative Council in regard to the Passage scheme and an attempt at coercion.

7. Only one of the Ministers, the Honourable Mr. D. S. Senanayake, the Minister for Agriculture and Lands, spoke in favour of the Vote. He made a not very success. ful attempt to dissociate the Vote from the question of a reduction of passage privileges by suggesting, without much justification, that exhaustion of the original Vote was partly due to the provision of homeward passages for retrenched railway officers. The position of the Ministers was, of course, extremely delicate. Several of them had actively participated in the attacks on the Passage scheme made in the late Legislative Council and, so far as action in the Council is concerned, I think that in recording their votes for approval of the Supplementary Estimate they did as much as it would be reasonable to expect of them in the circumstances. I must confess, however, that I was disappointed that the Ministers, having unanimously approved the presentation of the Supplementary Estimate. had neither contrived to secure a larger measure of support for it in the Council, nor, if they found that impossible, forewarned me of the danger of rejection.

8. It was, of course, impossible during the debate to gauge how far the con- stitutional considerations to which I have referred in paragraph 3 of this despatch influenced the members who did not speak on the subject, but no effective reply could have been made to the criticisms of those who spoke unless it dealt with the aspect of the matter which was most prominent in the debate. It was the opinion of the Financia Secretary, who was in charge of the motion for approval of the Supplementary Estimate, that any attempt to deal with the constitutional issue would have been regarded merely as another provocative reminder of the limitations on the powers of the late Legislative and the present State Council against which the members of the Council who had spoken had expressed such strong resentment, and would have driven into opposition to the Vote any members whose attitude to it might be uncer- tain, while there was not the remotest chance that it would convert any of those who had made up their minds to vote against the proposal. In these circumstances he decided that it was the wiser course to let the matter go to the vote without replying. He informs me that he reached this decision after a necessarily hurried consultation with the Leader of the House as to the probable effect of the arguments which he could properly urge in support of the Vote. As the event proved, the Vote was fore- doomed to rejection and it would have been better, in the result, if the Financial Secretary had made a statement of the views of the Governor on the question at issue. On the other hand, of course, it was quite impossible for him to foresee in a House containing so many new members that defeat of the Vote was a certainty. I am there- fore of opinion that no exception can properly be taken to the course which he pursued. 9. While I do not at present apprehend any immediate political consequences of a serious character from the incident described in this despatch, it has brought into prominence one of the greatest difficulties which the successful working of the new Constitution presents. I refer to the separation of responsibility for maintaining unimpaired the conditions of service of Public Officers, which is vested in the Governor, from responsibility for providing the necessary funds essential to the discharge of the first responsibility, which is vested in the State Council. Almost all the regulations affecting the conditions of service of Public Officers are necessarily worded with customary official caution which deliberately avoid conferring upon servants of the Crown absolute legal rights co-extensive with the rights which it is in fact the well understood, though unexpressed, intention to confer. Consequently when members of the State Council take any of the numerous opportunities presented by the necessity for asking them for votes for salaries, &c., to attack conditions of service, it will be rarely if ever possible to counter the attack by the one argument legal "bias, viz., that which would appeal strongly to minds having a strong impairment of the conditions of service would involve a breach of a contract between the Crown and its servants.

10. The Board of Ministers has requested an interview with me to discuss the situation created by the action of the State Council in regard to this supplementary vote for Passages and I have promised to see the members of the Board on Monday, the 10th instant. I understand that the Ministers propose to request me to seek your authority for an amendment of the passage regulations which will give effect to the intention of the late Legislative Council that passages should be granted at intervals

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of 5 years instead of 4 years. If, after consideration of such a proposal, you should decide that existing passage privileges should be preserved, it will be necessary for the Board of Ministers to consider whether or not they are prepared to propose the necessary expenditure to the State Council in the Budget. If the Board should decide that they are unable to go to the Council with such a proposal, a situation will arise upon which it will be necessary for me to address you further. In any event i shall, of course, communicate with you as soon as the interview has taken place.

Jl. 1 do not wish, of course, to express a final opinion on the proposal which 1 anticipate from the Board until I have heard what the Ministers have to say in favour of it. As at present advised, however, I am strongly of opinion that for European officers serving in Ceylon, leave out of the tropics once in four years at least must be regarded as an absolute necessity and that unless passages are provided at these intervals at Government expense the majority of European ollicers cannot possibly afford to take As it is, officers are the leave which is indispensable to their health and efficiency. frequently obliged, for health reasons or owing to the exigencies of leave arrangements, to take leave before they have qualified by four years' unbroken resident service, and in such cases they are required to make a contribution to the cost of their passages proportionate to the deficiency in the period of their current tour of resident service. I am not prepared to advise that an additional burden of expense should be placed on European officers in connexion with their leave either by an increase of the period qualifying for a full passage grant or in any other way.

12. Apart from my own strong opinion that the prosent passage privileges are not excessive, I have to bear in mind the effect on the European members of the Public Service which any impairment of their conditions of service would have at the present time. They know perfectly well that passages are granted once in four years and in some cases far more frequently by many of the Governments under your control and they could not be brought to believe that even a relatively small reduction of this concession in Ceylon, such as that involved in extending the qualifying period of residence to five years, had been decided upon purely on its merits and had not been influenced by political considerations. The fear that their interests may be sacrificed to placate Ceylonese opinion is almost an obsession on the part of a considerable number of European public servants in Ceylon. That they have some excuse for this is suffi- ciently clear from certain passages in the report of the Donoughmore Commission (cf., pages 125-127 and in particular the second paragraph on page 126), but whether their fears are justifiable or not they are real and are an important factor in the problem which has to be taken into consideration.

13. I annex a statement in writing submitted to me by Sir Henry de Mel, the member for Puttalam, in accordance with Article 23 (2) of the Order in Council, setting forth his reasons for objecting to the declaration under Article 22 made by the Financial Secretary by my authority and on my instructions. I have received no statement under Article 23 (2) from any other member and the period of 7 days which the Article allows as the period within which a statement may he submitted has already expired.

14. It will be seen that Sir Henry de Mel's objections are based on the intention of the Legislative Council that passages should be granted once in five years instead of four years and, as he claims, that they should not be granted for the families of officials; on the decrease of the revenue of the Island brought about by the depression and accentuated by the recent remission of export duties; on a statement that the salaries of officials are high and “ living costs low; on the reduction of the cost of passages; and on the absence of any explanation as to why the Vote was essential to give effect to the provisions of the Order in Council. In the preceding paragraphs of this despatch which were written before the receipt of Sir Henry de Mel's statement, I have dealt with practically all the objections which he has urged. I should add, however, that I do not know what justification Sir Henry de Mel has for the assumption that the Legislative Council in reducing the Vote for Passages in the current year's Budget by one-quarter intended to prevent the grant of passages to the families of officers. On the contrary, I think it is clear that the Legislative Council at that time contemplated only an increase of the qualifying period by one year.

15. Before concluding this despatch I think it right to mention a constitutional point which, though it has come to my notice in connexion with the rejection of the supplementary vote for passages, has a very important bearing upon the whole question of financial control exercised by the State Council. Article 65 of the Order in Council does not contain the provision based on the second paragraph of Colonial Regula tion 281 which the third revise of the Ceylon draft of the Order includes as Clause (3) of that Article. It would consequently appear that, according to a strict construction of the Order in Council standing by itself, it was not necessary to seek the authority

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of the legislature for an excess upon the sub-head of the Estimates containing the Vote for Passages, since the excess will in fact be counterbalanced by under-expendi- ture under other sub-heads of the same head and no additional provision under the head will be required. I should not, however, feel justified in assuming that the omission of the provision mentioned from the Order in Council was intended to authorize or require the abandonment of a practice established for many years and the withdrawal from the State Council of an important power of control over expenditure which, without an express grant of that power in the previous constitution, the Legis- lative Council had always exercised. Indeed I am satisfied that such a departure from established practice would draw upon the new Constitution an attack more serious, widespread, and damaging to its success than any which would be likely to follow the use of my reserve powers in a particular instance.

I have, &c.,

GRAEME THOMSON,

Governor.

Council) Order in Council. In view, however, of the falling public revenue no vote should have been exceeded at any time. In any case a detailed estimate for any passages of an urgent nature should have been submitted to the State Council in the first instance.

Such action

(6) I assert that the non-granting of a single passage to any officers on leave is not of the slightest moment in these diflicult and trying times, and, therefore, the extraordinary powers invested in the Governor to be used in urgent and extraordinary cases should not be invoked. will cause great loss of faith by the people in the good-will and sympathy with which the State Council was inaugurated, and the public expression "that reserved powers are reserved powers, and will be used in extreme cases becomes a negation.

}}

Dated at Colombo this fourth day of August, 1931.

HENRY DE MEL, State Council of Ceylon.

Member for Puttalam Electorate,

Enclosure in No. 32.

STATEMENT OF OBJECTION.

Ar a meeting of the State Council in executive session held on Wednesday, the 29th July, 1931, the Financial Secretary moved for sanction by the Council of a sum of Rs. 50,000/- (already sanctioned by Special Warrant No. 24) as passages of officers, their wives and families, Sub-head 23 of Head 66, in the estimates for 1930-31. The members of Council by 37 votes to 14 refused to sanction the vote. There- upon, the Financial Secretary under Sub-section (b) of Section 22 (1) of the Ceylon (State Council) Order in Council, 1931, declared that acting under the authority and on instructions from His Excellency the Governor, the vote was essential to give effect to the provisions of the Ceylon (State Council) Order in Council, 1931.

I, the undersigned member of the State Council, under Section 23, Sub-sec- tion (2) of the Ceylon (State Council) Order in Council, 1931, object to the said declaration on the following grounds:-

(1) Sub-head 23 was a vote for Rs. 300,000/- which the Legislative Council very reluctantly voted, vide discussion report in the Legislative Council debates of 24th September, 1930, page 1582 et seq. There 22 elected members as against 12 Officials and 4 other Councillors refused to vote anything more than Rs. 300,000/-, and indicated in no unmistakable terms that passages should be provided for at least once in five years and not for the families of officials. On that occasion it was suspected that this sum would be expended in spite of the expressed views of the elect of the people and the Member for Kalutara warned that the Council would vote no further moneys.

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(2) At a time when revenue was falling rapidly certain heavy duties on agri- cultural products had to be remitted and the public were also making great sacrifices, it was highly imprudent and improper for the late Govern- ment to have expended the original vote in nine months, and to seek the acceptance by the State Council of further moneys for a purpose which was of no interest to the public and against the expressed wish of 22 elected members who represented the people.

(3) In fact the payment of any passages at all in the face of the high salaries now being drawn by officials and the very low living costs can only be classified as luxury payments to well-paid public servants, and cannot by any stretch of argument be said to be of paramount importance or essential to give effect to the present Order in Council.

(4) Passages were in the nature of a bounty granted to certain officers when the cost of passages was highly inflated soon after the War. These con- ditions no longer appear and a single passage in some steamship companies can be secured at £36.

(5) Neither the Financial Secretary nor the Ministers were able to explain why this vote was essential to give effect to the provisions of the Ceylon (State

C. 83227/31 [No. 8].

No. 33.

THE SECRETARY OF STATE to The GOVERNOR

(Confidential.)

SIB,

Downing Street, 31st August, 1931.

I HAVE the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your Confidential despatch of the 7th of August,* regarding the rejection by the State Council of the Supplementary Vote of Rs. 50,000 required to finance the Passage scheme for public officers for the remainder of the financial year.

2. I have already conveyed to you in my telegram of the 7th of August,† my approval of your action in this matter. My views on the necessity for maintaining the existing passage privileges for public officers pending a revision of the conditions of service after full inquiry, were conveyed to you in my telegram of the 12th of Sep- tember, 1930. It might have been better if my views had been fully explained to the State Council in the course of the debate, but I recognize the difficulties, explained in the eighth paragraph of your despatch, which faced the Financial Secretary.

3. I shall await further communication from you after the interview with the Board of Ministers, to which reference is made in the tenth paragraph of your despatch As at present advised, however, I fully agree with your view that the maintenance of the existing passage privileges is indispensable to the efficiency of the Service, par- ticularly at the present time, when any impairment of the conditions of service of public officers must undoubtedly lead to an increase in the number of those retiring on pension under the special conditions provided in the Order in Council.

4. As regards the fifteenth paragraph of your despatch, I would explain that the omission in the final draft of the Order in Council of the provision included as Clause 3 of Article 65 in the Third Revise was not intended to require, nor expressly to authorize, any alteration in the practice existing in Ceylon. The financial provisions of the Order in Council were considered in consultation with the Director of Colonial Audit, and it was felt that this particular provision was superfluous in the Order in Council, while moreover its inclusion would prevent the adoption in the future of arrangements similar to those existing in this country.

I have, &c.;

J. H. THOMAS.

* No. 32.

+ No. 31.

C. 73563/30 [No. 7]: not printed.