State Employment means Life Employment
One of the most important results of this intervention on behalf of individuals has been the establishment of the doctrine that once a man has landed in the employ of the State, he has “something very nearly approaching to a freehold of provision for life,” to employ the words of the Chairman of the Select Committee on the Civil Services Expenditure, 1873.[250]
Before that committee, Sir Wm. H. Stephenson, Chairman of the Inland Revenue Commissioners, said: “…if a man was reported to be hopelessly inefficient, I should dismiss him; but even then you must act with a great deal of forbearance. For the simple reason that you are amenable to many opinions beside your own. You cannot act absolutely upon your own judgment without being liable to be compelled to give your reasons for that judgment; and these reasons, though perfectly clear in your own mind, may not always be easy to give to the satisfaction of another man…. I am afraid we should have a very bad time of it out of doors if we exercised a little more freedom in dismissing incompetent clerks and promoting deserving ones; I judge very much by what I see; as it is, there is a great disposition, I think, to exclaim against anything like an act of tyranny, and the exercise of such freedom would be called tyranny…. I have no doubt that if a public department had the power of absolute dismissal, it would have a considerable effect in increasing efficiency; but what I say is, that you cannot give them that power in the same way that it is held by a man in private employment. You have too many critics; you have the public newspaper press; you have Members of the House of Commons who are personally interested in these people; and you would be surprised, I am sure, if you knew the numerous instances in which, for the smallest thing [inflictions of punishment], applications are made, pressing that this man is an excellent man, a good brother, a kind father, and all that kind of thing which influences men individually, but which cannot [does, but should not] influence the judgment of the heads of a public office.” Sir William H. Stephenson was asked: “Do you not think that it might be made a rule in your office, as in the Customs, that any interference through a Member of Parliament should lead to dismissal?” He replied: “Yes; but you must prove that a man knows it. You cannot dismiss a man if some injudicious friend takes up his case; and if a man has a friend, it is always an injudicious one under these circumstances.”[251]
Before this same committee of 1873, Mr. Stanfeld, M. P., Third Lord of the Treasury, who, in 1869 to 1871 had been Financial Secretary to the Treasury, said: “…the great difference between the public establishment and the private establishment is this: that practically speaking, in a public establishment, you have a large proportion of established clerks who can do no more than a moderate amount of service…. Because you have not the faculty which men in private business have, without any particular fault, of saying to a man: ‘On the whole, you do not suit me, and I mean to get somebody else.’ When you get a clerk on a public establishment, he remains on that establishment with very rare exceptions, and you have to make the best of your bargain; the result naturally is that, with the exception of men of ability and energy, you have not so much stimulus for their effort as you have in private employment, and you have not by any means the same power of dealing with them.…”[252]
In 1888, before the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the Civil Establishments, this question of the great difficulty of getting rid of incompetent or undesirable men, was threshed out at great length. Sir Charles DuCane, Chairman of the Commissioners of Customs, said: “But it is an invidious thing, I do not mean to say as regards myself, but invidious rather as regards the [political] head of a department [the Minister], to come and make complaints against men whom one cannot perhaps accuse of any overt act of negligence or carelessness, but who are merely rather below the level of ordinary efficiency…. I think it would be a most desirable thing that we should have the power of getting rid of incapable and inefficient men who have yet managed to keep themselves out of any positive scrape or offence, for which they would be charged before a Member of the Board of Commissioners of Customs.”[253]
To Sir S. A. Blackwood, Secretary to the Post Office since 1880, the Chairman of the Royal Commission put the question: “Do you think it is a real evil in the public service that there should not be the same power to remove inefficient men as exists outside the public service, of course I mean within certain limits, because the public service must be different from private service, but in your experience, have you found it to be a real evil in the way of efficiency as well as of wise economy to be obliged to keep men whom you would be glad to get rid of if you could have sent them away with something in their pocket, [i. e., a pension]?” The answer was: “Yes, it is a serious objection.” Sir S. A. Blackwood even asserted that the Act of 1887, giving the Treasury discretionary power to pension men unable to discharge efficiently the duties of their office,[254] would not help much. “We should always be asking an officer to relinquish his full pay, and to retire upon a lesser pension than he would be entitled to if he served his full time, and there is always a disinclination on the part of heads of departments to do that.”[255]
Sir Reginald E. Welby, who had entered the Treasury service in 1856, and had been made Permanent Secretary in 1885, said there was full power to dismiss idle or incompetent persons without granting pensions or allowances of any sort. Thereupon, Mr. F. Mitford, one of the Members of the Royal Commission, asked: “Is not really the sole difficulty that public departments have to contend with in exercising that full power, the fact that Parliament is behind them, and a Member of Parliament always asks questions [in the House] and brings interest [pressure] to bear upon the head of the department, which practically annuls that power? The difficulty lies not with the public officer, but practically with the difficulties that are thrown in his way outside his department by individual Members of Parliament?” The Permanent Secretary of the Treasury answered: “There is always before the heads of departments the fact that pressure may be brought to bear by Members of Parliament, and it requires, therefore, that a case must be very strong, that it must be a very good case before you would dismiss. Probably you would be much more long-suffering in a Government department, than you would be in a private establishment.” Sir Reginald Welby just previously had said: “I have known men dismissed from the Treasury…. Perhaps I had better say, I have heard of men being dismissed from the Treasury for simple idleness, but it was before my time.” Thereupon the Chairman had queried: “It is the fact, speaking generally, is it not, that mere idleness and mere incompetence, without very gross negligence of duty or gross misbehavior, does not bring about dismissal from the service, either in the Treasury or anywhere else that you are aware of?” The reply was: “I would rather put it in this way: I think that Government offices are very long-suffering in that matter. If the man was reported as distinctly very idle and not doing his work he would be warned, and I think if it was repeated after that (I am speaking of any fairly managed Government department), he would be dismissed. But I think that a Government department is, for one reason or another, more long-suffering than a private establishment would be…. While I am admitting the possibility of there being bad officers, I should like to add that both in the Upper and Lower Division Clerks, we have got, on the whole, a very satisfactory set of men under the present regulations of the Treasury, and that they do their work well. I am happy to say that very few cases of complaint come before me.”
The House of Commons is Master
Mr. Lawson, a member of the Royal Commission, asked Sir Reginald Welby: “But you would hardly plead the interference of Members of Parliament as a justification for not getting rid of an unworthy servant, would you?” Sir Reginald Welby replied: “It is not a good reason, but as a matter of fact it is powerful. The House of Commons are our masters.”[256]
Sir T. H. Farrer, who had been Permanent Secretary of the Board of Trade from 1867 to 1886, and had been a Member of the so-called Playfair Commission, of 1876, on the Civil Service, was asked by Mr. R. W. Hanbury, a Member of the Royal Commission of 1888, whether the failure to dismiss incompetent men could not be attributed to “soft heartedness” on the part of heads of departments? Sir T. H. Farrer replied: “Yes, that is another aspect of the case, and it is no doubt theoretically perfectly true; but I think it overlooks what is the real difficulty of getting rid of useless men. There is a certain difficulty in the soft heartedness of heads of departments and of Ministers. But there is a very much greater difficulty in the pressure which is put upon them by Members of the House of Commons. That is the real difficulty; the real difficulty of the public service is getting rid of bad men; and the real difficulty of getting rid of bad men is that no Minister will face the pressure which is put upon him from outside…. I have had much personal experience of the matter; I have been plagued all my life at the Board of Trade with inefficient men that I wanted to get rid of, but have been unable to do so…. Parliamentary pressure is the main difficulty…. Members are economical in general [protestations]; but in particular cases they think more of their constituents than of the public service. No doubt with a little thinking I could recall a very great number of instances, but two or three occur to me.”