CABINET SALARIES AND CABINET PENSIONS;
THE National Government have very wisely taken a step which we strongly urged upon the late Government on February 28th, 1914, and again on July 4th of the same year. They are going to pool their salaries just as we then recommended, and make all holders of Cabinet rank, whatever their office, the recipients of £4,246 a year. The .only exception is the Prime Minister, who is very properly to keep a salary of £5,000 a year—that is, £754 more than the rest of his colleagues. As the plan of a standard salary for Cabinet Ministers has been so happily carried out, we shall say nothing more on that subject, unless it be to express our indignation and disgust at the ill-breeding with which the debate was conducted by a section of the Government's critics. We do not wonder that the Prime Minister lost his temper.
We are particularly sorry that such criticisms should have been made, for they render it more difficult for Ministers to take up the second portion of our proposal in regard to Ministerial salaries. Yet that second part is, we believe, even more important than the pooling of salaries. Our proposal was that, in addition to salaries being averaged at £4,000 a year, Ministers when out of office should receive as a matter of course, and without any application or declaration of poverty, half-pay, or £2,000 a year. We cannot do better than repeat here the arguments which we used eleven months ago on this point :— "The second part of the question is in some ways even more pressing. As things stand, probably every Cabinet is likely to contain men who must look forward to the resignation of office with genuine alarm. They have given up professional work, say, at the Bar or in journalism, and the prospect of being able to return to it is exceedingly uncertain. The positions they once held have been taken by others, and the work they have been doing while in office has not made it easier for them to find fresh work of the old kind. This is the penalty which we inflict on men whose only offence has been readiness to sacrifice en assured income and good prospects in the careers they have chosen in order to serve the State. Nor ie it only they who suffer by this state of things. The members of each Cabinet usually furnish a consider- able part of the material of which future Cabinets will be com- posed. It is not well that a man should fall out of his political environment the moment he is no longer a Minister. The supply of political ability and experience to the Opposition Front Bench is no less important than the maintenance of the eame qualifies on the Ministerial Front Bench. Each is the actual critic and the destined successor of the other, and if at each change of Ministry some of the ablest members are foreedby their financial necessities to retire from the field, there will be a constant impoverishment of a kind of material most necessary to the welfare of the nation. Politics are not a subject to be taken up, dropped, and then taken up again in the cheerful expectation that disuse will not have affected the capacity of the worker. If the country is to get the best a man has to give, he must feel that he is equally serving it whether he is in office or in opposition. If he is to do this with any degree of certainty, he must go on reading the same kind of books— chiefly those • Bine Books' which are the least inviting of all forme of literature. He must live a large part of his time in London, and mix with the best elements of the society in which he moved while in office. He must remain intimate with the men who were yesterday his colleagues, and who are looking forward to having him as their colleague once more. It is quite impossible that all this should be done without an assured income, and the command of time and energy which an assured income carries with it, and it is equally impossible for him to command these advantages if he has to spend all his time and energy in picking up the fragments of the professional prospects he gave up when he entered the Cabinet. Nor is this all the mischief that the present system canoes. The men we are describing are under two. very severe temptations. One is to use their official knowledge as a means of gaining the capital which may make continuance in political life possible. And if this is resisted, there is the tempta- tion to speculate for themselves, not relying on any information denied to other men, but merely trusting to their own ability or good fortune. Each of those ways may prove a road to ruin, though the latter has the advantage that, while it may be eeriously damaging to the purse, it does not necessarily injure character in the same degree. But there is no real difficulty in guarding against both dangers by removing the inducement to risk either of them."
The amount of money involved in giving pensions of £2,000 a year to Cabinet Ministers is not large. It might seem an imposing sum at the moment when a Cabinet went out of office, but owing to the fact that Cabinet Ministers are for the most part men over fifty, the list of persons in receipt of half-pay would very rapidly diminish, and in all probability the average amount would not be more than £20,000 a year. If Parliament in a sudden access of meanness were to object to this plan, we suggest that instead of £4,246 a year, the flat rate for Cabinet -Ministers should be £4,000. The saving of £246 achieved in each of some twenty Ministerial posts should provide a considerable part of the money required by our half-pay proposal. We feel pretty sure that most Ministers without large private means who were asked whether they would prefer £4,246 and no half-pay when in opposition, or £4,000 a year and £2,000 a year when in opposition, would prefer the half-pay arrangement. It would relieve them of the trouble and difficulty of trying to save when in office. We have one more remark to make about details. We should like all those Cabinet Ministers who are obliged to entertain officially to be given official residences, which, like those in France, should be furnished, lighted, warmed, and kept in repair by the Government, and also freed from rates and taxes, so that they should lay no burden upon the purses of Ministers. Amongst "enter- taining " Ministers we reckon of course the Prime Minister —who has already an official residence—the Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs, the Colonies, War, India, and Home Affairs, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. These Ministers are obliged to entertain, and should not be forced to take large houses for the purpose.
We most sincerely hope that the Government will think seriously of our proposition. They have a unique oppor- tunity for settling the matter, and settling it in the proper way. We can quite understand an ordinary Ministry shrinking from proposing to put themselves on half-pay when they went out of office, but this objection does not arise in the case of a National Ministry, or, at any rate, ought not to arise. A National Ministry should look at the matter from the point of view, not of personal pride, but purely of public utility. But every Cabinet Minister knows at heart that it is most undesirable that we should restrict our holders of great offices to rich men, or else put the poorer men who hold them into so much worse a posi- tion than their rich colleagues when they leave office. If Mr. Asquith and his colleagues dislike the idea of facing the vulgar kind of criticism to which apparently they might be exposed from a small minority of the House of Commons, then we devoutly hope that a body of independent members will either present a petition to the Prime Minister, or by actually moving a resolution in the House, which surely could be drafted so as not to conflict with the Standing Orders, will urge Ministers to found this system of half-pay which we suggest. Politicians always like a precedent, and unless we are mistaken there is one to be found in Canada. The Leader of the Opposition in Canada when out of office enjoys a salary. What the Dominion of Canada can do for one ex-Minister the British Parliament, representing a population so much larger, can very well do for nine or ten ex-Ministers. If nothing is done, then we are sure that all who have studied the question of the position of Ministers, and who desire that the very best brains and characters in the country should be at the disposal of the public service, will feel that a very great opportunity has been missed.
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