CABINETMINISTERS AND THEIR SALARIES. A VERY natural and reasonable desire has
been expressed that Mr. Lloyd-George should have his office raised to the rank of a Secretaryship of State. The distinction between one Cabinet Minister and another rests on no principle. It has an historical explanation, perhaps, in the fact that the Ministers who have salaries of £2,000 a year are either supposed to have much less work than their colleagues, or hold offices which until recent years were not included in the Cabinet. The offices of Lord President and Lord Privy Seal belong to the first class ; the four Presidents of Committees of Council, of whom Mr. Lloyd- George is one, belong to the second. These distinctions, which may have had a meaning when the aggregate business of Cabinets was less than it has since become, now represent nothing. The Board of Trade and the Local Government Board are among the most important offices in a Ministry. That the pay attached to them should be less than half that which is paid to a Home Secretary is plainly a survival from a time when trade was supposed to look after itself, and focal government included little else than the administration of the laws relating to the relief of the poor. If the present differences of pay among Cabinet Ministers are to be maintained, these two Ministers at all events should hold the position, and receive the pay, of Secretaries of State. We do not see, however, why a seat in the Cabinet should not of itself carry a larger salary than any of the offices which are not held to entitle their holders to that distinction. In theory Cabinet Ministers are equal. All of them have a share in determining the policy of the Government, and they are all responsible for the consequences of that policy. So long as salaries are regarded as marking equality or inferiority of position, the line ought, to our thinking, to be drawn between offices which do and offices which do not carry Cabinet rank.
It is true, of course, that this theory of Cabinet equality is now only a theory. All the Ministers receive the same summons, sit round the same table, are pledged to the same secrecy, and alike go out of office when they no longer command the confidence of the House of Commons. But unless rumour is more than commonly untrustworthy, this picture bears no relation to the reality. There is an inner Cabinet which holds a more important position, and is charged with more important work, than falls to the lot of the whole body. The size to which Cabinets have now attained makes such a division of labour inevitable. The utility of every Committee varies with the number of its members. It is greatest when they are few ; it grows less in proportion as the numbers increase. If the policy of the Government had to be determined by twenty men, all attending every meeting and taking an equal part in every discussion, the attempt would soon be given up in despair. The only way of avoiding this is to allow debates to go a, certain length, and when each problem has been stated to entrust the solution of it to a smaller body. The rest of the Cabinet have a general knowledge of what is going on, and doubt- less are quite willing to fall in with an arrangement without which business could not be got through. But the function of acquiescence in what has been decided by others has very little in common with the function of making the actual decision, and the substitution of the one for the other must make a very real change in the nature of Cabinet government. When Cabinets were small the share of each Minister in the work of the whole body was a reality. The legislation he proposed had the benefit of an examination in which his colleagues all had their part, and to the disuse of this examination may fairly be attributed many of those discrepancies between the intention and the effect of an Act of Parliament which give so much occasion for the satire of Judges and the discontent of suitors. It is hardly an impertinence to suppose that in modern Cabinets each Bill is regarded as the property of its author. It may fail to emerge from the crush at the end of the Session, but if it has this good fortune its contents will come as a novelty to sonic of the very Ministers who are in name responsible for them. That this system may have its advantages in the case of a strong Minister need not be denied, and if Cabinets were always composed of strong Ministers all might go well. But Cabinets do not always answer to this description, and when they do not we get the kind of legislation the meaning of which can only be arrived at by a series of test cases.
There is little probability, however, that the present character of Cabinets will undergo any change. It is the result, in a great measure, of a corresponding change in the political world outside. Parties are very much less homo- geneous than they were. They are more and more made up of groups, and these groups may often feel but a languid or intermittent interest in the party programme as a whole. They are willing to help in passing measures about which they care little, but only on the understanding that this readiness of theirs shall be of service to the measure for which they care much. It is of great importance to politicians of this type to be represented in the Cabinet as well as in the Government. If they are not, if their measures have nothing better to look to than the help of a Minister who has undertaken to do what he can for them in the intervals of getting his own projects through a series of Cabinet Councils, they are very likely to find a place among the measures which there is not time to pass. If the Minister in charge of a Bill has a place in the Cabinet, he need depend on no one but himself, and the obvious advantage of this position the group behind him is quite able to appreciate.
But if a return to Cabinets of thirteen, with all the advantages which this restriction carried with it, is past hoping for, there would, we think, be a gain in introducing a larger measure of equality between the members in point of pay. The present arrangement obviously does not answer to the facts. The larger salaries do not necessarily fall either to the most important offices or to the most important Ministers. The difference between £5,000 and £2,000 a year is a large one, but it cannot be said that he who receives the lesser sum either has less influence in Cabinet discussion or a smaller share of important work than he who receives the greater. When distinctions do not admit of being measured, they had better be abolished. If a politician is qualified to be a Cabinet Minister, he ought to be paid more than the holder of a subordinate post. Advantage might be taken of this rearrangement to make a change in the system of Cabinet pensions. The pension of every public servant ought to be in the nature of deferred pay—the suggestion has been made, we believe, in other quarters, but it is one which we are delighted to endorse- -and we fail to see any adequate reason why a Cabinet Minister should either go without a pension, or receive one based on any other principle. If we assume, there- fore, that the proper salary of a Cabinet Minister is £5,000 a year, a part of this—say .21,000—might well go towards the formation of a pension fund, and thus the actual pay drawn by each Cabinet Minister would be &NO. The creation and distribution of this fund might
present difficulties, hut not any that would be beyond the actuarial skill which a Government can command. Probably the principles that govern ordinary Civil Service pensions could be applied without any fundamental altera- tion. Provided that the conditions of equality of pay and the provision of pensions out of money foregone by the Ministers themselves were included in it, we should be satisfied. To the former condition, however, we would make one exception. The position of the holders of certain offices entails on them an expenditure which the remaining Ministers need not incur. The Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, and to an increasing extent the Colonial Secretary and the Secretary of State for India, are expected to show an amount of hospitality which is special to their position and duties. It may be that other offices ought to be included in the same category. Of this we have no knowledge. Nor do we pretend to say exactly what the additions made to the salaries of these Ministers should be, though probably an extra £1,000 a year entertaining allowance would suffice. All that we desire to insist on is that the principles on which the salaries of public servants are calculated should be fixed and intelligible, and that Cabinet pensions should be provided, as in the Civil Service, out of deferred pay.
Previous page
