ponsible for everything that happens in his office, and we regard
this ministerial responsibility as one of the keystones of our system.
But when we reflect that the minister is distracted by a multitude of
other calls upon his time, and that he has to deal with officials who
are generally his equals in ability, and always his superiors in special
knowledge; when we realise how impossible it is that a tithe of the
multifarious business of a great department should come before him, and
that the business which does come before him comes with the
recommendations for action of men who know ten times more about it than
he does, it must be obvious that the responsibility of the minister must
be quite unreal, in regard to the normal working of the office. One
thing alone he can do, and it is an important thing, quite big enough to
occupy his attention. He can make sure that the broad policy of the
office, and its big new departures, are in accord with the ideas of the
majority in Parliament, and are co-ordinated, through the Cabinet, with
the policy of the other departments. That, indeed, is the true function
of a minister; and if he tries to make his responsibility real beyond
that, he may easily neglect his main work. Beyond this consideration of
broad policy, I do not hesitate to say that the theory of ministerial
responsibility is not a check upon the growth of bureaucracy, but is
rather the cover under which bureaucracy has grown up. For the position
of the minister enables him, and almost compels him, to use his
influence in Parliament for the purpose of diverting or minimising
parliamentary criticism.

A CHECK UPON BUREAUCRACY

How can this growth of inadequately controlled official power be
checked? Is it not apparent that this can only be done if a clear
distinction is drawn between the sphere of broad policy, in which the
minister both can be and ought to be responsible, and the sphere of
ordinary administrative work for which the minister cannot be genuinely
responsible? If that distinction is accepted, it ought not to be
impossible for Parliament without undermining ministerial or cabinet
responsibility, to devise a means of making its control over the
ordinary working of the departments effective, through a system of
committees or in other ways.

The current complaints of bureaucracy, however, are not directed mainly
against the ineffectiveness of the machinery of control, but against the
way in which public