The Machinery of Government

Questions about the machinery of government seem to attract public interest only at times when governments are taking on new kinds of responsibilities that cannot be absorbed along familiar lines and there is a period of experiment before they are fully digested. Three such periods can be identified in the present century. The first was prompted by the great increase in government activities, including new social services and the temporary control of industry, about the time of the First World War. The Ministry of Labour (1916), the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (1915), and the original Ministry of Health, which looked after local government and the Poor Law as well as the Health Insurance Scheme (1919), date from this time. The relevant controversies can be traced in the famous Haldane Report. 1