respective functions and powers of the Ministry of Reconstruction, the
Ministry of Labour, the Board of Trade, the Ministry of Pensions, the
Ministry of National Service, the Board of Works, the Ministry of Food
Control, the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, the War Trade
Department, the Home Office, the Local Government Board, the Committee
on Food Production, the Restriction of Enemy Supply Committee, the
Priorities Committees, the Ministry of Munitions, etc., etc. The list
might easily be extended.

A thorough revision of the executive departments is necessary if
government is to be both efficient and economical. There is plenty of
good material in the Civil Service, and it will always be easy to obtain
more. It is the system or want of system that is wrong.

The next question is to provide or restore a more effective general
control over expenditure and impose checks on the growing expenditure
which has been so marked in recent years, even before the War.

The ordinary machinery for dealing with and controlling expenditure is
or should be fourfold.

(1) The spending departments make definite estimates or are supposed to
do so. Since the War, this has not been the rule. Of course, there are
many cases in which it would have been absolutely impossible to let the
items of proposed expenditure be published or discussed in the House of
Commons; but, as soon as War requirements permit it, proper estimates
should again be prepared and pressure put upon the departments to reduce
them. At present the pressure is all the other way; the heads of the
departments apparently like to have a large establishment as well as to
extend their jurisdiction. It is not merely to give their department