INTRODUCTION xix 



acting under the instructions of the Secretary for Scotland. As an 

 alternative they recommend that the Chairman of the Fishery 

 Board should be a permanent official, other provision to be made 

 for the functions at present discharged by the sheriff and the 

 scientific member, leaving the other four members as at present. 



The Central Fishery Department in England and Wales has for 

 many years laboured under two great disadvantages ; a too frequent 

 change of the political head, and the understaffing of the depart- 

 ment. During the fifteen years from 1902-16 there were no less 

 than eight different ministers responsible to Parliament for the 

 Fisheries, and it is no exaggeration, and no reflection on the minister 

 in view of the multiplicity of other interests he was responsible 

 for, to say that most of them were frankly indifferent to fishery 

 interests. 1 Again- the method of presenting the fishery estimates, 

 as a branch of and largely indistinguishable from those of Agricul- 

 ture and the allocation of an evening or the part of an evening for 

 the consideration of the estimates by Parliament, has not tended 

 in the direction of the improvement of administration. The fact of 

 the matter is that imder the party sj^tem of Government, the House 

 of Commons has lost all effectual control over the great spending 

 departments of the State. 



When local authorities have been treated unfairly, or think they 

 have been treated unfairly by the Central Department, effectual 

 protest is practically impossible A division of the House on a 

 matter which might well be vital to the interests of the fishermen 

 over a large extent of coast is so rare as to be almost unheard of. 

 An instance occurred in 1912. The County Council of Glamorgan 

 and the City Council of Cardiff objected to certain provisions in an 

 order establishing a Fishery District for South Wales. It is un- 

 necessary to enter into the merits of the dispute ; the Board of 

 Agriculture and Fisheries may well have been in the right and 

 the protesting Local Authorities may well have been in the 

 wrong. 



What happened was a division of the House on strictly party 

 lines, 183 members (including 49 Irish Nationalists) voted for the 

 Government, i.e. the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, and 62 

 for the Opposition, i.e. the Local Authorities. No one can pretend 

 that the House of Commons exercised the slightest judicial function 

 in this matter. 



There remains but one method of protest open to Local Authorities 

 when they feel aggrieved, and that is the repetition of questions 



1 Some years ago at a Conference of Representatives of Local Fishery Authorities 

 the President of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries remarked in an audible 

 voice, apropos of an item on the Agenda, " What is a berried lobster ? " A very 

 little forethought would have avoided a contretemps of this kind. 



