Parliamentary scrutiny of executive action
32. Should the Government be able to undertake whole new areas of executive activity without parliamentary scrutiny? Should it be able to abandon areas of administration without such scrutiny? Is that not inconsistent with the responsibility of Ministers to Parliament and-. with Parliament's right to scrutinise major changes of government administration? We agree that that responsibility and scrutiny are central to our constitutional system. We do not however think that the very occasional enactment of statutes like the present is a significant part of that control. To be compared with the opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny provided by the enactment of the departmental legislation of 1903, 1954 and 1988 are
(1) the debates on the 32 scheduled statutes and their many predecessors and amendments back to 1891 (or earlier since labour legislation preceded the Department) - thus a 1909 collection of The Labour Laws of New Zealand (compiled by direction of the Minister of Labour, 5th ed) contains the whole or part of 32 Acts
(2) the annual consideration of and debates on the estimates of departmental spending which provide an opportunity to check the changes in activity and especially of course the introduction of an entirely new department and function
(3) other parliamentary opportunities, e.g. by way of questions and the enhanced powers of select committees.
33. That last matter can usefully be elaborated a little. The select committees according to the 1985 Standing Orders have a general power of their own motion to examine the policy, administration and expenditure of departments and associated non-departmental government bodies related to their area of interest (SO 322). One major regular source of information relevant to that power and to the estimates process are the annual reports of departments which, as we have noted, are now to be made to the House by every department (para 27). The estimates process is now, we also note, the subject of valuable published reports from the relevant committee to the House.
34. The format of the annual reports has also just been altered with the intention of improving the overall standard of departmental reporting for the purposes of government accountability to Parliament and the public. The Government Administration Committee has proposed guidelines for the content of departmental annual reports (Report of the Government Administration Committee 1987, Departmental Annual Reporting Standards App JHR 1987 I 6C). That format 16s been adopted in departmental reports tabled this year (e.g. Department of Labour (G1), Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Al), and Department of Trade and Industry (G14)). The new format includes a statement of the purpose for which the department exists, a statement of the intended outcomes of each programme or major activity of the department and a list of the legislation (including subordinate legislation) which it administers. Some of that information is also available in a consolidated form in the Directory published under the Official Information Act and, more briefly, in the Official Yearbook.
35. The above processes are not only relevant to the executive's responsibility to Parliament but they also provide extensive information about the activities of departments - much more extensive than that given by departmental statutes.
36. The State Sector Act 1988 provides a further Parliamentary check if a department is to be abolished or its name altered. In that case legislation is needed. By contrast an addition of a department can be made by Order in Council. That is also true of all changes (including deletions) to the schedules listing departments to the ombudsmen Act and the Films Act. We come back to that matter later (para 45).