THE DEBATE on the motion of censure brought by the Opposition against Mr. Robert Pickersgill, Minister of Transport and Works, for misleading the House in the matter of how much money Central Government allocated to parish councils for the repair of roads, ended not with a bang but a whimper. Mr. Pickersgill conceded in effect that Parliament had been misled, and expressed regret in a statement preceding debate on the censure motion at Tuesday's sitting.
He refused to apologise on the basis that in the confusion and uproar in the chamber when the matter was first raised in the House on November 15, what he intended to say was curtailed by the abrupt adjournment of the sitting.
It may be a matter of semantics to distinguish a 'regret' from an 'apology.' We do not think the Opposition believed that it could succeed on the censure motion, given the Government's superior number of votes in the House. But the Opposition, as a matter of principle, was right to initiate the debate. If the integrity of Parliament is to be preserved, members must be scrupulously fair in how the circumstances of a particular issue are presented for consideration by both sides of the political divide. This principle is given the highest priority in the United Kingdom Parliament, the sin of misleading being almost more grave than the wrongdoing itself.
Weighing the arguments on both sides, we believe that Mr. Pickersgill's character and reputation would have been enhanced if he had simply withdrawn his original statement and apologised. The fact is that the parish councils did not get the amount of money for road repairs originally stated by the minister. There is now no dispute about that.
So even if the minister was himself misled by the paper from which he was quoting and had no intention of misleading the House, it is clear that the public was given the wrong impression which a withdrawal would have gone a long way to correct. Mr Pickersgill's refusal to apologise comes across as somewhat glib, but, hopefully, the vigorous debate itself has helped to clear the air.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
