The Public Corporation in Britain

Abstract

All political parties now accept the public corporation as being the appropriate instrument for operating nationally-owned undertakings requiring management of a commercial or industrial character. The legislation also enabled the Minister of Civil Aviation to own and operate civil airfields, and his department will manage all the airfields in Britain required for regular air services. Transport is the only service where an administrative tribunal is provided by the nationalizing legislation. The Forestry Commission was originally set up under the Forestry Act, 1919, and it therefore dates from an earlier phase of the movement; but changes in the constitutional status and characteristics of the commission introduced by the Forestry Act, 1945, have brought it into line with the more modern types of public corporation. It has for long been accepted that while a public corporation should be immune from parliamentary questioning on matters of day-to-day management, it should not be wholly free either from responsibility to Parliament or from ministerial control.