Supplementary memorandum submitted by
Professor Colin Richards
In addition to my submission referred to below can
I draw the committee's attention to points made by John Stuart
mill in "On Liberty". These points stress the importance
of an independent Inspectorate that can put the affects of government
policy under scrutiny and who can diffuse interesting practice
that may be different from government orthodoxies.
With individuals and voluntary associations…..there
are varied experiments and endless variety of experience. What
the State can usefully do is to make itself a useful depository,
and active circulator and diffuser, of the experience resulting
from many trials. Its business is to enable each experimentalist
to benefit by the experiments of others, instead of tolerating
no experiments but its own. (134)
It is indispensable..that the means should exist,
independently of the government, of forming watchful criticism
and furnishing it with the opportunities and experience necessary
for a correct judgment of great practical affairs (138).
December 2010
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