Crown agency
A crown agency was an administrative body of the
Today the term is also used to refer to
Office of the Crown Agencies
Operation
Crown agencies nominally reported directly to (and were wholly owned by) the Crown, but in practice, reported to the Crown Agency Office in London, thus independent of the
History
Crown agencies trace their founding to the time of the British Empire and in 1833 the British government, hived off from the Colonial Office as a financing, stores, transport, and development (to use a modern term) office. Historians have argued that crown agencies, whose organisations operated across the British Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, were the de facto administrators of British colonies. Crown agencies welded governmental powers through the maze of British, territories, protectorates, dependencies, mandates, and Crown colonies which de jure made up the British Empire of the late 19th century.[3] From 1833 to 1880, they also operated in areas with Dominion status. After this, their mandate was reduced to "dependent" colonies (most of British Africa, India, and the West Indies), but they were given near monopoly rights over finance and supply of non-local manufactures for any public or government use.[4]
With the dissolution of the British Empire, many of these agencies reverted to control by their respective governments, became parts of the British government, or became
Contemporary usage
The legal category of crown agencies still exists in some nations of the former British Empire. In most places, these have been replaced by government agencies,
Canada
In Canada, the term "crown agency" may refer to any government agency, created by statute, which does not report to a government ministry.
New Zealand
The term is also used under New Zealand law[13] to designate state owned enterprises which do not report directly to a single Ministry.
Crown bodies
In the United Kingdom, the term is sometimes used to refer to
See also
- Crown Agents Philatelic and Security Printing Archive
- Crown corporations
- Crown corporations of Canada
References
- ^ "Crown Agents - Home". www.crownagents.co.uk.
- ^ David Sunderland. Principals and Agents: The Activities of the Crown Agents for the Colonies, 1880–1914. The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 52, No. 2 (May, 1999), pp. 284–306
- ^ Sunderland (2004)
- .
- ^ Sunderland (2007)
- ^ Profile: Millbank Technical Services. David Leigh and Rob Evans, guardian.co.uk, Friday June 08 2007
- ^ "Submission from the Campaign Against Arms Trade to the Quadripartite Committee on Strategic Export Controls" (PDF). February 2006. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 January 2007.
The DSO arranged for the use of a nationalised company, Millbank Technical Services (MTS), then a wholly owned subsidiary of the Crown Agents, to pay bribes on a proposed Government-to-Government arms deal. A senior DSO official Harold Hubert wrote in 1972 about a proposed sale to the Saudi Arabian National Guard: "MTS will have little hope of business unless we [UK government] invite them to sell on our behalf. ... Since, when the Ambassador sees the King, he will indicate our willingness to do business on a G-to-G (government-to-government) basis there might be advantages to MTS co-ordinating any British equipment business to provide the quasi-government oversight as well as passing on the douceurs" (FCO 8/1914).
- ^ Advisory Structures for Development Cooperation Policy in the United Kingdom: survey (1993–1994) carried out by ECDPM on behalf of the National Advisory Council for Development Cooperation (NAR) of the Netherlands. Published 1996.
- ^ Crown Agents Act 1996 (completed 21 March 1997), Hansard, 21 Mar 1997 : Column: 917
- ^ ANIP e-News Bulletins GOVERNMENT NEWS: Government Approves Customs Contract Archived 2011-07-18 at the Wayback Machine: Volume 3 Issue 21, 2 June 2006
- ^ Municipal Tax Assistance Act. R.S.O. 1990, CHAPTER M.59: ""Crown agency" means an agency of the Crown in right of Ontario, but does not include Ontario Hydro Financial Corporation; ("organisme de la Couronne")"
- ^ Establishing a Crown Agency, Government of British Columbia, 26 August 2003.
- ^ Public Finance Act 1989: Crown Agencies Archived 2008-10-16 at the Wayback Machine: Legislation Advisory Committee Report No.7, LEGISLATION ADVISORY COMMITTEE, Parliament of New Zealand (1989).
- ^ UK Crown Bodies, Office of Public Sector Information (2008)
- ^ Archives, The National. "UK Crown bodies - Re-using PSI".
Further reading
- Marjorie A. R. Laird. The Ontario Crown Agency Act, 1959. The University of Toronto Law Journal, Vol. 13, No. 2 (1960), pp. 281–284
- Lillian M. Penson. The Origin of the Crown Agency Office. The English Historical Review, Vol. 40, No. 158 (Apr., 1925), pp. 196–206
- Sunderland, David (2004). Managing the British Empire: The Crown Agents for the Colonies, 1833–1914. Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer.
- Sunderland, David (2007). Managing British Colonial and Post-Colonial Development: The Crown Agents, 1914–1974. Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer. ISBN 978-1-84383-301-7.
- Arthur William Abbott. A Short History of the Crown Agents and Their Office. Eyre and Spottiswoode, H.M. Printers (1959) ASIN: B0007JAS74 (A privately published history by a former director, cited in a number of sources detailing the less savory involvement of the Crown Agency in the run up to decolonisation)
External links
- Crown Agency Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. C.48.
- Directors of Crown Corporations: An Introductory Guide to Their Roles and Responsibilities. Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (2002).