§ MR. MONK, in rising to call attention to the operation of the Half-past Twelve o'clock Rule; to its failure to shorten the Sittings of the House after midnight; and to the insuperable difficulties it has placed in the way of Bills, however acceptable they may be to the majority of the House, advancing beyond the second reading; and to move—
That the Standing Order No. 45 be amended in paragraph 3, line 2, by leaving out 'a Member,' and inserting 'six Members at the least,'said, the Rule had not had any effect whatever in facilitating Business. He admitted that when the Rules of Procedure were under discussion in 1882 there was an unmistakable feeling in favour of maintaining the Rule, but with some relaxations. It was then decided that it should not apply to the introduction of Bills, nor to Bills that had passed through Committee of the Whole House. Members had had two years' further experience, and were aware that it had not facilitated the progress of Government measures, while it prevented private Members' Bills progressing beyond the second reading. In 1882 a Bill, of which he had the charge, was read the second time on the 16th February after a debate and a Division showing a majority of more than four to one in favour of it. A single Member blocked the Committee stage, and the Bill became a dropped Order in the month of August, though he had lost no opportunity of moving the Speaker out of the Chair. The question he desired to put to the House was—Does the House, or does it not, desire, by maintaining the Rule as at present, to place it out of its own power to proceed with a measure which 99 Members out of 100 desired to support? If he required any justification for his Motion, it would be found in a letter written on May 16, 1884, by the Prime Minister's Secretary to a Manchester gentleman—I am to add that, in Mr. Gladstone's view, the block of Business is not likely to terminate until the House of Commons shall adopt fur 871 ther measures for its own liberty and relief, and until there shall be a change in the present method of opposition.He believed that the ingenuity of man could not have devised a Rule better calculated to obstruct Public Business than the Half-past Twelve o'Clock Rule. He almost hoped that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxford University (Sir John Mowbray) must feel compunction at having riveted its chains upon the House as a Standing Order in 1879. There was, he believed, a time when not a single Member would have abused the Rule; but—Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.The theory of the Rule allowing Members to retire to rest at half-an-hour after midnight was excellent; but its practice was abominable. Out of deference to the opinion expressed in 1882, be proposed not to abolish the Rule, but to relax its stringency. It had not shortened the Sittings of the House after midnight. The average number of hours that the House sat after midnight from 1872 to 1876, immediately after the adoption of the Rule, was 116 hours; from 1877 to 1881 the average was 176¾ hours; and last Session it rose to 179 hours. One ill effect was that it encouraged Members to speak against time, so as to prevent a "blocked" Bill being reached before half-past 12 o'clock. In 1879 the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Devon (Sir Stafford Northcote) said he was not fond of the Rule—much could be said for it, and much against it—but, he added—It does not signify nearly so much what the Rules of the House were as in what spirit they were worked. If the Rule were worked in a proper and fair spirit, with a sincere desire to obtain the objects its promoters had in view, it would be useful and valuable; but if, on the other hand, it was worked for the purpose of wasting a great deal of time over Business—which would be opposed only for the purpose of throwing something else over the limit of half-past 12—it would be not merely useless, but mischievous.On the same occasion the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for War said—If, in the next Parliament, they had anything to say about this Rule, they would have to tell something about it not so pleasant as the right hon. Gentleman (Sir John Mowbray) supposed. They would have to tell them that, in the opinion of the Speaker, this Rule, so far from shortening the Sittings of the House, had had the effect of prolonging them. It also put 872 into the hands of any individual Member the power of obstructing a Bill which the House generally desired to pass.Notice taken, that 40 Members were not present; House counted, and 40 Members not being present,
§ House adjourned at a quarter before Eight o'clock till Monday next.