MR. GORSTasked the Chairman of Ways and Means, Whether he has considered the desirability of extending Standing Orders 116, 117, and 118,which restrain Members from sitting upon Committees on Private Bills in which they are themselves interested, so as to prohibit any Member who is interested in the promotion of a hybrid Bill from himself sitting in judgment upon the private interest which such Bill affects?
§ MR. RAIKES,in reply, said that the Standing Orders to which his hon. and learned Friend had referred appeared to him to have been intended rather as directions to the Committee of Selection and the Committee on Canal and Railway Bills, and to the Members chosen by them to serve on Private Bill Committees, than as fetters upon the discretion of the House itself. His hon. and learned Friend had correctly stated the practice on private Bills, but he would remind him that it was usual in the ease of public Bills to place on the Committee hon. Members who were presumably most conversant with the subject which the Committee had to consider. In the case of hybrid Bills, partaking as they did of both a public and a private character, although it might possibly occur that some hon. Member might be proposed to whom a special objection might be urged, he thought the best way of dealing with such a case would be to challenge the nomination when the name was put from the Chair.