HC Deb 09 August 1883 vol 282 cc2107-9
MR. RAIKES

said, he desired to ask Mr. Speaker a Question with respect to the Rules of Debate, arising out of an answer given on Tuesday by the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government. In doing so, he (Mr. Raikes) would venture to refer to a decision given by his (the Speaker's) Predecessor in the Chair, upon the 18th of May, 1865, on an occasion on which a Question was put by the noble Lord the then Member for Stamford (Lord Robert Cecil) with regard to the production of documents, quoted by a Minister in answer to a Question asked in the House. He (Mr. Raikes) found that, on that occasion, the Attorney General of the day (the present Lord Chancellor) excused himself from producing what he had quoted in the House in consequence of its being—[Mr. GLADSTONE: I did not quote the document.—of a private character; and the Speaker on that occa- sion, while allowing that excuse on the part of the Attorney General, was reported to have said that— Public despatches, documents, and papers relating to public affairs, if read and quoted by Ministers, may be called for to be laid on the Table."—(3 Hansard, [179] 490.) The right hon. Gentleman in the Chair then proceeded to draw up a distinction with regard to that particular case, having reference to the private nature of the communication which had been quoted. He (Mr. Raikes) begged to ask Mr. Speaker, Whether he will still lay down the Rule as interpreted by his Predecessor in the Chair, that Public Despatches, Documents, and Papers relating to public affairs, if read and quoted by Ministers, may be called for to be laid on the Table; and, whether he will also inform the House whether, in his opinion, a Memorandum upon a public topic, composed, not by a Colleague of a Minister, but by an Ambassador in Her Majesty's Service, and relating to a Mission in which he had been expressly employed by the Government, and communicated to a Minister, did not, if cited by a Minister, come within the range of that ruling?

MR. SPEAKER

As to the latter part of the Question of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Cambridge, my answer will depend upon the character of the Memorandum in question. If it was of a private character, I should say it could not be called for in order to be laid on the Table of the House. My Predecessor has laid down very distinctly the Rule of Debate in this matter as quoted by the right hon. Gentleman. I have only to add that it is a well-known Rule of the House that, when a Despatch or other State Paper is cited by a Minister, it should be laid on the Table of the House; but it has always been held that that Rule does not extend to private communications. Such documents are never ordered to be produced by the House, or presented by a Command of Her Majesty. I did not answer the Question of the right hon. Gentleman on Tuesday last, because the explanation of the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury as to the character of the Paper to which he referred appeared to me to be satisfactory, and I thought that the right hon. Gentleman himself would accept that explanation, and see that it was such a document as could not be properly laid on the Table of the House.

MR. GLADSTONE

Sir, there is no Memorandum in my possession. There was a letter; but I quoted nothing from it. I merely confined myself to giving to the House a general impression of my own founded upon it, which I thought would be interesting as being the best intelligence I had embodying Lord Dufferin's opinion.