HC Deb 18 February 1902 vol 103 cc371-460

(4.28.) Standing Order No: 1 read, as followeth:—

That, unless the House otherwise order, the House shall meet every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, at Three of the clock, and shall, unless previously adjourned, sit till One of the clock a.m., when the Speaker shall adjourn the House without question put, unless a Bill originating in Committee of Ways and Means, or unless proceedings made in pursuance of any Act of Parliament or Standing Order, or otherwise exempted as hereinafter provided from the operation of this Standing Order, be then under consideration.

That at midnight an Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, except as aforesaid, and at half-past Five of the clock on Wednesdays, the proceedings on any business then under consideration shall be interrupted; and if the House be in Committee, the Chairman shall leave the Chair, and make his Report to the House; and if a Motion has been proposed for the adjournment of the House, or of the debate, or in Committee that the Chairman do report progress, or do leave the Chair, every such dilatory Motion shall lapse without question put; and the business then under consideration, and any business subsequently appointed, shall be appointed for the next day on which the House shall sit, unless the Speaker ascertains by the preponderance of voices that a majority of the House desires that such business should be deferred until a later day.

Provided always, That on the interruption of business the Closure may be moved; and if moved, or if proceedings under the Closure Rule be then in progress, the Speaker or Chairman shall not leave the Chair, until the questions consequent thereon and on any further Motion, as provided in the Rule "Closure of Debate," have been decided.

That after the business under consideration at 12, and 5.30 respectively, has been disposed of, no opposed business shall be taken; and the Orders of the Day, not disposed of at the close of the sitting, shall stand for the next day on which the House shall sit.

That a Motion may be made by a Minister of the Crown at the commencement of public business, to be decided without Amendment or debate, to the following effect: "That the proceedings on any specified business, if under discussion at 12 this night, be not interrupted under the Standing Order 'Sittings of the House.'"

Provided always, That after any business exempted from the operation of this Resolution is disposed of, the remaining business of the sitting shall be dealt with according to the provisions applicable to business taken after 12 o'clock.

Provided also, That the Chairman of Ways and Means do take the Chair as Deputy-Speaker, when requested so to do by Mr. Speaker, without any formal communication to the House. And that Mr. Speaker do nominate, at the commencement of every session, a panel of not more than five Members to act as temporary Chairmen of Committees, when requested by the Chairman of Ways and Means.

Amendment proposed— In line 2, to leave out the words 'Thursday and Friday at Three of the clock, and shall, unless previously adjourned, sit till One of the clock, a.m., when,' and insert the words 'Wednesday, and Thursday at Two of the clock for an afternoon sitting, and at Nine of the clock for an evening sitting. If the business appointed for an afternoon sitting is not disposed of at Eight of the clock, the sitting shall be suspended till Nine of the clock. At One of the clock at the evening sitting.'"—(Mr. Grant Lawson.)

Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Standing Orders."

*SIR CHARLES DILKE

said he thought it would be most convenient if they were to consider for a short time the bearing of this proposition on Bills and Motions. The Question which he put to the right hon. Gentleman a short time previously with regard to private business had considerable bearing upon what he was about to say. The proposal with regard to everything in fact, except Private Members' Bills, Government business, and votes of censure by the Opposition, amounted to this, that in future the non-official Members would have to depend on evening sittings.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

And Fridays.

*SIR CHARLES DILKE

I said except Bills. Continuing, the right hon. Baronet said they ought to consider what was being taken away from the House as a whole, and what was being offered to it instead. This Motion proposed to take away all Tuesday, a day which, in late years, had been enjoyed by private Members, and in lieu thereof it was proposed to relegate unofficial Members to the evening sittings, which might begin somewhere about 10 o'clock. There was no certainty whatever that they would commence at 10 o'clock, for the First Lord, when he introduced his scheme to the House, announced that private business was to go over to the evening sittings, and to be taken up to 10 o'clock and then adjourned. That was the original statement of the right hon. Gentleman, as it was understood by Members of the House and by the Press.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

No, 10 o'clock was the time after which it could not be taken.

*SIR CHARLES DILKE

said that if the right hon. Gentleman would refer to the report of his speech and the comments upon it he would find that he was most certainly understood as saying that private business would be taken up till 10 o'clock.1 The matter was now left absolutely vague. All the House knew was that the Chairman of Committees was to have power to place private business where he pleased. With the known objection of Parliamentary Agents to taking private business on Mondays, he could not but fear that the two days most frequently taken would be the two days allocated to the House as a whole from 9 o'clock. [Mr. A. J. BALFOUR dissented.] Would the right hon. Gentleman give the House any certainty on the point by giving even one day at 9 o'clock of which they could be sure?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

said he had more than once explained his view to the House. Opposed private business was to be taken at the evening sitting. There were four evening sittings in the week.

*SIR CHARLES DILKE

One is for Supply.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR (continuing)

said the Government did not think it right that the distribution of private Bills as between the various evenings should be left to the promoters, and the idea was that the Chairman of Committees should distribute them as evenly as possible.

*SIR CHARLES DILKE

said that what independent Members in all parts of the House were anxious for was certainty as to some occasions, however few, in the course of the session upon which they would be able to obtain the decision of the House in regard to questions in which they were interested. Not only might private business be put down for 9 o'clock, but Motions for adjournment were liable to be taken at that hour. Therefore, when private Members had on the Paper Resolutions which excited strong feeling, Motions for adjournment might, and probably would be, made for the very purpose of defeating the ballot, and bringing forward casual as against fixed subjects. In such a case, the Member who had by the fortune of the ballot obtained priority, and very likely represented the wishes of a large number of Members of the House, if he had to bring his Motion on at some late hour, would not obtain the closure from the Chair, because the question would not have been sufficiently discussed. It would only require one Member opposed to the Motion to make a long speech, to render it impossible for the decision of the House to be obtained. On one occasion, when proposing to take the time of private Members on Tuesdays, the First Lord of the Treasury expressed his belief that he had never brought forward a Motion on a Tuesday. But, as he (the speaker) stated at the time, that was not so. Not only the First Lord, but all the Gentlemen at present holding a leading position in the House, had found it necessary to bring forward Motions on Tuesdays. The present and late Leaders of the Opposition, when unofficial Members, had brought forward such Motions, and the Leader of the House himself on one occasion not only brought forward but succeeded in virtually carrying a Motion. It was true the House was counted out on that night, but not until the right hon. Gentleman had obtained his way; and he scored an immense success. All these distinguished Gentlemen had found it necessary from time to time to bring questions to the judgment of the House, independently of the Government and independently of votes of censure by the regular Opposition; and it was essential that the House should insist on that opportunity being in some form preserved.

This protest was not the ordinary shriek of the victims, to which the right hon. Gentleman had alluded. There were many Members who had not often brought forward such Motions, but had co-operated with others in doing so. They were now pleading, not for the right of old Members, who could look after themselves. The House was kind to old Members, and such had no difficulty in making their views heard. But it was necessary to plead, not only for young Members, but for those who would in future become Members. Preparations were being made in the country for the representation in the House of practically new interests; but it would be a delusion for the representatives of those interests to expect to bring before Parliament the questions to which they attached the deepest importance, because, under this rule, they would have no opportunity of submitting them to the judgment of the House. Trade unions were of opinion that they had lost some of the Parliamentary rights which a Conservative Administration had formerely given them, and they were making large sacrifices of time and money for the purpose—and he believed they would attain their end—of being more largely represented in the next Parliament than they were in the present—and not by men who put trade unionism before all things, but by men like the hon. Member for Morpeth, who, besides being trade unionists, were statesmen. If these men came to the House in large numbers at the next election, and were given no opportunity of bringing the questions in which they were interested before the House, more would have been done to destroy Parliamentary Government in this country than had been done for a long time past.

False notions were prevalent in the House as to the use unofficial Members had made of their time. It had been said that private Members counted out one another. He had investigated the use made by unofficial Members of their time for a considerable number of sessions past. He would not go over the whole period, but simply take the last two, sessions as an example. Even reduced as private Members' time had been under the leadership of the right hon. Gentleman, and cut down to a greater extent than ever before, with the exception of a single year, there were in each of these sessions six full nights, besides a considerable number of occasional opportunities, on which a large number of questions were brought to the test of the judgment of the House, divisions in most instances being taken. Last year ten questions were brought to the judgment of the House on those six evenings, and there was not a single "count." In the previous year there-were three "counts," but they did not take place until several questions had been decided by the House. There were eleven questions brought to the decision of the House in that year, making twenty-one in the two years. The right hon. Gentleman had occasionally said that private Members did not make the best use of their time, but he had never helped them to the adoption of any of those schemes—and under these Rules they were impossible of adoption —by which the best use could be made, of the time. But putting that aside, and admitting that unofficial Members in all parts of the House would have to cooperate far more closely than they had hitherto done—and he was glad to see signs of that co-operation even in the discussion of these Rules—he yet contended that the opportunities of the past had not been marked by the failure the right hon. Gentleman appeared to think, but that they had been of important assistance-in the direction of Parliament. As he had already said, there had been three "counts" out of twelve full nights during the last two years. One was at half-past seven after one decision had been taken; one was at half-past eight after two decisions, and the third was at 8.50 after four questions had been decided by the House, so that Members on that occasion were able to go to bed with clear consciences. Questions brought forward in this way had been hampered in a manner unknown until quite recently. Formerly, it was a point of honour with Governments not to count out the House in unofficial Members' time, and they were always represented by at least three or four of their Members when a "count" did take place. But during the last three years, he regretted to say the custom had arisen of every single Member of the Government leaving the House, of the Government Whips themselves actively promoting "counts," and practically insisting on their Members not coming into the House. That, he thought, was almost a conspiracy against the rights of unofficial Members.

This was not a question which affected Radicals in particular. It was a curious fact, but he was glad it was so, that the new generation of Conservative Members were making large use of unofficial Members' time. Of the twenty-one questions to which he had referred, four in each year were submitted by Conservative Members. The Irish Members, notwithstanding their great success in the ballot, had only two Resolutions in 1900 and three in 1901. There were three Motions by Liberal Members above the gangway in 1900, and one in 1901; there was one Welsh Motion in each year; there was one from the Radicals below the gangway in 1900, and none in 1901; and one Socialist Resolution was very properly brought to the test of a division in 1901. The Leader of the House was under the delusion that private Members could obtain the opportunities they desired in Supply, and had constantly suggested that the new Supply Rule afforded means for obtaining a decision of the House on matters of this kind. Of the twenty-one questions dealt with in the last two years, there was probably not a single one, with the exception of some Irish matters, which could have been brought to a decision in Supply. One of the Motions brought forward by Conservative Members—that by the hon. Member for Hythe on the subject of cable communications—appeared at first sight capable of being so dealt with; but when even that was examined it would be found there was not a Vote in Supply to which the hon. Member's arguments or conclusions would have applied. Supply all orded no opportunity for bringing these questions to the test of a. division.

It was essential, however, to the efficiency of the House and the reputation of Parliament in the country—in the future even more than in the past—that unofficial Members of all shades of opinion should be able to take the judgment of the house on questions without either the Government inviting them to do so or by a vote of censure from the Front Opposition Bench. If no certainty such as he had urged were given, the regular Opposition would be forced more and more by the pressure of their supporters to bring forward unsatisfactory votes of censure, which might help the Government but did not help the country. The tendency was to place more pressure upon the Address, and although the Amendments might not concern non-party matters technically, they were votes of censure on the Government, and hon. Members opposite were obliged to resist them He did not know what course the right hon. Gentleman would take with regard to these matters; but he did not think it was possible that he could defend his proposals as they stood and leave them as they were. The Government seemed to think that all the advances made in the country—all the thought on labour questions and Conservative democracy in this country—could be sufficiently dealt with by magazine articles rather than by bringing such questions before this House. There were many such questions which must be discussed in this House. By the change of the hours on Tuesday, there was also a loss, of the opportunity for a certain number of very good Bills upon which the judgment of the House had been obtained on Tuesdays. By these proposals this opportunity would be gone. Such Bills would now be relegated to the Friday only, and on that day dealt with in the way in which patents were dealt with in a. country he had heard of, where all patents offered to the Government were referred to a Committee of Inventors; the result of this was that the inventors generally agreed that the particular inventor was a lunatic and his patent was a fraud. It was now suggested that those Bills should be dealt with by those who were generally interested in them. That was not at all satisfactory, and they would have to deal with the subject later on. They would have to deal carefully with the subject of the time-table, and they were convinced that the Rule as to adjournments was unfair. They also felt sure that the right of the unofficial ruler to submit questions to the judgment of the House was impossible under these rules.

(4 49) MR. LAURENCE HARDY (Kent, Ashford)

said that in this proposal, two entirely different questions had been raised. The first question was whether they should alter their long established practice of sitting on Wednesdays for private business; and the second was the question of the afternoon and evening sittings. Those two matters hung together to some extent, but he thought they were entirely different subjects and should be dealt with separately. He was sorry that the Government had not adopted a different way of putting this question before the House. As the Motion stood, if they desired to raise those questions separately they could have suggested that after "Tuesday" Wednesday should be inserted in the present Standing Order, and subsequently they would have come to the other, which was an entirely different point, by leaving out the words "and Friday at Three of the clock." By that means they could have taken the two questions separately, and hon. Members on the Government side would have been able to exercise a free judgment on each matter as it came before the House. He did not desire to enter upon a discussion of the question at that moment. Personally, he felt very strongly upon the question, and he experienced very considerable difficulty in knowing how he was to vote upon the Motion as it was at present before the House. While he agreed with the Government as to the time of the sittings of the House, he did not agree with their change from Wednesday to Friday. Before they started upon that somewhat conflicting debate, it was desirable that they should obtain some clear idea as to how the House might express its opinion without committing itself to an adverse vote upon the whole matter before them.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I understand the hon. Member's point to be this: That the question as to whether we shall substitute Friday for Wednesday is a question quite isolated from the question of the remaining days of the week, which we shall divide into afternoon and evening sittings; and the hon. Member would like to have those debated separately. His suggestion, I understand, is that we should put the word "Wednesday" alone.

MR. LAURENCE HARDY

My suggestion is to insert "Wednesday" before "Thursday" in the Standing Order.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The House has already embarked upon the particular question of the distribution of the time and the want of facilities which the distribution gives to private Members, and I do not think that the general discussion of this question ought to be in any way burked. But surely my hon. friend will have a full opportunity of raising the question of Wednesday and Friday on his own Amendment or on those similar to his own on the Paper, and I should have thought that would have satisfied him and would have been convenient to the House.

MR. LAURENCE HARDY

said he quite saw the point which the First Lord of the Treasury had put forward, but at the same time, owing to the manner in which the Standing Order was proposed to be amended, it would follow that those who voted for these words being left out would, by implication, support the words that were afterwards to be inserted, which included Wednesday, on account of the peculiar way in which the words had been taken out.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

No, no.

MR. LAURENCE HARDY

said that after the explanation of the right hon. Gentleman, in consideration of his approval of the time of the sittings, he should give his support to the proposal that the words may be left in in order that the sittings of the House should be arrived at afterwards. He thought every hon. Member who did not like the Wednesday change might support the rule in that broad way, reserving the actual question of the Wednesday and Friday change for the general debate upon the Amendments.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Hear, hear.

(4.54.) DR. FARQUHARSON (Aberdeenshire, W.)

asked what arrangements were going to be made for the Private Bill Committees and the Grand Committees under this new Rule. The work of the Committee of Selection was not very easy now, when the Members had to come at twelve, but if they were forced to attend at eleven o'clock in the morning, the work of the Committee of Selection would become well nigh impossible. The change from three to two would be a crushing disability to men of affairs. They wanted to consider the convenience of those men who were of great value to their debates. Lawyers, merchants, doctors, and others, whose time was very valuable in the morning, would find it impossible to get down to the House by two o'clock. But if, in addition to this, they had to come down at eleven to attend Private Bill Committees, their work would be very hard indeed. Then again, what about the Grand Committees, upon which Ministers often sat? Ministers ought to be employed in the forenoon upon the business of the nation, and if they attended Grand Committees they would have to neglect the affairs of the nation. As to the dinner hour, he had already spoken of the absurdity of attempting to drive down to Kensington to dine and return to the House in an hour. He was sure that that arrangement would only produce dyspepsia, bad health, and bad tempers. They all knew what the morning sittings would be, and there would be very little continuity in the business. The result of the break in the continuity of the business would be that the Members who went away in the dinner hour would, in many cases, not return, and he pitied the poor Whips. They understood that private business was to come on Friday and overlap the opportunities of private Members. Now he had been in charge of private business in the House for many years, and he knew that, as time went on, it would increase in complexity, and if private Members were deprived of one opportunity, they would take another. If they could not talk at the proper time, they would take advantage of Motions for adjournment and private business in order to bring their own questions forward. He should be greatly obliged if the right hon. Gentleman would explain to them what arrangements were to be made under the new dispensation for Private Bill Committees and Grand Committees

(5.0.) Mr. BARTLEY (Islington, N.)

asked whether the suggestion now before them was going to increase the businesslike capacity of the House. No doubt the proposed arrangement would be a convenient one for many Committee of. Supply would be on Thursday, and they would go away on that day. Possibly they would run away before the end of the Wednesday sittings, and some might forget to come back quite in time on Monday. The system of taking a week-end had become enormously fashionable, and it was a very pleasant one, but was it really business-like arrangement? Was it making the business of the country the prime duty of this assembly? He must candidly say that he did not think it was. It seemed to him that no one in arranging his own private business would put four consecutive long days together, each to twelve or one o'clock, with only an interval of an hour for dinner. The present arrangement for Wednesday seemed to him a reasonable one both, for the staff, and, what was of perhaps more importance, for the Members themselves. To sit from two to eight o'clock would be a very long time without a break. It was an hour longer, than at present, and was, it seemed to him, no improvement. There was a proposal that the Chairman should be, allowed to leave occasionally, but they had never yet established that, and it was hardly a reform which could be considered, a real practical reform of the procedure of the House of Commons. The proposal to adjourn for dinner was a very pleasant one to many Members, He lived in Victoria Street, and it would be extremely comfortable for him to go home to dinner, but although he had been in the House for nearly eighteen years he had always made it a rule to dine here, because if he did go home he did not like to turn out again. But years were rolling over him, and if he were compelled to go home for dinner he might have a difficulty in coming back. A private Members' night might possibly be too much even for him.

He fully agreed that some change was necessary, but looking to the number of hours this change would give, he really could not see that the Government would get a very great advantage out of it. He had never known the Government, when it had the whole time of the House, to have morning sittings. If it were true that when the Government had the whole time of Parliament at its disposal it had never adopted morning sittings, in what possible way could it be necessary to adopt them now for the sake of getting business through? He thought there was a grave objection to meeting so early as two o'clock. There was the question raised by the hon. Gentleman the Member opposite about Committees, which was a very important one. It must be remembered that Private Bill Committees were part and parcel of the whole system of administration in this Rouse, and a very important part. It was a very trying thing for a man to be here at eleven o'clock on these committees, but if it were to be made a regular thing to come at that hour it would be still more difficult for hon. Members to attend the Committees. He supposed he was old-fashioned, but he did not wish to see the House full of simply professional politicians. He wished to see men of all classes and of all occupations—successful men in business and in the professions. After all, these were the men who had made and were making the country great, and for whom they ought to have respect in their arrangements. It had been asked how were they to get through the enormous quantity of business which had to be done. He thought sometimes they tried to do too much business. If they would confine themselves to the business of Supply, and one or two measures that were wanted, and do that properly and efficiently, they might get on better than they did. He agreed with the hon. Baronet opposite that private or unofficial Members, by bringing forward Resolutions and having them debated, were ventilating subjects which were of interest to the public outside if they were good; they ultimately led to legislation. With regard to the changes of hours, although they would be extremely comfortable for him personally, he could not think that they would tend to the better carrying out of the business of the House. He, therefore, with regard to these particular changes, regretted that they had not his support.

(5.10.) CAPTAIN NORTON (Newington, W.)

said that the rule now under consideration involved a constitutional change, and in his opinion it struck at the efficiency of Parliament as a whole. Except in the case of a few who had been brought into contact with the machinery of the House in various ways, hon. Members found it necessary to be here for two or three sessions before they were able to grasp the manner and method whereby they could make any position for themselves in the House, or do what their constituents sent them here to do. The Labour Members had been sent here by certain sections of the community throughout the country, and, up to the present, they had been unable to bring prominently before this assembly the grievances under which their class laboured. It would take them some sessions before they could get into touch with other Members, in order to press forward the questions they had at heart. In the event of a dissolution taking place before these Members had been able to do anything for their constituents, the result would be disastrous, not only to them, but to the particular trade or section of the community that sent them to Parliament. The result would be to crush out of public life all those Labour Members, who, it would be admitted, had been admirable Members of the House. It had been said that those Members would find a means in Committee of Supply of dealing with those questions which they desired to bring forward. He maintained it could not be done in that way, but if it could be done in Committee of Supply, it would be done most ineffectively, and if done, it would rob those Members who desired to bring forward other matters in Committee of Supply of their opportunity. Therefore, no matter which course was taken, private Members would lose. It seemed to him, looking at it with comparatively limited experience, that in drawing up this particular Rule there had been a conspiracy, on the part of the official Members generally, to kill the private Member, or, at any rate, to ruin him, so far as his efficiency in the House was concerned. The ballot, which was one great protection of the private Member, would become practically a myth, because, when the time came, he would, in all probability, be robbed of his opportunity. It had been said that the Chairman was to be the arbiter of what was of value and what was not. The effect of this Rule would be to crush the private Member between the upper and the nether millstone. It could not be denied that the pressure of work during four successive days would be found in the first place very irksome to the higher officials in the House. It would become a drudgery to the employees of the House and on the working private Members, who desire to forward any particular matters of moment, who would be obliged to attend here the entire day in order to take their share in the work of the House, and to whom the remainder of the night would be occupied in futile and ineffective attempts to gain some hearing for the subjects which they had at heart. The only class of Members to whom this Rule would be of any value were those for whom least consideration ought to be given, either by the House, the constituencies, or the public at large. He meant those Members who were able to come there and take as small a share in the business of the House as they chose; and who could afford to go away when they pleased, especially for the week-end. But should-other Members of the House be penalised for the benefit of those who took the least interest in the business of the House I He hoped the Leader of the House would take this question of substituting Fridays for Wednesdays into his serious consideration, for he was convinced that it would benefit no one except the Governmental section of the House and those Members who took a very small part in the real business of the House, while it would be of enormous disadvantage to and a strain upon the officials of the House, and upon the gentlemen of the Press, and therefore to the public at large.

(520.) MR. LOWE (Birmingham, Edgbaston)

said he did not wish to speak on this question in any spirit of hostility to the proposals of the Government. In fact, he considered that it should not be treated as in any sense a Party question, because what they wanted to arrive at was, what would be most convenient to the majority of Members on both sides of the House; and in matters of this kind they should be left perfectly free to express their own opinions. At any rate, when a change of this magnitude was proposed, an appropriate opportunity should be afforded to review the whole position in regard to the sittings of the House, and to consider whether the hours during which they had been in the habit of sitting, even with the modifications now proposed, were those most likely to be conducive to the convenience of the general body of Members, and to the efficient conduct of business. He had no hesitation in saying that the vast majority of people outside who were in the habit of watching their proceedings were filled with amazement at the late hours which they persisted in keeping, and at the unseasonable times at which they elected to transact a good deal of the most important part of their business. They could not account for it, and could not fathom the reasons which impelled them to such a course. They simply regarded hon. Members with a sort of amused toleration—as a kind of peculiar people who were a law unto themselves, and who held different views on these subjects from those held by the generality of mankind. After having carefully examined the proposals of the Government he confessed he had utterly failed to discover how they were likely to bring about any material improvement in this respect. Although they were to be allowed an hour instead of half an hour for dinner, they would have to come down an hour earlier in the afternoon. In fact, it was worse than that, because under the present system Questions were taken first, after private business. These usually took at least an hour, and therefore it was unnecessary for hon. Members, unless they had Questions to put to Ministers, to come down until half-past four o'clock. Under the suggested arrangement, however, Government business would generally be taken at half-past two, which would mean that they should have to come down two hours earlier than at present, whilst it seemed to him that it would still be necessary for them to sit very late on most nights in the week, especially after the Government had appropriated the time of the House for their own business. Then the substitution of Friday for Wednesday as the day for an early sitting, by causing them to sit late for four consecutive nights, would make these late sittings even more trying than they were at present. The changes proposed might, to some extent, relieve those Members who were not in the habit of attending the sittings of the House regularly, but it appeared to him that these were the Members whom it was least necessary for them to consider, for whatever changes might be made; it was not at all probable that they would attend any more regularly. Nor could he see that these proposed changes would to any material extent relieve Mr. Speaker, the officials of the House, the members of the Government, or those Members of the House who wished to follow and take an intelligent interest in the whole of their proceedings.

Since he became a Member of the House, four years ago, several things in connection with their procedure had impressed themselves very forcibly upon his mind. In the first place, he thought they had been in the habit of transacting a good deal of the most important part of their business at most inconvenient, unsuitable and unseasonable hours; often turning night into day; assigning the first place and the best hours of a sitting to comparatively unimportant business; and relegating the considerations of high matters of State to the small hours of the morning. And he had also thought that whether their business was important or the reverse they had taken about six times as long to transact it as any other business or legislative Assembly in the world, not excluding that much abused body, the House of Lords, would take to transact precisely the same amount of business, and with no better results. It seemed to him that it was not only or even mainly a question of the convenience of Members. It was simply a perversion of terms, and a misuse of the English language, to say that hon. Members were idle, slothful, and lazy, just because they wished to restore their mental balance by going away for the week-ends; or because they did not wish to spend 10 hours at a stretch in an unhealthy atmosphere, listening to long-winded orations on subjects with which they were already perfectly familiar, without any sufficient interval for rest or refreshment. His opinion was, that the sooner they recognised the fact that Members of Parliament were after all only human beings, and not mere cast-iron machines, the better it would be for all concerned.

But the point he wished to make was, that if they expected hon. Members to work at unseasonable times or for an excessive number of hours without a sufficient interval in which to recuperate their powers, it followed as a matter of course that they would not get from them the best work of which they were capable, and that the business of the, nation would necessarily and inevitably suffer in consequence. They knew perfectly well that, for most business purposes, a man was at his best in the early part of the day; but except on Wednesdays, when, usually, comparatively unimportant subjects were discussed, that was the very part of the day when the House of Commons scorned to sit at all. Why should they, in their corporate capacity, act in a different manner in regard to the transaction of their business and the management of their affairs to that which each of them would adopt individually if they were dealing with their own private concerns; and why should they set at nought and ignore the very salutary custom which prevailed amongst all business and professional men, indeed amongst all sane individuals who could control their own actions, all over the world, namely, to do the most arduous and important part of their work in the early part of the day, when they were fresh, vigorous and alert? He himself did not see why they should not hold morning sittings, just as they did at present on Wednesdays, on every week day except Saturday. That would be something like a genuine relief not only to Members of the House, but even more to Mr. Speaker, to members of the Government, and to the over-worked officials of the House; and yet it would leave Ministers free for an hour or two both in the morning and in the evening to attend at the offices of their Departments and transact such business as that they had to do there. He was quite aware that whenever this suggestion was put forward, many of the older Members shook their heads and said that it would never do. But what he could never get to know was why it would not do. Except for the old-fashioned, high-and-dry Tory objection to any change whatsoever, the only objections he had ever heard raised to such a course being adopted were two—firstly, that it would interfere with the attendance of business and professional men who had their own affairs to look after, and could only come to the House after their personal work was done; and, secondly, that it would interfere with the work of the Committees of the House. But he respectfully submitted that neither of those objections, when they came to be examined otherwise than superficially, would hold water for a moment. In most foreign Legislatures far more work was delegated to Committees than in this House. On a reference to the Return, with which they had been favoured as to the customs which prevail elsewhere, it would be found that the House of Commons differed from all foreign Legislative Assemblies in respect to the length and lateness of their sittings. He believed he was correct in saying that there was not another Parliament in the whole of the civilised world which transacted the most important part of its business in the latter part of the day when every one is tired, except on very rare occasions, and cases of great emergency. It might be said that in most foreign countries Members were paid, that they had the professional politician, and things were done in a very different way. The English thought themselves very superior people—possibly they were—but human nature was pretty much the same all the world over, and he believed that exhaustion, fatigue, and mental prostration from excessive hours of labour were just as likely to overtake an English Member who was not paid, as a French, German, or American Senator who was paid. They could not expect the average man, just because he happened to be a Member of Parliament, to be moulded differently and to have greater powers of endurance than all other people, and surely if Members were not paid they were entitled to even more consideration than Members who were paid.

Nor did he believe that the shortening of the hours and assimilating them to those of other business and Legislative Assemblies would have the effect of depriving the House of Commons of the services of business and professional men. He thought that they would continue to come just as much as they do now on Wednesdays when anything of importance necessitated their attendance. But however that might be, things had come to a pretty pass if a rich and powerful country like Great Britain could not command the services of a sufficient number of men, able and willing to transact the business of the nation, without having recourse to men, jaded, weary, and worn, who had spent their best energies over their private concerns and could only give to the nation of their second best, after their own work was finished. He did not wish for a moment to disparage the services of that class of Members. On the contrary, he considered them most valuable and advantageous in every way. And as he had said he believed that many of them would—even at some personal sacrifice—continue to attend on all essential occasions, even if they did have morning sittings. Even if they did not, their advice and assistance could always be obtained whenever any expert opinion was required on matters before the House. And there would, in such a case, be this distinct gain both to them and to us, that it would no longer be "advice gratis," which many people think is not worth very much. But his contention was, and he thought it could not readily be answered— That if the sittings were altered so as to bring them within reasonable and respectable hours, it would not only improve the quality, character, and capacity of existing Members, but it would largely add to and increase the number of suitable and well qualified men who would be willing to serve their country in the capacity of Members of this House. Then, as regards Committees, he did not see why such a change need impair their usefulness and efficiency, or in any way interfere with those functions which they now exercised with so much advantage to the State. Some of these Committees already sat, to a certain extent, whilst the House was sitting, and it seemed to him that was a difficulty which could readily be got over if a few business men were to meet round a Table and devote themselves to the task of finding a solution. At all events, it was quite certain that Members could not be in two places at once. But as most of these Committees were composed of an equal number of Members from both sides of the House, it seemed to him that not very much harm would be done if they did occasionally miss a few divisions while attending to the work on which they were engaged, which most people would think was at least as profitable a way of spending their time as tramping through the Division Lobbies. If, however, the sittings of the House were held earlier, they would get through the work so much more rapidly and thoroughly, that it would soon be found quite unnecessary to sit every day in the week any more than Foreign parliaments found it necessary to do so; and in that case it would be quite possible for Committees to sit when the House itself was not sitting, or it might be arranged that they should sit at a different period of the year altogether.

He was sadly afraid that he would not be successful in persuading the House, and, least of all, the members of the Government, to adopt such a drastic change as that which he had suggested on the present occasion. But, nevertheless, he was glad to have had an opportunity of laying his views on this subject—which he held very strongly—before the House, and he was much obliged for the patience with which they had listened to him, and in conclusion he would only say that he hoped and believed that the time would come, and that before so very many more years had passed over their heads, when the change he advocated would be adopted, because he was convinced that it was in accordance with the dictates of reason and common sense, and that it would be most advantageous to them all in conducting the business of the nation.

(5.36.) SIR HENRY FOWLER (Wolverhampton, E.)

I cordially agree with one remark which fell from the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, and that was that the discussion of this Rule in particular should be left to what I may call the unbiassed judgment of the House, and that no influence should be exercised to procure its decision in a specific direction. Yet I venture to say with reference to the picture the hon. Gentleman has dawn of a reformed House of Commons enjoying itself with Wednesday sittings every day of the week, with the attendance which Wednesdays secure, and with the admirable legislation of which Wednesday legislation is a type, that if the unbiassed judgment of the House were left to deal with that question, the hon. Gentleman will find himself in a very small minority. I would like to say a few words on the questions that may be raised in the discussion of this Rule. With reference to the point raised by an hon. Gentleman opposite, who said that he was prepared to agree with some portions of the Rule and prepared to disagree with others, it did seem, at first sight, that we should have been precluded from discussing all the branches of this Rule, and that we would find ourselves in some difficulty when we came to divide upon it; but the course adopted by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House seems to free us from the difficulty; and we shall be able, while necessarily surveying all the points as they arise, to have our individual opinion on each point separately.

The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Forest of Dean raised one of the most important points which could come before us with reference to any alteration of our procedure, and that is the position of the unofficial Members. He attached great importance to the unofficial Members and their Motions, and he seemed to think that the proposed alteration of the Rule would deprive unofficial Members of what they at present possess and would reduce their opportunities for discussing legislation. I do not quite read the proposals of the Government in that light. I think they form a sort of contract between the Government and the House of Commons for securing that a larger portion of time should be placed at the disposal of unofficial Members. [An HON. MEMBER: Oh!] I am expressing my own opinion, and not the opinion of anyone else; and the way I read the Rule is that the grabbing and grasping of the time of unofficial Members, which sometimes takes place very early in the session, is to come to an end; that unofficial Members are to have the time of the House left to them during certain periods of the session, without its being infringed upon by the inexorable demands of Supply, and that they are to have certain nights absolutely secured to them. I would wish to mention, however, that the right hon. Gentleman omitted one point, namely, the importance of a different mode of allocating the time given.

*SIR CHARLES DILKE

I did say that on what was called the Second Reading Debate, and I alleged that it was a ground for having the Committee which the Leader of the Opposition asked for, because without that Committee it could not be raised.

*SIR HENRY FOWLER

I had not the pleasure of hearing that speech. I entertain a strong opinion that the plan which Mr. Courtney suggested years ago with reference to allocating the time of unofficial Members would prevent these counts out which necessarily arise from insignificant matters being brought before the House. I should like to correct the right hon. Baronet on one point. He asserted that it was a modern practice for the Government tellers to assist in a count out. I was never counted out except once, and that was at the instigation of a Government of which the right hon. Baronet formed part. I do not think we can dispose of this question satisfactorily until we have some mode of allocating private Member's time. As to the question whether the Wednesday sitting should be changed to Friday, or should remain as it is, there is a good deal to be said for the change and against it. I can see that a holiday at the end of the week, which would practically be a holiday of three days, and not of two days, would be agreeable to a large number of Members; but, while I agree that we are hound to consider the convenience of Members, we are bound to consider first the discharge of the business of the House, and I do not think that the substitution of Friday for Wednesday would be in favour of the effective transaction of business. Supply is to be taken on Thursday, and an evening sitting on Thursday for Supply I do not think will have any more attraction than an evening sitting on Friday now has. The practice will very soon be adopted. It will become a habit of the House to practically adjourn at the close of the morning sitting on Thursday. Friday will become a dies non. I do not think that the House as a whole can afford to convey to the public the impression that the first instinct of Members is to seek opportunities for holidays instead of devoting themselves to public business. I think that the Wednesday sitting is a break in the week which is appreciated, not only by the Speaker and the officials, but by hon. Members. As far as the convenience of Members is concerned, and you cannot disregard their convenience altogether in this matter, Wednesday has become an accepted break in the week, and a great many engagements of a social and political and public character will be greatly interfered with, if that day is taken away from us.

Then, with reference to the change of hours, I am glad to hear that question raised at last, and I am impelled to ask the right hon. Gentleman what is to become of Committees if this change takes place. I do not think the right hon. Gentleman has made a suggestion with reference to the Committee work of the House. Who is to do the Committee work, and when is it to be done? The hon. Member who has just sat down spoke rather disparagingly of Committee work.

MR. LOWE

No, no, not at all!

* SIR HENRY FOWLER

I acquit the hon. Member of any intention, but that was certainly the impression he created.

MR. LOWE

On the contrary, I said that service on the Committees of this House was of great advantage to the nation.

* Sin HENRY FOWLER

The House must recollect that a Private Bill Committee is a judicial body, and Members are not allowed to leave it without the consent of the House, and that if a Member is absent he is reported to the House, and before now in a case of that kind, the House has used its punitive powers. If the House is to meet at 2 o'clock, at what hour are the Committees to begin work? When the alteration of the meeting hour of the House from 4 o'clock to 3 o'clock was made, it produced a great deal of inconvenience and dissatisfaction. I believe they now meet at 11.30. You cannot ask hon. Members to conic here before 11.30. [A VOICE: "Yes. 11 o'clock.") Can you ask them to come before 11 o'clock? You must remember that if you cut the hours of these Committees short a considerable amount of extra expense will be inflicted upon promoters of Bills. Then, as to Grand Committees. There is a tendency now to send a great deal of legislation to Grand Committees which are specially prohibited from sitting while the House is sitting, and only once or twice has that prohibition been removed by special permission. You cannot be in two places at once, and you have not provided for that in any way; you ought to give a chance to a Member sitting on a Grand Committee or attending the Sittings of this House.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

There cannot be any important business until 2.30, and if the right hon. Gentleman looks at the Rules he will see that a Grand Committee can sit after the House sits, but not while important business is going on.

*SIR HENRY FOWLER

But the most important business of the day is to begin at 2.30. Members of Private Bill Committees and other Committees have a right to come to the House when important business is being discussed. When we come to discuss the question in detail, I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will make some concession to the House on this matter. I think there may be time to allow some margin with reference to Committee work with regard to the suspension of the sitting. One hon. Member objected very much to this adjournment between the morning and evening sittings, and what he said was perfectly true. Nevertheless, we have to look the fact in the face that, at the present time, call it what you will, there is a dinner hour now, and no one would submit to sitting for eight or nine hours at any occupation without having a reasonable and proper interval for refreshment. I am of opinion that it is best that a time should be allotted for that; and whether the hour the right hon. Gentleman has allotted, or whether the proposal of Mr. W. H. Smith when he occupied the position of the right hon. Gentleman in this House, I need not trouble myself now to consider, but I think you must in sonic way provide for a suspension of the sitting of the House for a reasonable time in order that hon. Members may refresh themselves.

With regard to the change of Wednesday to Friday, I feel there are insuperable difficulties in the way of this change, and there is great difficulty in making our sittings commence at so early an hour as two o'clock. A difficulty will also arise as to the allocation of the time from 7.15 to 8 o'clock, and also in the arrangement of private business. As regards private business, I do not think the proposed remedy of the right hon. Gentleman is sufficient for the purpose, even when the Chairman of Committees is given the power of fairly dividing the work among all the days of the week. I think it certainly should be put out of the power of any Parliamentary Agent to dictate to the House what it should do with its time, but the remedy proposed will not deal with that question. I think there will have to be much more consideration and a great deal of devolution with regard to private business. The experiment which has been tried with so much success in Scotland must be tried elsewhere. That is not within the limits but I do not think you will be able to take up private business in the evening without great inconvenience to the House and those who introduce measures to the House. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will, on files questions which concern our convenience, leave the House at liberty to form it, own opinion, although the House will give the greatest possible weight to his opinion. I, therefore, appeal to not to make this a Party question, but allow it to be decided by the House itself.

(5.57.) MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Perhaps the House would allow me at this stage to say just a few words. If this debate is continued, not, I hope, for very long, we shall have all the questions touched on by the right hon. Gentleman cropping up again, so, perhaps, I had better answer them at once. The right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down appealed to me not to make Government proposals a question for a Government division. That is a very difficult doctrine to maintain. We have to consider this matter as a whole, and, in so considering it, it would be quite inconsistent with our procedure if those responsible for the Government plan did not take the further responsibility of carrying it with all the authority which all Governments exercise in the conduct of public affairs. We must exercise that authority. I do not think that touches the merits of the question, and. it is on the merits that I propose, for a very few moments, to detain the House. The right hon. Gentleman is, I think, not counted as one generally hostile to the procedure suggested in these Rules, although he has severely criticised some of our proposals. I will not say anything as to that, part of his speech in which he dealt with the question of Wednesday and Friday sittings, as that will be dealt with at a later stage, and it is independent of the question of morning and evening sittings. Let me deal first with the general objection to any alteration of the times of the business of this House. Whatever you do, whatever device the wit of man can contrive, it will undoubtedly be open to objections of genuine force. I do not for one instant suggest to the House that the plan we have proposed is a perfect plan, or that a scheme has been devised by which everybody's convenience may be met, by which no single interest either in or out of the House may be injured, which shall at once give the Government all the time they want for legislation, and at the same time give private Members all the time they want for their resolutions, give private Bills a place in the very heart of the Parliamentary day, give every Member ample time for his dinner, and yet not ask him to come down until four or five o'clock in the afternoon. This plan, like every other, calls for sacrifices from some people. All we claim for it is that by it we add to the general convenience of Members without materially injuring the great interests committed to us. Let me prove that general proposition by dealing with the subject of Committers—private Bill Committees and Grand Committees. As regards Grand Committees, I think the right hon. Gentleman opposite has not made himself acquainted with one of the proposed Standing Orders appearing later on the Paper, by which the existing Binds within which Grand Committees may sit are curtailed by half-an-hour. At present, Grand Committees may not sit beyond three o'clock without special leave of the House. Under the Standing Order that we propose, that hour is to be altered to 2.30. Therefore, Standing Committees may sit while some of our proceedings are going on, but they will be released at the hour public business begins. No doubt that will, to some extent, curtail the hours of their activity, but I do not think it will seriously impair their efficiency.

DR. FARQUH ARSON

Will the right hon. Gentleman state the hour at which the Committees will commence their sittings?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

That is not a question of our Rules. That point is not laid down by the Rules now; it is a matter for the Committees themselves. I will pass from the Grand Committees to the Private Bill Committees. Let the House remember that the existing system requires or enables Private Bill Committees to sit while the House is engaged in public controversial work. I believe that these Committees now habitually sit until four o'clock, and I see no reason why — at all events, it is a matter for them to decide—they should not sit, perhaps not until four, but until the House had begun its public work. That is the practice already, and I see no reason why that practice should not continue. Let me remind the right hon. Gentleman that, while he praised, and praised justly, the Scottish system, and while he desired to see that system extended to England and Ireland—a view with which in its general terms I heartily agree—that system requires Members of both Houses to be completely away from the controversial work of Parliament.

*SIR HENRY FOWLER

Not during the session.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Certainly. That system requires a certain number of Members of this House to be away altogether. That being our existing system, and that being the system the right hon. Gentleman desires to see extended, do not let us be too fastidious or too particular about the fact, which is undoubtedly true, that the sittings of Private Bill Committees will overlap the general sittings of the House.

Having made that defence of the proposal against the right hon. Gentleman's attack, let me repeat in his presence—as I think I said to the House when he unfortunately was away on account of illness—that I do not think the existing system of dealing with private business is either good or should be indefinitely continued. I do not see why we should wait to reform our general procedure until we have got a perfect system for dealing with private Bills, but I think that these new Rules offer an occasion which ought not to be lost of appointing a Committee, as we propose to do, to consider the whole question of how private Bills may best be dealt with by this House. As I said in answer to a question from an hon. friend of mine the other day, I think that Committee will have, among other topics, to consider how far the system which is working so admirably in Scotland may receive a yet further extension.

I omitted to say just now that not only do the sittings of Private Bill Committees overlap the sittings of the House, but the Committees also sit on Wednesdays; that is to say, they sit on Wednesday through more than two-thirds of the whole sitting of the House. I think, therefore, I am justified in dismissing as insufficient—I do not say as wholly without foundation — the arguments the right hon. Gentleman has brought against the scheme.

Then my hon. friend the Member for North Islington attacked, but in very moderate terms, the general allocation of business. He stated that so far as he could see, the Government would get very little advantage out of it. I entirely agree, if by the Government he meant the progress of Government Bills. I do not see why that progress should be much more rapid under this plan than under the existing system; at all events, I do not think the gain to Government is very great. But these Rules, and, in particular, the Rule we are now discussing, were not devised to give the Government more time than they already get or take —I will come to the question of taking presently—but to allocate that time in a manner more convenient to the general body of unofficial Members of the House, and to make our proceedings secure and certain so far as concerns the hour at which Government business should come on. I have been reproached with having promised the House that these Rules would give security as regards the time private Members' business would come on at the evening sitting, whereas, evidently, there is no such security. If this House is to have any elasticity in its procedure at all, that elasticity must be granted at the expense of somebody, and I frankly admit that by these Rules we get that necessary elasticity at the cost of the evening sittings, and not of the afternoon sittings, which are the kernel of the day, and which are always Government sittings—if you call Supply Government business. I quite admit that these Rules are intended to make, and will succeed in making, the business to be taken at those sittings absolutely secure. And what an advantage that will be! It is not the mere advantage of the Government having more hours in the session. The advantage is not so much to members of the Government as to all Members of the House who want to take part in what is and, after all, ought to be, the main business of the legislative session. Is that a small boon? Is that a boon which ought to be lightly thrown aside?

Then my hon. friend went on to say that while this plan did not give any special facilities to the Government, it did make a much more convenient arrangement of work for most private Members, him elf included. He admitted the arrangement was convenient, but he said it was not specially business-like. I do not admit this distinction between what is convenient and what is businesslike. There are circumstances in which the two may be at odds or antagonistic, but, depend upon it, no hours which are really inconvenient are really businesslike. That may be laid down with certainty. The House may be obliged in order to do its business to sit at very inconvenient hours, but the more we make the hours of sitting convenient to Members of the House, surely the more business-like will be the arrangement under which this assembly does its work.

I will not say anything about the interesting speech of my hon. friend the Member for the Edgbaston Division. He has a plan of his own, which is almost as far removed from the Government plan as it is from the plan under which the House has hitherto worked. He desires to have five days in the week on which the Wednesday Rule shall prevail, and have no evening sittings at all. That, no doubt, is a plan which has charms, but it is not I a plan the Government could ask the House to accept, and I do not think it is necessary that I should do more than thus briefly allude to the scheme the hen. Member has endeavoured to lay before the House.

I will pass to the criticisms of the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean, who initiated this debate. Some of them I have already dealt with. He thought there was great uncertainty as to the method by which Private Bills would be dealt with under the plan of the Government. I really think my opening statement has not had full justice done to it. After hearing that statement, as I thought, so strangely represented by the right hon. Baronet, I consulted Hansard, and I find that, as there reported—though the report has not been corrected or touched by me, or, indeed, by anybody else—it quite accurately represents what I intended to convey to the House, and it certainly is not at all consistent with the views the right hon. Baronet put before us. Our views about the time to be given to controversial Private Bills are quite settled. We think that such Bills as cannot be finished before 2.25, should, in the main, be taken in the evening sittings; as between the evening sittings we desire that the most impartial distribution should take place under the auspices of the Chairman of Committees. We see no reason why Government time should be sacrificed to private Members, or private Members' time to the Government, or Supply to either, but we think all four evenings should be treated on an equality, whether they belong to the Government, or are devoted to Supply, or are in charge of private Members. I thought, and still think, that that is a practical, convenient, and possible scheme.

The right hon. Baronet went on to complain that this Rule greatly limited the opportunities the House now has for discussing and voting upon those private Members' Resolutions to which he attaches such supreme importance, and he seemed to think that I am an enemy of those Resolutions. I do not know on what statement of mine he founds that belief. For my part, I am perfectly ready to admit that they are of value, that many interesting discussions take place upon them, and that, in some respects, they are a very welcome interlude to the prolonged debates which the House insists on having in regard to the details of Government measures. It is an interlude, however, of which Members did not always show themselves very appreciative, for the number of counts out on these occasions in the last ten years is really much greater than any human being would guess from the two years which the right hon. Baronet has selected as giving a fair specimen of what happened.

*SIR CHARLES DILKE

There was not one last year.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

There was not a single count out last year, and an average taken over last year and the preceding year presents a very imperfect view of the way in which hon. Members use these opportunities. I value them myself, but I do not value so greatly what the right hon. Gentleman calls the decision which the House takes upon them. The debates are very often interesting, but I do not think that the division shows the real estimation in which the House holds the Resolution, and we shall never get that until such Resolutions are brought forward in the form of a Bill or some measure in charge of the Government, in some form in which hon. Members think it would be likely to pass into law. Therefore, I think the opinion of the House on these abstract Resolutions is of very small value and, within my own recollection, I know a case in which right hon. Gentlemen opposite, when Members of the Government—and when the right hon. Gentleman himself was the Leader, on the very morrow of the House having passed a Resolution upon a subject—paid no attention to it whatever on behalf of the Government. [An HON. MEMBER: No, no!] I am sorry if I am misrepresenting the historical sequence of events. Now is it a fact that these abstract Resolutions are receiving very hard measures at our hands? I think not. It is perfectly true that under the Standing Orders as they lie on the Table private Members have the whole of Tuesday in every week for the discussion of these abstract Resolutions, but surely the experience of even the youngest Member of this House, to say nothing of the older Members, would show that, as a matter of fact, every Government in turn trespasses and trenches upon the time given to these Resolutions. The hon. Gentleman the Member for King's Lynn, and other ardent supporters of the rights of private Members, must take facts as they find them. It is not because of any aversion to the work of private Members that their time is taken, but it is because in no other way can the legislative business of the House be carried on. Our view is that, once for all, we should regulate this division of time between the Government and private Members, and we ought not to leave it to these constantly recurring Motions for taking the time of the House, but private Members ought to have some certainty as to what days of the week are to be devoted to work other than Government work. That certainty is given by these Resolutions. By this allocation of time we shall have one day a week in which hon. Members will not be prevented from bringing on a Resolution by lengthy private business or by Motions for adjournment.

MR. LABOUCIIERE (Northampton)

Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will contend that a Motion for adjournment is not Government business, but it is nevertheless due to the lachesof the Government and actually is Government business.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The hon. Member says that the adjournment of the House is Government business. Really, I do not quite see how after such a statement we can argue together. If 40 Members rise in their places in this House and say that a certain matter is a matter of emergency as against something put forward by the Government of the day, that is, in the opinion of the hon. Gentleman, to be labelled Government business. I need not argue that question any further. I say that there is no business which is more private business than adjournments, and an adjournment which can only be brought on by 40 Members has probably more backbone in it than the abstract Resolution in favour of which the hon. Gentleman speaks. I still consider that if 40 Members choose to move the adjournment, that is emphatically private business, and we really ought to confine these Resolutions to private Members' days. I do not, however, propose that, and I should be very much surprised if we do not find that there are a great many more matters of urgent public importance started on those days on which the Government have evening sittings than on those days which the private Members have set apart for their business. Time alone will decide whether I am right or wrong, but I think my prophecy will not be found to be wrong. I do claim to have shown to the House, leaving the Friday and Wednesday question on one side, that this arrangement is not open to every objection which has been taken against it. It does not give everything which each of us desire, but I do think that it gives more than any other rival plan can give, and I know it gives more than the plan upon which the House now tries to carry on its business.

(6.21.) SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT (Monmouthshire, W.)

The right hon. Gentleman has made a very adequate statement as to the operation of these rules. I cannot, however, myself understand how he considers that any considerable advantage is going to be gained by the Government in the conduct of public business. The right hon. Gentleman has stated that this new Rule will not give more time to the Government, and that is exactly what appeared to me, for I do not think it will give any more time to the Government. If that is so, then I do not quite understand what the object is in making this change. You may make this change to obtain a better distribution of the time, but, in my opinion, you will have less time for the Government than they have at present, and they will have that time in a very inconvenient form, because, practically speaking, in order to secure what is called dinner you give up two hours of the day, and in order to recoup those two hours you call upon the House to meet an hour earlier. I think everybody must feel that, to a great number of hon. Members, to meet an hour earlier is a very great inconvenience, and that inconvenience applies to those who attend Committees, and to everybody who have their own private affairs to look after, and to whom coming an hour earlier is certainly an inconvenience. And all this inconvenience is incurred in order that we may have these two hours for dinner. But we do not dine here under the existing system, for a large number of hon. Members go away to dine. I am not sure that this plan of supposing that we are going away at 8 o'clock and coming back at 9 is going to be more convenient than the present system. Why is it when the right hon. Gentleman wants to get through the business of the House that he does not have a morning sitting? Why does he not have a continuous sitting of the House in order to get through the business? I cannot understand how he considers that he is going to get more working time for the House of Commons by this new arrangement. He is certainly not going to get more time for the Government, but is he going to give more time to the unofficial Member? As was pointed out by my right hon. friend the Member for the Forest of Dean, everybody knows that the time that will be available to unofficial Members will he less under this plan than it is under the existing system. He is left out of consideration upon this question of the time available for business.

Then there is the important question we shall have to consider presently of the change from Wednesday to Friday. In my opinion, by this plan you are going to lose at least one day out of the seven in the work of the House of Commons. I believe that will be the result of this change. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton that this is a great blot upon the proposals of the Government. I believe that Friday will be a wasted day, and that will he the inevitable consequence of this change. I entirely agree with my right hon. friend the Member for East Wolverhampton that hon. Members will go away, to a great extent, upon the Thursday. That will be an absolute loss to the working time of the House. Looking at the whole of this plan, though I agree that there may be some advantageous readjustments of the manner in which the business has been arranged, yet the plan proposed by the Government I think is one which will not add to the working time of the House of Commons, but will diminish the working time of the Government, and will also diminish the opportunities which the unofficial Members would otherwise have had at their disposal. So far from believing that this plan is going to raise the reputation of the House of Commons as a working Assembly, in my opinion the existing plan, with all its defects, is better than the plan the Government now propose. Therefore, I for one will vote for not altering the present system, imperfect as it is, as I see no advantage but considerable inconvenience and loss of time, in the plan proposed by the Government.

(6.31.) SIR, SAMUEL HOARE (Norwich)

said he was sure the uppermost feeling of all Members was not merely to make Rules for their own convenience but for the better carrying out of the business of the House. He attached the greatest importance to the proposed interval between the two sittings of the House. He believed strongly that it would facilitate business, and that to many of those who were hardest worked in the House it would be a great convenience and relief. He spoke of those who sat on Committees, and especially Private Bill Committees. Many hon. Members knew from experience how great was the effort to come down and deal with a difficult and contentious bill in Committee when a number of witnesses and a great many learned counsel were taking part in the discussion, and then to be obliged to stay in the House until one o'clock in the morning or sometimes later. They were expected on the following day to undertake their onerous and responsible duties again at eleven or a quarter past eleven. This was no new question, although some hon. Members spoke of it as a novel idea on the part of the Leader of the House. In 1848 a Committee reported that it was undesirable that hon. Members, having had to attend to the trying work of Committees, should be forced to sit here without an interval till late at night. In 1857 Sir Erskine May suggested before a Committee that it would be desirable to have morning sittings two days in the week. The 1886 Committee, which was the last important Committee, made a Report on the subject. He felt that the Leader of the House could not possibly have avoided bringing forward these matters, because they were distinctly in accordance with the suggestion of a great number of that Committee.

The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Monmouthshire was most anxious that before considering these proposals they should be discussed by a Committee. The questions had already been fully discussed by Committees. In 1886 the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Monmouthshire, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, was a member of the Committee, and their recommendations were almost exactly the same as those now proposed by the Leader of the House with respect to the hours of meeting and the interval. The opinion of a large number of that Committee was that the interval should be from seven to nine. Now the proposal was that, it should be from eight to nine. He expected that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Monmouthshire would have said a kindly word for his own recommendations, but his attitude now proved that those who took part in the deliberations of Committees could not be depended upon when they came to talk about them in the House. He believed that two o'clock was a good time for the fleeting of the House, although he realised fully the great difficulties that would be entailed upon professional men and others. The question had been started as to how the Committees were to work under the circumstances, and he appealed to the Leader of the House to consider this point. He saw that there would be considerable difficulty in carrying on the work of Private Bill Committees upstairs if Members were liable at half past two to be called away for Government business, or to an important division. When intricate questions were being argued by counsel, it was unsatisfactory both for them and those who had to adjudicate on the case that Members of Committees should be called away to divisions. His right hon. friend said that Members could pair, but there were many occasions when they wished to record their votes. When presiding over a Committee and Members said they must go and vote or ask Questions, he had never ventured to influence them in any way whatever. They were asked why Private Bill Committees should not meet earlier. They met at eleven, but earlier was impossible if Members were in the House until one o'clock or later. He asked the Leader of the House to consider whether it was not possible to modify the proposal just a little in order to get over the inconvenience to Members of Committees. Would it not be possible, if the House met at two o'clock, to arrange that Government business should not begin until three? There would thus be half an hour for private business and half an hour for Questions. He also suggested that Government business should be carried on to half past seven instead of a quarter past seven. If these suggestions were adopted, the arrangement would conduce to the convenience of Members, and the advantage of the business of the country.

[6.45.] SIR JOSEPH PEASE (Durham, Barnard Castle)

said that, having had for many years a somewhat extra share in the Committee business of this House, he desired to say a few words on the subject under discussion. He was obliged to His Majesty's Government for attempting to ease the way in which the business of the House could he conducted; and he would take up the points at present in debate one by one. He could not imagine a more inconvenient proceeding than beginning business at two o'clock. First of all every Member had his letters to attend to, and with the increase of the number of voters in every constituency the amount of a Member's correspondence had enormously increased. Then, nothing would tend more to poor wishy-washy speeches in the House than to deprive hon. Members of those opportunities of preparing their deliverances, which they would not have if they had to go down to Committees at 11 o'clock and afterwards to sit in the House till 12 or one o'clock next morning. And all this was to be done without Wednesday as a resting day! As regarded Private Bill Committees, he confessed that when a division of considerable importance was coming on before the House, it was very difficult to induce the Members of these Committees to attend steadily to their work. If they went down to the House to vote it was almost impossible to get them quickly together again. Even if they did come back as soon as possible it involved never less than the loss of 20 minutes. He had sat on many Committees before which 12 and 14 Counsel were engaged at high fees, but when the Members of Committees left the room to go down stairs to vote, business was interrupted and Bills which ought to have gone through in a day were often carried over two or three days, to the great expense of both promoters and opponents of the measure. Owing to the hurry of the times and the increasing numbers of engagements which hon. Members had and the necessity of getting through the business of the House, Grand Committees were created. Now of all the institutions of the House he most disliked Grand Committees. The Private Bill Committee was an institution belonging to Parliament; it was a Committee of its Members to examine private Bills judicially, but a Grand Committee was a Select Committee composed of those in favour of the measure and those against it and they merely sat as partisans not as judges. If they were going to force more business on Grand Committees, there would be more trouble with the Private Bill Committees. Again, Members of Select Committees were not obliged to attend all its meetings, and they would prefer to go down to the House when important business was before it. He was sure that, if the business of the House were to be well done, instead of decreasing the time before the House met it should be increased.

Then, it they were going to have a full dinner hour emptying the House, what was to become of the dinner hour speeches? At present the dinner hour was the only chance of a good number of the junior Members giving voice to their views, and getting them reported. Moreover, if hon. Members went home to dinner they would not come back in such weather as we have had lately, and the House would be badly attended. In regard to Fridays and Wednesdays he entirely agreed with his two right hon. friends below him. In this they were going to work Members on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for Government business, and he was very sure that on Thursday night there would be a very poor attendance, and also perhaps on the Monday night. The debating and listening power of the House would likewise be greatly les- sened. This Amendment had been brought in with the best possible intentions, but he trusted that the head of His Majesty's Government would think more seriously about the effect it would have on the working powers of the House, and the ability of Members to discharge their duties, especially as regards Select Committees, and those on private Bills.

(6.55.) MR. STUART WORTLEY (Sheffield, Hallam)

said that the House found itself face to face with the fact that there was a contest for the time of the House between the Government and private Members. The scheme of these Rules recognised that there were favourable and unfavourable times for debate; and that there were subjects of greater and less importance to be debated. The present system lent itself too much to enable certain Members to take up the time of the House with the less important subjects at the most favourable times in order to gain notoriety. A definite adjournment for dinner would save the House from the undignified failure to keep a quorum, and from unexpected divisions being taken which did not reflect the real opinion of the House. He did not believe that private Members motions would suffer under the proposed new Rule; in fact, he thought that the Rule would be a benefit rather to private Members. The most serious part was the private Bill legislation, but he thought they would find that any evils which arose would work their own cure. Some hon. Members seem to think that the Standing Committee was a sort of Paradise for their particular proposals, and he did not think that they would show the same anxiety to seek opportunities of getting their Bills before Standing Committees if they found that owing to this probable overloading of Standing Committees their Bills never found their way downstairs again. There were many grave difficulties in the way, and he was glad that the Government proposed to relegate the questions to a Committee to consider it in all its possible bearings. After all, he did not think the change from public business at 3.30 to 2.30 was a very serious step, for there were provincial as well as metropolitan business men who were entitled to be considered. He would not, discuss the question of Wednesday and Friday at present, but as regarded the convenience of the metropolitan business men, he did not think that ought to be taken so much into account. He supported this Resolution with a reservation, as to the proposal to substitute Friday for Wednesday, although he did not share the apprehensions of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Forest of Dean as to the dreadful things which would happen if these rules were passed.

(7·4.) MR. BROADHURST (Leicester)

thought it was not at all creditable to His Majesty's Government that while they were discussing the very central part of this new system there was only present one representative of the Government and there was not a single Cabinet Minister present. They appeared to have abandoned all interest in the Rules, and perhaps they had retired to an early dinner. He was not at all sure that he would not be justified in moving the adjournment of the debate in order that some Member of the Government should be induced to attend. [AN HON. MEMBER: Move it.] He scarcely felt justified in moving the adjournment, although he thought he had ample grounds for calling attention to this contempt and indifference for the progress of this great sessional measure. He was not at all depreciating the importance of his hon. friend the Secretary to the Local Government Board, who was present as the representative of the Government.

With regard to the proposed change from Wednesday to Friday, he regarded it as the most important and the most sensible part of the whole Rules. Much as he disliked the new Rules, he would vote for many of them in return for the Wednesday change. No doubt the right hon. Gentleman had been informed that the Government were likely to be beaten in the division upon this question of. Wednesday, but they should not be beaten if he could help it. He would whip up and canvass and do his utmost to secure the right hon. Gentleman a majority upon this question. [AN HON. MEMBER: Why?] Because he believed that it was a sensible change. It would accord general convenience to the greatest number of hon. Members of the House, and he believed it would act largely to the interests of the public service. As a rule hon. Members did not attend now in large numbers until about five o'clock, and so they had an enormous length of absence from the House, which they did not seem to have acknowledged in the debate. Under the change, all hon. Members would have more chance of leisure. A great deal had been said about this being a week-end convenience. In his opinion the week-ends were an enormous convenience to poor hon. Members of this House, who had not palaces at their disposal within a few miles of the House of Commons. He had a week-end every week, but he did not take it so much for pleasure as for economy, It was cheaper for him to take his week-end at his own cottage than to remain in an expensive place like London, and that was why he considered that the change would be good for all parties, and would be more economical for the poorer hon. Members of the House.

To those who lived in London the advantage would not be so considerable, but they had also to consider the class of men to whom the right hon. Member for the Hallam Division of Sheffield referred just now. What about a great number of the hon. Members of the House who leave their businesses for five days in the week in charge of managers, and neglect their businesses as far as their personal superintendence was concerned, and who at present could not return until midday on Saturdays? That class of men had a right to be considered in the rearrangement of the machinery of the House of Commons. He regretted that any inconvenience would be caused to his professional friends, and he knew what a great deprivation this change would be to them. But even they had their consolation, which was very considerable and substantial, and many other hon. Members would like to suffer the same deprivation with the same result. He thought hon. Members would be able to get on with the business for the extra hour in the afternoon, while the professional class were pursuing their daily avocation for their own sustenance and profit.

There was another reason why it would be an advantage. Thursday was generally looked upon as the most important day of the week, and it was the best Government day of the week. Under the new system, Supply would be taken on Thursday instead of Friday. They had been voting between £130,000,000 and £160,000,000 a year during the last two or three sessions, and the greater part of this money had been voted on a Friday, but under these new Rules it would be voted on the best day in the week, when a larger number of right hon. Members would be in attendance. Surely the expenditure of these vast sums of money should be the principal consideration of the House. If the new Rule relegated that great expenditure to the principal day of the week, it would be doing a great public service to the consideration of the finances of the country, and they would have much better debates. It was well known that under present conditions a large number of hon. Members left London on Friday mornings, and vast sums of money were consequently voted in a very thin House. He considered that the change from Wednesday to Friday would prove the most serviceable of any of the new Rules which the right hon. Gentleman had proposed.

With regard to the dinner hour, he entirely disagreed with the Government, and he had put down an Amendment. He believed that the dinner hour would be mainly a waste of time. He was a Member of the House when morning sittings were invented and first applied, and he could safely say that they were dismal failures. One of the greatest difficulties at the evening sittings was to secure a sufficient number of hon. Members to make up a quorum of 40, and it was the custom on such occasions to look from a great distance to see if there was a light in the Tower to know whether there had been a count out or not. When the House met it lingered on until 10 or 10.30. There was no efficiency in the House of Commons on the day of the morning sitting between 9 and 11.30, yet the right hon. Gentlemen proposed to cut into two parts what otherwise would be a useful legislative day. Nobody ever came down to these evening sittings unless they were inter- ested in the subject under consideration. The adjournment at 7 o'clock was very useful to those who lived within a two mile radius of the House, but to the working Members it was a delusion and a snare; it was an hour or two thrown away, and only tempted them to spend what they could ill afford.

Another subject he wished to allude to was the 1 o'clock in the morning arrangement. He did not know whether a frequent continuation of the sitting to 1 o'clock was contemplated, but his opinion was that if they sat an hour earlier they ought to adjourn an hour earlier, and on that question he should divide the House. To do good work one must be in good health and in a good state of preservation, which could not be the case if the sittings were continued after midnight. He did not know whether Mr. Speaker would be able to put the Question in such a way that hon. Members could vote on the Wednesday and Friday question, apart from the other portions of the Rule, or whether the Rule would have to be put as a whole. If it was put as a whole, he should vote against it, but if it was divided so that the change of Wednesday to Friday could be voted upon, he should vote for the change. But the whole discussion had shown the wisdom of the suggestion of the Leader of the Opposition in favour of a Committee being appointed to consider the whole of the Rules. They ought to consider the whole scheme of Parliamentary work which was necessitated by new developments and by modern requirements, which were not experienced in years past. If these alterations were made they would have to pass a measure for the payment of Members, otherwise the representation in Parliament would be restricted to wealthy men only, and in order to bring Parliament up to date there would have to be further Amendments in the Rules in a very few years. For these reasons, he wished the Leader of the House had consented to relegate the whole subject to a Committee of experienced Members, so that the House might be advised upon the whole question.

(7.23.) COLONEL LOCKWOOD (Essex, Epping)

said the hon. Member who had just sat down had complained of the expense which would be entailed on certain Members by the adjournment from 8 to 9 o'clock; but there was no obligation for those Members to leave the House, where a cheap and excellent feed was provided if people wished to remain, and they had every convenience in the precincts of the House after dinner. A great fear had been expressed that business and professional men would be inconvenienced by the new rules, and, as all classes were expressing their opinion on this matter, he would like to put in a word for another deserving class. There were many simple country gentlemen who would like to go to their homes in the country from Friday to Monday, and attend to the business from which they had been withdrawn for the rest of the week. They had no particular anxiety, they did not ask anything from the Government, and were only anxious to support the Government because they had confidence in it. To that class of men this alteration would be of the greatest possible advantage, as it would enable them to leave London on Friday afternoon for their homes, where they could remain until Monday afternoon. It must be remembered that their domestic occupations were of some importance to them, and their only object in coming to Parliament at all was, because they thought their doing so would benefit their constituents. As he believed the proposal now before the House would be of great advantage to that deserving class of Members, he should support it.

(7.26.) MR. J. A. PEASE (Essex, Saffron Walden)

said that as junior Whip he felt that these Rules, so far as they affected private or unofficial Members' legislation, would not work satisfactorily. Bills would not be dealt with satisfactorily, Small Bills, which the House might think it desirable to oppose, would not be stopped from passing, while others which the House might like to see passed would be hotly opposed. It would be almost impossible to bring Members up to the House to discuss private Bills on a Friday, and therefore, he would appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to reconsider this question. If the right hon. Gentleman adhered to the Friday being given up to a morning sitting, he would ask him whether he could not see his way to allowing unofficial Members to have Wednesday instead of Friday and that the Government should take the morning sitting on Friday for Government business. If the Government took the morning sitting he was satisfied that Membres would come down to the House without any great strain being put upon the Whips. Unless the suggestion which had been made with regard to important Questions being put down at the commencement of the sitting on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, was carried out, Members, in his opinion, would lose the very great power they had at the present time of moving the adjournment of the House on matters of urgent public importance. As matters stood at present, these motions were usually made on account of unsatisfactory answers being given by Ministers. In that way unofficial Members would retain this power and privilege which in the past had never been abused. During the last 19 sessions the average number of Motions for adjournment were six per session, the greatest number for one session being 20, the least number being two. In the last seven sessions the average number has been five per session. It could not be contended therefore that this privilege had been abused in the past, and the House ought not to allow it to be taken away.

(7.29) SIR W. HART DYKE (Kent, Dartford)

said there was one important matter he would like to mention. His right hon. friend the First Lord of the Treasury had promised that a Committee should be appointed to consider the arrangements for Private Bill Committees, but in his opinion, whatever the ability of the Committee might be, it could not by any possibility prolong the time to be allocated to Private Bill Committees on any day, and it might result in the fact that their decision might seriously upset the proposals now before the House, by either breaking into the time of the Government, on the one hand, or the time of private business on the other. Whilst in the main in favour of the proposal of the sitting commencing and ending at given hours, he did not agree with the time at which it was proposed to commence. Moreover, he believed the arrangement would ultimately prove to be to the disadvantage rather than the advantage of the Government business, as a definite hour for the conclusion of business always afforded greater facilities and temptation for obstruction. The scheme, however, was an experiment, and it ought to have a fair trial, because it was essentially a business proposal in itself. The proposed arrangement with regard to Questions to Ministers would cause a difficulty in reference to Private Bill Committees. The only way out of the dilemma to which he had referred would be to grant a longer time than at present proposed for the asking of Questions. He thoroughly agreed with the suggestion of the hon. Member for Norwich, that a good half-hour should be given. Whether the Questions remaining over should be dealt with by being printed with the answers in the Votes next day, or whether there should be a small Committee of the House to sift Questions, in the same way as there was a Committee to deal with petitions—whatever scheme was adopted—that would take them more than half-way out of the dilemma, by causing the public business to commence at 3 o'clock instead of 2.30. The Private Bill business was of vital importance to the constituencies, involving as it did the spending of millions of money. It needed no Committee of Inquiry to declare that it was impossible for these Committees to sit for any length of time coincidently with the sitting of the House. As illustrating the absurdity of the position, in which Private Bill Committees might be placed, he would remind the House of what had happened and would very likely happen again. Take the case of a Committee with a large group of Bilk to deal with. One of the measures might have passed the Committee, and be down for Third Reading, with the result that the Chairman might be dragged from the Chair while counsel was addressing him on another Bill, in order to be in the House to defend the Third Reading of that measure. Numerous other instances might be quoted, and he earnestly begged the right hon. Gentleman seriously to consider whether it would not be worth while to remodel his proposal with regard to questions in the direction which had been indicated.

(7.35.) MR. A. J. BALFOUR

My right hon. friend has gone into the subject of Questions, which I think is not absolutely germane to our present discussion.

*SIR WILLIAM HART DYKE

pointed out that he advocated a longer period being given to Questions at the commencement of the sitting, in order to relieve the Private Bill Committees.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I must be excused at the present stage going into that no doubt very difficult portion of the whole matter. My right hon. friend threw out the suggestion that there should be a Committee of this House to sift the Questions. I believe there is a suggestion of that kind by another hon. Member on the Paper, and if any scheme of that sort could be devised that would be acceptable to the House, it would be a great advantage.

(7.37.) MR. LABOUCHERE

said he had heard only one speech seriously addressed to the House against the proposed Wednesday and Friday change, and that was by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton. The first argument of the right hon. Gentleman was that Members would find it difficult to fulfil their social and political engagements if the change were made. Why should they find it difficult? Surely they might arrange for their social and political engagements on Fridays as well as on Wednesdays. The second argument of the right hon. Gentlemen was that if the change were made Members would not attend on the Friday, and if they could keep away on the Friday, they would not come on the Thursday. But it was not the duty of the House to take Members into custody in order to bring them to its deliberations. If Members liked to stay away, let them do so, and settle the matter with their constituents. There had been a great deal of humbug in the debate. He had always understood that Gentlemen in the position of the First Lord considered the best Members of the Party were those who never spoke, never opposed the Government, stayed away as much as possible and always paired with a Member on the Opposition side of the House. One of the junior Liberal Whips had stated that this rule was entirely against private Members, but in that he was altogether mistaken. About twelve years ago, when Mr. W. H. Smith took the time of the House to make some changes in the rules, he himself put down an Amendment to the same effect as the present proposal. Mr. Smith approved of it, and said he would vote for it. When the day came to move it, however, he had changed his mind, and gave as his reason that the Whips objected to it, because it would be so enormously to the advantage of private Members and so harmful to the Government. That showed that even junior Whips might totally disagree as to the effect of a particular Motion. In fact, the proposal was so much to the advantage of private Members, that he was rather surprised the First Lord was in favour of it. The right hon. Gentleman probably considered that the private Bills would have no more practical effect than the abstract Resolutions which were moved —that the Bills would not go on further —and in all probability in a short time that would be the general view.

Then, objection had been urged to the House meeting at two o'clock. Personally, he did not care whether it met at two, one, or twelve o'clock, but they were always told that the lawyers and business men would not be able to attend. He respected the lawyers too much to say there were too many of them in the House, but Members might depend upon it that, with the number of positions open to lawyers, there would always be enough lawyers in the House, whatever rules were adopted. As for the business men, those who lived in London had an advantage over those from the provinces, inasmuch as they were able to give, at any rate, a portion of their time every day to business affairs. Doubtless the House would be told what an enormous advantage it was to have these business men, and they would be warned against the professional politician. But experience had led him rather to doubt the advantage of having business men. Business men were uncommonly sharp, and generally had an axe of their own to grind. If a constituency selected a politician as its representative, he would probably represent it, whereas a business man would be popping in and out, looking more after his own concerns than those of the constituency.

His objection to the Rule was that the right hon. Gentleman had not been quite fair in the allocation of the time. The Government took four days in the week, and secured perfect certainty in regard to its business at the expense of private Members. Government business was to occupy the morning sitting, controversial private Bills being thrown over to nine o'clock. As the House knew, private business, particularly with regard to London Bills, frequently went on for two or three hours, so that a Member who by ballot had secured the day for a Motion might find himself unable to bring on his Resolution at all. The right hon. Gentleman had denied that Motions for adjournment were Government business. He might as well say that speeches delivered by the Opposition on a Government Bill were not Government business, because it was not the business of the Government to oppose its own Bill. The adjournment was usually moved because the Government had done something it ought not to have done, or had left undone something it ought to have done, and it was certainly not, in the ordinary sense of the word, the private business of private Members. The Tuesday Motions of private Members were most useful. The old process was that an opinion was created in the country on some particular matter. When that opinion acquired a certain force, a Motion on the subject was brought forward in the House, and generally lost again and again. But the number in favour of the Motion would gradually increase, until the matter was brought within the range of practical politics, and finally adopted by the Government of the day. It was really rather hard on private Members that they should not have even one safe day, while the Government insisted on four. If the Right hon. Gentleman would only make such a concession that private Members had one safe day—they did not ask it for all the session, but, say, to Whitsuntide—he did not believe there would be any strong opposition to the rest of the Rule, but it was necessary the right hon. Gentleman should remember that the sole business of the House of Commons was not to pass measures proposed by the Government, but that it had also to be, to a large extent, a place of discussion, and a safety valve for the whole country.

(7.52.) COLONEL PILKINGTON (Lancashire, Newton)

said that, generally speaking, he thought the new rules were very well adapted to the more rapid despatch of business, but there were one or two points of detail on which he differed from the First Lord. It was of vital importance that the time of the sittings of Grand Committees, and Committees on Private Bills, should be made to fit in with the time at which public business in the House itself was to commence.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

reminded the hon. Member that by a later Amendment it was provided that the Grand Committees should not sit later than 2.30, before which time no public business would be taken in the House.

COLONEL PILKINGTON

said that was quite satisfactory as far as it went, but it did not meet the point with regard to Private Bill Committees, which, perhaps, was more important. With regard to the Wednesday to Friday change, he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would keep an open mind, and ultimately alter his view. At present, Wednesday came as a rest, with two heavy days before and two heavy days after it. That rest was of great importance to many people. It would be a great strain to go on for two nights in succession until 1 o'clock; but to sit for four nights in succession would be almost unbearable if Members did their duty. Moreover, the Rule would fall with great severity on the officials of the House, who, unlike Members, were not able to pair, but had to be in attendance right through the sitting. Another point was that business would probably go on well enough until the end of the morning sitting on Thursday, but the evening sitting of that day would be in peril. Human nature was human nature even in Members of Parliament, and Members, instead of going away by the 6 or 7 o'clock train on Friday, would go by the corresponding train on Thursday. The Parliamentary week, then, instead of being four and a half days as at present, would be only three and a half, and the public life of the country would sustain a great injury.

(7.58.) MR. J. NOLAN (Louth, S.)

said that many new Members served their apprenticeship, as it were, by addressing the House during the dinner hour. Modest and retiring Members, like himself, felt more at home in addressing a few Members than they would be with a sea of faces around them, and, taking all things into consideration, he thought the balance of opinion would be in favour of letting things remain as they were. An hon. Member on the Ministerial side of the House had offered a plea in favour of English county gentlemen when speaking of the advisability of the proposed change in regard to the Wednesday sitting. He should have been glad if the hon. Member had remembered that there were Irish and Scotch county gentlemen who might also be taken into account. To Irish and Scotch Members the change would have no advantage whatever, because in order to avail themselves of the week-end holiday at home they would have to travel something like a thousand miles in going and returning. The Leader of the House had told them that the new Rules had been framed without taking the Irish Members specially into account. On that matter he might say, like the gentlemen beyond the Tweed, "I ha'e ma doots," at least, so far as the punitive part of the business was concerned. In introducing the Rules, the Leader of the House stated that Members on both sides were invited to consider them in no Party light, but with the view of settling the question in an amicable way. He looked in vain for proof of the genuineness of that invitation. It was true that hon. and right hon. gentlemen opposite had stated their views manfully without regard to the views expressed from the Treasury Bench. Some of them had gone further and recorded their votes against the proposals of the Government, but he had noticed that at each division, up to the present time, the Government Whips were the tellers in favour of the proposals It required no small amount of moral courage for the followers of the Government to run the gauntlet of the Whips, and vote in opposition to the proposals. He thought it would be well in future divisions to allow non-official tellers to take the place of the Government Whips so that there might be a chance of getting at the honest convictions of Members on both sides of the House. (8.8.)

(8.45.) MR. FLYNN (Cork, N.)

said it appeared to him after listening to the debate that this Rule was an illustration of how far wrong the Government and the House were going in dealing with the congestion of public business. This Rule, so far as he could see, seemed to unsettle everything and settle nothing. It disarranged the whole department of Parliamentary work known as Questions; it upset the arrangements with regard to adjournments of the House; it left important Private Bill Committees in a nebulous condition, and was a mere groping in the dark by a Minister who would not acknowledge the difficulties of the position. With the change of Wednesday to Friday he was not concerned. It might be a good thing for English Members who lived in the country and could get to their homes and have a full week-end in which to recuperate, but so far as he and many who sat with him were concerned, they were too far away from home to take advantage of it. But would anybody contend that twenty-five minutes would be sufficient time to deal with Private Bills sent down from a Committee? Certainly not, and no Committee which was to be appointed to deal with Private Bill procedure would alter matters until there was devolution both with regard to Private Bill business and other far more important business. He would not go into the subject of Questions at length, but would only say that the attempt which was being made by the Government to relegate that important branch of Parliamentary inquiry to the fag-end of a tiring sitting was little less than a scandal. What ground was there for supposing that Questions would come on at 7.15? A division might be taken and business interrupted with constant divisions, with the result that Questions might not be reached until nearly 8 o'clock, and that most important branch of Parliamentary work would be relegated till after midnight. That would be a very disappointing result of the Rules which were alluded to a few months since with so much triumph. They were told that the House was to meet from Monday to Friday at two for a morning sitting and at nine for an evening sitting; the Rule on that point did not appear to be quite grammatical. Was there to be one sitting prolonged into the other, or were there to be two sittings? Whichever it was, it gave no rest to the active Members of the House, because Members who had Questions to put—and some of the most important questions of policy were put at Question time, and information extracted which would take hours to obtain by way of debate—would have to remain till eight at night. The hon. Member who looked on the House of Commons as a club would get away at 7.15, but those who took an interest in the affairs of Parliament generally would have to wait till eight, and would not be able to get dinner then, because between that and nine would give no time. The practical interest in the House would disappear from 7.15 to ten or eleven, and the result would be that they would not do half the business. There had been no case made out for the Rule. It would upset everything; nobody would be able to know what was going to occur, and then what would become of the dignity of the House? The whole thing would be higgledy-piggledy, each branch of Parliamentary business trying to get its fragment of time, and instead of having a condition of things where there would be some certainty about the business of this House, with the exception of a few hours devoted to Government business there would be no certainty as to the order in which the business of the House would be taken. He approved of the early hours of sitting, but he would suggest that they should have a practical three o'clock sitting when they should at once take Questions, then proceed with the business of the House in the proper way, and have an hour for dinner. There was no abuse of the Motions to adjourn the House, and when they had occurred they had taken very little time. In his opinion the whole thing was an ill-considered attempt to deal with a condition of things which no tinkering at the Rules of the House would ever satisfactorily deal with. The situation would have to be dealt with in another manner. Looking at the Government proposals as a whole, he could find little to commend them to the House except the change of Wednesday to Friday. He would have much to say later on on the important subject of Questions, but at the present moment he would only say that it appeared to him that these rules, as a whole, put a premium on idleness, and encouraged Members in a system of giving as little time as they could to their Parliamentary duties, and encouraged them to look on Parliament more as a glorified club than as a deliberating and legislative Assembly.

(8.58.) MR. GALLOWAY (Manchester, S.W.)

said he differed entirely from the hon. Gentleman opposite as to the effect of the rules they were now considering. He just desired to draw attention to one or two points not yet raised, but before doing so he would apply to his hon. friend representing the Government not to withstand the appeal which had been made to him not to make tins a Government division. He supported that appeal, because he believed however strong the arguments were in favour of making it a Government division, equally strong arguments could be urged in the other direction. For his part, he thought that the Rules of the House were essentially for the House itself to deal with. He was aware that in this matter the Government were following the example set them by Mr. Gladstone, than whom there was no better Parliamentarian ever lived, and he was quite ready to offer the Government whatever support he could in following the example of so great a man. This rule provided for an adjournment during the dinner hour. He was one of those who had a right to complain of this because upon the four or five occasions upon which he had addressed the House he had been confined to the dinner hour. He was bound to admit that while they could not get any alteration in the rules without sacrificing something, he thought that the least valuable time of the House was the dinner hour, and he thought they might very well dispense with it.

With regard to the question of Wednesday being substituted for Friday, a great many of his hon. friends viewed such a change with suspicion, for they feared that it might be the means of revolutionary measures being passed. He remembered that last session there was a Bill down for the Wednesday during the Ascot meeting, a function which was attended by a great many hon. Members. The first Bill down on that day related to the education of children in Scotland, and the second was the Sparks Bill, in charge of the present Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means. Two or three of his hon. friends and himself who were interested in the Sparks Bill found plenty of time to discuss adequately the Bill dealing with the education of children in Scotland, and although they challenged no division on the Second Reading of that measure he was bound to admit that they occupied a good deal of the time of the House, explaining the important provisions of that measure dealing with education in Scotland. Personally, he thought their fears would be misplaced, because, in his opinion, what ever rules might be framed for the conduct of business, it would be impossible to stifle free discussion and the ventilation of any subject which might come before the House. So long as they had that safeguard it appeared to him to matter very little whether they changed Wednesdays into Fridays or Fridays into Wednesdays. At the same time, he thought that if the Wednesday under the new Rule was to be a full sitting from 2 o'clock until midnight, and even later, a very severe physical strain would be put upon the officials of the House, and particularly upon Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker's duties were very onerous and arduous, for while other hon. Members were able to retire from the House for a change, Mr. Speaker had to sit there the whole time. There- fore he thought the extra strain which would be put upon the officials of the House should be carefully considered. He desired to join with the hon. Baronet the Member for Norwich in his request that, instead of unopposed private business coming on at 2 o'clock, it should be postponed until 9 o'clock, and the interval between quarter past two and 3 o'clock should be devoted to the most important Questions down on the Paper. He was aware that great difficulty would be experienced in selecting the Questions to be answered during that three quarters of an hour, but he hoped that the First Lord of the Treasury would resist the suggestion that a Committee should be appointed to settle this difficulty. He could not imagine a more ungrateful or difficult task than for a Committee to decide which were the most important Questions on the Paper, for what one Member might consider important, another hon. Member would consider unimportant. Therefore he did not think such a suggestion ought to meet with favour from the House.

As to allowing Committees on private Bills to sit after the House had commenced its business, he desired to say a word or two. It was said that Select Committees on private Bills now sat from 11.30 to 4 o'clock. He had discovered an extraordinary Standing Order which appeared to have entirely passed into disuse. He alluded to Standing Order 76, which referred to private Bills, and which instructed the Serjeant-at-Arms when the House was going to prayers, to give hon. Members notice of Committees which were sitting. He submitted that there was a very grave objection to allowing Select Committees to sit for any lengthened period after the House had commenced its labours. If hon. Members serving on private Bills had to come down to this House to attend divisions, the work could not be done effectively. The House should realise that under the rule enabling them to meet at 2 o'clock a very serious alteration would be necessary in the method by which private Bills were conducted, and he doubted very much whether they would be able to get the Select Committee to sit any sooner than they did now, while hon. Members were detained at the House until 12 o'clock, and sometimes till a later hour. The case was infinitely stronger with regard to Grand Committees. The hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire asked at what hour did they propose to allow Grand Committees to sit. He believed that they could sit at whatever hour they decided, and it depended to a great extent upon the rapidity with which the Minister interested was anxious for the Bill to get through. The serious difficulty with Grand Committees was to get a quorum. He could not see how those hon. Members who took an active interest in the business before the House, and in Grand Committees upstairs, would be able to continue that work under the new arrangements, for any lengthened period. They might be able to do it at the close of the session, and in the case of non-contentious measures. Under the proposals of the Government there were going to be more and more Bills referred to Grand Committees than ever, and unless some way was found of limiting the labours of Grand Committees, it would be almost impossible for them to do their work. Those were matters of detail, but for his part he intended to support the proposals of the Government in this instance. He did hope, however, that when it came to a division upon the Wednesday or Friday question, the Government would not yield to the suggestion not to put on their own Whips, because by adhering to their Whips, they would only be following the example of Mr. Gladstone, who declared that this was the only way in which they could effect any alteration in the Standing Orders.

(9.19.) MR. DILLON

said that this was one alteration which was not directed against any particular section of the House, and which they could consider calmly. What was the ground on which it was proposed to make these changes in the time-table? He did not think the changes were calculated to substantially expedite the conduct of public business through the House. He understood that the First Lord of the Treasury did not base his case for these Rules upon any of these considerations. He was sure that if they did not gain time by the change they would not gain inefficiency. The right hon. Gentleman based his recommendations entirely upon the convenience of hon. Members of the House, and he said his object was to make the House a more attractive place for hon. Members. He doubted whether that was a really substantial ground upon which to recommend a change of this kind. When the right hon. Gentleman talked about increasing the attractions of this House, he would ask what class of hon. Members he had in his mind? Broadly speaking there were two classes. In the first place there were the hon. Members who followed the proceedings of the House closely, and who did so under a sense of obligation to their constituencies. In the second place there was another large body of hon. Members who came down to the House from totally different motives, because they imagined it conferred certain social distinctions upon them, and their one desire from the time they took the oath, was to keep out of the House as much as they possibly could; and their one object was while retaining M. P. at the end of their names, to avoid as much as possible the tedium and boredom of this House. They took practically no interest in the proceedings, and only attended when the Whips sent for them. Were they now to be told that their procedure was to be altered without regard to the interests of the nation and the increased inefficiency of the House simply for the purpose of attracting men belonging to the second class he had mentioned? Those hon. Members to whom he alluded were not influenced by a sense of public duty. Then there were two other classes "The dinner brigade," and "The week-enders." He thought the real motive for this particular set of alterations was to be found in the difficulty which the Government Whips had experienced in inducing what he described as "the dinner brigade" to remain in the House. They had heard that certain Members of the House came there because they could get a cheap dinner and others went away because the dinner was not good enough for them. Most of the discussion was more or less of a farce in so far as it related to the conduct of business. The whole business time-table of the House was to be altered to suit the convenience of Members and the Whips. Those were the hon. Members for whom the time-table was to be altered, and in his opinion he did not think it added to the dignity of the House and it did not strengthen the position of the House of Commons in the country that they should spend those valuable days debating alterations intended to make the House more attractive to the class of hon. Members he had described. Hon. Members had announced their horror of the professional politician, but he would ask who were the Gentlemen sitting on the Front Benches? The First Lord of the Treasury had all his life been a professional politician, and so had the Leader of the Opposition and every other right hon. Gentleman and hon. Gentlemen on the Front Benches. Every man who succeeded in gaining a prominent position in this House must be a professional politician or he could not give that amount of attention which the affairs of the nation required. He did not think there was the smallest risk of the House being composed solely of professional politicians, for they were drifting entirely the other way. During the last 20 years the tendency had been in a totally different direction, and instead of having more men like John Bright and Richard Cobden the House had been swamped largely with hon. Member who regarded public affairs with contempt and who came to the House simply on account of social distinction and amusement and simply to increase their own personal importance. Therefore this danger of the House passing under the control of professional politicians was absolutely groundless.

He did not think a sufficient case had been made out for this change. It was proposed to increase their labour one hour per day by meeting at two o'clock, but the strain which this would involve in the case of working Members would not have a compensating relief in the arrangement for the dinner-hour. The dinner-hour was a mere fraud and a delusion so far as the working Members were concerned. Care must be taken not to make the work of the House intolerable. He did his share of the work on Grand Committees, and he could state from experience that the strain on those Members who tried to do their duty from Whitsuntide on to the rising of the House, was all but intolerable. They were completely worn out by the end of the session if they attended to business. Now, it was proposed to suit the convenience of men who never worked, and increase the normal strain by imposing an additional hour on the sitting of the House. It was perfectly manifest that the adjournment from eight to nine o'clock was of no use to anybody. It meant that those who went away for dinner would remain until ten, but the working Members were to be here when the business was resumed at nine. How would this act on the business of the House? He did not agree with what had been said as to the valuelessness of the speeches made immediately after the dinner-hour. Some of the most interesting speeches he had heard had been delivered then—sometimes more interesting than those which came from the front Benches. It was the time when young Members addressed the House, men who were the salt of the House of Commons, and who then, to use a slang expression, got their sea legs. Therefore, he thought that by adopting the proposal before the House, they would do a real injury to the debates in Parliament. What would happen at nine o'clock? The dinner brigade would not be back. They would, of course, not come back till ten, because they had notice that the Government did not want them as the House could not be counted out before that hour. Between nine and ten o'clock it would be essential to the existence of the Government to prevent a division, and if the Irish Members would not do the talking, it would be necessary to have a set of men behind the Front Bench to do it. To base their rules on such a system as that, was to degrade the House of Commons, because they would be deliberately setting up a system of imposition and hypocrisy by pretending to do business when they were doing no business, but simply marking time.

This Rule as proposed, or as modified in the course of the discussion, instead of improving would greatly worsen the position of private Members, because, while the Government would always have certainty as to their business, private Members would be left in absolute uncertainty whether they would have any chance at all. The Leader of the House had set up the extraordinary doctrine that the business of Supply was private Members' business, or tantamount to private Members' Motions, which, of course, was absurd. He protested against the proposals brought forward year after year by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton, in favour of a system of allocation. If there was such a system the Irish Party would be wiped out altogether. Under present conditions they had their chance in the ballot, but he had never heard anything more monstrous and unjust than the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman, whereby all hope of the minority obtaining a hearing would be wiped out. He was opposed to the whole of the alterations now proposed. They were no calculated to expedite the business of the Government; no case had been made out for them; and the long time which must be consumed in debating them, was an absolute waste of public time.

(9.45.) MAJOR RASCH (Essex, Chelmsford)

said he hoped the Government would not be beguiled into making any graceful concessions to hon. Members on their own side of the House, with reference to their proposals concerning the substitution of Friday for Wednesday as the half holiday. That proposal, it seemed to him, would promote innocent enjoyment to hon. Members on both sides of the House. They would be able to get a quiet Saturday with their constituents, or to take part in those amusements to which they were addicted; and the only thing which hon. Members would have to give up would be the Wednesday afternoons in London. There was a very great precedent from adjourning early on Friday. Sir Erskine May recorded that Mr. Speaker Onslow complained that the great grief of his life was that he could not make a House on Friday because Sir Robert Walpole would go a-hunting on Saturdays. That was the reason, and he had not heard any better, why he was prepared to vote for that portion of the new rules of Procedure. As to the dinner hour, he agreed very much with what fell from the hon. Member for East Mayo. He had always thought that hon. Gentlemen took themselves too seriously in the matter of dinner. What the hon. Gentleman said was perfectly true; the upshot of adjourning at half past seven o'clock for dinner, would be that hon. Members would not come back at all. They were told that lawyers, business men, and company directors, could not henceforth be useful Members of the House, because they could not attend at two o'clock. They should have thought of that before. The House might very well do without them—there were quite enough lawyers and company directors in the House as it was—and he imagined that the gaiety of the House would not be eclipsed by their absence. He was glad that the Government had thought proper to curtail, if possible, the number of Questions, and the time occupied in answering them. He knew that when he was a new Member, if there was any subject in which his constituents were interested, he said to himself: "I cannot make a speech; I cannot sit silent; I will put a Question." Taking the Rules all round, he, having been in the House for seventeen years, humbly approved of them, and so long as he was there, he would do his best to support them.

MR. TOMKINSON (Cheshire, Crewe)

appealed to the Leader of the House to allow the question of the change of day and hours to be an open one. They had special justification for that concession in the speech of the Colonial Secretary, in which he reviewed and defended the action of the Government from beginning to end. That right hon. Gentlemen had laid down the indisputable proposition that such changes should be made, if possible, for the convenience of the whole House; that the convenience of the majority must prevail, and that the minority must give way. And the right hon. Gentleman added that the convenience of the majority would be found in the votes recorded. He maintained that, unless those words were unreal, this question should be allowed to be open, and that unless the division was absolutely free from all party lines, the decision would not express the honest opinion of the House.

(9.55.) MR. GRIFFITH BOSCAWEN (Kent, Tunbridge)

said that having been ten years in the House, and a very constant attendant, he entirely supported the new rules. He did not think the Government need feel in the least disappointed by the discussion. The objections to the new rules were self-destructive. At the present moment the Government got absolutely insufficient time, while private Members had more time than they wanted. Although under the new Rules private Members would in theory have much less time than now, they would, with certainty, have as much or more time. He was not one of those who advocated that they should arrange their rules for the benefit or convenience of Members, but if they made their rules more convenient to Members they would despatch their business better. He did not see how hon. Members could be subjected to greater inconvenience than at present; and it would be far better for the Speaker, the officials of the House, and the Members generally, that the dinner should be for a definite and fixed time, and that they should have two sittings each day instead of one. As to the change from Wednesday to Friday, he was not an advocate in the least of the days being so arranged that hon. Members might take their holidays at their ease. It had been said that hon. Members would go away from Thursday to Monday to enjoy themselves; but he pointed out that Members in business could not take two clear holidays, and that there were Members who took an active part in their home affairs as members of County Councils and District Councils. They were told that they did not want to have only politicians in the House. He quite subscribed to that, but against that there was the advantage of these people going away if they wished. There was only one serious point, and that was the question of the Committees. He fully agreed that they should not curtail the hours the Committees sat, and also that a Member hould not be required to sit on a Committee when the House was sitting. But if Standing Committees met at eleven and sat till 2.30 they would sit for half an hour longer than they sat at present, and they would not sit when important business was being transacted in this House. Private Bill Committees sat now until long after the meeting of the House, and he saw no reason why they should not continue to do so. He supported in the main the proposals of the Government.

(10.3.) MR. VICARY GIBBS (Herefordshire, St. Albans)

expressed the opinion that the Leader of the House had acted wisely in refusing to allow a division to take place on this question on other than Party lines. As he looked at the matter, it was the duty of the right hon. Gentleman having proposed rules for, as he thought, the convenience of the House, to force them through with all his power. He did not oppose this Rule in any spirit of determined hostility, but he would like to say just a few words upon it. The change from Wednesday to Friday was opposed by many of the supporters of the Government, because they thought it was absolutely necessary when private legislation was being dealt with that there should be a representative House. When Supply was being discussed, if a Member could not be in his place he could always find another Member who would call attention to that matter which he considered of public importance. It was not a question, then, of how many Members were in the House, but whether a particular point was raised; but when a private Bill was being dealt with, then it was a matter of counting hands in the lobby. He had some little delicacy in dealing with the question of the 2 o'clock sitting, owing to the fact that that hour of meeting was so extremely inconvenient to himself. He thought, however, that the hour between two and three was eminently a business hour for the discussion of business questions, though there was no doubt it was very inconvenient. The hon. Member for Northampton said that business men came down to the House with axes to grind, but in his opinion a business man would be a perfect fool to come down to the House with the idea of making money there. He did not think such a reflection upon business men was justified. The point which he did not think the House quite realised was that the House met when its Committees met, and the Committees sat at 11.30 o'clock. He would ask the House to consider whether a 2 o'clock sitting had not the serious disadvantage that Members would be detained upstairs upon important Private Bills, which they could not leave, when they ought to be taking part in the deliberations of the House. He quite recognised that the right hon. Gentleman had dealt very fairly by the House in the allocation of opposed Private Bills to the evening sitting, but there was a serious danger in taking opposed Private Bills at 9 o'clock. All through these Rules there seemed to be a tendency to place opposed private business down for a time when there would be a disposition on the part of a large number of Members to withdraw from the debate. He had seen Railway Bills, which some of them thought proper to be passed, hotly opposed, whilst County Council and other Bills which they thought should be opposed had passed in consequence of this tendency. Was 9 o'clock the time of night when it was to the interest of the House to see such business undertaken? He appealed to his right hon. friend to consider the argument of the Member for Norwich, the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, and Members of his own Party, who had impressed upon him the importance that the early business of the House should not be of a controversial character necessitating Members being in their places at 2 o'clock. He thought the right hon. Gentleman would do well to consider whether he was not able to meet those who were his most ardent supporters. If he could show some consideration in this matter to Members of his own side, the right hon. Gentleman would find the passage of the Rules through the House would be much eased, and if some alteration could be made in the new Rule which automatically referred to Grand Committee Bills taken in the House on Friday, the opposition to the change from Wednesday to Friday would be much lessened. In the matter of this change he was not biased, because if made it would be infinitely to his own convenience, but he was frightened—and he was not the only one who was frightened—at the alterations the right hon. Gentleman was making, and he urged him to relieve hon. Members of their fears in that matter.

(10.15.) MR. A. J. BALFOUR

May I venture to make an appeal at this stage. I do not want to unduly press the House in this matter, but every argument that can possibly be adduced for and against the Rule has been used over and over again, and every argument will find its proper place at a later stage when the Amendments to the Rule come to be considered. I therefore desire to impress upon the House the propriety of coming to a decision without further delay on the question before it.

(10.17.) MR. NANNETTI (Dublin, College Green)

said he did not want the week-end spoken of by the first Lord. He could not go hunting or golfing. He had to do his duty to his constituency, and he protested against the changes proposed to be made. The right hon. Gentleman had appealed to the House in this matter, but he had hoped the right hon. Gentleman would have shown some consideration for Members like himself upon whom the Rule would so hardly press. With regard to the change from Wednesday to Friday, Members in his position viewed with alarm any such change. They naturally desired to be constant in their attendance. When they were elected they understood that on Wednesday when the House was sitting they had a chance of recuperating their waning energies. But under the Rule proposed by the right hon. Gentleman Friday was going to be substituted for Wednesday, with the result that there would be no break, and with the result than an hon. Member who wished to do his duty to his constituency and the House would have to come down at 11 o'clock in the morning for Committee work, and would then have to stop here until 1 o'clock on the following morning in order to get his questions asked. Consequently he viewed with alarm the proposals of the Government, which would compel him to give his attendance for such long hours, and thought they had a right to ask the Government to consider all the Members of the House in a matter of this kind. The early rising on Wednesday was of immense advantage to hardworking Members to rest from the effects of their early attendance on Committees and at late sittings in the House.

(10.22.) MR. CHAPLIN (Lincolnshire, Sleaford)

appealed to his right hon. friend, as one of the oldest Members of this House, upon what he regarded as the most important of all the Rules now under consideration. It was upon the acceptance of this Rule that the larger part of the scheme of his right hon. friend depended—by far the most controversial part of it. All the Questions relating to private business, to the work of Committees, to the proposals with regard to Questions, to Motions for the adjournment of the House, almost entirely vanished if this Rule was passed, and, therefore, he wish to intervene for a few moments. He desired most emphatically to re-echo what was said by one of the Members for Birmingham, by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton, and by the hon. Member for St. Albans, each of whom pointed out that this Question above all other questions ought not to be treated as a Party question, and that as much freedom and liberty should be left to every hon. Member of this House as it was possible to leave. Changes in the Rules of Procedure stood upon a totally different footing to all other changes ever made by any Government of the House; those changes affected every Member of the House of Commons in their daily work in the House, and they had as much right to form their own opinion and act upon it when any change in procedure occurred as any Member sitting on the Government Bench. Indeed, when they had to consider questions of this nature, it was only because of the exceptional privileges which the Government possessed, and must necessarily possess, in having the control of the time of the House, that they moved these Rules at all. If it was not that private Members had never been able to have an opportunity of moving Rules of their own, they would of course have had their share in making proposals for a change in procedure just as much as the Government. Therefore it was that he rather differed from his hon. friend the Member for St. Albans, and thought that questions of this nature should be left open to Members themselves to say how they should be dealt with, and if there should be a difference of opinion on this question between the Government and their supporters that ought not to be treated as disloyalty by the Government. There was another reason which ought to be borne in mind, which was that if any changes in the Rules were to be really effective they ought, as far as possible, to be Rules adopted by the general agreement of the House.

Having said that, he would like to say one or two words on the merits of the proposals. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton had adduced arguments against the proposals of the Government as they affected private Bills, which he thought were insufficient arguments, but the answers made to those arguments by his right hon. friend did not seem to him altogether sufficient. He did not see at present how the difficulties with regard to the work of the Committees were to be got over. Great objections had been pointed out tonight so far as the Committees were concerned which, it might be, could be remedied when the Rules came to be discussed in detail, but which, in his opinion, had not been got over yet. He might say, with regard to private business, he did not now know what the proposal was; whether it was to be referred to a Private Bill Committee, or whether it was to be taken on all the evenings of the week. But there was a much more important subject, which was the question when "Questions" were going to be put.

MR. DAVID THOMAS (Merthyr Tydvil)

, on a point of order submitted that to discuss the subject of Questions was now not in order.

*MR. SPEAKER

To a limited extent Questions can be discussed under this Motion. There are no doubt times when they may be properly discussed in detail, but the question when they are to be taken can be discussed now.

MR. CHAPLIN

I am much obliged for your ruling Sir, upon a ruling which, I believe from my experience, to have been one of the most uncalled-for interruptions that has ever been made in this House. The right hon. Gentleman continued: With regard to the great majority of questions, he entirely agreed with the Government. In fact, he thought the proposal might go even further, and postpone some Questions altogether. But, on the other hand, there were some Questions which it was essential should be put at the commencement of public business, viz., Questions on matters of transcendental importance with regard to which there ought to be no delay. The right hon. Gentleman had himself admitted that this was a real difficulty, but that, unless the double sitting were given up altogether, he could see no way in which it could be arranged better. If that was so, much as he desired to see the great bulk of Questions postponed altogether, it would be the lesser of two evils to give up the double sitting.

As to the question of Motions for adjournment, the right hon. Gentleman had completely recognised that they were a necessary safety valve. Nobody in the House would deny that circumstances constantly occurred, no matter where a Liberal or a Conservative Government was in power, in regard to which it was necessary that Members should have the power of moving the adjournment. If that point was conceded, the power ought to be effective. Under the present proposal that would not be the case. What was the great virtue of the power to move the adjournment? Under the existing rules, that power was always affective because, if the Motion were carried, the Government would lose a day and be placed in a position of extreme difficulty. But suppose Motions for adjournment were relegated to the evening sitting; first would come private business, then the Motion for adjournment. That Motion might be discussed for an hour or an hour and a half, and what then would be the position of the Government? The amount of time left for the transaction of other business would be so small that the Government would say, "Let them have the adjournment; what do we care? we will go home." Under such circumstances, the weapon of Moving the adjournment would be utterly useless. Another aspect of the matter was with regard to moving the adjournment in consequence of an unsatisfactory reply to a Question. A great many Questions might not be answered until 12 o'clock. The adjournment could not be moved until next day. Meantime, down would go a blocking Motion, and it would be impossible to move the adjournment. If the Government admitted, as they had done, that the power of moving the adjournment was a great safety valve and ought to be effective, he contended the present proposals failed altogether.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

said the Government had never contemplated the possibility of a Motion for adjournment being stopped by a blocking Motion. If it were found to be possible, they would have to provide a Rule to prevent it.

MR. CHAPLIN

said that gave away the whole case. His right hon. friend admitted that such Motions might be moved.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

No; I do not think they could be.

MR. CHAPLIN

Why?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Because I do not think so.

MR. CHAPLIN

said he was afraid his right hon. friend and he must agree to differ on that matter. It was quite within the bounds of possibility that an occasion would arise, at no distant date, when he would be able to give his right hon. friend a practical illustration by putting down a blocking Motion to a Motion for adjournment of which he disapproved. He was not dealing with this question from the point of view of the present Government alone. With his knowledge of and long acquaintance with his old colleagues and friends on the Treasury Bench he did not for a moment contemplate that they would do anything of which he greatly disapproved, but no Government remained in office for ever, and a time would come when the present majority, or at all events hon. Gentlemen younger than himself, would be confronted by a Radical Government anxious to make up for lost time. It was with the greatest respect he ventured, therefore, to offer these words of counsel and warning to his hon. friends around him. Nobody in the world would be more sorry than himself to interfere with the comfort or convenience of any Member of the House, and, although he had doubts as to its expediency, he was anxious to make this concession with regard to the evening sitting. His support to the proposal will greatly depend on the answers he received from

the Government to the questions he was about to put. What concessions were the Government prepared to make with regard to the right of asking Questions? What concessions were they prepared to make with regard to the right of Moving the adjournment at the commencement of public business? He was convinced that, in the interests of the House of Commons itself, and, above all, in accordance with the rights, privileges, and duties of private Members, some concessions on those points ought to be made.

(10.42.) Question put.

The House divided:—Ayes, 112; Noes, 230. (Division List, No. 36.)

AYES.
Abraham, Wm. (Cork, N. E.) Gilhooly, James O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)
Abraham, William (Rhondda) Goddard, Daniel Ford O'Doherty, William
Allan, William (Gateshead) Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton O'Donnell, T. (Kerry, W.)
Allen, Charles P.(Glouc., Stroud Hammond, John O'Dowd, John
Ambrose, Robert Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Sir William O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N.
Ashton, Thomas Gair Harmsworth, R. Leicester O'Malley, William
Atherley-Jones, L. Harwood, George O'Mara, James
Barry, E. (Cork S.) Hayne, Rt. Hon. Charles Seale O'Shaughnessy, P. J.
Bayley, Thomas (Derbyshire) Humphreys-Owen, Arthur C. O'Shee, James John
Blake, Edward Jameson, Major J. Eustace Power, Patrick Joseph
Boland, John Jones, William (Carnarvonsh. Price, Robert John
Bolton, Thomas Dolling Jordan, Jeremiah Rea, Russell
Broadhurst, Henry Joyce, Michael Reddy, M.
Brown, George M. (Edinburgh Kennedy, Patrick James Redmond, John E. (Waterford)
Burke, E. Haviland- Langley, Batty Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.)
Burns, John Layland-Barratt, Francis Roche, John
Caldwell, James Leigh, Sir Joseph Runciman, Walter
Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H. Levy, Maurice Russell, T. W.
Cogan, Denis J. Lewis, John Herbert Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)
Condon, Thomas Joseph Lundon, W. Schwann, Charles E.
Craig, Robert Hunter MacDonnell, Dr. Mark A. Sheehan, Daniel Daniel
Crean, Eugene Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J. Sinclair, John (Forfarshire)
Cremer, William Randal MacNeill, John Gordon Swift Spencer, Rt. Hn. C. R (North'nts
Cullinan, J. M'Crae, George Sullivan, Donal
Delany, William M'Fadden, Edward Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.)
Dewar, John A.(Inverness-sh.) M'Govern, T. Thomas, Alf. (Glamorgan, E.)
Dilke, Rt. Hn. Sir Charles M'Hugh, Patrick A. Thompson, Dr E C (Monagh'n, N
Dillon, John M'Killop, W. (Sligo, North) Tomkinson, James
Disraeli, Coningsby Ralph Mansfield, Horace Rendall White, George (Norfolk)
Donelan, Captain A. Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen Whitley, J. H. (Halifax)
Doogan, P. C. Murphy, John Wilson, Fred W. (Norfolk, Mid.)
Duncan, J. Hastings Nannetti, Joseph P. Wilson, Henry J. (Yorks, W. R.
Edwards, Frank Nolan, Col. John P. (Galway, N.) Young, Samuel
Esmonde, Sir Thomas Nolan, Joseph (Louth, South) Yoxall, James Henry
Evans, Samuel T. (Glamorgan) O'Brien, James F. X. (Cork)
Fenwick, Charles O'Brien, Kendal (Tip'er'ry Mid. TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr.
Ffrench, Peter O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny) Lough and Mr. M'Kenna.
Field, William O'Brien, P. J. (Tipperary, N.)
Flynn, James Christopher O'Connor, James (Wicklow W.)
NOES.
Acland-Hood, Capt. Sir Alex. F. Arnold-Forster, Hugh O. Bain, Colonel James Robert
Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel Arrol, Sir William Baird, John George Alexander
Anson, Sir William Reynell Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John Balcarres, Lord
Archdale, Edward Mervyn Bagot, Capt. Josceline FitzRoy Balfour, Rt. Hn. A. J. (Manch'r)
Balfour, Capt. C. B. (Hornsey) Hamilton, Marq of (L'nd'nderry Pryce-Jones, Lieut.-Col. Edward
Balfour, Rt. Hn. Gerald W (Leeds Hardy, Laurence (Kent, Ashf'rd Purvis, Robert
Balfour, Kenneth R. (Christch. Hare, Thomas Leigh Randles, John S.
Banbury, Frederick George Haslam, Sir Alfred S. Rankin, Sir James
Beach, Rt. Hn. Sir Michael Hicks Hatch, Ernest Frederick George Rasch, Major Frederic Carne
Bentinck, Lord Henry C. Hay, Hon Claude George Ratcliff, R. F.
Bignold, Arthur Heath, Arthur Howard (Hanley Reid, James (Greenock)
Bigwood, James Heath, James (Staffords, N. W.) Remnant, James Farquharson
Blundell, Colonel Henry Heaton, John Henniker Renshaw, Charles Bine
Boscawen, Arthur Griffith- Henderson, Alexander Renwick, George
Brodrick, Rt. Hn. St. John Higginbottom, S W. Ridley, Hon. M. W. (Stalybridge)
Brookfield, Colonel Montagu Hoare, Sir Samuel Ritchie, Rt. Hn. Chas. Thomson
Bull, William James Hogg, Lindsay Roberts, Samuel (Sheffield)
Bullard, Sir Harry Hope, J. F. (Sheffield, Brightside Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)
Carson, Rt. Hn. Sir Edwd. H. Houldsworth, Sir Wm. Henry Rollit, Sir Albert Kaye
Cautley, Henry Strother Hoult, Joseph Round, James
Cavendish, V. C. W. (Derbysh.) Howard, J. (Midd., Tottenham) Royds, Clement Molyneux
Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor) Jackson, Rt. Hon. Wm. Lawies Rutherford, John
Chamberlain, Rt. Hn. J. (Birm.) Jeffreys, Arthur Frederick Sackville, Col. S. G. Stopford-
Chamberlain, J. Austen (Worc'r Johnston, William (Belfast) Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander
Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry Johnstone, Heywood (Sussex) Samuel, Harry S. (Limehouse)
Chapman, Edward Kenyon, Hon. Geo. T.(Denbigh) Sandys, Lieut.-Col. Thos. Myles
Churchill, Winston Spencer Kenyon, James (Lancs., Bury) Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert
Clive, Captain Percy A. Kenyon-Slaney, Col. W. (Salop.) Saunderson, Rt. Hn. Col. Edw. J.
Coghill, Douglas Harry Keswick, William Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)
Cohen, Benjamin Louis Lawrence, Joseph (Monmouth Seely, Maj. J. E. B (Isle of Wight)
Collings, Rt. Hon. Jesse Lawson, John Grant Sharpe, William Edward T.
Colomb, Sir John Charles Ready Lee, Arthur H.(Hants., Fareh'm Shaw-Stewart, M. H. (Renfrew)
Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow) Leigh-Bennett, Henry Currie Simeon, Sir Barrington
Corbett, T. L. (Down, North) Leveson-Gower, Fred. N. S. Smith, Abel H. (Hertford, East)
Cranborne, Viscount Llewellyn, Evan Henry Smith, H. C. (Northmb, Tynsde.(
Cross, Herb. Shepherd (Bolton) Lockwood, Lt.-Col. A. R. Smith, Hn. W. F. D. (Strand)
Crossley, Sir Savile Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesh'm Spencer, Sir E. (W. Bromwich)
Cubitt, Hon. Henry Long, Rt. Hn. W. (Bristol, S.) Stanley, Edward Jas (Somerset)
Dalkeith, Earl of Lonsdale, John Brownlee Stanley, Lord (Lancs.)
Dalrymple, Sir Charles Lowe, Francis William Stock, James Henry
Denny, Colonel Lowther, Rt. Hn. James (Kent Stone, Sir Benjamin
Dewar, T. R. (T'rH'mlets, S. Geo. Lucas, Col. Francis (Lowestoft) Stroyan, John
Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P. Lucas, Reginald J. (Portsmouth Strutt, Hon. Charles Hedley
Digby, John K. D. Wingfield- Lyttelton, Hon. Alfred Sturt, Hon. Humphry Napier
Dorington, Sir John Edward Macartney, Rt. Hn. W. G. Ellison Talbot, Rt Hn. J. G. (Oxf. Univ.
Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers- Macdona, John Cumming Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr
Doxford, Sir William Theodore Maconochie, A. W. Thornton, Percy M.
Duke, Henry Edward M'Calmont, Col. J. (Antrim, E.) Tomlinson, W. Edwd. Murray
Durning-Lawrence, Sir Edwin M'Iver, Sir Lewis (Edinbro', W. Tritton, Charles Ernest
Dyke, Rt. Hn. Sir William Hart M'Killop, James (Stirlingshire) Valentia, Viscount
Elliot, Hn. A. Ralph Douglas Majendie, James A. H. Walker, Col. William Hall
Fellowes, Hon. Ailwyn Edward Manners, Lord Cecil Warde, Col. C. E.
Fergusson, Rt Hn Sir J. (Manc'r Martin, Richard Biddulph Warr, Augustus Frederick
Finch, George H. Maxwell, W. J. H. (Dumfriessh.) Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
Finlay, Sir Robert Bannatyne Melville, Beresford Valentine Webb, Col. William George
Fisher, William Hayes Mildmay, Francis Bingham Welby, Lt-Col A. C. E.(Taunton
Fison, Frederick William Milner, Rt. Hn. Sir Frederick G. Welby, Sir C. G. E. (Notts)
Fitzroy, Hon. Edward Algernon Mitchell, William Wentworth, Bruce C. Vernon
Flower, Ernest Molesworth, Sir Lewis Wharton, Rt. Hn. John Lloyd
Forster, Henry William Moon, Edward Robert Pacy Whiteley, H. (Ashton und. Lyne
Foster, Sir Michael (Lond. Univ. More, Robt. Jasper (Shropshire) Whitmore, Charles Algernon
Foster, Philip S. (Warwick, S. W. Morgan, David J. (Walthamst'w Williams, Col. R. (Dorset)
Galloway, William Johnson Morrell, George Herbert Williams, Rt Hn J Powell Birm.)
Gardner, Ernest Morrison, James Archibald Willoughby de Eresby, Lord
Gibbs, Hon. Vicary (St. Albans) Morton, Arthur H. A (Deptford Willox, Sir John Archibald
Godson, Sir Augustus Frederick Mowbray, Sir Robert Gray C. Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E.R.)
Gordon, Hn. J. E.(Elgin & Nairn Murray, Rt Hn. A. Graham (Bute Wilson, John (Falkirk)
Gore, Hn G. R. C. Ormsby (Salop) Murray, Charles J. (Coventry) Wilson, John (Glasgow)
Gore, Hn. S. F. Ormsby-(Lincoln Myers, William Henry Wilson, J. W. (Worcestersh.N.)
Gorst, Rt. Hn. Sir John Eldon Nicol, Donald Ninian Wilson-Todd, Wm. H. (Yorks.)
Goulding, Edward Alfred Parker, Gilbert Wodehouse, Rt Hon. E. R (Bath)
Gray, Ernest (West Ham) Parkes, Ebenezer Wylie, Alexander
Green, Walford D. (Wednesb'ry Penn, John Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George
Greene, Sir E. W (B'rySEdm'nds Percy, Earl Yerburgh, Robert Armstrong
Greene, Henry D. (Shrewsbury) Pilkington, Lieut.-Col. Richard
Gretton, John Platt-Higgins, Frederick TELLERS FOR THE NOES—
Groves, James Grimble Plummer, Walter R. Sir William Walrond and
Guthrie, Walter Murray Pretyman, Ernest George Mr. Anstruther.

Question proposed, "That the words 'Wednesday and Thursday at Two of the clock for an Afternoon Sitting, and at Nine of the clock for an Evening Sitting; if the business appointed for an Afternoon Sitting is not disposed of at Eight of the Clock, the Sitting shall be suspended till Nine of the clock; at One of the clock at the Evening Sitting,' be there inserted."—(Mr. A. J. Balfour.)

(10.50.) MR. CHAPLIN

asked if the First Lord of the Treasury had any reply to the questions he had put and the appeal he had made as to whether the Government had any proposals to make with regard to concessions with reference to Questions being asked at the commencement of public business, and any concessions with regard to the moving of adjournments upon questions of great importance at the commencement of public business.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

What is the question?

MR. CHAPLIN

said his question was whether his right hon. friend had any reply to make to the appeal which he made just now as to whether the Government were prepared to make any concessions upon Questions, and also upon the question of the adjournments.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I think my right hon. friend is a little premature. We have had a general discussion, in which I think most of the arguments on both sides have been put forward. We are now about to proceed to various Amendments which raise in turn the question of Wednesday and Friday and other questions connected with this Rule. I hope, therefore, that my right hon. friend will have patience until we concentrate ourselves upon the special Amendments before the House, and I do not think the Government should make any statement until the specific Amendments are raised.

MR. CHAPLIN

said he asked the question because he stated in the observations he made that his support to the proposals of the Government would depend upon the answer he received. It was perfectly competent for the First Lord of the Treasury to have made the answer before the Question was put just now.

(10.54.) MR. LAURENCE HARDY

said he hoped that the Government would not be so anxious to press for the whole of their plan, and they might perhaps allow the House itself to decide upon a matter which, to some extent, was a private Member's question, which did not form part of their general plan, and, so far as he knew, had not been a matter which had given rise to any practical difficulty in connection with their business in the past. When they arrived at the period of the session when the 12 o'clock rule was suspended, the Wednesday interval was an extremely critical thing to everybody, and more especially to the officials of the House. He hoped that, as a Conservative, he would not be considered disloyal in raising this matter. In his opinion, they ought to have very strong reasons for making such a material change in the old custom of the House. As he understood from the statement of the First Lord of the Treasury, the real advantage which the right hon. Gentleman expected from this change was that business men would be able to get away in order to transact their business on days which the Government consider were the most convenient days in the week, so far as business men were concerned. An argument put forward by the hon. Member for Tunbridge was that hon. Members would be able to get to County, District and Parish Council meetings by means of this transference of the day. It seemed to him, however, that this argument was hardly to the point, because he did not think that Saturday was the day usually devoted to the sittings of local bodies. There was something to be said for the argument in connection with Wednesday engagements, in the country. In many parts of the country Wednesday was the only evening when hon. Members could make engagements which were convenient to their constituents. It was an early closing day, and it was the evening when Members were most free from attendance in the House. It was a great convenience to have Wednesday evening free to go away from this Assembly. These were only minor points. The real issue to be considered in connection with this, change was the effect it would have on the business of the House. It seemed to him that the Government in introducing this proposal had laid down that it was their desire to have the great legislative work of the nation done on four days of the week, and that the fifth should be given to private Members. They rather forgot what the position of private Members was at present in connection with the introduction of their Bills. The tendency was to bring forward Bills for discussion on Wednesday by the aid of groups of Members, and very often important measures were brought forward for discussion on Wednesday in the fate of which great interest was taken by the constituencies. It would be a distinct disadvantage to bring forward such Bills at the end of the week. It was not wise to remove the consideration of these Bills from the middle of the week, when they were, so to speak, under the eye of the Government, to the end of the week, when almost an encouragement was given to Members to go away. The general impression in the country was that they were ready to discuss on Friday a large number of measures which they did not believe were going further. That would in no wise add to the dignity of this Assembly. These new Rules went further than anything they had known before. By one of the new Rules, private Bills might, on mere notice being given, pass to a Standing Committee for consideration. He asked the House to consider how this would operate in the case of very debatable measures like the Eight Hours Bill or the Old Age Pensions Bill. If the Eight Hours Bill were taken on a Friday, it might pass the Second Reading, and be sent to a Grand Committee. Having been relieved from these earlier stages, the Government might take up the Bill, carry it through the report stage, and the Third Reading might be passed by a very small majority, and the Bill might eventually become law in consequence of this particular procedure. It would be very much safer in this matter to adhere to the old traditions of the House. There was another contingency which might arise if this new Rule were passed. They would find much greater difficulty than at present in getting a House for a Saturday sitting, which was sometimes necessary. Many of them held strong opinions on the danger of this change, and thought the Government should leave them free to decide for themselves upon it. He begged to move his Amendment.

Amendment proposed to the proposed Amendment— To leave out the words 'Wednesday and'."—(Mr. Laurence Hardy.)

Question proposed, "That the word 'Wednesday' stand part of the proposed Amendment."

(11.10.) MR. TOMLINSON (Preston)

said the reason which had led the Government to make this proposal arose out of the difficulty which was found in making a House on Friday evening. He asked the official Members how they were going to get a House on Friday, when they had told their own supporters that they might very well stay away on that day. In the main he was a supporter of the Rules proposed by the Government. He would suggest, however, that Wednesday sittings should be left as they were, while on Fridays they should have morning sittings, and also evening sittings, subject to certain conditions.

MR. LOUGH (Islington, W.)

said his sympathies were divided with regard to this Amendment. He agreed with the First Lord of the Treasury that the Friday sitting should be short, although his reference to the getting of fresh air on the evening of that day was a little highly pitched. At the same time, while he was with the Leader of the House in regard to Friday, he could not help feeling that the sitting on Wednesday should not be made a late sitting, and that private Bills should be taken in the middle, rather than at the end of the week. He believed as much business would be done in the House in three long and two short days, as under the present procedure, especially when they began business an hour earlier. There was no Assembly in the world which sat so many hours per week as this House.

(11.18.) MR. BANBURY (Camberwell, Peckham)

said he had been a loyal and consistent supporter of the Government, and therefore it was in no carping or hostile spirit that he ventured to support the Amendment moved by the hon. Member for Ashford. There were several reasons which suggested themselves to him as to the disadvantages of making the alterations proposed by the new Rule. The first was that those Members who came down regularly to the House and stopped there till the adjournment, would have to sit for four consecutive days till late at night. He knew it was an advantage to Members to be able to go to bed on Wednesdays at 10 o'clock. Suppose the 12 o'clock Rule was suspended, and hon. Members were sitting on a Committee upstairs beginning at 11 in the morning, or that they had other work to do, the four consecutive late nights would be a very great hardship. As to what would happen on Friday—Thursday would be Supply night, which was not of very great interest to many Members, and the temptation would be for them to go away on Thursday morning, they would not return on Friday, and the consequence would be that Members interested in a Bill would come there on Friday, and that Bill might pass a Second Reading, leading the country to believe that the principle of the Bill had been approved of by the House. He had read every private Bill introduced for the last eight years, and he could say that he did not think that would be to the advantage of the country. While sitting four days consecutively would be a very great strain, he could not conceive what advantage would be gained except by certain Gentlemen who had business in the country, and as Saturday was a bad day for business, they would go away from Thursday to Monday, including the greater part of Monday. He ventured to assert that the House ought not to give encouragement to Members to go away for so long, when it was their duty to be there.

(11.25.) Sin BRAMPTON GURDON (Norfolk, N)

said that the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House ought to consider the interests of some classes of Members as well as those he had consulted. He was a farmer, and wanted to go down to look after his farm on a Friday and Saturday, and he could do that because Friday was a supply day at present. But if private Members, business was to be taken on Friday it would be quite impossible for an agricultural Member to go away on that day, because there was always an Agricultural Bill or a Temperance Bill to be discussed. He quite agreed that having four nights running late sittings would be much too great a strain on Mr. Speaker, the Officials, and on Members, more especially those on the Treasury Benches, and that it would not at all conduce to efficiency. He hoped this matter would be left an open question at the division, since it did not concern the constituencies, but the convenience of Members and the efficiency of the House.

(11.28.) THE SECRETARY TO THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. GRANT LAWSON, Yorkshire, N.R., Thirsk)

said that in the course of the debate they had heard some very strange contradictions of opinion. The early part of the proceedings was occupied with the argument originated by the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean, who said that private Members would have no opportunity of discussing private business.

*SIR CHARLES DILKE

As regards resolutions

MR. GRANT LAWSON

said that it might have been some other hon. Member who argued that the substitution of Friday for Wednesday as private Members' day would kill the private Member, but on the other hand others maintained that it would give undesirable facilities to the private Member to pass his Bills. He should be very sorry to think that the latter would be the case. Under the proposed Rule the private Member would have as good opportunity, and no more, of passing legislation as at present. His hon. friend the Member for Ashford division asked what was the inconvenience of an evening sitting on Friday. There must be some inconvenience because of the difficulty to get hon. Members to sit on Friday. He must confess, as being a Northern Member, that it was often inconvenient for him to sit on a Friday. If they had a high sense of duty which compelled them to be there when the House was sitting, they could not see their homes from the beginning to the end of the Session. The Government had been asked to apply no pressure whatever upon their followers to support their proposal. But surely the Government was in the end responsible for the conduct of the business of the House. If the business did not go well, or got into confusion, it was the Government which would be found fault with and would be called to account. Earlier in the day, it was argued that there should be no break in the sitting by adjourning for dinner, because continuous sittings were so much better for business; but now it was argued that we should have a break in the week on Wednesday, because it was very good for business; but what was good in the one case, was surely good in the other. He hoped hon. Members would really think of the convenience of those who had to be continually present. It would be an immense boon to them to have at the end of the week a reasonable period of leisure. If they were going to have holidays, let them have fair and equal holidays, and not holidays which could only be enjoyed by hon. Members who could not be persuaded to attend on, Fridays at all. The Wednesday night being a full night, would, it was said, be a great strain on the officials; but the great strain would really be on the members of the Government. That surely was a matter which might be considered by the supporters of the Government.

(11.32.) SIR J. FERGUSSON (Manchester, N.E.)

said that the argument of his hon. friend seemed to him to be no conclusive answer to the speech of his hon. friend the Member for the Ashford division. His argument divided itself into two branches, one having reference to public business, and the other to the convenience of Members. The convenience of Members occupied the larger part of his hon. Friend's discourse, but it was possible to carry that too far, as the convenience of Members would be very elastic at the end of the week. As a very old Member of the House, he had heard for the first time that the abolition of the break in the middle of the week would be for the benefit of Members and officials. During the half century he had known the House he had always heard the very reverse. While he had every desire to support the Government in carrying rules for making the House more efficient, and remedying certain abuses which had arisen, he did not for a moment believe that the Government were prepared to insist on every part of their proposals as obligatory on hon. Members, who, generally speaking, supported them. It was obvious that a change proposed apparently for the convenience of hon. Members should be left to hon. Members to decide; and therefore he thought they should speak for themselves. He himself did not think the rule would be for the convenience of hon. Members, and from that point of view he was certainly unfavourable to the change, but he did not think that the convenience of hon. Members was the main point to be considered. The country was not in favour of having a quantity of half-digested legislation slipping through on Fridays, and being referred to a Committee of the House, pr a Standing Committee, when many hon. Members would not be present, and when the debate would be of tessellated character, partly on the Bill and partly on the question whether it should be referred to a Committee. To a great extent Colonial Bills were placed upon the Statute Book with great ease. They were very numerous and ill digested, and many of them had to be amended or repealed, or if not, they would inflict considerable injury. Legislation, no doubt, led to many abuses being remedied, but why should they rush to the other extreme? He was opposed to that particular change, and he hoped it would be reconsidered.

(11.38.) SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN (Stirling Burghs)

A sort of instinct, which has survived a long Parliamentary career, leads me to have the utmost reluctance to repeat anything I have already said. Sometimes I am obliged to do so, but it always goes against the grain with me. Therefore, I do not propose to keep the attention of the House long, because I have already, in the initial debate, stated my view on this question. I have never heard an answer to what I then said, which was that the presumption is that a Member of Parliament is available in London. Much has been said about Members from distant parts of the country having engagements there, and that we must adjust our business to suit their convenience; but I place against that the fact I have stated that when a man becomes a candidate and is elected to this House, it is surely the presumption that he should keep himself available if he is required. Therefore I do not attach much importance to that argument; but I do attach great importance to the argument that the change of life on Wednesday is an immense relief to the Members and officials of the House. It is enough to state that fact. I need not dwell upon it. The hon. Gentleman opposite and some other hon. Gentlemen are alarmed at the prospect of Bills slipping through on Friday which they think may be of a most dangerous kind. Some of them are dangerous and some are not, like all other sublunary affairs; but I do agree that the change would have the tendency to reduce the action of the House on the Second Reading of private Members' Bills to a very hap-hazard proceeding—it would be dependent on the state of the weather, and on the condition of the soil for certain avocations which take hon. Members to the country, and other things which ought not to interfere with or influence our proceedings. I do not think, even from the point of view of the regular and decent consideration of private Members' Bills, that Friday is at all as suitable a day as Wednesday. I am not, as I said, going to dwell on what I have already laid down, but I am going to make an appeal to the right hon. Gentleman on this subject, namely, that he should allow the House to judge for itself. Words have been quoted which fell from the Colonial Secretary almost implying an obligation, amounting certainly to an understanding, that such would be the case. It is in accordance with common sense. I do not go so far as to say that the whole of these Rules of Procedure should all be treated by the Government as matters beyond the ordinary restrictions which govern our divisions, but what is the case here? The right hon. Gentleman says that the Government have nothing to gain by it; that the Government do not require it; and that it is purely for the convenience and satisfaction of Members. It is sup- posed that it will add to the attractiveness of the House, and that it turns, not on the necessity of public business, but on the convenience of Members. Let, then, Members judge. I think the right hon. Gentleman might very well make that concession. I do not know what the result would be. There would be a great deal of cross voting. I believe that my hon. friend the Member for Northampton would support the Government; and if that would not take away Party character from the division, I do not know what would. My hon. friend going into the Government Lobby would surely be compensation for the loss of almost any number of political followers. Let us decide the matter on that footing. In all matters which concern the convenience of Members, I do think we are entitled to appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to allow Party considerations to be placed out of sight.

(11.45.) MR. RENSHAW (Renfrew-shire, W.)

said that the right hon. Gentleman had spoken as to the necessity of hon. Members being resident in London, and available to be called upon to discharge their duties in the House on Fridays, but he noticed that, in a previous speech of the right hon. Gentleman, when the question of the House meeting at 2 o'clock was being considered, he argued in exactly the opposite way, and urged the necessities and exigencies of business men in London, and said that it was undesirable that the House should meet at 2 o'clock. He was a business man himself, and represented a constituency in the same part of the country as the right hon. Gentleman did, and he ventured to say that the proposals of the Government would be a very great privilege and a very great boon to hon. Members representing distant constituencies. His hon. friend who moved the Amendment, ridiculed the idea that Saturday was an important day for business men, and suggested that hon. Members, who were anxious to have an opportunity of looking after their business on that day, were disguising under that pretence another object, possibly pleasure. He believed he was expressing the view of a considerable number of business men when he said that it was of the greatest importance that they should be able to go away on Friday evening in order to be able to resume the trend of their business occupations. His hon. friend also claimed that Wednesday was a beneficial arrangement for many Members, because on Wednesday evenings the shops in many Southern constituencies were closed and public meetings were generally held, and hon. Members were able to attend to their constituencies in the neighbourhood of London. He would appeal to hon. Members to consider the case of Members representing remote constituencies. The discussion had turned on the subject of what was the best day for dealing with private Members Bills. He did not feel called upon to express an opinion upon that point, but he was prepared to support the proposal of the Government. It was more or less in the nature of an experiment, but it would show how far it was possible to carry on the scheme suggested, and for his part if it were found that it did not secure proper and sufficient attendance when private Members Bills were under discussion he should be glad to see the experiment tried of putting private Bills down on Monday instead of on Friday, but the Friday experiment should be tried first, and for this reason. He believed unless the Government had had their present large majority it would have been impossible for them to have carried on during the time they had been in office the work of supply on Friday night. He would appeal to hon. Members to bear in mind that the alternative for the proposal was that they would have to continue Supply on Friday night, and he should like to ask if a Government had only a majority of 30 would they still be able to keep up Supply on Friday night? He did not believe they would. [AN HON. MEMBER: It was done before.] He did not think that Supply had ever been taken on Friday night before the Rule which had been established by the First Lord of the Treasury had been passed. He was certain that if a Government were only supported by a small majority the business of Supply on Friday night would be absolutely unworkable. He was prepared to support the Government, who would also have the support of a large number of Members like himself.

(11.52.) MR. SEELY (Lincoln)

said he hoped that the Government would stand to their opinion on this subject, and would at all events try the plan of discussing private Members Bills on Fridays. He thought it would be obvious that hon. Members whose constituencies and businesses were distant from London would feel it a great convenience indeed to have that plan tried, and he thought it was a little hard on hon. Members, who were not so fortunate as to have constituencies and businesses in London and the surrounding counties, to try and prevent such a very small concession to the comfort and convenience of Members who came from a distance. He hoped, therefore, the Government would stand to their opinion, and give hon. Members that advantage. He had a higher opinion of the feeling of public duty on the part of hon. Members than some of his hon. friends, and he thought that they need not be afraid that there would be any difficulty, if objectionable measures were brought forward on Friday, in finding a sufficient number of Members to treat them as the country wished them to be treated. The change would also be a great advantage to Government business, because four consecutive days would be devoted to it. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition said it would impose, a very considerable strain, but he was not at all sure that a certain amount of mental strain on Members of the Opposition would not sometimes be very conducive indeed to putting them in a proper frame of mind to carry on the business of the House. He saw no difficulty in altering the day if it were found to work badly, and he therefore hoped the Government would persist in their proposal.

(11.55.) MR. GALLOWAY

said he would like to ask the First Lord of the Treasury what was the character of the business which it was proposed to take on Fridays. If it were proposed that private Members' Bills should be taken, he wished to point out that under a subsequent rule those Bills would be able to be referred to a Grand Committee without any discussion.

*MR. SPEAKER

The discussion of that rule is not in order.

MR. GALLOWAY

said he was entitled to ask his right hon. friend what business he proposed to take on Fridays.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

If I am not exhausting my right in answering the question put by my hon. friend, I may say that the division which I hope we may take tonight cannot decide what business is to be taken on Friday, but it will decide whether or not there should be an evening sitting.

MR. DILLON

said that, practically speaking, the division would decide what business was to be taken on Friday, as it substituted Friday for Wednesday for the early morning sitting. That was really the issue which was being discussed. There never was a more gross waste of public time than to spend two hours in discussing the question. If that were not the issue, why did not the First Lord of the Treasury get up and tell them what the issue was? He listened with considerable interest to the appeal made by the hon. Member for the Thirsk Division to remember hon. Members whose homes were at a great distance from London, evidently admitting that the object of the proposal was to give those hon. Members a holiday on Friday; but what about the Irish Members? Surely if there were any hon. Members who were entitled to lean on that argument it, would be the Irish Members whose homes were at such a distance that they were obliged to cross the sea, sometimes a very rough and stormy sea, and after to travel great distances. The hon. Member drew a most lamentable picture of the father who did not see his family or his home from the beginning of the session until the first adjournment, but let the House think of the fate of the Irish Members. Although they had not the same inducements to reconcile them to that terrible fate that Members sitting on the Treasury Bench had, they had left their homes in Ireland, and some of them lived very uncomfortably in London in order to attend the House, and they never dreamt of seeing their homes or their families until the House adjourned. Yet they did not come whining to the House in order that they might be able to get away and enjoy themselves in Ireland. In all the speeches which had been made in support of the alteration of the Rule, the same voice was manifested which underlay the whole of the present proposals. It was not the business of the country, it was not the duty which Members owed to their constituents, but the convenience of Members and the desire of Members to get away from the House of Commons for the week-end that was responsible. In the old and better days of the House of Commons such a plea would not have been listened to for a moment. When Mr. Gladstone led the House of Commons he would have covered with contempt and ridicule any rule or alteration based on such arguments as had been used. For his part, he was not in the slightest degree influenced by the arguments he had heard. If the alteration would facilitate the passing of private Members Bills, he would be rather inclined to support it, and he had no objection to the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman as to referring such Bills to Grand Committees. He was not really very seriously concerned whether the change was made or not.

It being Midnight, the debate stood adjourned.

Debate to be resumed upon Thursday.