§ MR. SWIFT MACNEILL (Donegal, S.)submitted as a matter of constitutional procedure that a new Writ should not issue until a Committee had been appointed to consider and report whether the hon. Member was or was not a contractor within the meaning of the statute. He contended, according to precedents which he cited, viz., the cases of Baron Rothschild in 1845, and of Sir Sydney Waterlow in 1869—in each of which the Speaker of the day suspended the Motion for the Writ until the question had been considered by the Committee—that the question whether a Member had become a contractor with the Crown was one absolutely within the purview of the House, and was not a question for the Member himself.
§ MR. SPEAKEROrder, order! It is a matter entirely in the hands of the House to say whether the Writ shall issue. When it is moved for it will be open to the hon. Member to object, that the proper course would be to appoint a Committee, and then the Motion will be discussed on some subsequent day.
§ SIR A. ACLAND-HOOD (Somerestshire, Wellington) moved the issue of a new Writ for the City of London.
§ Motion made and Question proposed, "That Mr. Speaker do issue his Warrant to the Clerk of the Crown to make out a New Writ for the election of a Member to serve in this present Parliament for the City of London, in the room of Alban Gibbs, esquire, who has accepted a contract with the Admiralty."—(Sir A. Acland-Hood.)
76§ MR. SWIFT MACNEILLsubmitted that the Writ ought not to be issued on the grounds he had already indicated, and that a Committee should first be appointed to find out whether or not these gentlemen were contractors. In previous cases, when gentlemen had been elected Members of the House and had subsequently discovered that by reason of their being contractors to the Government at the time of their election they were disqualified from sitting, they had been allowed to release themselves by letter to Mr. Speaker, but there was no precedent for following such a course in the present case, and he therefore hoped a Select Committee would be appointed to ascertain whether or not these gentlemen were legally contractors.
§ MR. SPEAKERsaid that so far as regarded procedure, the present cases were exactly parallel with those in which gentlemen elected at a General Election had found themselves disqualified by holding Government contracts.
§ MR. SWIFT MACNEILLurged that there was a material difference between those cases and the present one, where the hon. Members took contracts after their election. That brought it absolutely within the purview of the House to decide whether or not they were contractors. It was not in accordance with constitutional usage for an hon. Member to thus declare himself a contractor on his own ipse dixit. Further than that, these gentlemen in their public speeches had themselves expressed doubt as to whether they were contractors.
§ MR. SPEAKERI do not say it is not in the power of the House to deal with the question. I am only saying that the proceedure followed in this instance was in accordance with previous precedent. Does the hon. Member object to the issue of the Writ?
§ MR. SWIFT MACNEILLYes, Sir, on the ground that the precedent set in the Rothschild and Waterlow cases ought to be followed in this, and that a Committee should be appointed to find out whether these gentlemen are contractors or not.
MB. SPEAKERsaid that probably the most convenient course would be that debate on the question raised by the hon. Member for South Donegal should be adjourned until to-morrow, the hon. Member meantime putting his Amendment in form.
§ MR. SWIFT MACNEILLVery good, Sir.
§ Motion made, and Question, "That the Debate be now adjourned," —(Mr. Swift MacNeill,) —put, and agreed to.
§ Debate to be resumed to-morrow.