§ MR. DISRAELII beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, now that the changes in the Rules of this House have had ample and various opportunities of being tested, whether he will afford facilities for the individual opinions of Members to be freely expressed as to whether they find the changes to their convenience, or whether they would prefer to return to the former hours of meeting and sitting.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURI am not quite sure what kind of facilities my Hon. friend has in view. Does he mean a debate in this House? That, unfortunately, until the proposals of my hon. friend the Member for Essex come into operation, 402 would give him but a limited opportunity for every Member to express his views on the very large number of changes that are effected by the Rule. If he means a kind of ballot or plebiscite of the House, I do not quite see how that is to be undertaken. To formulate the questions would be difficult, and I do not know that I could undertake the task or provide the machinery for taking the answers.
§ MR. LOUGH (Islington, W.)Will the right hon. Gentleman consider the possibility of meeting at 2.30?
§ MR. SPEAKEROrder, order! That is altogether different to the Question on the Paper.
§ MR. DISRAELIMy Question is meant to raise the point whether hon. Members may discuss and vote on the matters concerned as a family and not as a Party matter.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURI am sure my hon. friend carefully considered the matter before he put his Question. I am, however, quite unable to see how he would frame a Resolution which would give every Gentleman in this House an opportunity of stating his views. It must be a series of Resolutions, as long and probably as hardly contested as the original Resolutions I brought before the House. I do not know how long they took. I think they took up the time of the House continuously for several weeks.
MR. GIBSON BOWLES (Lynn Regis)Does the right hon. Gentleman propose this session to introduce the end of the Standing Order which remains without an end?
§ [No answer was returned.]
§ MR. CORRIE GRANT (Warwickshire, Rugby)Would it impose too much labour on the right hon. Gentleman and his secretaries to invite the Members of the House to express to him by letter what their wishes are in regard to the hour of meeting?
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURThat only deals with one of the topics referred to by the 403 hon. Gentleman, and even that topic can hardly be discussed in isolation from the others. Everybody, beginning with His Majesty's Ministers, would like to meet later, of course. But the question is, what would you give up? Do you or do you not interfere too much with the general arrangement of the time which the House requires? Members of the House are always pressing me to give them opportunities for discussing this or that question; but while they make these appeals, as soon as I ask them to make any sacrifice of the general time of the House, then they are, perhaps naturally, reluctant to give the necessary facilities. All I can say about the afternoon meeting is that I have always regarded that as separate from the other Resolutions, and I have never expressed any final judgment on the precise hour at which we ought to meet. I am sure it ought not to be so late as to interfere with a good solid Second Reading debate in the afternoon.