§ Mr. H. A. WATTI wish to ask your ruling, Mr. Speaker, on a point of order to which I alluded yesterday. On the 9th June, according to the Votes and Proceedings of this House, there were appointed to the Scottish Grand Committee five Members, who within recent months had been elected at bye-elections for Scottish constituencies. Before the 9th June four of those Members had taken part by speech and vote in the proceedings of that Committee. I wish to ask whether the work of that Committee is nullified by the speeches and votes of those Members, seeing that they sat and voted there before the Committee of Selection had allocated them to that Committee.
§ Mr. SPEAKERI am obliged to the hon. Member for having given me some notice of the point he desired to raise. I have considered it, and it is perfectly clear from the Standing Order that from the moment a Member enters the House as a Member for a Scottish constituency he becomes ipso facto a member of the Scottish Standing Committee. The hon. Member will find that under Standing Order 47, section (2). Therefore, the Act of the Committee of Selection in allotting these Gentlemen to the Scottish Standing Committee was simply a recognition of an already existing fact; they sat there by virtue of the Standing Order, and not by virtue of the Order of the Committee of Selection.