LAW REFORM (MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS) BILL (Hansard, 8 July 1949)

§ Mr. Speaker
The first new Clause on the Order Paper in the name of the hon. and gallant Member for Brixton (Lieut.-Colonel Lipton)—[Separation for seven years to be grounds for petition for divorce]—I have not selected; the second new Clause in the name of the hon. Member for the Isle of Wight (Sir P. Macdonald)—[Extension of jurisdiction of court of session in certain consistorial proceedings]—I cannot select in its present form. If it is put in an amended form, then I can select it. The words after "marriage" must be left out.

§ Lieut.-Colonel Lipton (Brixton)
On a point of Order. May we have your Ruling, Mr. Speaker, on the admissibility of the new Clause in my name which has been on the Order Paper for the past fortnight—supported by some 200 Members—which provides that separation for seven years should be grounds for divorce?

§ Mr. Speaker
I am quite prepared to make a statement about that, because I quite agree that it is within the very wide Title of the Bill, but I have to consider the conditions under which this Bill was passed by the House. It was passed after a Debate of 30 seconds; it was also passed with the assurance that it was entirely uncontroversial, and was merely intended to correct some anomalies with regard to the divorce law and raised no controversies. On those principles I have 2502 decided that this Clause is not within the scope of the Bill, and that neither is the second Clause.

§ Mr. Eric Fletcher (Islington, East)
As this is a very important matter, Mr. Speaker, may I, with respect, ask for your guidance on future occasions? While, of course, accepting your Ruling, may I with respect point out that when this Bill was originally introduced it contained only three Clauses, and that another three Clauses were added in Standing Committee upstairs which, in fact, very considerably increased the scope of the Bill? I think it may be very desirable that the House should know for its guidance on future occasions whether there is any difference in connection with Private Members' Bill having Clauses added in Standing Committee and adding Clauses on Report.
As I understand the Rules of the House, those governing the addition of new Clauses are precisely the same whether new Clauses are sought to be added in Standing Committee or on Report. It is perfectly true, Mr. Speaker, that you have said that this Bill was passed by this House in a short time on Second Reading, but on Second Reading it was in a very different form from that in which it has now emerged from the Standing Committee. At present, the Bill contains six Clauses, whereas, when it emerged from the House on Second Reading, it contained only three Clauses.
The Bill, according to its Title, is the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, and I think it is reasonable to say, from an examination of the Bill in its present form, that the three Clauses which have been added in Standing Committee are at least as important as, if not more important than the Clauses which the Bill contained when it was orginally presented to the House. In fact, of the three added Clauses, one has now become the first Clause in the Bill, and only Clauses 2, 3 and 6 were originally in the Bill.
In view of that, it seems to me to raise a question of principle. As I understand it, the new Clause standing in the name of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Brixton (Lieut.-Colonel Lipton) was not sought to be added in Standing Committee because it was thought it might be more convenient to add it on the Report stage, but I imagine that if 2503 it had been put down for consideration in the Standing Committee it would have been very difficult, as the Bill then stood, to have excluded that proposed new Clause without also ruling out of Order the three new Clauses which were considered and added to the Bill in Standing Committee. May we therefore have your guidance, Mr. Speaker, whether in future any difference should be made between the procedure on Report stage and in Standing Committee?

§ The Attorney-General (Sir Hartley Shawcross)
I understood from what you said, Mr. Speaker, that the basis of your Ruling was that the new Clauses which it was now sought to consider raised highly controversial issues, and that the Bill, as committed after the Second Reading, was one which had been stated to be a non-controversial Bill. In that connection you may think that the new Clause now on the Order Paper in the name of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Brixton (Lieut.-Colonel Lipton) is of a highly controversial nature, politically and socially and on religious grounds, but that the new Clauses which were introduced into the Bill in Committee were not controversial. I do not doubt that they were not unimportant alterations to the Bill but they were alterations of a purely procedural kind, and they raised no sort of controversy in Committee, or, so far as I know, elsewhere. My recollection is that the Committee stage was completed in two hours and that the Amendments introduced into the Bill, so far from involving any departure from the express purpose of the Bill, which was to introduce non-controversial procedural Amendments, were procedural Amendments which secured the unanimous approval of everybody in the Committee, and, so far as I am aware, outside.

§ Mr. Pritt (Hammersmith, North)
As this is a matter in which you, Mr. Speaker, are exercising your discretion, but, in doing so, are good enough to give reasons to the House, I desire to put something before you if it is not out of Order for me to suggest it to you. It is a rather important matter of principle as to whether the question of whether something should fall within the scope of the Bill, or should be ruled as not falling within the scope of the Bill, should 2504 depend on whether it is controversial or not, because controversy is the breath of Parliamentary life. If people introduce a Bill which is not controversial well and good, but if something controversial crops up, should it not be ruled upon not from the point of view of whether it might invoke strong feelings but whether it falls within the scope of the Bill?

§ Mr. Speaker
The decision is mine. One does not make these decisions by rule or anything of that kind. This new Clause falls within the Title of the Bill, but it is up to me to decide whether or not I think it is within the scope of the Bill. In view of what was said on Second Reading, and in view of what happened in Committee, I have decided that the new Clause and the part of the other new Clause to which I have referred are outside the scope of the Bill. I am afraid that we must leave it at that, because my decisions are not arguable.

§ Lieut.-Colonel Lipton
Further to your Ruling, Mr. Speaker, which the House must, of course, accept, will you hear any submission that the Clause is within the scope of the Bill, the principal object of which is to amend the law of divorce? A large number of its Clauses are also designed for that specific purpose.

§ Mr. Speaker
I am not prepared to hear further arguments. It is really no concern of mine whether there are a hundred and one names to some proposal. It is a question of whether I think what is proposed is within the scope of the Bill. I have said that I do not think that this is within the scope of the Bill, and that I have decided.