HC Deb 29 November 1951 vol 494 cc1731-8
Mr. Speaker

I have a short statement to make. I was asked yesterday by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) —

Hon. Members

Where is he?

Mr. William Hamilton

Gone to join the Home Guard.

Mr. Speaker

—if I would give a Ruling for the guidance of hon. Members as to the procedure which is followed in the case of an hon. Member being named by the Speaker for disregarding the authority of the Chairman of a Committee of the Whole House.

Standing Order No. 22 provides that the Chairman shall forthwith suspend the proceedings of the Committee and report the circumstances to the House, because it is for the House, with the Speaker or his Deputy in the Chair, to pass judgment upon the hon. Member on the circumstances being reported to it. When the Chairman makes his report to the House, through the Speaker, and the hon. Member is named by the Speaker, it is the duty of whoever is leading the House at the time to move, at once, the suspension of the hon. Member.

By practice and usage, this Motion must follow immediately upon the naming of the hon. Member by the Speaker. The House and the Speaker are entitled to assume that before matters have reached this stage the resources of the Committee and its Chairman for maintaining order have been exhausted. The time for withdrawals and apologies is, for the moment, over.

Up to 1882 it was the practice, when a Member was named in these circumstances, that he should be heard in his place in his own defence before the House decided what course of action it should adopt. It was precisely because this practice led to obstruction and disorder that what are now Standing Orders Nos. 22–24 were passed. For the last 70 years, since the modern summary procedure was introduced, the practice has been as I have described.

I have thought it proper to give this Ruling, not only because I was asked to do so by the right hon. Gentleman, but because it is now a long time since a similar case occurred. May I express the hope that it will be a long time before such a case happens again.

Hon. Members

Hear, hear.

Mr. T. Driberg

In connection with the matter to which you have just referred, Sir, may I respectfully draw your attention to two instances in which the report in HANSARD of our proceedings on that occasion does not correspond with the words which were actually uttered. I do so because in both cases the changes involved slight but perhaps not unimportant differences of emphasis at least, and because they were made deliberately—I am sure without your knowledge or authority, Mr. Speaker, and in good faith by the staff Of HANSARD.

The first instance to which I wish to draw your attention is in column 1311 of HANSARD, 27th November, about two-thirds of the way down the column: The Deputy-Chairman: If the hon. Gentleman persists in defying my Ruling I must ask him to withdraw from the House."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 27th November, 1951; Vol. 494, c. 1311.] In fact, the Deputy-Chairman did not use the last three words there attributed to him, and although this may seem a very slight distinction I would venture respectfully to submit to you, Sir, that there may on occasion be a genuine misunderstanding caused by the ambiguity of the use of the word "withdraw" in this context—because when, as in this case, a number of Members are shouting "Withdraw, withdraw" they usually mean "Withdraw the words that have just been uttered." Therefore, I suggest that there is at least a chance that in the rather tumultuous circumstances of that occasion hon. Members such as my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) may be under a genuine misunderstanding of what the Chair is ordering them to do. The words "withdraw from the House" were not used by the Deputy-Chairman on that occasion, as I have verified, because, through the courtesy of the Editor of HANSARD, I have had access to a copy of the original typescript and the words "from the House" have been written in in ink.

The second instance to which I would draw your attention is, I think, more substantial. It is in the next column, column 1312 and it is on a point of order which I raised with you during that Division. I asked you, in that point of order, as reported in HANSARD today, if you would indicate whether it is possible to raise a point of order at the time when the Question is being put, to which, very naturally, you replied "Yes." I was rather surprised when I saw that report in HANSARD this morning because I had a clear recollection of having used other words also at the end of my point of order and of having gone upstairs to the Office of HANSARD to check the typescript myself an hour later, as is customary, and they were in the typescript.

Again, I have had access to the typescript through the courtesy of the Editor of HANSARD, and I find that I was reported by the original reporter as having said: …whether it is possible to raise a point of order at the time when the Question is being put which you recently put to the House. But those last seven words have been crossed out in ink, thus substantially altering the sense of what I said in my point or order, and changing the point of order from a specific reference to the occasion that we had just been witnessing to a very obvious generalisation. I thought it my duty to draw your attention to these two substantial changes, but, at the same time, I am confident, as I say, that they were made without your authority and in good faith by the staff of HANSARD

Mr. Speaker

I understand, though I was not present, that there was a good deal of noise going on, and it may be that recollections differ and that the reporters heard differently what was said. However, I will look into the points raised by the hon. Member and see if there is anything I can do. May I say that in giving my Ruling today I deliberately abstained from referring to the events of yesterday.

Mr. Driberg

Further to that point, Sir, with great respect, the point I was making was not that there may have been some mishearing or misunderstanding of what was said at the time but that the words clearly heard and reported in the original typescript by the reporter were subsequently changed twice.

Hon. Members

Why?

Mr. Speaker

I do not know about that. I am not prepared to answer that until I have had a chance of looking into the matter.

Mr. Driberg

It is true; I have got it here.

Mr. Speaker

I will go into it later.

Mr. I. Mikardo

Mr. Speaker, on a related point you will recollect that some time after the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) had been named and had withdrawn I raised with you a point of order, and although I put it in a rather long and involved way you were kind and patient enough to hear me out and give me an answer. I did not pursue the matter because I had raised my point of order based upon a recol lection of what I thought you had said, and, of course, one cannot always be sure that one's recollections are correct. As I was not sure that my recollection was correct in what you had said, I pursued the matter no further. But now, on having the report of our proceedings I find that, in fact, the recollection on which I based my point of order is substantiated in the Report. The passage concerned is on column 1312 of the OFFICIAL REPORT, in which you said: I understand so, but at that time I thought the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne was out of order as he was the subject of the Motion."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 27th November, 1951, Vol. 494, c. 1312.] The point which I had been endeavouring to put to you was to ask for your guidance as to whether it was not an inalienable right of an hon. Member to raise a point of order at any time and under any circumstances. I was, of course, thinking particularly of an occurrence before you entered the House. The difficulty, which arose as a result of the action of the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne, arose precisely because he endeavoured to put a point of order and was prevented by the occupant of the lower Chair from doing so.

Of course, I am making no comment at all on whether he was right or wrong in thinking that he was entitled to speak on the Motion to report Progress, and, of course, I make no comment—it would be most improper for me to do so—on his own behaviour after he had been given certain instructions by the Chairman. But what I did query with you, aside from the merits of the incident which caused his naming, was whether, even under those conditions, an hon. Member does not always inalienably have the right to raise a point of order.

I put it to you that you had made the remark which I have just quoted at the bottom of column 1312, and that, while I was not pretending to quote your actual words, I recalled that, and suggested that the hon. Member had been refused permission to raise a point of order on a view you had taken of the matter when you had entered the House, but that you had taken another view on reflection afterwards. I was subsequently reinforced in this view—and here I think I can simplify the rather complicated nature of my point— by the fact that you, Sir, permitted the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne to raise a point of order, seated and covered, whilst the Division on his own behaviour was actually taking place.

Surely there could be no moment at which the conduct of the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne was so much under question than when, on either side of the Chamber, in the two Lobbies, some hundreds of hon. Members were dividing about the Question; and yet at that very moment, when the conduct of the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne was so much in question, you, Mr. Speaker, and I feel quite rightly, permitted him to raise a point of order.

May I put this question to you? [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I apologise for being so long, but we are dealing here with the rights of ordinary Members which I know, Mr. Speaker, you will be as anxious as anyone else to safeguard. The question I want to put to you is this. If, even at the moment when we were dividing about the conduct of the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne; if, even at that moment, you thought he had the right to raise a point of order, then, with respect, was the occupant of the Lower Chair right in thinking that the hon. Member could not raise a point of order at a moment when his conduct was not in question?

Mr. Speaker

I cannot deal with what happened in Committee; I was not there. I will, however, say this about my own refusal to listen to points of order when I resumed the Chair. The reason for that was this. The only business before the House, as re-constituted, was order. Therefore, any point of order raised was debate on the subject before the House. Different considerations apply to a point of order raised by an hon. Member when there is another Question before the House and he intervenes on a point of order, very often for the assistance of the Chair, to point out some irregularity which has passed unobserved. It being the Rule that first the matter of order for which I was summoned, should be dealt with, points of order upon that were debate. When the Question had been put and the House divided, however, there might be subsidiary points of order about the conduct of the Division and so on which it would be my duty to hear; but in the interval between my entering the House and putting the Question on the Motion which was moved, any point of order raised would have been debate, because the subject of the House was order, and therefore it would have been out of order.

Mr. Mikardo

May I thank you very much for your Ruling, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Walter Fletcher

Arising from the statement made by the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr. Driberg), could you say, Mr. Speaker, to what extent Members of this House have right of access to HMVSARD for anything except their own speeches and statements? We use so frequently in the House the phrase, "The hon. Member will see that I am right in quoting what I have said when he sees tomorrow's HANSARD." From that, surely one can draw the conclusion that a Member has not right of access, even by courtesy of the Editor, to the HANSARD report of what has been said by other hon. Members.

Mr. Speaker

I should like to inquire into that. I know hon. Members have been in the custom of going to HANSARD to correct their own speeches and I see nothing wrong in that. I do not know what the rule is with regard to looking at other reports. I will inquire.

Mr. Driberg

In this case may I point out, since the matter has been raised, that I, of course, asked to see only that page of the typescript which referred to my own intervention, which I sought to check, but, naturally, I had to read through the episode concerned in order to find it, because the whole thing was handed to me together. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh"] There is nothing surprising about that. That was the point. In addition to checking my own intervention, I noticed that there was this change in what had been said by an hon. Member who is at present excluded from these premises and who, therefore, could not verify it himself.

Mr. Speaker

I think we had better pass on to the next business.