HC Deb 16 December 1959 vol 615 cc1467-75

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do meet Tomorrow at Eleven o'clock and that no Questions be taken after Twelve o'clock, and that at Five o'clock Mr. Speaker do adjourn the House without putting any Question.—[Mr. R. A. Butler.]

4.9 p.m.

Mr. Tom Driberg (Barking)

In considering the Motion now before us— which relates, of course, only to Question Time and the Adjournment of the House tomorrow—there are, I think, several lessons to be drawn from recent experience, including today's experience. There are on the Order Book for tomorrow 137 Questions for Oral Answer. Several comments have been made by hon. Members—and by you yourself, Mr. Speaker, today—on the very slow progress which has been made at Question Time recently. Today, we reached Question No. 47; yesterday, Question No. 45; on Monday, we only reached Question No. 37. Yesterday, we managed to get only one Oral Answer from the Prime Minister, owing to what seemed like a slight filibuster by the right hon. Gentleman himself and by his hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Mr. Lindsay). I do not, of course, suggest that it was an intentional filibuster, but it had the same effect as if it had been.

I hope that, in opposing this Motion, I shall have the support of some hon. Gentlemen opposite. I take it that, since this is a matter which concerns the House of Commons and is not a matter of party controversy at all, we shall on both sides of the House have a free vote; I hope that the Leader of the House will be decent enough to allow that in this case, at any rate. I hope for the support, among others, of the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. C. Osborne), who was disappointed yesterday, when he asked if we could have an Oral Answer to Question No. 49, which was just not reached. As one can ascertain if one looks at the Written Answers at the end of HANSARD today he got a rather dusty answer in writing, as is often apt to happen. So I hope that the hon. Member for Louth, at any rate, will support me.

I hope, also, that there will be support from hon. Members on both sides of the House who have Questions down for answer orally tomorrow which will almost certainly again not be reached— particularly since it happens that there are three very long Questions put down by the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro), Nos. 40, 41 and 42. I suppose we may hope just to reach these: they will no doubt be answered by the Home Secretary seriatim, but probably not very succinctly.

So it looks as though the outlook for the Prime Minister's Questions tomorrow is rather doubtful. Hon. Members who have looked at the Order Book will note that there are a number of Questions put down for tomorrow—for instance, by my right hon. Friend the Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson), by my hon. Friend, the Member for Thurrock (Mr. Delargy), and others—on a matter which the Home Secretary dealt with in part today, when he answered a question about his statement on sanctions against the Republic of Ireland.

When the Home Secretary himself reads HANSARD tomorrow morning, I am sure that he will hope that those Questions to the Prime Minister will be reached tomorrow, because he will find that he has left the House and the country and, of course, the people of Ireland in a state of considerable doubt about his intentions. When he was pressed today by hon. Members behind him who evidently take a rather ferocious view of this matter and, clearly, were urging him to come out strongly in support of sanctions—

Mr. Speaker

I dislike having to interrupt the hon. Member, but clearly he cannot go into a discussion of individual Questions. For the purpose of the point to which his argument is directed, the assertion that they are of importance is sufficient.

Mr. Driberg

I am very grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for that guidance. I was merely trying to illustrate how essential it is for the Home Secretary's own reputation as Leader of the House, and as Secretary of State, that we should be in a position to put those Questions to the Prime Minister tomorrow, so that the position can really be clarified, because it was left in considerable doubt today, when the right hon. Gentleman said that some answer which had been quoted in the Press, or an answer he gave today, I forget which, was only one of two answers."

One of the troubles about the right hon. Gentleman is that he always gives two different answers to the same question. So we all hope that tomorrow—

Mr. Speaker

Order. I do not follow, even if that were true of the right hon. Gentleman, as to which I express no view, what it has to do with the hon. Member's argument on this procedural Motion.

Mr. Driberg

I will try if I may, with great respect, Mr. Speaker, to submit to you how it could be relevant to this motion. It is relevant because, as I say, if it be true that the Home Secretary has left the House and the country in some doubt about his real meaning today, it is essential that we should get these Oral Answers from the Prime Minister tomorrow, and I am suggesting that it is very doubtful, on recent form, whether we shall get to Questions Nos. 52, 53 and 55 tomorrow. That is surely directly relevant to the Motion That this House do meet tomorrow at Eleven o'clock and that no Question be taken after Twelve o'clock. I am opposing the Motion so that Questions may be taken after 12 o'clock, so that we can reach Question No. 55, etc. That is the point I was trying, in my very clumsy way, to make, and I am grateful, to you, Mr. Speaker. for your guidance.

We had quite a lot of discussion today, after Questions were over, about the future of Question Time, and so on, and the Leader of the House has stated that there are recommendations which we shall be considering. I would seriously suggest to him that tomorrow might be an occasion for a little experiment in liberty. If he allows a free vote on this Motion, it is at least arguable that a large number of Members—at least all those, from both sides of the House, who have put down 137 Questions on the Order Paper, all of which they want answered orally or they would not have starred them—will vote with me against the proposal that no Question be taken after Twelve o'clock". So I hope, as I say, that the Leader of the House will allow a free vote on this Motion, that we shall defeat it, and that those Questions will be taken after 12 o'clock tomorrow till all the starred Questions have been called—which would, I suppose, probably take the House a couple of hours in all, instead of the usual 55 or 56 minutes for Question Time. Then the business on the Adjournment could be taken by an extra hour being given after 5 o'clock and the House would adjourn at 6 o'clock, having lost no time for the Adjournment. No harm would be done at all, and a great many oral answers would have been given to the large number of Members who seriously want them.

There is, for instance, the hon. Member for Carlisle (Dr. D. Johnson) who has a Question down asking for some information about a book called "Lolita". I am sure that he would like to have an Oral Answer. There is Question No. 67, by my hon. Friend the Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway), which concerns a constituent of his serving a sentence of seven years' imprisonment. This, I feel, is a particular illustration of the value of Oral Answers at Question Time, because I am quite sure that tomorrow my hon. Friend will get a Written Answer which will give him nothing at all—whereas, if he had the opportunity tomorrow to put that Question orally, with a supplementary couched in his usual eloquent terms, he might possibly convince the Home Secretary that his constituent ought to be discharged at once from imprisonment. As things are, for the long weeks of the Recess, this unfortunate constituent of my hon. Friend will remain in Oxford Prison.

In this connection, Mr. Speaker, I should like to remind you that the rules of the House and the Manual of Procedure care so tenderly about individual rights and anything which concerns the good name of individuals, not only Members of the House but anyone outside, that the very exceptional procedure is allowed that, if there is any Question casting an aspersion on anyone which ought to be answered quickly, that Question can be put by any Member of the House, not necessarily by the Member who has put it down. That just illustrates what great importance the House attaches, as Parliament always should, to the rights of the individual. I say, therefore, that Question No. 67 tomorrow should be put and answered orally.

I have referred already to the very unsatisfactory and, I am sorry to say, sometimes downright misleading Answers which we receive in writing from Ministers when our Questions are not reached orally. Only yesterday I had an Answer from the Attorney-General which, according to my information, is factually quite incorrect. I give this merely as an illustration, Mr. Speaker, and I beg you not too—

Mr. Speaker

The hon. Member is delightfully ingenious, but he must not go, by way of illustration, into the details of his Question.

Mr. William Yates (The Wrekin)

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. If an hon. Member wishes to put a Question by Private Notice tomorrow about an exceptionally urgent matter which concerns his constituency, may he do that?

Mr. Speaker

With the leave of the Chair, if it be submitted.

Mr. Driberg

I am very grateful to the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. W. Yates) for that intervention. That, of course, is one way round the difficulty.

Another partial way round the difficulty would be for the Prime Minister, or other Ministers to whom there are Questions put down for Oral Answer tomorrow, to ask your permission, Mr. Speaker, to answer them at the end of normal Questions. But that would involve them in the invidious task of selecting what Questions they thought seemed particularly important; and, of course, it is always just possible that some Minister might prefer not to have to answer a Question orally. That possibility has not escaped us.

It seems to me, therefore, that the simplest way round these difficulties for all hon. and right hon. Members, on the back benches and the Front Benches, is to oppose the Motion and allow Questions to run their full length tomorrow.

Mr. F. Blackburn (Stalybridge and Hyde)

Is my hon. Friend trying to move an Amendment? Does he understand that, if we vote the Motion down, we shall meet tomorrow at 2.30?

Mr. Driberg

I am much obliged to my hon. Friend. We should, of course, meet at 2.30. That is a very tricky one. I think, however, that I have ventilated the case which I wanted to ventilate, and the Leader of the House is probably seized of the importance we attach to the oral answering of Questions put down with a star.

4.24 p.m.

Mr. Ede (South Shields)

I wish to raise a point supplementary to what my hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Mr. Driberg) has said. One of the difficulties about Questions which are unstarred is that one can never be sure of getting an Answer to them on the day for which they are put down, whereas one can always be sure of getting an Answer to a starred Question even if it is obvious from the first that it will not be reached that day.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give an undertaking that he will see to it that all the Departments put into tomorrow's HANSARD the Answers to unstarred Questions which are now outstanding, or that would have been answered tomorrow, so that we shall not have to wait until it pleases a Minister to give us an Answer at some time in the New Year to Questions to which Answers were desired before the House rose for the Recess?

4.25 p.m.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. R. A. Butler)

The hon. Member for Barking (Mr. Driberg) has opposed the Motion that we do meet tomorrow at 11 o'clock, because he wishes Questions to continue for more than an hour and that all Questions should be taken.

The first answer to him, according to the procedure of the House which has been respected for many years, is that this particular Motion follows a pattern which has never been departed from, namely, that on the day we adjourn we meet at 11 o'clock, Oral Questions are answered until 12 o'clock, and there are facilities, to which my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mr. W. Yates) referred, for Ministerial statements, and, after that, the time is arranged, at the discretion of Mr. Speaker, for private Members to air subjects on the Motion for the Adojurnment of the House.

What the hon. Gentleman is really doing is to put forward a general plea for an extension of Question Time at the end of the sitting, contrary to all precedent. Although there is every reason for answering Questions, owing to the beauty and excellence of the Answers that will be provided by my colleagues, I think that there is an even stronger reason that we should not depart from Parliamentary precedent on this occasion. The hon. Gentleman has given various examples of Questions which may or may not be answered. I shall endeavour to obey your Ruling, Mr. Speaker, by not going into them in detail. The fact is that there will be Written Answers to these Questions which hon. Members can receive.

In answer to the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), I should find it quite difficult to ensure absolute compliance with his request, but what I can do, if I cannot get absolute compliance, is to endeavour that Departments should write to hon. Members who have Questions down on the Order Paper if it proves impossible to give an Answer to a Question on the last day of this particular sitting before the Recess. I can at least do that. It is only the time factor which makes me anxious not to give a promise to the right hon. Gentleman, but I will do my best to meet his wishes.

Mr. Ede

Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind, in considering procedure, that a good many Questions are put down as starred Questions which might very well be unstarred if hon. Members could be sure of getting an unstarred Answer on the day they put a Question down?

Mr. Butler

That general question is one which we can discuss inside the Administration, and I think that it would be particularly for the convenience of Parliamentary procedure.

If there were that reliance on the part of hon. Members in the sense desired by the right hon. Gentleman, it might certainly take some of the burden off the time for Questions which are starred for Oral Answer. So I will certainly look into that. I shall also look into his particular request, subject to the difficulty of complying with it absolutely owing to the time factor and of getting in touch with everybody in time.

I quite appreciate the importance which the hon. Member for Barking attaches to Questions. As I said earlier, in answer to the short interchange that we had on procedure generally, I did receive a letter from him, the object of which was to extend Question Time to a full hour and not to take out of it the time for Prayers and the time for notices of other forms of business. All that can be raised in the debate we should expect to hold on our return. Nothing is barred from consideration.

I think, however, that the hon. Member would really be going too far—as a Member who has sat in the House before for that beautiful part of the world from which I come, he must be filled with reason and some sense of artistry —if he did not feel that he would make a great inroad into the whole history of our Parliamentary development if he caused us to depart from the normal practice on the day we adjourn. I hope that his constitutional sense will prevail and that later, after the Recess, we may be able to meet some of his more importunate demands.

Mr. Blackburn

Is it strictly correct that Private Notice Questions could be taken tomorrow? If we adhere strictly to the Motion, that will require that no Question can be taken after 12 o'clock. Would that involve Private Notice Questions as well?

Mr. Butler

It is my business, in the variety of avocations which I have to fill at present, and the duties I perform, to work as far ahead as I can in arming myself with the necessary citations. I am informed that this point has been raised in the past, and I draw the attention of the hon. Gentleman to the fact that on 9th April, 1952, Mr. Speaker ruled that Private Notice Questions can be asked.

Although the Motion is in this form, I understand that the general rule would cover the possibility of a Private Notice Question. It would also cover the possibility of Ministerial statements being, as they would be then, in order, and as they would be on a normal day after 3.30. The only difference then would be that some of the private Members' time which would otherwise be taken up on the Adjournment would be taken up immediately after twelve o'clock.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved, That this House do meet Tomorrow at Eleven o'clock and that no Questions be taken after Twelve o'clock, and that at Five o'clock Mr. Speaker do adjourn the House without putting any Question.

Back to